This is a list of online brewing resources that Al and I have been collecting, but it certainly isn’t an exhaustive list. Please leave us comments with suggestions for others that we should check out and we will follow up with worthy additions. So, in no particular order…

The Brewing Network
These guys bill themselves as “A Multimedia Resource for Brewers and their Craft”. They offer a weekly podcast with visits from brewmasters as well as covering such topics as how to judge homebrew competitions and brewing chemistry. They also offer a couple of special videos and a fairly active discussion forum. There is even a Java chat channel, but I couldn’t get that working. Judging by their photo gallery, they have a great time putting their shows together.

BrewingKB “The Home Brewers KnowledgeBase”
This site offers a few brewing tutorials, offers an opportunity for members to show off their setups, and has active forums covering bottling tips, general homebrewing, recipes, information on brewing cider, mead and wine, and a market to buy, sell, and trade homebrewing equipment.

Beertown – the American Homebrewers Association
No discussion of homebrewing resources would be complete without the official site of the American Homebrewers Association. There is the National Homebrewers Conference (being held this year June 21-23 in Denver, Colorado), sponsorship of the Beer Judge Certification Program, articles for beginners to experts, recipes, state laws that affect homebrewing, recommended reading, and a good deal more.

HomeBrewTalk.com
And boy, do they. This forum boasts a couple dozen topics and thousands of posts. There is also a recipe collection, a wiki, photo gallery, product reviews, and a decent collection of links to related sites.

Open Directory Project: Recreation: Food: Drink: Beer: Homebrewing
The Open Directory Project is the largest human-edited directory on the web. This category contains over three hundred links to a variety of homebrewer resources, including almost 150 homebrewing clubs. Other categories include software, recipes, and equipment.

How to Brew – By John Palmer
A condensed, easy to read and easy to understand, “how to brew”, just like the name says. But what I like best about this resource is that John touches on many of the frequently asked questions regarding the nuances to brewing such as describing off-flavors and how you may have caused them, and how to formulate your own recipes.

Brew Your Own
This magazine is fantastic for the home brewer. Many of their feature articles are posted online several weeks after the issue has been out in circulation. Check out the Brew Wizard for excellent tips and answers to frequently asked questions.

Hops in the BrewPot
I like have charts like this on hand. This one gives a decent list of hop varieties and a basic description of each.

Yeast – Wyeast and WhiteLabs
Descriptions of yeast strains from the two most popular home brew yeast producers.

Cheap and Easy Batch Sparging
Debate it all you want, but this method to sparging will work just fine and certainly is cheap and easy.

Basic Brewing
Basic Brewing offers many offline resources, such as DVD’s that explain the whole brewing process, but, check out their awesome Basic Brewing Radio podcast.

In the April 26th 2007 episode, I learned all about home brewing software that is available, some online, some offline. (some free, some not) If you want some online tools, check out the simple calculators available at the Knights of the Mashing Fork

Northern Brewer Forums
Northern Brewer will be able to sell you all that you need to home brew, but they also offer a very popular discussion board to help you figure out exactly what you need. Whether it is all-grain brewing questions or recipe exchange, these forums have people who can help and you won’t have to wait for days to get a reply.

I stopped home brewing years ago long after I had started back in 1992. I started simple, with an extract kit plus some whole grains to steep. The process was simple and I was just tickled that I could actually make my own beer.

Side note: What we in the U.S. consider “home brewing” is referred to as “craft brewing” internationally. In the U.S., the term “craft brewing” typically refers to someone who has taken their craft to the next level and are making a business out of it. But trust me, when we make beer at home we are striving to craft incredible beer.

I was just married back then; no kids, no dog, rented, and thus I had a lot of time on my hands. Home brewing was an inexpensive way to get pretty good beer. I got to the point where I was brewing just about every other month, which, as the primary consumer of the brew, was just about enough time to go through the approximate 2 cases of beer and have a couple left over to have “not worrying” while I made my next batch.

A couple years later we moved to a new house and I tried to keep up on my brewing, but with the addition of house maintenance and a dog, my weekends just weren’t as free as they used to be. I was expanding into partial and whole mashes, which took more time. I was also starting to have problems with quality control. All of my batches were starting to pick up off flavors.

Assuming that my problems were related to sanitization, I did an overhaul on my equipment hoping that old scratched plastic buckets and such were to blame. I was on the verge of quitting altogether, because if I couldn’t brew good tasting beer, it obviously wasn’t worth it. Plus, better beer was becoming more readily available at the local stores and I was also at an age where I could start to afford it.

I added new glass carboys, started to formulate my own recipes, and the biggest change was that I abandoned bottling and went to kegging. I remember that first brew from the new system… I was a brewer reborn. (The beer I brewed I named “The Dragon Reborn” after the Robert Jordan series I was reading at the time.)

I was all grain brewing, even had my own grain mill to crack the barley. I took the time to journal every entry. I would brew a whole keg just for friends. …and then I had kids.

The frequency of my brewing sessions quickly became far and few between. I brewed a few more times, including a great Belgium white for my daughter’s Christening celebration. Then sometime in 1998, I just stopped.

I did try a couple more brews since then including my kids in the process which was fun and educational. (Turning starch to sugar is a great chemistry lesson – and you can never be too young to learn how to brew… can you?) None of these brews were anything to write home about, but they were ok.

Home brewing is a great experience and can give you a great sense of accomplishment. With practice and a bit of luck, you can make the best beer in the world catered to just how you like it. It can also be a frustrating and daunting project. There is a lot of preparation and education involved, you better like cleaning, and it still won’t always come out great.

It’s not any cheaper for the casual, a couple-three times a year, 5 gallon batch, home brewer to brew their own, either. It makes little sense why I would even have any yearning to brew my own beer given all of the potential downside and the fantastic selection of craft beer I can get at my local candy store, like Victory, Southern Tier, Brooklyn, Rogue… and the list goes on and on. Why would I even bother? That’s why I stopped.

But, I never said I quit…