I've been told the ice way tends to take a few hours. I'd assume the problem would be that the outside would get cool, but the middle would stay really warm.

The immersion wort chiller I have worked in about 15 minutes.

At that point in the brewing process, aerating the wort is good, so I just assumed I would stir it occasionally, keeping the interior and exterior temps pretty much consistent. Is that a bad idea?

O.K. Here's the deal on wort cooling. Stirring ins't bad, but the fact that you have to take the lid off your pot everytime you stir is. The longer it takes to cool, the more chance bacteria have to get in there and go to work before the yeast. And, wort is heaven for bacteria...it's essentially an IDEAL growing media.

Now, why the ice method is bad is time. It takes hours to cool the wort, and hours is plenty of time for the bacteria to get started.

A wort chiller is the way to go. It can cool down your wort in 15 minutes. Pick one up and enjoy the instant improvement in your beer.

I usually bring the beer down to the utility sink, which is near where I poor into the carboy. I set it in the sink, and then stick a large diameter piece of rubber tube into the drain. It's cut so that the top is just about the height of the level of the wprt in the pot. Then, I turn the cold water on to fill up the sink (the tube lets the overflow go down the drain without floating the pot). Once full, I turn it back down just to a trickle. It tends to circulate around the pot, and I can leave it unattended. It only takes me about 45 - 60 minutes to get the entire pot down to "pretty well cooled". After that, I dump it into the carboy (strain it actually). Then, I fill it up with so much cold water that it's real easy to get the whole concoction down to room temperature or beyond, more than cool enough to pitch the yeast. So - the wort chiller is nice, but for me anyway it would only save about 1/2 hour (My roommate and I both brewed a sea of beer, and he'd use it when he was in charge - typically his projects went about that cited 30 minutes faster).

I'll attach pictures of the fridge I use: The first is just the outside, as it sits underneath of the workbench in the utility room.

This is the inside, with the two 5 gallon soda kegs placed side-by side.

Lastly, a better idea of the inside. As you may see from the previous picture, I had to remove the shelving from the front door. I pushed the insulation back into place and screwed a sheet of plexiglass over it instead. On the inside, I had two big things - first, I had to cut each shelf short so that the kegs would fit in. I can still put unused ingredients in there, store a pair of sixpacks, or anything else. The other thing I had to do was bend the crap out of the freezer piece. This is of course the part that cools the fridge, and I was careful with it. All I really did was bend it into a 90 degree angle, and run a pair of screws through (a section of it that wouldn't hurt anything) to hold it in place.

It was about $50 or so to pick up the fridge from a friend, maybe $10 for the plexiglass, and an afternoon worth of work. Doesn't hold quite what these other pictures show, but really - 10 gallons is more than enough for the smaller gatherings I have.

The longer it takes to cool, the more chance bacteria have to get in there and go to work before the yeast. And, wort is heaven for bacteria...it's essentially an IDEAL growing media.

Now, why the ice method is bad is time. It takes hours to cool the wort, and hours is plenty of time for the bacteria to get started.

A wort chiller is the way to go. It can cool down your wort in 15 minutes. Pick one up and enjoy the instant improvement in your beer

For my own benefit, just so I understand a little better, can you clarify this point please... I assume you are saying that chilling the wort quickly improves the flavour for it's own reasons and you are not referring to the bad flavour caused by bacterial infections?

As long as the immersion chiller gets the wort temperature down quickly, having to take the top off the pot (for the chiller) is OK then?

P.S. You guys ROCK!

No. What I am saying is that cooling the beer down quickly reduces the chance for harmful bacteria to get in there and ruin your beer. It's the bacteria that you have to worry about. Just the mere act of cooling the beer quickly has no effect on the flavor as far as I know...but it could.

Not really. You should try to keep it covered at all times. What I usually do is stick the chiller in the wort with 5 min. left in the boil. That heat sanitizes it so that when you stoip the boil the chiller won't introduce anything bad. Then when the boil is done, I cover the whole thing up with aluminum foil while I'm cooling the wort down.

Gotcha. I was trying to figure out how the lid stayed on with the immersion chiller in there. Foil makes sense.

I'm really getting excited to try this out. Only problem is that the starter kit hasn't shipped yet. I'm going to go nuts.

Ok, now you've got my attention on proper brewing rather than simply using malt kits

Aside from equipment costs, what is the cost/pint of beer brewed using grains etc?

I have just worked out my costs.....
Good quality Malt kit $28 = $0.78/pint based on 36 pints drinkable

I know home brewing isn't all about cost necessarily but I'm interested in understanding whether it actually is cheaper using grains in the long run.

Something to remember when you are brewing with your own grains (not a "malt-kit") is that you get to really brew what you want. You are not at the mercy of any kit so with that in mind, the ingredients cost varies. However, just for reference, I like to make stouts and porters (heavy beers with a lot of grain). My ingredient costs usually run about $30 for a 5 gallon batch. Depending on your technique that will be about 35-36 pints of beer (~$0.85/pint). A typical Ale recipe would be almost exactly the same price as you quoted, Rue.

It litterally all depends on your tastes and what you want to add into the beer. Now that you are essentially in full control, you can do damn near anything you want. The neat thing is to take a recipe that you know and start messing with it a bit...see what happens...you can learn a lot about ingredients that way.

Since everyone seems so into this...here are two of my recipies....

Baird's Beaked Ale (IPA) O.G - 1.065, IBU - 56, Color - 18 HBCU, Alcohol - ~5.6ABV
GRAINS:
8lbs Pale Malt Extract (NOT HOPPED!!!!)
2lbs 20L Crystal Malt
1lb Flaked Wheat
2lbs Flaked Barley
HOPS:
1oz Chinook
1oz Willamette
1oz Cascade (used for dry hopping)

Steep the Crystal Malt, flaked wheat and flaked barley for a good 30 min at 150F in 2 gallons of water. (an easy way to do this and save time is to let the grains steep as you bring the water to a boil. BUT TAKE THE GRAINS OUT BEFORE IT BOILS!!!!). After the grains are steeped, remove the kettle from the heat and add in the Malt Extract. Return to heat and boil. Once you get a rolling boil, throw in the Shinook hops and time a 60min. boil. At 30min to go add in the Willamette.

At the end of the boil, cool the wort (wort chiller anyone?) and pitch with White Labs (or what you can get) English Ale Yeast. The bottling O.G. should be about 1.019. About 5 days before you plan on bottling, throw the Cascade hops into the fermenter and stir GENTLY!! (That's the "dry hopping" part)

Dan's Little Bit 'o Irish Stout (Stout) O.G - 1.065, IBU - 49, Color - 209 HBCU, Alcohol - ~4.8ABV
GRAINS:
4lbs Pale Malt Extract
5lbs British 2-Row Malt
2lbs Roasted Barley
2lbs Flaked Barley
1lb Flaked Wheat

HOPS:
1oz Willamette
1oz Chinook
1oz Fuggles

Follow the above general instructions only remember that you are using 10lbs of grain here...it's alot!! When you get the boil, throw in the Willamette and time 60min. At 15 min to go, add the Chinook. At 5min. to go add the Fuggles. Pitch with Irish Ale Yeast. The bottling O.G. should be about 1.025.

Now a quick explanation for the beginners...OG is Original Gravity. This is the thickness of the WORT, not the finished beer. This is for a VERY specific reason. The thickness of the wort controls the level of hop extraction during the boil. A very thick wort will not extract the acids from the hops as well as a "light" wort. For those science minded, it is exactly the same thing as Specific Gravity. I recommend getting a Specific Gravity tool (available at any good Homebrew store)....it will give you better control over your beer. And you can figure out the alcohol content from the readings.

IBU is International Bitterness Units, and HBCU is Homebrew Color Units (not as scientific as the other measures...but it's close enough).

Brew and enjoy. And, remember (although I am not religous), as Ben Franklin said, "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."

Thanks for the recipes. I think I'm going to start collecting all the recipes I find and keep them in a binder or maybe put them all on a web page or something. Just a massive collection of everything I can find.

Here's where you want to look for recipes:

http://hbd.org/brewery/cm3/CatsMeow3.html

Wow. Thats a ton. Guess that means I don't have to do anything

My kit is going to get here tomorrow (I'm still excited), and I checked out the place close to me. After talking with the guy there for awhile, I went ahead and decided to make the "First Born Pale Ale". The guy there rocked. He suggested that one because just by tasting it or listening to the description, they will be able to tell what went wrong (if anything, the directions are extensive). Kind of like a painless introduction (even though it does include steeping grain).

If you haven't already found this one....
http://hbd.org/recipator/

Tim, how's the brewing coming along?

By the way, it's amazing what a little time will do for your beer. I cracked another bottle open the other night, after not having had it for almost two weeks. Wow, MUCH better. I had like a 2-3 inch head on it, and it was definitely a richer and smoother taste.

Man, I want a beer right now. Guess I have to wait until I get home.

I let it ferment for 8 days, and just bottled it last night. My roomie tried a little (not knowing that I just added 2/3 cup dextrose to it) and said it was good, but a little sweet and flat. I guess that about summed it up

I'm planning on cracking my first one a week from today at a friends graduation.

I wish you the best on the beer. Like I said, they definitely get better with age. You won't believe the difference between a bottle at week 1 and a bottle at like week 4 or 5.

Well, I tried my first beer Friday night. A friend was graduating (finally - really 10 years isn't that bad I guess), so I took 4 of the 24 bottles I made up to school. They all agreed that it was awesome tasting and that I should've brought more. I was really surprised at how good it tasted.

That was after conditioning for one week. Now I'm going to try to wait for this weekend (my final will be over, and two week break from work).