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hazz20

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Hey all, got a U Brew It opening in our area soon, just wondering what everyone thinks of it, those who have one anyway. Worth a look? Sounds too good to be true.

Hazz
 
how it works is you go there, they make the wort but legally (cause they would have to pay tax, etc) you sprinkle the yeast on top so you're making the alcohol. they store it there for two weeks and filter it then you go and bottle and cap it.

I went a few times, had to drink about 30 stubbies once and wasn't drunk, the second time we went 3 of us drank about two or three stubbies of the stuff and we developed some sort of disease/sickness whereas you'd wake up each morning and cough until you spewed, unable to breathe. The only thing the three of us ever had was this beer together.

needless to say I will *never* ever go back to a shitty place like this. I honestly thought I was dying.
 
U brew it places are basically extract brewers.
I've looked at a couple but never tried any

works like quantocks says

cant see anything inherently wrong with the process ( other than quantock's comments)

always figured its better to brew at home because I can make more adjustments to what I brew to get it the way I like instead of settling for what someone else thinks is good.
 
I teamed up with another bloke and brewed a sierra nevada pale ale clone and was pleasantly surprised at how good it tasted. It was actually a very nice drop. My only criticism of the place is the price: $160 for ~50 litres = $30 a slab.....not exactly cheap for "homebrew", though much nicer than megaswill. Will I ever go back there again...... most probably, though the cost is fairly high (when compared to AG home brew), the time saving is well and truly there. On average my Ag brew day takes ~ 7hours from start until I've finally cleaned up. A brew at u brew it takes little more than an hour, no cleaning required.
 
seriously, we had all drunk these 'beer factory' beers and we all had the same thing. You'd be unable to breathe and cough so hard you spew just trying to breathe. not cool ^_^ it went on for months, the doctor had no idea what it was.


you may aswell just do your own K&K and filter it, that's all these guys do basically.
 
Might give it a miss, I like being able to breath without vomiting.

Hazz
 
I've tasted a few different U Brew products and frankly I brew much better. They use extract malts, warm fermentation (I don't think they brew at lager temps, but I'll accept admonishment if they do) using probably Mauri yeast and filter their beers. Its good enough for the market they attract but any genuine home brewer probably wouldn't bother. If you are a simple K & K brewer its not too bad as the beer should be better than what you can do at home (assuming the sanitation, constant temps and filter) but not much. You can't fiddle too much. The bloke running the setup bought a franchise to make beer, but I doubt he's a brewer, in the same way that the kid who makes burgers at McDonalds is not a chef.

Don't automatically deride the notion of these complexs, just remember that the market they cater for (almost exclusively) are not at this site. If out of their customers someone comes over to our side of brewing, all the better. I know that some posters here operate such franchises and they would support my comments here. The day they allow you to do extensive changes to the brew in terms of wort ingredients and yeasts and cool temperature control may see more homebrewers go across and use their facilities to brew rather than make a mess at home.

Edit : Don't listen to Q's complaint, I think it's a bit over the top. A poor beer is a poor beer, but to make you sick it must have been infected. If it was infected, you'd taste it and not drink it. It could just as easily been poor bottle cleanliness and some kind of food poisoning. I doubt Q's and his mates experience had much to do with the general output of these places.

Hazz, if interested, give it a try. The only way to correctly assess value and performance is to stick your money down and taste the end result.
 
I'm new to the forums and wouldn't have stumbled across this place (or decided to get into brewing) if it wasn't for u brew it. I don't know what the beers are like from there yet but I'm going to bottle my Duvel clones on Wednesday so should know by Christmas.

It's a different process to brewing at home as the guys above describe, you pretty much just mix it, bottle it and drink it.... there's no actual brewing involved.

As for the poor quality of the beers, as pointed out, they are franchise operations and I don't think they would still be in business if the beers were crap and made you sick. Sorry to hear about you experience though quantocks, sure hope mine don't turn out like that.

Anyway, for me it was a stepping stone and will get me through until I can get some gear together to brew at home. I have a couple of recipes I've found for Trois Pistoles which is my beer of choice....but at $140 a carton it's not in the fridge very often in carton quantities.

So I guess what I'm getting at is Give it a go and see if you enjoy 'making' (read: mixing) your own beer, if you do then get some gear together and move to homebrewing.
 
seriously, we had all drunk these 'beer factory' beers and we all had the same thing. You'd be unable to breathe and cough so hard you spew just trying to breathe. not cool ^_^ it went on for months, the doctor had no idea what it was.


you may aswell just do your own K&K and filter it, that's all these guys do basically.


doesn't sound like the beer if it went on for that long, as Fatgodzilla said possible infection and that wold be taste or smelled and the beer discarded.
 
I'm new to the forums and wouldn't have stumbled across this place (or decided to get into brewing) if it wasn't for u brew it. I don't know what the beers are like from there yet but I'm going to bottle my Duvel clones on Wednesday so should know by Christmas.

It's a different process to brewing at home as the guys above describe, you pretty much just mix it, bottle it and drink it.... there's no actual brewing involved.

As for the poor quality of the beers, as pointed out, they are franchise operations and I don't think they would still be in business if the beers were crap and made you sick. Sorry to hear about you experience though quantocks, sure hope mine don't turn out like that.

Anyway, for me it was a stepping stone and will get me through until I can get some gear together to brew at home. I have a couple of recipes I've found for Trois Pistoles which is my beer of choice....but at $140 a carton it's not in the fridge very often in carton quantities.

So I guess what I'm getting at is Give it a go and see if you enjoy 'making' (read: mixing) your own beer, if you do then get some gear together and move to homebrewing.

This is a good point, a place like this could act as a "Gateway drug" into proper brewing..
 
Edit : Don't listen to Q's complaint, I think it's a bit over the top. A poor beer is a poor beer, but to make you sick it must have been infected. If it was infected, you'd taste it and not drink it. It could just as easily been poor bottle cleanliness and some kind of food poisoning. I doubt Q's and his mates experience had much to do with the general output of these places.

Hazz, if interested, give it a try. The only way to correctly assess value and performance is to stick your money down and taste the end result.

I'll say it's probably just a once off infection we had in a batch, but the first batch we could sink 20 bottles in an arvo and not be pissed. So with the "Beer Factory" we went to, (not sure how U-Brew-It operate), but to drink 20 beers and not even get a tingle and then drink the next batch and be violently ill, we all decided to give this place a miss.

again, I'm sure some people brew average beers here. Just not my experience.
 
I'll say it's probably just a once off infection we had in a batch, but the first batch we could sink 20 bottles in an arvo and not be pissed. So with the "Beer Factory" we went to, (not sure how U-Brew-It operate), but to drink 20 beers and not even get a tingle and then drink the next batch and be violently ill, we all decided to give this place a miss.

again, I'm sure some people brew average beers here. Just not my experience.

Matey, 3 batches tipped down the sink now? :eek: Were they all just crap kits or what?
 
What went wrong buddy?

have you even read this thread? lol.

going on what ive heard on this site, and some mates personal experiences with BOP's, the general consensus is that they are pretty terrible. its just making extract homebrew in a shop, then they filter and force carb it for you.

there is a market for it, but most of the people running them seem pretty clueless. i know of at least 3 people that have been to the BOP here in tassie and come home with infected brews.
 
but most of the people running them seem pretty clueless

I think you are rather generous - the ones I met knew the names of the beer on their price list and thats about it.
 
Hazz, if interested, give it a try. The only way to correctly assess value and performance is to stick your money down and taste the end result.

I think my fellow IBU said it all. The local U Brew it run a clean plant and it dots all the "i's". (they are also nice fella's to boot).

The cough and weez bit has nothing to do with beer. Was there privet in flower, did you eat too much garlic, had you pulled too many cones?? No beer will do that to you, drunk in reasonable amounts. If unreasonable amounts the ce la vie...

Scotty
 
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