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Hello from Slovenia

kalbo

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Hello there.
I come from a country which is famous for its hops around the world. We have two breweries. Slovenians mostly swear by one of the two brands that we have. Both breweries produce lagers of mass production, which are consequently without any special taste. They don't use Slovenian hops, they use Chinese hop extract what is a shame in my opinion. The last couple of years things are improving. Several microbreweries have Ben formed and they brew all kinds of beer and use Slovenian hops. Home brewing is still a fiction. So, how I came up with home brewing in such an environment?
One summer day my friend Mark and I were drinking beer after beer at the garden behind my house. We talked about an article of home brewing, and the next morning, like a bolt out of the blue comes to my mind that I typed into google the phrase "home brew" (in Slovenian "domače pivovarstvo) and one of the top hits was Slovenian internet store for home brewing. They sell only ekstract kits and an equipment for that sort of brewing. So I have orderet starter kit from mr Malt, and I have brewed several kits in the last year or so. Mostly it was  dark stouts that my wife loves. But I want more :), so I am gathering and making the equipment for all grain brewing for some time now. I am expecting my first batch of all grain in couple of Mont's. I will post it up here :)

I apologise for my poor writing in English. I understand everything, but for writing I need help from google translator or my wife, and now she is not by my site to correct my mistakes :)

Greetings from Slovenia

Luka
 
Your English is plenty good enough.
Welcome to the world of brewing.

I'll give some limited advice at this point.

1) Plan for much bigger batches than you think you are going to do.  It saves money in the long run.  When you buy a kettle or mash tun only to figure out that it's too small later, you end up buying two. (or three or four)  Just get everything larger than you think.  I have lots of stainless pots for the kitchen that are brew pots I outgrew.

2) forget what you read.  For boiling 5 gallons, a 10 gallon pot is best.  For 10 gallon batches, a 15 gallon keggle is small.  When you account for boil off, hop loss and the fact that you want 11 or more gallons in the end for a 10 gallon batch, 15 gallons is smallish.  You wont have boil overs with 20 gallons!

3) Think outside the box with equipment.  You can make a mash tun, you can shop around for kettles or build some from kegs and you can shop around for good propane burners.

4) Put a lot of thought and effort into sanitization.  Brew kits don't come with star san and they should.  Most kits come with cleaner, like PBW or some other form of Oxyclean.  That stuff is great for cleaning but you need sanitization. 

5)  Check out youtube for a chance to watch people brew.  I watched several mashing videos before I went all grain or even started to get gear for it.

6) If you don't have beersmith yet, get it.  It's great for building recipes, storing recipes, tweaking recipes, scaling recipes, converting from grain to extract (if you're into that), and keeping notes.


Get brewing and enjoy.    Try different styles.  It's probably not easy to try different styles based on what you say about available beer there.
 
Hi!
I just moved to Slovenia and I'm interested on brewing :)
So you had to order the kit from outside Slovenia, right?

Could be nice to contact directly slovenian hops producers, do you know some?
 
Hello.

Yeast is working on my first batch of all grain dry stout. My brewery is complete.

Complete kits are available on Slovenian site (type in google "sam svoj pivovar"). Grain, yeast and hops can be bought in Hmezad d.d, Žalec Slovenia.

Emilio, if you want to contact me, you can do it on loblak@siol.net.

SharpsRifle, thanks for advices. Some of them were alredy taken. Mash tune, hot water tank and boil pot are made of 50l stainless steal kegs. Our kegs are six liters smaler then US kegs so I managed to brew 40 liters batch witch is ideal for my 28 liters fermentors.

kalbo
 
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