A phenomenon has emerged in the brewery world that has caused a chaotic stir among those wanting to make their own beer. Home brewing has not only grown into a popular activity in residential kitchens but it has also gained a reputation in commercial kitchens as well. Making your own brew is a very inexpensive product that will easily rival anything else you could buy in the store.
You will need the following ingredients in order to make your own home brew: Malt extract (liquid or dried), hops, specialty grains, yeast (this varies depending on the type of beer you are brewing, and these ingredients are all available in kits).
Sanitize everything that will come in contact with your beer after the boiling process is complete. The best way to do that is to use an electric commercial dish washer set at high heat or use a powdered cleanser such as pbw. Pathogens tend to grow in grooves left behind, and are almost impossible to sanitize. Make sure to rinse well and then soak in a bleach or iodine solution.
Rinse off bleach before using items using clean, distilled water. Make sure to add one ounce of bleach to every five gallons of cold water, followed by one ounce of white vinegar. Never mix the bleach and vinegar together before adding to the water. The vinegar will make the water too acidic. Do not rinse iodine solutions, let equipment air dry instead.
That being said, first you need to decide whether you are going to brew all-grain or extract. All-grain is how most craft breweries make their beer. This starts with malted barley. With all-grain you have more control over the final product. You control everything that goes into the beer and the process of the mash. If you decide to brew with extract, then someone has already done the mash for you and dehydrated the wort for ease of use. For beginners, it’s good to start out on extract and work your way up to all-grain; however, if you decide to brew with all-grain then read the following steps otherwise skip down to step five. Put any specialty grains into a grain bag and steep them in the large brew pot in three gallons of hot water around 150F° for about 30 minutes. Make sure to remove the grains and allow water to drip out of the grain bag. Never squeeze the bag, because you may extract tannins that will give your beer an unfavorably strong taste.
The grains are usually added at various intervals for flavor, bitterness, and aroma and the times will be instructed to you in the recipe depending on the style of beer you are making. Hops are added at the end of the boil and will have a more pronounced flavor and aroma. This has nothing to do with the bitterness of the beer itself.
Step 1. Turn on your burner and heat your brew kettle to 160°F. (There are several types of brew kettles one can choose from including economy brand, tri-ply, or some with sight gauges or even some with stainless steel ball valves). The size of the brew kettle depends on the amount of brew you choose to make. An ideal size is 32 quart brew kettle for an average brew. It’s always good to heat 1 quart of water per pound of grain. You can either use your kitchen stove or an outdoor burner. Once this process is complete, add your grain. This step is also called “mashing in”. It should consistently resemble a thin layer of oatmeal. Stir your grain in with what is called a mash paddle which is a 30” long perforated paddle that allows little resistance for quick stirring. If the mash is too thick, you will not have the enzymes moving around enough to convert the starch to sugar. If the mash is too thin, there will not be enough enzymes to convert the starch into sugar.
Step 2. Make sure your brew kettle is maintains temperatures between 144-158° for 60 minutes for a regular beer. Make sure to stir every 10 minutes and take temperature readings from multiple angles. Stir constantly while applying heat. The bottom will get hotter than the top and may burn the grain. Make sure all the enzymes are scattered apart so the starch will turn into sugar. Get this item up to a certain temperature and then put a lid on your brew kettle to enclose that heat. After you have boiled the liquid, you then need to heat the water and the enzymes and convert the grain into sugar. This is where the sparging process takes place to extract the sugary water (also known as the wort). These sugars will later be converted into alcohol by the yeast.
Step 3. The sparge process starts by adding water at 170°F to a bucket. This bucket should have a false bottom attached to a stopper and hose. The stopper should fit in the hole near the bottom of the bucket and the hose or also called a wort chiller should be clamped off at the bottom. You should now add the contents from the brew kettle into the bucket. Be careful here because the contents will be quite hot and have a tendency to splash if you pour it too hard— this causes what is called a stuck sparge. A hose or wort chiller is ran from the bottom of the bucket back into the brew pot.Step 4. Now it is time to start the boiling process. The brew pot is full of wort and it’s time to start brewing. The wort is just sugar water. You are going to boil it to sanitize it and boil out some of the chemicals that will if otherwise left in give your beer and off-taste. You’ll also add hops in this stage to balance out the sweetness of the beer. It’s important to note that anything that touches the wort after the boiling process must be sanitized.
Step 4. It is now time to start brewing. If you are brewing with extract, bring the water to boil and add the extract while constantly stirring. You will want to heat your wort until it boils. Continue boiling until you hit your boiling point (or the contents will start to foam). Make sure to drop down the temperature periodically through the boiling process in order to prevent any spillage.
Step 5. You can now add your hops. Start your timer here and your boil will last for one hour. These hops will make your beer bitter to counteract the natural sweet flavor of beer.
Step 6. At 45 minutes into the boil, you will add your flavoring hops. These require much less time to stir in.
Step 7. After about 55 minutes into the boil, you will add your finishing hops (aroma hops). This will leave all the volatile oils in the beer and gives you the hops smell that is so common to beer.
Step 8. Once your boil is complete, you need to quickly cool off your wort. The easiest way is to put the whole pot in a sink or bathtub that has a nice, cold bath of ice water in it. You can gently stir the wort with a brewing spoon to help speed up the cooling process, but don’t try to splash or aerate the wort while it’s still hot. Once it’s around 80°F you can then transfer it into a fermenter.
Step 9. Now you can transfer your wort to a fermentation bucket. After the wort has cooled and before fermentation starts is the one and only time that splashing is recommended. Yeast need oxygen and splashing the wort as you pour it into the fermenter (or a bucket with the similar contents as mentioned earlier) will help. Once fermentation has started, you want to reduce the exposure to air— this will lead to unusual flavors and aromas. Using a large strainer or china cap will help to get most of the hops out. Leave them out of the fermenter if you can.Step 11. Once the fermentation starts, the sugar you create in the mash is now being eaten away by the yeast, which is expelling alcohol and carbon dioxide. Add water to make five gallons. You are now ready to add the yeast. Some yeast requires that you stir them with warm water prior to pitching. After adding yeast to your wort, leave your beer alone for two weeks to be safe. Once the yeast has eaten the sugar in your wort, you have beer. For more information on how to bottle your own beer, read this article .
