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Malt extract (liquid or dried)
Hops
Specialty grains
Yeast (varieties all depend on the type of beer you are brewing, and these ingredients are all available in kits)
StepsPreparation
Clean and sanitize everything that is going to come in contact with your beer. The easiest way to do that is to use an electric dish washer set at the high heat setting. If one is not available then scrub everything well with hot soapy water (don't use a scrubber that will scratch the surface -- things love to grow in the grooves left behind, and are almost impossible to get clean), rinse well, then soak briefly in a bleach or iodine solution.
Rinse off bleach/iodine before using items using very clean potable or distilled water. If you're using bleach to sanitize, add one ounce of bleach to five gallons of water, followed by one ounce of white vinegar. Do not mix the bleach and vinegar together before adding to the water! The vinegar will make the water more acidic, which helps the bleach sanitize.
Note that bleach can cause unwanted flavours in your beer, and requires rinsing, which can introduce microorganisms to your sterilized equipment. If you want to sterilize your equipment properly, use either a food-grade cleanser/sanitizer, like sodium meta-bisulphite, or 1step food cleanser, which requires no rinsing. Remember, in beer brewing, you can do just about anything you want, and add anything you want, to make whatever kind of beer you want -- but proper sanitizing is the MOST important thing you can do. Take the time and the energy to do it right.
Brewing
Put any specialty grains into a grain bag (a mesh bag to contain the grains - like a tea bag, only a lot bigger) and steep them in the large stock pot in three gallons of hot water around 150 degrees F (66C) for about 30 minutes. Remove the grains and allow the water to drip out of the grain bag. Do not squeeze the bag, because you may extract tannins that will give your beer an astringent flavor.
Add the malt extract and bring everything to a boil. The hops are usually added at various intervals to add flavor, bitterness, or aroma and the times will be spelled out for you in the kit's instructions for your style of beer. In general, hops added early in the boil will contribute more bitterness, but at the expense of flavor and aroma. Hops added at the end of the boil will have a more pronounced flavor and aroma, but will not contribute significantly to the bitterness of the beer.
After you have boiled the liquid (called wort - pronounced wert), you need to cool it as quickly as possible. 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 to help expedite the cooling, but try not to splash or aerate the wort while it's still hot (it can make for some funky flavors). Once it's around 80 deg F (27C) you are ready to transfer it to the fermenter.
Pour the cooled wort into your fermenter. After the wort has cooled and before fermentation starts is the one and only time that splashing is encouraged. Yeast need oxygen, and splashing the wort as you pour it into the fermenter will help. Once fermentation has started, though, you want to minimize exposure to air, as it will lead to off flavors and aromas. Using a large strainer (usually cheapest at restaurant supply stores) will help to get most of the hops out. You've already got all the good stuff out of them, so leave them out of the fermenter if you can. Add water to make five gallons. You are now ready to "pitch" (add) the yeast. Some yeasts require that you "bloom" (stir with warm water to activate) them prior to pitching, others do not. You may find that even those that don't require blooming will start working faster if you do bloom them first, but it's usually no big deal. Put the lid on your fermenter (or stopper in your glass carboy) and affix the air-lock to the top. Put the fermenter in a dark area that stays a fairly consistent room temperature (for ales...lagers need refrigeration to ferment properly). Within about 24 hrs or so you should notice the air-lock happily bubbling away, if it hasn't started doing anything in 48hrs or so, you might have a problem (like dead yeast).
Bottling
After a week or so, the activity from the airlock will slow to a crawl. The beer is now ready for bottling! Your kit probably came with some priming sugar or DME(dried malt extract). This is used to provide carbonation to your beer once it is in the bottle. Boil the sugar in a little water and cool it. Then, add it to the empty, cleaned and sanitized bucket with the spigot or to your fermented beer.
Use your cleaned and sanitized plastic tubing as a siphon to transfer the beer as quietly as possible (little or no aeration) from the fermenter to the bottling bucket with the priming sugar solution in it - try not to get any of the sediment (trub) from the fermenter into the bottling bucket.
Attach your cleaned and sanitized bottle filler to your clean and sanitized plastic tubing, the other end of the tubing attaches to the bottom end of the spigot. (If you are only using one bucket, first it is important to let the fermented beer settle after stirring in the priming sugar solution (there is sediment on the bottom (trub) that will lend an off flavor to your beer).
Get your thoroughly cleaned and sanitized bottles ready. If you are using a bottling bucket, just open the spigot and put the bottle filler in a bottle. Push the bottle filler to the bottom and that will let the beer flow. If using the one bucket method, fill the tube (attached to the bottle filler) with water and put the open end in the fermented beer and place the bottle filler in a glass, or a bottle or the sink, press down to let the water flow out and start the beer flowing in the tube like a siphon. Fill each bottle just to overflowing, remove the bottle filler and this leaves an almost perfect airspace at the top of the bottle. Cap the bottle with your handy bottle capper. Repeat until all the bottles are full.
Store the bottles for at least a week preferably two at about room temperature.
Refrigerate.
Open, pour carefully into a glass (leave about a quarter inch in the bottle - the sediment tastes a little yeasty and will give you serious beer farts).
Enjoy!
TipsClean and sanitize! It can't be repeated enough. Clean and sanitize! Use an electric dishwasher if available.
A bottle brush will be handy for cleaning the bottles. A good thermometer will be useful for many things.
Start collecting non-screw top bottles well in advance of beginning this hobby, you will need about 50 to bottle a standard batch. This is a good excuse to start buying premium brands. Also old recyclable glass soft drink bottles and some champagne bottles are outstanding (a dark beer in a coke bottle is stealthy to say the least), and can often be found at yard sales.
Screw top plastic soda bottles are excellent choices for beginners. Most home brewers don't like the feel and appearance of plastic beer bottles but they work great. They are cheap, strong, and easy to use. If you use them make sure to remove the labels so that someone will not pick up a bottle of beer thinking it is a soft drink.
An extra large cooler full of bleach water is a great device to soak bottles in to sanitize them.
Glass carboys, although heavier and a little more expensive, are really the best if you are going to be brewing for a long time. The plastic buckets eventually get scratched, are more difficult to clean and the plastic will let in oxygen, albeit very slowly.
Most beers benefit from a second fermentation stage, or a "secondary." Once fermentation has slowed (the airlock is either no longer bubbling, or has slowed to 2-3 bubbles per minute), very carefully siphon the beer from the first fermenter to another sanitized fermenter, preferably a glass carboy. Splashing is discouraged at this stage, as you do not want oxygen getting into the beer. A slow, smooth siphon is best. This "secondary fermentation" gives the beer more time to clear, meaning less sediment in the bottles, and generally results in a better tasting beer.
Keeping temperatures down in the fermenter will result in a cleaner and better tasting beer. Try to keep the temperature between 60-70F (16-21C) if possible (for ales) or 45F-55F (7-13C) for Lagers (closer to 45 the better). Much cooler and the yeast goes dormant, but if it gets too much warmer you'll get some unusual "fruity" flavors. The ideal temperature varies depending on the strain of yeast you use, so the above recommendation is just a general guideline.
An easy way to keep the temperature down is to keep the fermenter in a large bucket of water and wrap the whole thing with a big blanket. You can add ice packs or frozen water bottles to drop the temperature a few degrees if you need to.
Cans of malt extract can be purchased at your local home-brewing store, or online. They often come in different flavors and produce different tasting beers.
WarningsWhen boiling the wort, watch for boil-overs. That malt extract is some squirrelly stuff when it starts boiling. Same goes for boiling the DME for priming.
Before adding extract to the boiling water, turn off the heat. Stir it in well, but gently, before turning the heat back on. This helps to avoid scorching the extract, and minimizes the chance of boil-overs.
If you are using a glass carboy, never pour hot wort directly into it, it will break from the temperature difference.
Be careful when adding the sugar to your bottles for carbonation. If you add too much they can explode!
Check your country's laws about brewing your own brew. A few American states require permits. Home brew Laws
Do NOT use "Brewer's Yeast" as sold in health food stores, etc. - this is |
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