Hello! Welcome back to BrewSumo, here we are going to learn about how can we make beer at home, so you can enjoy cheaper and tastier beer from your own kitchen or garage. If this is your first time, the the best way to brew your first batch of beer is to pick up an ingredient kit from your local homebrew supply store. Most homebrew supply stores will carry what we might call a box kit that has all the ingredients you’ll need to brew your first batch of beer with instructions on how to do it. But hey, If you want do beer making from scratch at home, keep on reading:
Beer Brewing Preparation
First thing first, we have to get and prepare the equipments and ingredients of homebrewing ready:
Equipments
Here are the tools and equipments that you need to prepare before starting any DIY Beer Homebrewing:
- Brew Kettle – essentially, this is where you are going to make the base for your beer, any large kitchen pot will do (Try to get 5-gallon and above). Also, Make sure you have plenty of headspace to avoid a boilover.
- Grain Bag – or a Muslin Bag, to hold all of the grains and hops so your beer will stay clear of grains’ and hops’ sediment.
- Kitchen Thermometer – to check the temperature, of course!
- Fermenter – to hold the wort as it ferments into beer.
- Air Lock and Bung – an airlock is inserted in the top of a fermenter and allows carbon dioxide, a byproduct of fermentation, to escape the fermenter without letting contaminants in. A bung is used to secure the air lock on the fermenter bottle.
- Heat Source – your kitchen stove should suffice for smaller amounts of boil, however once you get passed the small batches, you will need more powerful heat source, something like turkey fryer works well for larger batches.
- Siphon and Tubing – a siphon and tubing is a great way to move the wort or finished beer. By using this you are reducing the risk of spilling and contaminate your beer.
- Cleaner – you will need a homebrew-specific cleaners that you can get at your local homebrew shop or get unscented dish soap to avoid the aroma lingering around the beer.
- No-Rinse Sanitizer – different from the cleaner above, sanitizer works to ensure that there are no microorganisms that could spoil your brew.
- Hydrometer – technically you don’t actually need a hydrometer to brew beer at home, but measuring gravity lets you closely monitor the fermentation and calculate specifications of your beer’s alcohol content.
- Stirring Spoon – to stir your brew, so you don’t boil your own hands!
- Measuring Cup – any standard kitchen measuring cup can be used to measure the appropriate water volumes.
- Strainer – to strain the wort during the transfer from the brew pot to the fermenter, to prevent hops and other solids from being transferred.
- Bottles – there are a lot of options here and we’ll discuss this some more in the bottling step later
Ingredients
Here are the ingredients that you need to prepare before starting any DIY Beer Homebrewing:
- Crushed Grains – brewing grains provide the sugars that yeast ferment. They are the primary source of beer colour and a major contributor to beer flavour, aroma, and body.
- Malt Extract – concentrated sugar extracted from brewing-grade malted barley. By using Malt Extract, you will skip the mashing process needed to brew with grains and takes you straight to the boil.
- Hops – contain specific amounts of alpha & beta acids, and essential oils which will be extracted and broken down in boiling wort that give your beer the bitterness, flavour, and aroma.
- Brewer’s Yeast – or in latin called Saccharomyces, is a type of fungus that consumes fermentable sugars in the wort and creates alcohol and carbon dioxide as a byproduct.
- Water – the water you brew with is extremely important because beer is, hmm, made of water! Most of homebrewers are fine with their tap water, if you are unsure, get some bottled water.
- Priming Sugar – this brings the bubbly effect for bottle conditioning (at the very end part of the beer brewing process).
Beer Brewing Process
Clean and Sanitize Everything
it’s important to properly sanitize any equipment that might come in contact with your beer or work. These sanitizers are readily available at any local homebrew supply store and most of them are no rinse sanitizers which means you can merely soak or wash any of your equipment for a few moments in the sanitizer then allow it to drip dry. And you can put it into your beer with no risk of contamination.
Steep the Grain
The first step is steeping your specialty grains. This step is important to add specific malt character to your batch of beer. You might use any range of specialty grains to get different characters in your beer. You might use a caramelized grain or even a roasted grain for dark flavours that you might find in a stout or a porter.
The first thing we’ll do is steep the grains in hot water in your brew kettle. The best kind of brew kettle is a stainless pot which is less corrosive and easy to take care of than other metals. So the first thing to do is to check that your water is approximately 150 F to 170 F (65 C to 75 C) degrees. You can use a simple stainless thermometer to check the temperature.
While waiting for the right temperature, place the crushed specialty grains into the grain/muslin bag and tied a knot into the top of the bag to hold them in and once the water is at the correct temperature, you can to steep the grain.
You will want to have a flame on your pot turned off, so that your specialty grains won’t scorch against the bottom of the pot when they sink to the bottom. Don’t forget to stir the grains periodically and you’ll see in just a few moments how much color and flavors steep out of those grains. Once you’ve steeped your grains for approximately 30 minutes you’ll want to remove them from the water place them in a strainer or colander and rinse the extra flavors and sugars in color from those grains with a small amount of hot water.
You can see that you have extracted most of what these grains and you won’t need them in your beer anymore but you can use them to compost.
Add the Malt and Boil
The next step is to add the malt extract to the water. Malt extract is the extracted fermentable sugars from malted barley the small extract is quite concentrated and very thick and syrupy. So you will want to stir the pot very thoroughly and make sure that you mix everything in very thoroughly.
Once we add our malt extract to the water it’s commonly referred to as wort which is a brewers word for unfermented beer, it’s important to get all the malt extract out of the jar and into your wort, so I usually rinse the jar out with hot water and scrape the insides of the jar to get the rest into your pot once you’ve mixed your malt extract thoroughly into your wort, the next step is to bring everything to a boil.
This can be done on your kitchen stove at home but for the brew geeks out there, they normally use a propane burner. When your wort is approaching a boil it’s important to watch the pot and make sure to boil to a calm comfortable rolling boil carefully without allowing it to surge up and boil over. You need to keep watch on the heat and your flame in order to keep a comfortable rolling boil without boiling over and make a big sticky mess all over your stove or burner.
Once you’ve reached a calm comfortable boil it’s time to start your bittering addition a.k.a the Hops!
Add the Hops
Now the wort will full of sugar and taste very sweet, you need to add some bittering agent to balance the flavor, in this case, we will be using Hops to do just that.
If you are using whole hops, you’ll want to take your hops out of their bag and place them into your muslin bag. You need to put the hops to the bag so that none of them can escape in your boil.
If you are using pellet hops, you can just throw them into the kettle.
Once the hops are added to your boiling wort, you need to begin your 60-minute timer to start a 60 minute boil. As you’re boiling your bittering addition you’ll be extracting the bitterness from those hops to counter the sweetness of the malt in your wort.
Your recipe may call for a flavoring or an aroma addition of hops in the last 15 minutes of your boil so you’ll want to add those hops as per the recipe.
During this time, you might want to add your so called Fining Agent, to make your beer clear as crystal. There are a few things you can add to make your beer clear, such as, Irish Moss and Whirlfloc Tablet. Whirlfloc tablet works to coagulate the proteins that would cause a hazy beer and cause them to fall out after fermentation leading to a beer with better clarity and presentation.
At the end of your 60 minute boil you’ll want to chill the wort down to a temperature that won’t harm your yeast as quickly as possible.
Chill the Wort
Now you are done with fire and heat, it’s time cool stuff down yeah! You need to submerge your pot in an ice bath in your sink to help cool it down. A nice trick that you can do is to put some salt to the ice bath, it helps the ice to not melt too quick.
Another way to cool the wort down quicker is using a tool so called wort chiller. Wort chiller works as a heat exchanger to course cold water through the coil and remove the heat through the water. A wort chiller is the most effective way, but either will get you the desired results. If you are going to use a wort chiller, please sanitize the chiller before touching the wort. so there is no bacteria left in the wort that could cause off-flavors in the beers.
Beer Fermenting
Add the Yeast
Again, the most important thing in beer brewing is a cleanliness. First of all, you need to get your fermenter ready. Normally you can get some glass carboy or something similar, then you clean by washing it and sanitize. You need to use brewer’s sanitizer, normally it is a no-rinse sanitizer
You can sanitize your carboy by splashing the sanitizer around and pour it back out. A lot of these sanitizers create foam, which is perfectly food-grade and safe, and you don’t need to concern yourself with getting all of the foam out of your equipment but you merely need to make sure that everything that will come in contact with your beer has been rinsed appropriately with the sanitizer.
Remove the hops bag from the wort and move your wort to the fermenter, you can use a siphon or just a plain funnel. If you wish, you also can use a strainer to strain the last bits of grain and hops that left in the wort. Once the pouring is done, measure the volume and check back your recipe. Top it up with cold water if needed to follow the recipe.
It’s important to use a larger fermenter than the batch size, because it can foams up a lot due to the beer fermentation process.
Once your wort is topped up to the recipe and about room temperature it’s time to add the yeast. The simplest yeast to use is a packet of freeze-dried ale yeast because it can be torn open and poured directly into the wort to begin the fermentation process. So you’ll want to sprinkle all of the yeast into your wort and there’s no stirring necessary the yeast rehydrate themselves and begin to ferment your ward on their own after you’ve added the yeast attach the airlock with a rubber stopper or bung to your carboy which will allow the gas from fermentation out of the fermenter but stop airborne bacteria from getting in.
WAIT
Now here comes the most difficult part of the homebrewing process, the WAIT. The fermentation process will take a bare minimum of two weeks before you move on to bottling. You just need to put the fermenter in a dark and cool place. Make sure that the room temperature does not varies too big during the day and night. Check once in a while to make sure the water in the airlock is enough.
Beer Bottling
Beer Priming/Conditioning
After two weeks or so, you will have a fermented beer! Congratulations! But the work is not done just yet.
Now you need to siphon this beer into your bottling bucket, you normally need to raise it up to a level higher than the level that you are going to be working from.
Again, I need to remind you to clean and sanitize your bottle, cap, capper, siphon, tubing, and bottle filler. This is a very important step!
This next step is called beer priming or beer conditioning, here you will give the beer a fizzy carbonation feels, without doing priming your beer will taste fine just not as refreshing as the ones fizzed.
If you are going to use a conditioning pills (also called carbonation tablet), you can just drop a few (see the usage instruction on the tablet that you have) directly to the bottle.
If you are going to use a normal priming sugar, you need prepare a corn sugar solution by mixing three or four ounces of corn sugar with one or two cups of water and boil it until the solution is clear again add that solution to the bottom of your bottling bucket and siphon your beer into the bottling bucket on top of the sugar solution to mix it thoroughly.
In order to make your life easier when siphoning the beer you are going to need to use auto siphon here which is readily available at any homebrew store and after sanitizing the auto siphon place the end of the tube in your bottling bucket place the siphon into the batch of beer and simply pump the auto siphon to prime the line and get your siphon started.
So now that you have the batch of beer mixed with a small amount of fermentable sugar in the bottling bucket, we are ready to go the next step!
Beer Bottling
I take it that you have sanitized everything by now. Now we’re going bottle the beer!
You now need to attach the bottle filler to the end of the auto siphon. Place the auto siphon into your batch of beer, place one end of the bottle filler into the bottles and start your siphoning when you press the bottle filler down into the bottom of the bottle it’ll fill from the bottom without splashing because at this point, once you have fermented beer introducing oxygen and splashing it into your beer will stale the beer and decrease the shelf-life so you want to siphon it carefully into the bottles without splashing. When your bottle is full right to the brim, pull the bottle filler out of the bottle and that’ll stop the flow.
Take a sanitized uncrimpped bottle cap (you can get the cap from your homebrew supply store) place it on top of your bottle and use your capper to crimp the cap down onto the bottle and you have a bottled beer.
Beer Aging
Once you’ve filled and capped all your bottles, you’ll need to allow a week or two for the small amount of sugar that we added back to the batch of beer to ferment inside the bottles and create carbonation.
Beer Chilling
Once the waiting game is over. You can put all the bottled beers to your fridge and you just need to wait for it to be ice-cold before enjoying it.
Enjoy Your Homebrew Beer
None of these processes are entirely hard I find the process to be fun and simple and the most important part is after time you can be creative with your recipes and you’ll absolutely love the beer that you’re making. Eventually you’ll find that you can make beer exactly like you’d like it to taste beer that fits your own personal tastes beer that impresses your friends and beer like nothing you’ve ever tasted before!
So, please enjoy your ice-cold homebrew beer. Cheers!