Have you ever wanted to make beer at home? Home brewing for the first time? Weve decided to start the new year with a three part guide that takes you through your first batch of beer including the equipment needed, how to brew the beer and how to ferment, bottle and age it.

Brewing is a great hobby. In these difficult economic times, many people are turning to hobbies that can be done inexpensively at home in a reasonable amount of time. Brewing fits this bill, as it does not require a huge investment in capital or time, and is a great hobby to enjoy with friends.

Equipment Needed

You dont need a large set of fancy and expensive equipment to brew your first batch of beer. Many brewing supply stores sell starter kits for $75 or less. If you are interested in pursuing the hobby long term, a deluxe brewing kit can be found for less than $150. A number of online stores will even ship the equipment and ingredients directly to your door. It can cost even less if you borrow some or all the equipment from a friend. Heres a quick summary of what is needed:

• A Large Pot – at least 3 gallons in size, though a larger one will generally result in fewer spills

• Tubing & Clamp – to siphon and bottle the beer- A 6 foot section of 3/8 ID food grade plastic tubing will work. Clamps are available at your brew store

• An Airtight Fermenting Bucket – a 5 gal plastic bucket with lid, or a glass carboy. If you can afford it, purchase a glass carboy as they are easier to keep sanitized and dont leak. If you get a carboy you may need a large bottle brush to clean it

• An Air Lock and Stopper – sized to fit your fermenter

• A Bottle Filler – available from your homebrew supplier – should be sized to fit on the end of your siphon tubing

• A Thermometer – A floating thermometer with a range of 0-100 C or up from 32-220 F

• Bottles – You need just over 2 cases in 12 oz bottles to bottle 5 gallons of beer. Do not use twist-off bottles – use high quality bottles that require a bottle opener.

• Bottle Brush – While not absolutely required, you usually need a small brush to get your bottles clean

• A Bottle Capper – a hand driven device to cap your bottles also available from your homebrew store

• Bottle Caps – New bottle caps sold at your brewing supplier – you need about 50 caps for a 5 gal batch

• A Sanitizing solution – Beer is prone to infection, so everything must be sanitized before use. Household bleach can be used, but it must be thoroughly rinsed to prevent contamination. Your brew store may have alternatives such as iodophor and starsan.

Ingredients Needed

The list below assumes you want to brew 5 gallons of a simple ale.

1. 6 lbs of Unhopped Pale Malt Extract – Usually this comes in cans that are around 3 lbs each. Malt provides the sweet base that the yeast will feed on to make alcohol. Available from various manufacturers. Dry malt extract is an acceptable alternative.
2. 2.25 Oz of East Kent Goldings Hops – Hops add bitterness to your beer. Pellets are most common and easy to store. Keep your unused hops in the freezer in airtight bags.
3. 1 Package of Wyeast American Ale liquid Yeast (#1056) [ or White Labs California Ale #WLP001 ]. Liquid yeast gives very high quality beer.
4. 2/3 cup Priming Sugar – such as corn sugar. Also available from your brew store or grocer.

An Overview of the Brewing Process

Brewing consists of five simple stages.

1. 1. Brewing the Beer – Pale malt extract and hops are boiled together with water for about an hour to sterilize the extract and release the bittering qualities of the hops. Frequently grains are steeped in the mixture prior to the boil to add additional color and flavor complexity.
2. Cooling and Fermenting – The hot mixture (called wort) is cooled to room temperature and siphoned or transferred to a fermenter where it is combined with additional water to achieve the desired 5 gallon batch size. Once the mixture drops to room temperature, yeast is added to start the fermentation process. Cleanliness and sanitation are very important since the wort can be easily infected by bacteria in this state. An airlock is used to keep the fermenter sealed during fermentation. Your beer will ferment for 1-2 weeks.
3. Priming and Bottling – Once the beer is fully fermented, it is siphoned to another container to prepare for bottling. Here priming sugars such as corn sugar sugar are mixed with the beer. The beer is siphoned into bottles and each bottle is capped with a bottle capping device.
4. Aging – Once the beer has been bottled it needs to age for 2-6 weeks. During aging the yeast will ferment the remaining sugar you added and create carbon dioxide. This carbon dioxide will naturally carbonate your beer so it is nice and bubbly. In addition, undesirable sediments such as excess yeast and proteins will drop out of the beer during aging and this will enhance the flavor of your beer. In may take several months to reach peak flavor, though homemade beer usually drinkable after a month.
5. Drinking – When the beer is properly aged – just put the bottles in the fridge and enjoy! Theres nothing quite like a great beer that you made yourself.

This is the five step process for making your own beer. The brewing portion takes a few hours, and bottling and transferring take another hour+ spread out over a few weeks.

Overall, brewing a batch of extract beer involves 3-4 hours of your time and about 4 weeks to ferment and age into a drinkable brew. This makes home brewing an attractive hobby for people who lead a busy lifestyle, but enjoy making things from scratch.

Step 1 – Brewing

Brew day is my favorite part of the process. The smell of sweet wort bubbling away stirs something primeval in the human psyche. Since we are brewing an extract beer, there is not much preparation required.

You need a clean pot large enough to hold 2-3 gallons of water plus the two cans (6 lbs of extract) and boil it (I recommend a 4-5 gallon pot if you can find one). Put 2-3 gallons of water into your pot and begin to heat it over your stove.

Once the water has heated up a bit, open your cans of extract and slowly start mixing them into the warm water. The malt extract will have the consistency of heavy syrup, and you may need some hot water to get it all out of the sides of the can. The combined water and extract mixture is called wort (pronounced as wert which rhymes with Bert).

As you are adding the malt extract to your wort, you need to continuously mix it. If you do not mix it, the extract syrup will settle at the bottom of your pot where it will heat and caramelize, leaving a hardened caramel mess at the bottom of your pot. This carmelization can also alter the color and flavor of your beer, so it is important to mix well while heating.

Once you have all of your extract mixed in, the next step is to bring your wort to a boil. This is best done slowly, as your wort will tend to bubble up a lot when it first starts to boil. The water you used for your brew has a lot of air in it, and these small air bubbles will be released as it comes to a boil creating foaming and a high potential for a boil-over. One method to reduce foaming is to use a spray bottle filled with clean water to spray down the foam.

The best way to avoid a boil-over it to turn the heat down a bit as the wort just begins to boil, and then very carefully manage the heat during the first 15 minutes of the boil until you have a steady boil with minimal foaming. Also, do NOT use a cover on your pot! While a covered pot will come to a boil quicker, the first time you open the pot it will boil over immediately – making a huge mess on your stove.

Once you achieve a steady boil it is time to add the hops. Weigh the proper amount and drop it in the hot wort. Some brewers use a mesh hops bag to reduce the mess later, but if you can cool your beer quickly most of the hops will drop out after the boil.

Stir occasionally during the boil to reduce the chance of extract settling to the bottom and carmelizing. I recommend you boil for 30-60 minutes. Boil time and size will affect your hop utilization and beer bitterness.

Step 2 – Cool and Ferment

When the boil has finished, you need to cool the hot wort to room temperature as quickly as possible to reduce the chance of infection. Many beginning brewers immerse their pot in a cold ice bath. Adding very cold water to the wort to bring it up to your target batch size (usually 5 gallons) will also help. More advanced brewers will use a chiller such as an immersion coil that runs cold water through a coil of copper tubing to quickly cool the beer. If needed, add sterile water to the wort when you transfer it to your fermenter to achieve the target volume of 5 gallons.

The wort at this stage is very vulnerable to infection so you need to make sure that your fermenter, airlock, siphon tubes and anything else that touches the wort or yeast are thouroughly sanitized. I use a solution of 5 gallons of water and small amount of household bleach to sanitize my equipment. However if you use bleach you must carefully rinse everything with hot water or you risk leaving your beer with a chlorine taste.

Your wort must be fully cooled to room temperature (72 F or less) and siphoned or dumped into your fermenter before you add (pitch) your yeast. Dont worry about all of the junk (hops and proteins – called the trub in brewers lingo) in the wort – most of it will fall to the bottom during fermentation.

Pitching yeast in hot wort will kill it, so wait until your wort has fully cooled before adding yeast. I highly recommend the use of liquid yeast as it is superior in quality to dry yeast.

Liquid yeast comes in either a plastic tube or smack pack. The plastic tube type can be added directly to the wort. The foil smack-packs require you to pop an internal pouch containing the yeast several hours before pitching it to allow the yeast to grow in a self contained starter.

Follow the instructions on your yeast pack to prepare it and then carefully add it to your fermenter. Once the yeast has been added and mixed in, close the top, fit your airlock (which needs a little water in it) and set your beer in a dark cool place where the temperature is steady.

Your airlock should begin bubbling within 12-36 hours, and continue fermenting for about a week. If you see no bubbles from the airlock, check the fit on your plastic pail and airlock. Often plastic fermenters have a poor seal on the lid that leaks.

The bubbles in the airlock are CO2 produced by the fermentation, and will slowly tail off as fermentation nears completion. Assuming you have a good seal, the bubbles should slow to one every minute or two before you consider bottling. As a minimum I would ferment for a 1-1/2 to two weeks before bottling.

At this point youve brewed your first beer, and the yeast will ferment your wort for the next week or two before you will need to concern yourself about bottling the beer. Next week we will cover the bottling and aging process.

Step 3 – Priming and Bottling

The final step before bottling your beer is called priming. Priming consists of mixing sugar in with the beer to carbonate the finished beer. The priming sugar will ferment and carbonate your beer.

Before you can prime and bottle, you again need to sterilize everything the beer will touch. Though your beer has fermented out, it still can be ruined by bacteria or by adding too much oxygen to it (i.e. dont splash it around). Most brewers use a large plastic bucket or carboy to make it easy to mix the priming sugar in evenly. Sterilize the bucket thoroughly, and also sterilize your siphoning equipment, tools and of course your bottles.

Make sure your bottles are clean and free of debris before sterilizing – use a bottle brush to remove any deposits. Some people sterilize bottles by soaking them in a weak bleach solution and then rinsing well. Ive also had some success with washing my bottles in the dishwasher, but you need to run it several times with no soap and hot water to avoid leaving a soap residue that will ruin the head retention on your beer.

Siphon the finished beer into your priming bucket, trying very hard not to splash it around or mix any air in with it. Add 2/3 cup of priming sugar (I recommend corn sugar) to your beer and very gently mix it in. Next siphon the beer into your bottles using your bottle filler. Be sure to leave at least an inch or more of empty space at the top of your bottle to aid in fermentation. Put the caps on each bottle as you go and use your bottle capper to secure them.

Step 4 – Aging

The most difficult part is waiting for your beer to come of age. While beers are drinkable after a few weeks, the average homebrew reaches peak flavor anywhere from 8 weeks to 15 weeks after brewing. Most homebrewers cant wait this long. During the aging process your beer will carbonate and excess yeast, tannins and proteins that create off flavors will fall out of your beer and settle to the bottom of the bottle. This will substantially improve your beer. I personally recommend waiting about 3-4 weeks after bottling before sampling your first brew.

Store your bottles in a cool, dark place. Unless you are brewing a lager under temperature controlled conditions, do not store your beer in the refrigerator for the first two weeks after bottling. Give it two weeks to fully carbonate at room temperature. After the first two weeks, refrigerating the beer will help it improve more quickly because the tannins, yeast and protein will sediment faster at cold temperature.

Step 5 – Drinking

The blessed day has finally arrived to sample your creation. During the aging process excess yeast, tannins and proteins will leave sediment at bottom of your bottle. Get a clean glass, open your brew, and gently poor most of your beer into the glass leaving only the sediment and a small amount of beer in your bottle. Dont worry if you take a little sediment into the glass – it wont hurt you. Smell the fresh beer, admire the frothy head, and then sip (dont guzzle) your first homebrew.

Popularity: 32% [?]

A bright, sparkling clear beer is highly prized by beer drinkers, yet clear beer can be elusive for the average home brewer. Commercial brewers use fining agents, filtering, and pasteurization techniques to keep their beer crystal clear. While filtering is sometimes used by advanced brewers, much simpler techniques can help improve your clarify. Using a few simple tips, it is not difficult at all for home brewers to match the clarity of commercial beer.

Before we jump into the tips, lets take a quick look at the main causes of cloudiness in beer. Cloudiness generally comes from one of three sources: tannins, proteins and yeast. Tannins are naturally occurring elements of the barley grain husk that is extracted along with sugars during the mashing process. Proteins come both from dark grains and also from certain non-barley grains including wheat, oats and flaked barley.

Proteins enhance the head retention and body of the beer, but also hurt the clarity of the beer. It is a delicate balance to achieve a full bodied beer without excessive protein. Finally yeast itself is present in the beer during fermentation and will remain suspended in the beer for some time. Most yeast will eventually precipitate to the bottom of the beer, but it takes considerable time for many yeast strains. Tannins, proteins and yeast also contribute young off flavors to the beer, so the quicker you can clear your beer the sooner you can enjoy it!

1. Select Lower Protein Grains

Proteins enhance the body of your beer, but can hurt clarity. Save high protein adjuncts like wheat, flaked barley and very dark malts for wheat and dark beers where clarity is not a significant consideration. If you are brewing a light beer where clarity matters, choose two row pale malt or pale malt extract base and add only enough high protein darker malts to achieve the desired color and body.

2. Use Irish Moss at the End of the Boil

A few pinches of Irish Moss at the end of the boil can aid the clarity of your finished beer considerably. Irish Moss is a charged adjunct that actually helps tannins and proteins in the hot wort coagulate and quickly fall to the bottom of the boil pot while cooling the beer. If you drop a small amount of Irish Moss in your brew you can actually see the proteins and tannins coagulate into little lumps at the end of the boil.

3. Cool your Wort Quickly

Use an immersion or counter-flow chiller to cool your beer as quickly as possible. If you take your wort from boiling to fermentation temperature quickly, the tannins and proteins will form clumps, fall out, and form a thick layer of trub at the bottom of your boiler. The quicker you can cool the wort, the more dramatic the effect. The less tannins and suspended proteins, the clearer your beer will be. Ideally you would like to cool a boiling 5 gallon batch to room temperature in 15 minutes or less.

4. Choose a Yeast High in Flocculation

Flocculation is defined simply as the rate at which a particular yeast strain will fall out of the beer once fermentation is complete. If you choose a yeast strain with a high flocculation rating, it will clear much more quickly than one with a low flocculation rate. Flocculation should not be your only consideration, but if you have a choice, pick a yeast strain that both matches the style of your beer and has medium to high flocculation.

5. Add a Fining Agent

A number of fining agents can be added to the finished beer that will aid in clearing the beer quickly. These agents work by attaching themselves to the yeast, tannins and proteins to help them precipitate to the bottom of your fermenter or bottle more quickly. One easily obtained ingredient is clear, plain gelatin from the grocery store. Dissolve it in a few cups of warm sterile water and add it to your secondary fermenter a few days before bottling. Another personal favorite of mine is polyclar. Mix it with a little water and add it to your secondary fermenter a few days before bottling or kegging.

6. Cold Store (Lager) your Beer

Storing beer under refrigeration, called laagering, helps to clear beer rapidly. At lower temperatures it is more difficult for the yeast, tannins and proteins to remain suspended. Cold stored beer will clear much more rapidly than beer stored at room temperature. Note that if you are bottling or naturally carbonating a keg, you need to wait for the beer to become fully carbonated before laagering. Otherwise laagering may slow or kill the yeast resulting in a poorly carbonated beer.

Popularity: 32% [?]

Porter is a English beer style that has become very popular in the United States. This week we will look at the origins of Porter, how to brew Porter at home and provide a collection of sample recipes. When I started brewing back in the 1980s, the microbrewery revolution was still in its infancy, and it was difficult to find anything beyond the classic American lager in the stores. Yet dark beers were a passion of mine, and Porter was a perennial favorites.

History

Porter is first mentioned in writings in the early 1700s, and the name Porter is derived from its popularity with Londons river and street porters. There are many stories surrounding the origins of Porter, such as one about it being a blend of three other beers, but more likely Porter was derived from strong brown ales of the period. Original porters were substantially stronger than modern versions. Wikipedia mentions that hydrometer measurements on 18th century Porters indicate original gravities near 1.071, or 6.6% ABV – about twice the alcohol of a modern beer.

Taxes during the Napoleonic wars drove the alcohol content down to modern levels. Porter was also the first large scale beer to be entirely aged before delivery, often remaining in vats or casks for 18 months before shipment to pubs. As the 1800s started, breweries mixed aged porter with new porter to reduce storage times. Stouts started as a stronger, darker version of Porter, with most including the name Stout Porter. Eventually the Porter tag was dropped giving the modern style of Stouts. (Re: Wikipedia)

In another interesting side note, Porters popularity was so high that it was stored in huge vats in the late 1700s, and there was an arms race of sorts between major breweries to see who could build the largest vas. According to Ray Daniels book (below), the largest vats approached 20,000 barrels (860,000 gallons) at the end of the 1700s. This compares to the largest in the world today which clocks in at around 1600 barrels, less than 1/10th the size. In October of 1814, a huge vat at the Meux brewery ruptured and reportedly wiped out an adjacent tank and devastated the neighborhood in a 5 block radius. In the ensuing chaos at least 8 people were killed.

Designing a Porter Recipe

Designing Porter recipes can be a lot of fun as the Porter style includes room for experimentation. Porters have an OG of 1.040 and up, color of 20-40 SRM and bitterness of 18-35 IBUs for Brown Porter, or up to 55 IBUs for higher gravity Robust Porter. The color is brown to black, and they have low to medium hop flavor. They are almost always brewed with a full bodied mash schedule (higher mash temperature of 154-156F) to give a full body taste. They have low ester, fruitiness and diacytl, are well balanced and have low to medium carbonation.

Traditional porters start with a Pale malt base, and typically add a mix of Crystal, Brown, Chocolate and Black malts to achieve a dark color and taste. Roasted malts are used only in Robust Porter styles. Pale malt makes up 40-70% of the grain bill (60-80% for malt extract brewers). Dark Crystal/Caramel malts are used for color and body and provide at least 10% of the grain bill. Chocolate and Roasted malts each average around 5% of the grain bill, with roasted malt less common in Brown Porter.

A variety of grains including Munich malt, Roasted malt, wheat and additives are also used. I will occasionally brew kitchen sink Porter which consists of whatever malts I have laying around over a pale malt base. Traditional Porter also made heavy use of Amber and Brown malts, though these are less commonly used today. Ray Daniels recommends a mash temperature of 153F, though I often go a bit higher (156F) to provide a full bodied beer.

Traditional English hops are the appropriate choice for Porter, with East Kent Goldings being a favorite of mine. Other good choices include Fuggles, Northern Brewer, Northdown and Williamette. Light dry hopping is appropriate to the style, though hops aroma should not be dominant. English ale yeast is traditionally used for Porter for its fruity flavors, though other high attenuation yeasts are appropriate. Irish ale yeast is also occasionally used by homebrewers. Adjuncts are only rarely added to specialty Porters. A London water profile (high in carbonates) is best.

Popularity: 30% [?]

Recipes are recipes. And unless you have a difficult time following a recipe, the contribution that a good recipe has on your final brew in a fixed variable towards making better beer. Lets face it: yeast do most of the hard work for us brewers. When you are still green to brewing, managing your fermentation is the best way to start moving from good beer to better beer. And who doesnt want better beer!?Fermentation is everything in the brewing process. Managing yeast cell counts (pitching rate), yeast health, and temperature control are crucial factors for getting the perfect fermentation. Any good experienced brewer will tell you to make a yeast starter. However, for the greener brewer that only has 2-3 batches under their belt jumping right into starters, while certainly good for yeast management, is not exactly the easiest step towards making better beer. By not overly complicating your brew day you can focus more on mastering the basics of wort boiling, chilling, and sanitation.A simple and affordable alternative is to use some of the high quality dry yeasts available on the market from companies like Danstar and Fermentis. The nicest thing about dry yeast is that one package generally contains more than enough cells to ferment any average gravity wort (O.G. < 1.050). The choice to use dry yeast usually makes for a simpler brewing process and a slightly cheaper (which can be a relief with the cost of hops and malt still on the rise); albeit at the sacrifice of the variety you can get with liquid cultures from Wyeast and Whitelabs.

The critical factor for using dry yeast is the re-hydration step. Many beginner recipes will simply have you sprinkle the dry yeast over the chilled wort. This is not the best practice. Some sources cite that this practice results in up to a 50% decrease in viability of the yeast cell countmeaning many of those cells you pitched just dont survive the re-hydration. The best way to ensure the greatest effectiveness of your dries yeast is to rehydrate in clean, sterile water. The best technique is to boil up a pint of water to sterilize it at the start of your brew session in a small sauce pan. The cover the pan with the lid and set it aside during your brew session. Just as the boil ends and before you start the chilling process is when you should start to rehydrate the yeast. Open up the sauce pan and sprinkle the dry yeast over the top of the water and recover. After you go through your wort chilling process the yeast should be almost entirely rehydrate at that point. Anticipate at least 15-minutes to rehydrate.

You will know the yeast is full hydrated when the water now looks a little creamy and cloudy. There should be very little if any grains of yeast still floating around. Its OK to gently swirl the sauce pan a bit if you think there is too much stuck to the sides or not all the yeast seems to have taken the plunge into the water (sometimes they can seem a bit hydrophobic and are stuck on top of the water). Now that the yeast is ready you can pour it right into your wort. If you are using a bucket fermentor as most of us did just starting out pouring is a snap. If you use a narrow necked carboy be sure to include a funnel in your sanitation procedure while cleaning and prepping the fermentor. You did sanitize your fermentor right????

Properly rehydrated dry yeast can help you make a cheap and easy leap forward in the quality of your brewing. Master this part of your brew process and youll be even more ready to move on to yeast starters and controlled fermentation temp before you know.

Popularity: 8% [?]