I love beer.
I really do and there's nothing more interesting or rewarding that brewing your own.
Today I started another batch and I'm going to document its progress. This is going to be a light summer beer and all the ingredients will be for a 23 Litres batch (5 gallons or 40 pints).
First things first; what do you need?
I'm going to talk about entry level home brewing, so no specialised equipment or brewing from scratch.
You need a fermenting vessel, which, in my case, is a fancy word for a bucket with a lid and a hole where the air lock goes in. Then you'll need some grain extract. I chose a Wheat Beer kit as I find it is the best base for playing around with; it's also cheap and cheerful. The kit contains a tin of wheat and malt extract and a sachet of yeast.
Yeast is the star when it comes to beer so we need to feed it. Yeast will eat the sugars in the malt extract and convert it into alcohol, but the malt extract doesn't contain enough sugar so we need to add some extra, 1 kg for this size batch. Normally I use brewing sugar or spray malt for this purpose but today I went for spray dried brewers wort, this is supposed to give a better head retention, flavour and it's perfect for light beers. Don't use cooking sugar, that will give your beer a cidery taste.
The most important thing is to sanitise everything, we all know cleanliness is next to godliness.
I'm using a powdered cleaner and steriliser. Just follow the dosing instructions, and give a bath to all the equipment you're going to use. Splash it on the outside of the bucket as well and pay close attention to the mouth. It needs about 5-10 minutes to work so during that time I put my extract tin in boiling water to make it more runny.
Now that everything is sanitised we can move on to the next step which is adding the ingredients to the clean bucket. It's easier if your sugar goes in first. It is counter intuitive but using cold water dissolves brewing sugar a lot better than hot water. Mix the sugar up with a small amount of water and mix it until all lumps are gone.
Then add the extract.
After everything is mixed well again, fill it up with water to the 23L line. You want to use hot and cold water as well, the target temperature depends on the type of yeast you're using. For mine, the recommended pitching(adding of the yeast) temperature is between 18 and 20 degrees C. I have a stick on thermometer on my bucket to help me with that.
Before adding the yeast it's helpful if you check the gravity of the wort. The water, sugar and malt extract is called the wort and the gravity is the amount of sugars in the solution. This can be checked with a hydrometer, it's the glass thing you can see floating in the pic. This step isn't required but it will help a lot if you run into troubles later on. I have an initial gravity reading of 1040. This should give me a beer of about 4% ABV, if you would like a stronger one, you need to add more sugar or use less water.
Now that I checked my gravity and I know my temperature is in the range for my yeast, I'll open the sachet and chuck it in.
The yellowy brown stuff floating on top is the dried yeast. You don't want to just let it float, you want everything to be mixed well again. Besides sugar, yeast also needs oxygen in order to start breeding so a good mix is required here. Try to mix vigorously for a few minutes, pushing as much oxygen in as you can.
And this is it for the first stage. Put the lid on tightly, from this point on you don't want any oxygen getting in and spoiling your beer. Put your airlock in, you want to fill the airlock with sanitiser or alcohol so nothing can get in your beer and contaminate it.
Then you put the bucket in a dark place, ideally you'd want a place where temperatures don't fluctuate too much. I'm using my Harry Potter room, or under the stairs cupboard as it's commonly referred as. You can see I've got an earlier batch all bottled up and maturing in there as well.
From now on, it's a waiting game. I will keep updating you on the progress and the next steps.
Thanks for following this article so far, I plan do some giveaways once it's finished!
Cheers
PS:
@buzzbeergeek and @beers I'd like to make you an offer you can't refuse; at least I wouldn't be able to refuse it. How would you feel about reviewing a couple of my previous beers? These are true small batch hand made beers and all that yada yada. Basically they're delicious and I'd like a more informed opinion and some healthy criticism on them. Thanks
This post received a 1% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @buzzbeergeek! For more information, click here!
I saw you mentioned looking into conical equipment. Do you currently do any all grain or full boil?
I started mostly identical to what you've got there. Had some great results, I highly recommend adding additional grains for flavor, sounds like you've been doing that too. The kits are great but after going all grain my brews got so much better. Something about the kits, they just always seem to taste similar. Kinda like Campbell's soup recipes, there's 1000 casseroles to be made with Campbell's but they all kinda taste the same.
I do a full boil in a DIY keg kettle then ferment in a carboy, haven't gone conical yet, very tempted though. I went straight to kegging early on, bottling is such a chore.
And, yes, aging pays off. The best beer is always the last one!
I'd love to hear more about your brews and equipment
I do not do any all grain, I'm still just at the kit stage; but I am looking into moving up. A conical fermenter would work with my kit beers as well, they just look great for removing sediment and easy bottling/kegging.
I'm not sure though if I should save up for an integrated system like The grainfather or just buy a couple of big pots and use those. I saw some diy versions on some homebrewing forums so I might try my hand at building one. Those big pots aren't cheap though, are they? heh.
I agree with the kit comment; the taste is similar, that's why I tend to use the same wheat beer kit as it works great as a base, lightly flavoured, clean and I can just push it to any direction I want.
Your set up is a few levels above me and I hope I'll get there at some point. Do you use cornelius kegs or something else? I've got a plastic keg, but never used it, I should though, maybe for the this batch as I'm low on bottles as it is.
You should do a post on your DIY system, or could you give me more details on how you made it?
Thanks
I think this "contamination" thing about the beer should not be such a great deal in the homebrew scenario. As soon as the hygiene is good, contamination is very difficult to achieve. No one of my past year's batches was sealed and insulated so tightly in the fermenter, not a single contamination. I also had difficulties trying to reasonably contaminate a sour-beer batch. Finally after 2 months I managed!
Good job with this article!
Thank you!
I agree with your contamination comment; I mentioned it because on all the forums I read up on when I first started out they talked about this but after speaking to my father in law I think it's mostly a change in yeasts; 10-20 years ago they didnt use to have these high performing yeasts that just outgrow every competing bacteria and it used to be a finicky process.
I sanitise everything, but I don't go crazy about it, I mean I still use tap water for my bear which is definitely not sterile anyway, but I think it's better to be safe than sorry.
I am thinking about dedicating one of my fermenters to a sour, I never brewed one and I think I should; I only got into the sour beers a couple of years ago; I never knew that I like them, which I guess is a common story for many :)
I spoke to the head brewer of one newly established craft brewery in Bulgaria and they don't use airlocks at all, which surprised me a little. So yes, if the yeast culture is pure, I think there should not be a problem at all.
I started brewing sours about half an year ago, but now I am waiting for the results. Raspberry sour stout and Sour Saison on their way now. I brewed a Berliner weisse too. And it became very good indeed!
Wish you good luck with brewing! Cheers!
Nice! Youve got some tasty sounding beers waiting to grow up, heh.
There's the lambics as well where fermentation happens in an open container with no cultured yeast and relying only on wild varieties.
I know time is the key for sours but I found a cheat recipe that promises a quick finishing sour so I might give that a go for my first one.
Wish you good luck! Today I'm brewing a Sorachi Ace Wit (all-grain) beer, so if I have time, I will post some info on my profile. Stay tuned! :)
Thank you!
I've heard about Sorachi Ace but never used it. Hopped wits are my favourite style so I'm sure that will turn out wonderful! I'm definitely going to check out your posts for updates on the brews!
I love good home brew beer, it's so satisfying and always tastes better because its yours :)
thewineman brought me here...
I agree with that wholeheartedly even though I must admit I had some batches that I drank only because they were mine and were kinda beery, not all of them turn out great.
Thanks for the visit and for thewineman's help :)
hooray! A new follower for you!
Haha I know what you mean, I had few batches like that, but I was so proud that it was mine I drank it proudly too even though it tasted just like piss and kinda off 😅
Will follow for more beer tips!
Yeah, that's how it works, haha! I found that most of those beers get pretty good or at least drinkable at the 3-6 months mark. I always save 2 bottles of a batch to see how they are after a long time has passed and the difference can be amazing. And then you feel bad for drinking it when it was horrible.
I'm looking at conical fermenters now, I can't quite justify the cost to myself yet, but ... knowing me, I will find some reason to get one.
Thanks! Your pics are pretty nice, great action shot on the Zebra btw:) Will enjoy seeing more! Cheers
Nice :)
I always go for subjective feeling when I taste so don't expect an academic review but I'd love to participate in this! Honored you took time to contact me ;) Randowhale experiment didn't work out unfortunately :(
Resteemed.
Hah, it's taste so it's always subjective I guess, but I'm pretty confident you'll like it, heh, I'm not known for being modest :).
Thank you
Fantastic way to get into the art of brewing! Been several years since I brewed this way. Now we brew entirely from malted grains http://brew.computersystemconsulting.ca for our application in development.
Congratulations @costopher! You have completed some achievement on Steemit and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :
Click on any badge to view your own Board of Honnor on SteemitBoard.
For more information about SteemitBoard, click here
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPBy upvoting this notification, you can help all Steemit users. Learn how here!
Man I love you guys that homebrew. This is definitely taking the love of beer to the next level! Pro tip: stEEmpub :) Resteemed from Texas!!
O hello there :p
Hello my friend! How's the family doing? :)
So far so good, one more week till birth :D
Must be a hectic time! Any good changes in her weight?
We think she will be born in 2 weeks :) well last week she was still 2.1kg, next Saturday they will measure to get weight. I stopped worrying now, everything will be good.
/Click glass 🍷
good to hear, it will all be ok. Clink!! :)
Thank you! The main problem I have with them is the fact that only a tiny minority of my beers achieve their peak maturation time and then I regret drinking the rest too early. This time I have 3 batches in quick succession so I won't be in danger of drinking or gifting them away too early.
I can understand that, patience is a virtue, even with beer!
can't figure out what kinds of ales you are brewing now. Can you give me a little hint of it? :)
This one is going to be a hoppy hefeweizen, it's my favourite style to be honest. The bottled one in the background is an experiment. It's a gruit, old style that doesn't use hops. I've used a bunch of herbs in it. I will post it's recipe at some point I think.
Hi! Have you heard about @krwhale? It is similiar with @randowhale. For your information please click on.
FLAG THIS SPAMMY TRASH!!!