Tuesday, May 22, 2012

How to Brew Your Own Beer at Home

The idea of beer brewing has been a worldwide event for numerous centuries. Beer is a favorite drink for many people and many have crafted the skill of making their own beer at home. It has become a popular hobby for most people too.With the current interest in beer brewing many have decided it's time to begin brewing their own beer at home.

If you want to brew your own beer, you will need a few pieces of equipment. There are home brew shops that offer beginner kits to get you off to a start. Your home brewing doesn't require a lot of space. With a modest kitchen area and a burner, you can make your beer at home. The Beer brewing process is completed within three weeks from start to finish. After that you can have your beer to drink.The process is easy and requires that you follow a few simple instructions.

You are ready to begin when you gather the ingredients, but you will have to sterilize everything. First begin by combining malted barley and hot water. This will produce a mash after soaking for one hour. For the next step you will have to thoroughly wash all the liquid from the barley and collect it in a big pot. The result is called wort andthis is somewhat sugary and sweet. However, there is a shorter way to achieve this. So instead of creating a mash you can use malt extract instead. You can boil both the liquid and wort mix and then add the hops. The hops essentially characterize the beer. If you boil the hops for an hour, the bitterness is drawn out. If you boil it for 30 minutes you'll have the hop flavor and a little bitterness. However, if you mix in the hops when the boiling is almost completed only the fragrance of the hops will be extracted.

It is absolutely necessary to cool the wort below 70 degrees. You can hasten the cooling process by putting the pot into a bathtub of cold water and stir it constantly. When the wort is chilled, remove and place it in the fermenter, then add the yeast. To prevent contamination, ensure that the enclosed fermenter is air locked. Within twelve hours the fermentation will begin. The yeast while absorbing the sweet sugars in the wort will be releasing CO2 at the same time. It is the yeast that makes it possible to create the beer. Bear in mind however, that while the process of fermentation is faster with ale yeasts and will need only a few days for the process to be completed, lager yeasts on the other hand is a longer process which can take many weeks or months for completion.

Your home brew will need a few days to stabilize after the fermentation process is completed. All standard batches need approximately fifty-five beer bottles to bottle the beer. Sugar is now added to the home brew and the bottles will be filled and capped. Because the yeast is still in the home brew and the bottle is tightly capped, the yeast absorbs the sugar in the bottle while producing carbon dioxide thus carbonating the beer. This approach known as bottle conditioning has been used for many centuries and is still being used by some breweries today. So, it doesn't take much to brew your own beer!