How to Make Beer at Home

PREPARE Preparation Objective: To ensure you have the necessary equipment and ingredients to proceed with brewing. You'll Need: A list or knowledge of your home brewing equipment, ingredients, and some sanitizer. Directions: Success, so the saying goes, is 90% preparation and 10% inspiration, and so it is with beer. This guide will teach you how to make beer at home. Brewing beer involves boiling malt, hops and water to create a grainy, sugary liquid. Next, we add a fungus - yeast - to the wort, allow for time to pass and we have flat, warm beer. Finally, we mix this warm, flat beer with a bit of sugar and bottle it, which will result in carbonated beer after a week or two. But, let’s step back a moment. We add a fungus? Sure. Yeast is a fungus, a very special fungus, it is the crucial element to the creation of beer, it is what converts sugars into alcohol. We want to create an environment in which the yeast is happy; where the yeast is allowed to eat away at sugars without any competition. Competition means the yeast is unable to produce alcohol and even worse, competition means that some other element has entered our beer. Chances are this other element is bacteria. Bacteria will create off flavors in beer, beer that tastes, smells or feels unlike beer should, perhaps a strong smell of vinegar, a taste of cardboard, a viscous feel. Yuck. To prevent the introduction of such odd elements, we clean and sanitize. It is the most important task of the entire brewing process. You must clean well everything that your beer may come in contact with, and just before use you must sanitize this equipment as well. Your brew kettle will not need to be sanitized as the boiling wort will accomplish this, but you will want the kettle clean. There are many sanitizing solutions on the market, each with their own direction. Most are quick and easy to use. For example, Easy Clean: 1-Tablespoon Cleanser per 1-Gallon warm water and 2 minutes of contact time. No rinsing required. Below is a full list of equipment you'll need for your first brew day. A beer making kit from Northern Brewer will include everything you need to successfully brew your first batch of homebrew. Equipment: Sanitizer: Sanitizer keeps your equipment clean and prevents infection. Brew Kettles: Used for boiling your wort. Fermentation Vessel: A container used to ferment your beer. Fermentation Lock: Keeps your beer from being oxidized during fermentation. Spoon: Used for whirlpooling and helps prevent boilovers. Hydrometer: Use the hydrometer to figure out your original and final gravity. Bottles: Once your beer has fermented, bottle it for serving. Auto Siphon: The auto siphon to transfers beer between fermentation vessels. Bottle Cappers: An essential piece of equipment, fastens caps to the bottle. Bottle Caps: We have a variety of closures that work with many different bottles. Starter Kits: Choose a variety of Starter Kits to begin brewing! Ingredients: All Northern Brewer Recipe Kits and for that matter nearly all beer will have four basic ingredients: Malt, Hops, Yeast and water. Don't be fooled by the length of this list; there is enormous variety within each of these categories, enough to produce the wondrous array of beers available today, from the palest pilsner to the blackest stout and everything in between. Some recipes and kits may also include specialty grains, sugars or spices. You provide the most basic ingredient for your beer, water. Water chemistry can make a dramatic difference in your beer, but if your water tastes good to drink, it is fit for brewing. Malt: Beer is brewed by fermenting the sugars of malted barley and other cereal grains. Brewers utilize the process of malting, wherein seeds are prompted to sprout, after which growth is stopped through kiln drying, to eventually access these sugars. Malting stimulates amylase enzyme production within the grain. Brewers crush the malted grain and soak it in hot water in a process known as "mashing." This activates the enzymes, which convert the grain's starch into sugars. These sugars are then rinsed from the grain and the resulting liquid, known as "wort", is boiled with hops and other ingredients. After boiling and cooling the wort yeast is added to ferment the substance and produce delicious beer. Most new brewers prefer not to perform the mashing step themselves. Liquid malt extract and dry malt extract are the concentrated results of this process, malt sugars that have been produced by mashing and packaged for later use. Extract brewers then steep a small amount (usually about 1 pound) of specialty grains to provide specific malt flavors and color in the finished beer.  1. Steep Grains. Fill your 5-gallon brew kettle with 2.5 gallons of water. As you heat your water, steep your grains for 20 minutes, or until your water reaches 170 degrees.  When you remove your grains, let the water drip out of the grain bag and into the kettle.  Don't squeeze your grain bag as you don't want to extract tannins, which may give your beer unwanted flavors. 2. Bring kettle to a boil - Once your kettle comes to a rolling boil remove it from heat and add malt extracts. Once the extract is dissolved return to a boil. Hops will now be added at various intervals. (Note: Be careful not to boil over when hops are added.) Refer to your exact recipe as to when you need to add hops to your boil.  3. You now have wort - Otherwise known as sugar water. Cool your wort as quickly as possible. This can be done one of two ways:  Ice Bath - Simply set your pot into a sink filled with ice water. Use a wort chiller - Insert chiller into your wort. Run cold water from your tap through the chiller and out to the sink.  A wort chiller is the most effective way, but either will get you the desired results. Step 3: Ferment Don't forget to sanitize all your supplies! Then... 1. Pour cooled wort into the fermenter. Some brew kettles even have a valve for easy transportation from your kettle to your fermenter. 2. Add water to bring the level to 5 gallons. 3. Aerate wort by splashing it around in its container. Yeast need oxygen, and splashing your wort will help. 4. Add yeast. Dry yeast is the easiest, as you don't have to prepare it beforehand. Sanitize the yeast pack + scissors, cut the corner off the yeast pack, and pour the yeast into the fermenter. 5. Seal your fermenter, add a fermentation air lock, and store in a dark cool place. Ales should stay at 68 degrees to ferment properly Step 4: Bottling After fermentation is complete, typically within two weeks, it's time to bottle your beer. 1. Cleanse everything: bottles, bottle filler, bottle caps, bottling bucket, and any transfer hoses used. Use a bottle brush on your bottles.  3. Boil your priming sugar in 16 oz of water. After it cools, add it directly to the bottling bucket. 4. Transfer your beer. Siphon the beer out of your fermenter and into your bottling bucket. Leave as much sediment in the fermenter as possible. 5. Fill the bottles. Attach bottle filler to hose, and hose to bottling bucket spigot. Open the bottling bucket spigot and push the bottle filler to the bottom of the bottle