It is now legal to brew beer at home (except in Alabama—what’s up with that?), as long as you are 21 and don’t brew more than 100 gallons a year. It is illegal to sell your homebrew, so don’t go setting up shop unless you want to go through the official procedures it takes to become a legal brewery.
Brewing is the logical next step for you, the beer lover. Nothing will bring you closer to beer than becoming its creator. You will understand the ingredients and flavor profiles in a profoundly new way once you’re following brewing recipes and adding your own imagination to the pot. For many beer connoisseurs, this is the most rewarding part of the Beer Journey: being able to concoct a beer and share their homebrew with friends and family. And this will make you even more comfortable in conversations with brewmasters on brewery visits and in quality brewpubs. But don’t worry, brewing isn’t as complicated as it may seem.
If you break down the basics of homebrew—boiling, cooling, mixing, and storing—it’s basically cooking. It is done in a pot, uses ingredients, and is served to guests. The only difference, of course, is that it is alcohol (bonus!). Though it may seem overwhelming the first time you look at a homebrew recipe and get ready to brew, don’t fret. Remember the days when you would look at a food recipe and fear the seven steps and different measurements? You eventually found that it was easier to do than it looked. It’s the same with homebrewing; daunting at first, but with practice it does get easier and more fun. And at the end of it, you have beer!
So, first things first, you need to have a homebrew equipment kit. As with any kit, you can buy the necessities separately or conveniently prepackaged together, depending on your preference. A basic homebrew equipment kit will cost you anywhere from $70 to $200, depending on how geared up you want to be. We paid about $120 for our equipment. Once you have made this initial investment, homebrew gets a lot more economical. Ingredients will cost you on average about $30 per five gallons of beer. That ends up being about 60¢ for a 12-ounce bottle, a damn good deal.
The next section is a list of things you will need to have to get to brewin’.
Tools
BREWPOT : Yes, it looks like a silver pot with a lid. But it needs to be big, at least 20 quarts, and stainless steel is best. This is where you’ll cook the malt and add some hops and, well, make the beer.
BUCKET : You’ve seen these: a big cylindrical plastic thing, which often has a handle. You’ll need a large vessel, seven to eight gallons, with a good, secure, tight lid. The lid does need to have a hole in it that fits an airlock perfectly. This will be your primary fermenter, the vessel in which you will put the yeast and let your beer begin the fermentation process. The plastic needs to be food-grade, so double-check the quality of the bucket. Alternatively, you can use a glass carboy—a big glass thing that looks like those vessels people put in the watercoolers at the office. You’d need one that holds about five gallons. Unlike the plastic bucket, the carboy allows you to see the fermentation happening, and the glass seems nicer than the plastic. Note, though, that the carboy is harder to clean and easier to break.
Clockwise from left: brewpot, glass carboy with fermentation airlock and stopper, bottling bucket and hose, bottling cane and hose, capper, beer bottle, thermometer, yeast, bottle brush, siphoning cane and hose, and wort chiller.
FERMENTATION AIRLOCK AND STOPPER: This is a plastic device that is wedged into the top of the fermentation vessel (your bucket lid or carboy opening) and allows for CO2 to release during fermentation but prevents outside air from entering, which could spoil the beer.
STRAINING BAG: This is similar to a teabag or cheesecloth. You can use this to strain the mash. You will scoop all of the mash from the boil into this bag and then squeeze out as much liquid as possible. You don’t want to lose any of the sugar from the malt, so the squeezing is necessary. This can also be used to strain out hops at different increments during the brewing process.
WORT CHILLER : This is a device used to cool down the wort, enough so that you can add the yeast. If the wort is too hot, the yeast will die or act weird, and there will be no good beer (sad face).
SIPHON CANE AND HOSE : This is the vehicle the newly made beer will travel through to get to a secondary fermenter. Be sure you use food-grade plastic.
BOTTLE FILLER : This device looks like a little wand with a ball valve at the end that allows you to stop the flow of beer to keep the beer from overflowing your bottles.
EMPTY BEER BOTTLES AND CAPS: Remember when we told you to hold on to your empty bottles? This is why: You are probably going to want to bottle your beer. This is where your beer will undergo a secondary fermentation. Most homebrewers save bottles and then sterilize them. If you are making a five-gallon batch of beer, you will end up with 40 to 50 bottles. You can keg your beer, but beginners usually start off bottling, which makes it easier to keep and transport, and give as gifts to your lucky friends. Unfortunately bottle caps cannot be reused, but you can buy them along with new beer bottles (if you didn’t save yours) at a local homebrew supply store.
BOTTLE BRUSH : A long brush used to make sure the bottles are clean and properly sanitized.
BOTTLIN GBUCKET : After primary fermentation, you will transfer your beer into this bucket, which has a spigot on the bottom, and then transfer the beer into bottles.
SANITIZER : This is extremely important! Sanitizing is perhaps the most annoying part of homebrewing (who likes to clean, really?), but it is crucial to the health of your beer. You don’t want certain bacteria to get into your beer and make it taste bad. Get a commercial beer sanitizer; these usually have iodine, chlorine, or bleach. We suggest BTF Iodophor Sanitizer.
FLOATING THERMOMETER : Because you need to do certain steps at certain temperature points, you need a good thermometer—unless you can measure liquid temperature with your eyes.
HYDROMETER : This measures the density of a liquid against the density of water. You will need to take an initial measurement of the density of the beer before and after fermentation. This will help you figure out your beer’s ABV.
CAPPER : This little handy dandy device puts those flat caps onto your bottle. Wow, magic.
Brewing Vocabulary
Before you can start to brew, you will need to know what the hell people are talking about in those recipes for homebrewing. There are a few words that pop up a lot in this world, some of which you may already know, but it’s good to have a refresher. The definitions are in the order in which you may encounter them when brewing. Take note of these essentials (no, there will not be a quiz):
MASH: The process in which the crushed grains are mixed into hot water, and enzymes change the starch into fermentable (sometimes unfermentable) sugars for the yeast to eat.
PARTIAL MASH: Brewing using a wort made partially from grain and partially from malt extract.
ALL GRAIN OR FULL MASH : A brew made using grains—raw malted barley—instead of malt extracts. This requires space and time and is quite advanced in the brewing world. This is often the practice of professional brewers.
MASH TUN : The name of the vessel that contains the mash during all-grain brewing.
BASE MALT : The malt used as the main source of sugar for fermentation.
MALT EXTRACT: A concentrated liquid formed from wort that contains the sugars needed for brewing. This is what most homebrewers use instead of all-grain brewing.
SPECIALTY MALTS : Smaller amounts of malt used for flavoring and nuance. These can be steeped like tea instead of turned into a mash.
SPECIALTY GRAIN BILL : This is a list of specialty grains, typically malt, in a beer recipe to be used in addition to the malt extract. These are grains that will be crushed in the grist process and then usually steeped like tea during the boil.
STEEPING GRAINS: These are used to add flavor, nuance, or color for brewers using a malt extract. These do not need to be converted to sugar and can also be steeped like tea.
SPARGING: This comes after the mash, when grains are removed and the liquid is separ
ated, becoming the wort.
GRIST: A mixture of grains that is crushed in a mill and prepared for mashing.
WORT: The name for the liquid that is extracted from the mash. It is pronounced WERT.
ADJUNCT: A starch used in brewing other than malted barley, sometimes used for flavor and sometimes for mouthfeel. It is sometimes used instead of an amount of malt, making the beer cheaper to make.
HOP PELLETS: Little things that look like gross vitamins. These are used by most homebrewers in lieu of a bunch of dried or fresh hops.
BITTERING HOPS: Hops used early in the boil to bitter the beer, not to add aroma.
FLAVOR HOPS: Hops used later in the boil to add some aroma and flavor.
AROMA HOPS: Hops added last to the boil, meant to add hop aromas, not bitterness or flavor.
ATTENUATION: The term used to describe the amount of fermentation that happened (meaning how much sugar the yeast ate) and how much the original gravity decreased. Refers to the final ABV.
RACK: The process of moving the beer at different stages of homebrewing.
PITCH: The term for adding the yeast to the cooled wort, as in “time to pitch the yeast!”
PRIMING: The addition of sugar (priming sugar) to beer that has already fermented. This occurs as the beer is being bottled or kegged to promote more flavor nuances, more alcohol and carbonation, or all three.
ORIGINAL GRAVITY: The measurement of the density of the liquid wort before fermentation; important for later ABV determination.
FINAL GRAVITY: The final measurement of the density of the wort after fermentation; using the original gravity and final gravity, you can calculate the ABV.
How to Brew
The basic brewing process consists of these steps: making the wort, fermenting, conditioning, bottling, and drinking. It’s really that simple. The complexity depends on the recipe, the ingredients, your equipment, your patience, and proper sanitation. There are a ton of great resources out there with extensive details that will help you learn how to brew well. We offer a quick, basic step-by-step here but encourage you to pick up some of the books mentioned at the end of this chapter, and visit the many homebrew websites on the Internet.
First, gather your equipment and your ingredients based on a recipe. Start with something simple; nothing with fancy yeast or spices or fruit. Some styles are easier for homebrew, like a Pale Ale or a Porter, but don’t assume that darker brews are harder to brew. Everything is hard to perfect or do as well as a professional brewer, but some beers are good starter styles. An ale is easier for a beginner than a lager because, as you know, a lager needs to ferment at a steady low temperature for a long time. This requires some sort of large refrigerator for your homebrew, which most people don’t have. Ales can ferment at a high room temperature, and they take a shorter amount of time. We suggest brewing small batches; five gallons is standard for a homebrew and still makes a lot of beer.
The following steps are for brewing with malt extract instead of malted grains because extract is the best jumping-off point for beginners. Consult more advanced homebrew books if you feel you are advanced enough to graduate to all-grain brewing.
STEP ONE
Sanitize your equipment. Again, we know how annoying this may seem, but you must do it. Bacteria can ruin your brew, and it’s a shame to go through the process and wait for your beer to be ready only to find it tastes off because of bacteria. You need to soak all of the equipment you are going to use in a sanitizer/water mix (1 ounce per 5 gallons of water). This means you need a soaking tub or big sink. Soak for about 15 minutes, then rinse everything thoroughly so that the sanitizer doesn’t end up in your brew.
STEP TWO
Get the water boiling. Fill up your brewpot, leaving some room (about 6 inches) at the top. When you add the ingredients, the water level will rise, and you don’t want the dreaded boilover. You will eventually add the boiled liquid, or wort, to more water after the boil, but try to boil as much of the water as you can, for sterilization reasons.
STEP THREE
Add your malt extract. Remove the water from the heat first so that you don’t get boilover when you add the malt. You will most likely be dumping this syrupy substance (taste it, it’s yummy!) from a plastic container. Use some of the boiling water to rinse the container and get all of the extract out. Stir this mix and bring back to a boil. Don’t leave it alone because you don’t want the extract to burn on the bottom of the pot. Let the mixture boil for 15 minutes. You will add hops (probably hop pellets, but possibly whole hops) at certain increments based on the recipe you’re following. This will vary. After the hop additions, you will boil for a while, stirring occasionally.
STEP FOUR
Cool down the mixture, also known as the wort. There are several ways to do this, none of which is particularly simple, but you must cool it down before you transfer the liquid to your fermentation vessel (the plastic bucket or carboy). This goes for both ales and lagers; both must be cooled down before you add the yeast. You can put the pot into a sink or tub full of ice, or you can use a wort chiller, which is a spiral copper tube that you will have sanitized and can put into the wort. You then run cold water through the tube; the water travels through the copper and cools the wort before coming out the other end. The good thing about this is that it is fast; the slower you cool the wort, the longer you leave it open to contamination. We recommend catching the water at the end of the wort chiller and using it to water your yard.
STEP FIVE
Get ready to pitch your yeast. If you have liquid yeast from a vial, just shake it up and wait for the wort to reach the correct temperature. This temperature should be around 78°F. The temperature has to be cool enough to keep the yeast alive; high temperatures will kill the yeast, and you will have no beer. If you are using a dehydrated yeast, you’ll have to rehydrate it, using boiled water for sanitation purposes.
STEP SIX
Before you pitch the yeast, move the wort to the fermentation vessel (either a bucket or a carboy). Be careful and get help so that you don’t spill too much. If you want to filter out some of the stuff left in the wort, like the hops you may have added, use a funnel with a mesh bag, or hop bag, in it. Make sure everything has been sanitized! Most recipes require filtration because hops and malt can go bad if left in the beer. You can also use a siphon tube called a racking siphon. This will transfer your wort to the carboy quite well.
STEP SEVEN
Pitch that yeast! Go ahead, you’ve earned it! But wait! Use your thermometer to make sure the wort is at 78°F or below. Be patient and wait for the mixture to cool down to this temperature. If the temperature is above this, the yeast may produce off-flavors or die.
STEP EIGHT
Put in your airlock, which allows the CO2 to get out without letting air with bacteria in. These thingies have a little tube you need to fill up with vodka (you can use another type of alcohol, but vodka is the best because it lacks taste, so if some of it gets into the beer, it won’t alter the flavor). The alcohol helps keep any bacteria from getting in.
STEP NINE
Let the beer be. Ales are happiest fermenting between 60°F and 70°F, so find a cool dark spot. Lagers need to be fermenting between 45°F and 55°F, so you’ll need a refrigerated spot. If you are using the glass carboy, keep it away from sunlight because this may ruin the beer. After a bit, the airlock will start to bubble, and you’ll know that fermentation is happening. Let this sit for 10 to 14 days. You’ll know the fermentation is done if the bubbling in the airlock has decreased to about one bubble a minute.
STEP TEN
Bottle your beer. You need to sanitize the bottles and caps. You can soak the bottles in sanitizer, or run them through the dishwasher alone, or be super thorough and use the bottle brush to be sure they’re clean. The bottle caps need to be sanitized, too, but make sure you don’t ruin the seal by overheating them in any way. This could affect the seal on the bottle and in turn ruin your beer. Before bottling, transfer the beer vi
a a siphon hose to your bottling bucket and add dissolved priming sugar, which will get the yeast eating again and create a secondary fermentation in the bottle (good for flavor, CO2, and a higher ABV). Again, via siphon, you will send the beer to the bottles and then cap them. Leave 1 to 1.5 inches below the cap.
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