Brewers who are just starting out almost always use malt extracts,
which are prepackaged cans of concentrated wort (a brewers'
term for unfermented beer). When using these extracts, there
are three main steps to brewing: Boiling, Fermenting, and Packaging.
Each of these steps requires its own equipment:
Boiling
Equipment:
Stainless
Steel or Enamelware Kettle with at least 4 gallons capacity.
NOTE:
If you have any inkling that you may be pushing your new
hobby to the limits, you should consider getting a kettle
with at least 7 1/2 gallons capacity. This size will be
necessary if you switch over to advanced brewing, and if
you have it from the start you won't be wasting money buying
two kettles.
Fermenting
Equipment:
At
least one food-grade plastic or glass fermentor which can
be sealed with a lid or stopper and fit with an "airlock".
The airlock is a device which allows escape of Carbon Dioxide
gas from the fermentor while sealing the fermentor from
outside air, which could infect the beer with harmful microorganisms.
Packaging
Equipment:
You'll
need to package 5 Gallons of beer. The most common method
is to use bottles. Pry-off bottles are preferable to twist-offs
because they seal better and are composed of stronger glass.
About fifty 12-ounce bottles are necessary for a five gallon
batch. These can be purchased from your homebrew supplier,
but you can also collect and re-use your own empties. The
most important thing is that the bottles are clean and sanitized,
so if you're saving them it's best to rinse them out just
after emptying them. That way, cleaning won't be a problem,
and sanitation will be easy.
To
put the caps on these bottles, you'll need a capper. Decent
cappers range from $12 for hand-held models to $30 for bench-mounting
cappers. The only other thing you'll need will be enough
crown caps for all your bottles.
The
alternative to bottling is to use kegs. The cost of a good
5-gallon kegging system is prohibitive for a brewer just
starting out, but there are some cheaper, smaller systems
available. If you'd like to avoid bottling from the start,
you should do some research on these systems. Ours are found
on our bottling page.
Ingredients:
The
basic ingredients of beer are malt, hops, yeast, and water.
Homebrew shops sell these ingredients (the first three,
at least) in many different styles. Beginning brewers often
opt for prepackaged "kits" of malt. These are cans of pre-hopped
malt extract with a package of dried yeast under the lid.
These kits are pre-designed for a particular style of beer,
and they minimize the amount of effort the brewer must put
forth. Although this does make brewing extremely easy, it
keeps the brewer from having much input, or much fun! Also,
the prepackaged cans cannot duplicate the flavor of fresh
specialty grains and hops. Therefore, we recommend that
even first-time brewers use a more advanced method. The
addition of fresh specialty grains and hops is not complicated,
but it will do wonders for your first beer's flavor.
From start to finish, the brewing process takes only 4 weeks.
To oversimplify a bit, it's two weeks to ferment and two weeks
to naturally carbonate. However, although many of us don't have
the patience, giving a little time to the beer can do wonders.
The flavor of a brand new beer is a bit "green," and it needs
some time for it's flavors to mellow and "marry." A 3 month
old homebrew is better than a 1 month old homebrew in almost
every case.
The great thing about the modern homebrewing industry is that
there are now lots of companies devoted to producing prepackaged
kits with high quality, easy-to-use ingredients. With the production
of malt extracts, these companies have taken over the hard part
of homebrewing. If you can bake a good cake with a box of Betty
Crocker, then you can brew a good beer using malt extracts.
All of the ingredient kits we offer are available in the easy-to-use
use malt extract form. We throw in fresh specialty grains and
fresh hops to make sure the flavor is commercial-quality, but
the process remains simple and surefire.
Once
you develop your understanding of the process, you might decide
to delve into "from scratch" brewing with the all-grain brewing
method. But because all-grain brewing requires extra equipment,
extra time, and extra know-how, most homebrewers never switch
to advanced brewing. The quality and ease of the malt extracts
available makes it optional instead of preferable.
Homebrewing has a long, colorful tradition in this country.
Despite the effects of prohibition and the remaining myths about
homemade "hooch," homebrewing has become a well-established,
and (almost) universally accepted practice. By US federal law,
100 gallons of beer per individual or 200 gallons of beer per
household may be produced per year. Technically, you'd only
be breaking the law if you surpassed this mark--which is pretty
difficult to pass by brewing 5 gallons batches at a time.
The
legality of homebrewing is subject to the laws of individual
states, however. And since brewing laws are generally created
to set tax standards for commercial breweries, homebrewing is
often forgotten about on paper. There are still a handful of
states which have yet to pass formal statutes on the legality
of homebrewing, but their number has been falling fast with
the continuous pressure from the homebrewing community. Homebrew
shops, homebrewing clubs, and homebrewers exist in every state
in the country, and no one has been arrested or fined for homebrewing
in at least 20 years.
If
you're still curious about it, you can contact the American
Homebrewers Association to find out about your own state's relevant
laws:
Mark
Snyder
AHA Legalization Administrator
PO Box 1679
Boulder, CO 80306-1679
(303) 447-0816, ext. 137
FAX (303) 447-2825
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The directions on this can of malt are totally different
from those in my book. What's the deal?
We understand your dilemma. Unfortunately, there is little that
can be done to remedy this problem. But our advice is to ignore
the directions on the can. Though this may seem like bad advice,
it is perfectly logical. One part of the problem is that many,
if not most, malt extracts, are produced in England, where a
gallon is not a gallon. That is, a gallon on a can of British
malt extract is not a gallon in your American carboy. The British
use Imperial measurements, which are actually larger than our
own. So all of the volume measurements on that British can are
different from the ones we use here in the states.
Your
can says to make three gallons from the can alone, which really
equates to 3.6 US gallons, which obviously doesn't fill up your
fermentor. Even when the measurements are the familiar ones,
malt cans usually ask you to adjust your batch size to the amount
of ingredients in the can. This makes sense, since the manufacturer
wants to be selling you a self-sufficient product. But most
homebrewers adjust their ingredients to the established batch
size of 5 US gallons, and it's best to accept this general
trend to brew five gallons. In doing so, you avoid many problems
with equipment size, recipe formulation, and brewing instructions.
This is especially true when you are just starting out.
My beer fermented for 2 days and now the airlock has stopped
bubbling. What have I done?
There are three factors involved here, and we'll deal with each
one separately.
Trust
your yeast. Reading all of those foreign instructions
and brewing books when you were getting started may have
made everything seem so technical and unforgiving that brewing
seemed more challenging than it was fun. Not so. It's not
as complicated as it sounds at first, and not as unforgiving.
But yeast is a living, eating, multiplying organism, and
it is not always going to act exactly as you expect it.
There are many factors affecting the speed of your fermentation:
the amount of oxygen in your wort, the number of yeast cells
initially pitched, the amount and type of fermentable sugars
in your wort, and the temperature of your fermentation,
to name a few. Since each of these has a big impact on the
way the yeast ferments, there can be large variations in
the way your fermentation proceeds. Sometimes, we get the
disconcerting thrill of exploding fermentor lids. Other
times, barely enough activity to make it fun to watch the
airlock.
With
some experience, you'll learn the tricks of taking better
control of your fermentation activity, and you may better
control the length of your fermentation. But you'll never
completely control it, and learning which problems are minor
and which ones are major is a big part of becoming a good
brewer. In this case, even if you're fermentation did stop
prematurely, it's no big deal. A stuck ferment can be solved
by doing one or more of the following: moving the fermentor
to a warmer spot, stirring the wort, or adding yeast nutrient.
If your yeast is dead, you can just add more yeast. No problem.
Question
your airlock. Though it can give you a general idea
of how things are going, it will never tell you exactly
what you need to know. If the CO2 found a tiny
hole to escape through instead of your airlock, and you
bottled your still-fermenting beer, all the extra CO2
created in the bottle make for a big carbonated mess when
you pop the cap. Conversely, if the CO2 coming
through your airlock is not from current activity, but is
just seeping out of solution from past fermentation, then
you're waiting for something which may not end for weeks--even
though your beer is ready for bottling. When these questions
are raised, it is best to answer them with a hydrometer,
possibly the most important instrument for monitoring fermentation.
If you don't have one, buy one. If you have one, use it.
With it, you can see if the wort is at it's expected terminal
point. If not, you can use successive readings to see if
the gravity is changing, in which case your fermentation
is still occurring. When the readings have reached their
expected level and have stabilized, you're ready for bottling.
Relax.
We have enough experience helping beginning brewers to understand
why brewing guru Charlie Papazian coined the mantra of homebrewing:
"Relax, don't worry, have a homebrew." Don't assume that
every unexpected development spells doom for your entire
batch. It is always better to be overcautious about things
like sanitation and such than it is to be lackadaisical.
But most facets of homebrewing are much more forgiving than
beginners are lead to believe.
My beer has been fermenting for 2 weeks and it is still bubbling.
Will it ever end?
This is kind of the corollary to the question above, and much
of the answer is related. If you haven't read the statements
above about trusting your yeast and distrusting your airlock,
you may want to give them a peek.
Using
your hydrometer becomes very important at the end of your fermentation.
True, you're beer could still be fermenting. But it might just
be that CO2 is coming out of solution. After fermentation,
there is a certain amount of CO2 that was created
as a byproduct but did not escape from solution as gas and pass
through your airlock. In fact, the fermentation process totally
saturates your wort with CO2. Depending on changes
in temperature and other variables, it may slowly escape from
solution over a period of weeks. Just like you soda pop bubbles
after you open it--without any fermentation occurring--so may
your wort bubble slowly.
There
is no way of knowing if this bubbling is fermentation or simple
bubbling without using a hydrometer. Use it to see if the wort
is at it's expected terminal point. If not, you can use successive
readings to see if the gravity is changing, in which case your
fermentation really is still occurring. If it has been fermenting
for quite a while, try moving your fermenter to a warmer spot
to speed it up. When the readings have reached their expected
level and have stabilized, you're ready for bottling--even if
you airlock is bubbling slowly.
What's the difference between liquid and dry malt extract?
The only real difference between liquid and dry malt is how
it is packaged. The dry malt has nearly every trace of water
evaporated from it, so it ends up as a powder. Generally, liquid
malt retains about 20% water by weight, so it is in syrup form.
Though this does not greatly affect the malt extract itself,
it does affect your brewing process. For one thing, you should
consider dry malt to be more concentrated than liquid (since
20% of the liquid malt weight is just water). If you'd like
to convert from one to the other, you should use .8 pounds dry
malt for each pound of liquid, or 1.25 pounds of liquid for
every pound of dry malt.
Much
like the argument between brewers preferring a particular form
of hops (leaf, pellet, or plug), there are arguments for and
against each kind of extract. Some say that dry malts are less
fermentable since they have to be reconstituted--thus, they
leave a maltier flavor. Some say that dry malts are easier to
store, since their dryness makes them less susceptible to spoilage.
Our opinion here at the Cellar is that you should use whichever
gives you the best results or makes your brewing easier. With
years of brewing and tasting, we have found no significant difference
between the two forms. But we do recommend experimenting with
both.
What's the difference between leaf hops and pellet hops?
Like the difference between the malt extract forms, the difference
here is simply the means of packaging the product. However,
the results of these two processes should be considered when
you are deciding on which form to buy. We'll consider each aspect
separately:
Ease
of use: Most brewers consider the pellets easier to
use, since they basically disintegrate into the wort during
the boil. They do not need to be strained out after the
boil, and they precipitate during fermentation, to be cleaned
away with the rest of the sediment. In other words, there
is really no work or extra equipment involved in using them.
The
leaf form is usually placed in a nylon or mesh strainer
bag during the boil, or strained out afterwords with a collander
or strainer. This is not difficult, but it does require
some sort of strainer or boiling bag.
Bitterness:
When considering the difference between the bittering potential
of the hop forms, we must consider both the amount of bitterness
they have and the amount they give to the
beer. Pellets generally give more of their bitterness
(alpha acids), since they are already pulverized and simply
disintegrate into the boiling wort. However, the leaf forms
usually have slightly more bitterness, since none
of the alpha acids are lost to the pelletizing process used
for the other form. Then again, leaf hops lose more of their
bitterness during periods of storage, since they have more
surface area exposed to heat, oxygen, and light. So the
matter is not clear cut.
In
the end, your best bet is to find out what the alpha acid
levels of each form are, and compare them to the recipe's
level if it gives one. Weigh these facts with your own preferences
in deciding which form to use. Since both forms give excellent
results, it will most likely boil down to deciding which
form is easiest.
Flavor:
Always remember that flavor is not just what your tongue
is telling you about your food. All your tongue can say
is "sweet," "salt," "sour," or "bitter." Flavor gets the
rest of it's vocabulary from your nose. And the aroma of
hops is a major, major factor in the way we perceive a beer's
flavor.
Purists
will say that the aroma hops ("finishing" hops, used at
the end of the boil or after it) must be leaf hops.
The delicate oils found on the hop flower are responsible
for the hop's wonderful aroma, they say, and the hops should
arrive at the brewhouse with as little processing as possible.
Why would you want to pelletize something that's
too sensitive to be boiled for more than a short time? Well,
we understand their point. And some of us believe it enough
to choose only leaf hops even for boiling.
But,
again, it is important to understand that you can achieve
excellent flavor from either hop form, and that you're allegiance
to one form or the other will develop only with experience,
if it does at all.
