THE BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO HOME BREWING
Homebrewing is a great hobby, and easy for beginner's to jump into.
The beer brewing process occurs over the course of several weeks, broken down to the 'Brew Day', 'Fermenting', and 'Bottling'.
The actual creation of the beer occurs on brew day, with the alcohol being formed through the fermentation cycle, and the carbonation you experience when opening a beer formed during the bottling process.
This article offers an overview of the full brew process, aimed at first time home brewers. For more information on a specific part of the brew cycle, visit the following pages: Brew Day, Fermentation, Bottling.
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Brew Day
Tip Takeaway: Buy a Wort Chiller
The bulk of beer brewing is done at Brew Day. For a first-time beer brewer, you can expect the actual brew day to take 6 hours:
- Hour 1: Prep, clean, and heat water to beginning temperature (normally around 150°F).
- Hour 2: The grains will soak in this warm water for about one hour. This process is called "mashing".
- Hour 3: Remove the grains, and boil the water, increasing the water temperature from 150°F to 212°F.
- Hour 4: Boil the wort, adding in hops when necessary, for about one hour.
- Hour 5: Rapidly cool the wort.
- Hour 6: Siphon the wort into a fermenter. Clean the huge mess you created.
Beer Recipe
Each beer recipe consists of grains, hops, and yeasts.
Mash Process
The mash process extracts the sugars from the grains. Most beer recipes will provide an ideal mashing temperature, usually in the range of 150°F - 155°F. First, heat water to this ideal temperature. Pour the grains into a large brew bag, and drop the brew bag into the water. Eventually, we will remove these grains from the water, so the brew bag helps to contain the small grains.
The warm water will extract the sugar from the grains over the course of one hour. This process is called "mashing", with the final sugar-water product referred to as "wort". Stir the grains occasionally throughout the hour.
At the end of the hour, remove the grains. You'll notice a lot of water is seeped into the grains now - a lot of valuable sugar water that could one day be beer. Let this water drain back into the brew kettle. You will rinse the grains with some additional water to get more of the grain's sugar to wash into the kettle, in a process called "sparging". The sparging process will also raise your water volume, which will decrease slightly through the boiling process before ending at your desired output.
Wort Process
We are now left with sugar water sitting at around 150°F. Quickly bring this to a boil at 212°F, and continue the boil for the allotted time, usually one hour. During this hour, we will be adding the hops, preferably in a hop basket or hop bag to remove excess hops more easily.
Normally, when a recipe includes hops, it dictates a time frame to add the hops into the boiling wort. The time frame specified is based on the end of the boil - not the beginning! "Magnum Hops @ 15 Minutes" would tell you to add the hops when only 15 minutes of boil time is left, so 45 minutes into a standard boil process. "Magnum Hops @ 60 Minutes" would tell you to add the hops at the very beginning of the boil process. "Magnum Hops @ 5 Minutes" would tell you to only include the hops for the last 5 minutes.
Continue the boiling through the allotted time, then remove the hop baskets/bags. We can now move into the cooling process.
Cooling Process
The boiling wort kills any bacteria that happens to go into the wort. Now that the water is no longer boiling, you want to move the wort to the fermenter as fast as possible, but first the wort needs to cool to room temperature. By itself, the wort could take hours to cool to around 72°F, providing way too much time for potential bacteria to find its way into your hard-earned wort.
We need to force the wort to cool down, ideally with the use of an immersion wort chiller, ice baths, or both. An immersion wort chiller is a cyclone of copper pipes that are inserted into the beer. Cold water runs through the copper pipes, cooling the beer with minimal work and maximum efficiency.
Without the immersion wort chiller, an ice bath could be your best solution. Note that the warm beer kettle will rapidly melt ice cubes for the first few minutes, so be sure to have plenty of ice handy. This process could take a full hour or longer for a 5-gallon beer kettle, but is the cheaper option when testing out beer brewing.
Eventually, your wort will reach room temperature, or a temperature that your patience deems close enough. Siphon this wort into a clean fermenter, trying to avoid any clumps of grains and hops sitting at the bottom of the beer kettle. If you are tracking alcohol content, you will need a sample of this wort to test the sugar levels. After fermentation, you will test the sugar levels again, and the difference will be able to tell you the alcohol content of your beer.
Add your yeast to the fermenter (if using a packet of liquid yeast, sanitize any scissors or knives you use to open it). Close the fermenter, add the air bubbler, and relax!
FERMENTING
Tip Takeaway: Remember to test the sugar content!
The fermenting process is easy - place the fermenter in a dark room with steady temperatures and wait for about two weeks for the wort to ferment into beer. During this process, the yeast consumes the sugar within the wort, producing alcohol. After one or two days, you should start seeing bubbles in the air bubbler confirming the fermentation process is squarely underway. The yeast, as it produces alcohol, is also producing a carbon dioxide byproduct, which escapes through the air bubbler. You'll notice the different paces of the bubbling over the first couple of days. As the bubbling slows, so does the fermentation process.
As you get more experienced, you can add flavors, such as fruits, to the fermenter - providing better flavor and more sugar for the yeast to consume.
Most recipes recommend fermenting for two weeks. Towards the end of this time period, it may seem like fermentation has completely stopped with no more bubbles forming, and no more carbon dioxide exiting via the air bubbler.
The beer bottling process is straightforward. Grab a large bucket with a spigot, clean the bucket, and siphon the beer from the fermenter to the bucket, avoiding any residue sitting at the bottom of the fermenter. This residue is a mix of leftover grains, hops, and yeasts and will cause your beers to be murky or have its own residue at the bottom of the bottle.
Using the spigot, fill your beer bottles with beer to your desired level. For each beer bottle, drop a sugar tablet into the bottle. This tablet will allow fermentation to continue at a smaller scale, providing the carbonation effect when you open the beer bottle in 2-3 weeks. Eventually, you can create your own sugar mixtures on your stove, but this often creates uneven carbonation in the beer bottles.
As you fill your beer bottles, take a sample of beer to test the sugar content. The final ABV calculations will depend on the type of test you are performing and the instrument you bought, so rely on your own guides here.
Finally, in 2-3 weeks, open a bottle and ENJOY!
BOTTLING
Tip Takeaway: Buy the sugar tablets!
