Home Brewing Beer

When most people think "home brewer," they think of overweight bearded men, renaissance fairs, and civil war reenactments. No longer! With a modest investment in a couple of equipment items, anyone can brew 5 gallons of beer in a couple of hours, cleanup not included. In the course of this article I will review making a simple, malt extract brew. I will also discuss the required equipment and costs as well as popular (to me) vendors.1

Layout Equipment

The following is a bare-bones list of equipment needed to make beer in your kitchen:2

• 1 x 3 gallon stainless steel or copper pot (called a brew kettle)3
• 2 x 5 gallon food grade plastic bucket with a tight, sealable lid (one is called the primary fermenter or fermenting bucket, and the other is called a bottling bucket)
• 1 x long-handled, plastic spoon or ladle
• 1 x airlock
• 1 x 2 cup measuring cup
• ~50 x 12 oz bottles and unused caps
• 1 x capper
• 1 x cooking thermometer
• 1 x hydrometer4

Layout Ingredients

For the purpose of this article, we will be making a standard Pale Ale.5 The ingredients include:

• 3 lbs. light dry pale extract6
• 3 lbs. amber dry malt extract7
• 1 oz. 100% dextrin powder8
• 1 tsp. gypsum9
• 1/8 tsp. salt
• 0.5 oz. Columbus hop pellets10
• 1 oz. Willamette hop pellets11
• 3/4 cup corn sugar
• Wyeast 1968 liquid ale yeast12

Sanitize

It is easy to contaminate a beer prior to fermentation. Contamination can have a surprisingly large number of effects on the final product - the least worrisome of which is a bad aftertaste; the worst of which is bacteria competing with the yeast for sugars, resulting in weak beer.13

I generally like to use Clorox bleach for all of my pre-brew cleaning. Sweep and mop the floor, then bleach all surfaces in the area. As long as the impedimenta of brewing are resting on sanitized surfaces and there is no dust blowing around, I believe risk of contamination is minimal.

Clean and rinse all brewing implements prior to starting, too. Clorox wipes are great for this. The fermenting bucket should be cleaned once more prior to being filled with unfermented beer.

Boil

During this stage of the brewing process all of the ingredients come together in a glorious boil - the final product of which is unfermented beer. I will break this down by easy-to-follow steps, complete with definitions and explanations:

1. Fill the brew kettle with 2.5 gallons of regular tap water and bring to a boil.
2. Meanwhile, place the cans of malt extract into a second pot of hot water. In a few minutes, the heat will make the extract much easier to pour.
3. When the water is just off the boil, pour in the heated malt extract. Use the long-handled spoon to scrape out what's left in the can and stir slowly into the water.
4. Immediately after the extraction, stir in the dextrin powder, gypsum, and salt.
5. As soon as the water-based mix begins to boil, make a note of the time and stir in the Columbus hop pellets. (This is now officially unfermented beer, or wort - pronounced wert.)
6. Boil the wort for 60 minutes, continuing to stir slowly. If the wort is left unattended during the boil, it could boil over and be an absolute disaster. Not only are ingredients lost, but the unfermented wort is full of sugars - a mixture which becomes glue as it dries on your kitchen floor.14
7. At 60 minutes, turn off the stove and move the kettle from the stove to the kitchen sink. Lid the kettle and fill the sink with ice water. Keep the kettle in ice water until it drops to around 100° Fahrenheit.
8. Pour 5 gallons of the wort into the fermenting bucket once it cools.15
9. When the temperature of the wort is under 90°, pitch the yeast into the wort and seal the lid on the bucket.16 Place the airlock through the hole on the top of the lid, fill with water, and cap it.

This ends the boiling phase of the brewing process. At this point the beer sits in the fermenter in a dark,17 cool18 room or closet for the next 7 to 10 days. During this time, the yeast eats the sugar and creates alcohol. At day 7, check to see if the airlock is no longer "hopping" up and down in the water as it releases gas. Once that is the case, the ferment is done and the beer is ready for bottling.

Bottle

This is the final phase of actual work.

1. Start, of course, by sanitizing anything that will come into contact with the beer: