I’m going to share here my experiences with a most basic process that doesn’t require any special equipment. This way, you can walk away from the experience without spending much money, and you’ll know if you are into it. I am going to share how to make a little over a gallon of beer from extract, hops, water, and yeast.
When I tell people I homebrew, I usually hear two things in response. First, that they know somebody who tried to make something or another, and it exploded on them; and that was the end of it for them. Second, that they are daunted by the whole idea. People who have looked into the whole process have been recommended a bunch of equipment to get started. I’ve been working on minimizing the amount of equipment so people can check it out with the least amount of commitment.
A note about homebrewing culture: what I’m sharing here is sacrilege to a lot of people and would normally solicit some very skeptical–sometimes hostile–responses from homebrewers. I think a lot of it is American engineering culture which puts process above other things. There is some merit to this; you don’t want to ruin 5 gallons of beer due to a preventable mishap. But take this advice above all else: There are no absolutes in homebrewing. For the egoists, I normally do whole grain batches and some will vouch for the crazy shit I’ve done (malted corn for a lager, made a Belgian Tripel from 25 pounds of crimped feed barley using enzymes…). I’ve made normal beer too, but it does bore me.
(Note from January 2008–Methinks homebrewing culture has matured a bit so this has become an unfair generalization. Still, keep it in mind.)
So my best advice to you is to be discreet about what you’re doing and refuse to cave in if they start ramming the conventional wisdom down your throat. Remember that brewing is a modestly-controlled spoiling of food. You will have to really bungle up to infect the beer with something bad or otherwise ruin it.
Some notes on the recipes and this process. This process uses 2 gallons of bottled water. You don’t want to use tap water because of chloramine. That stuff doesn’t boil out like chlorine. You can use campden tablets (potassium metabisulphite) to drive that stuff out, or use filtered water, but then you still need two 1 gallon jugs to ferment in. All these recipes are extract only. They don’t use crushed grains in any way. Most of the recipes use wheat malt extracts. Wheat extracts are good for first-timers for a few reasons:
1. Wheat beers are naturally cloudy, so you can’t lose style points for clarity.
2. Two wheat beers are becoming popular in the US: Belgian Wit, and Hefeweizen.
3. They can be consumed young. This is good for your first time because first timers want to drink their first batch quickly.
I put a few other recipes at the end of the article that don’t necessarily use wheat extract if you’re enterprising.
Items you will need:
- A pot that can hold 2 gallons with head space. Beer likes to foam up–and over if you let it. You won’t really need a lid but that’ll help the water reach a boil faster. You won’t be boiling the combined ingredients with the lid on.
- A range that can boil the 2 gallons of water.
- A long spoon for your stock pot.
- A sanitizing solution. Note sanitization is not sterilization–the complete eradication of microbes. Bleach works but you must rinse it out over and over and watch your clothes–or brew naked. Perfume-free Oxyclean works pretty well.
- A funnel for pouring off the beer into the jugs–not into your mouth.
- A sink with a drain stopper that can hold cold water. Your pot will be rapidly chilled down with this.
- Old (Clean), empty plastic soda bottles with caps. I recommend the small individual ones. Think of serving sizes here since you’ll keep the beer in these. You won’t need them right away so maybe you could get some single-serve soda bottles while you’re out.
- A dark place to ferment the beer. Specifically, protected from all sunlight.
- Optional: A heating pad to speed up bottle carbonation. Don’t use it for the fermentation.
I heartily recommend you get an auto-siphon too. This lets you pull the liquid off of the settled crud–the “trub”–without mixing them together. I mentioned cloudy beer, but generally people don’t like sloppy bits. But this is an experiment so you can tolerate it.
I also recommend you get a hydrometer and figure out how to use it. The hydrometer will let you know if the beer has fermented out enough. Without it, you can only really go by rough taste and lack of activity to know that it’s done.
The basic procedure is to boil together fermentable ingredients, cool it off into jugs, ferment it a few days, pour off to soda bottles with a little more sugar, and let the yeast carbonate the bottles. First timers are afraid they’ll blow it, so I’m including a ridiculously-detailed procedure. I remember my first time that I was wallowing in doubt, and I would have liked to have had all this when I was doing 5 gallons. For the record, doing 5 gallons isn’t much different–just bigger. Here is the detailed procedure, using this abridged Hefeweizen recipe. Don’t worry about the details–I’ll lead you through what is what. More comprehensive notes on the recipe are at the end of the document.
With two gallons of water:
1.5 pounds wheat DME (Dried Malt Extract)
0.25 ounce Hallertauer 3.1% AA @ 60 minutes
Ferment with Safbrew WB-06; or fall back to either Safbrew W-68 or Safbrew T-58 if you must. You could use a liquid Hefeweizen yeast too but think of the shipping and what it might due to the critters.
You will likely have to get two 1 pound bags of wheat extract, and hops come in 1 ounce bags. The yeast come in little packets meant for 5 gallon batches, but you’ll do fine to use it all for your project.
I. Preparing the Wort.
This is the sweet liquid product that the yeast will gobble up and turn into beer.
Each participant may consider having a beer before beginning, but it’s a bad idea your first time. That being said, friends don’t let friends brew sober. Well I do, and that’s why it makes me miserable and I have to make it interesting by doing crazy crap like this . . .
- Clean out the stock pot, rinse it out and dry it. Continue to rinse until the only odor you think you get from it is a little chlorine from your tap water. If you’re shoving your nose right up to it to figure this out, then the stock pot’s ok.
- Pour the water into the pot and heat it on high. If your pot is very large, you might be able to span two burners for this. Covering the pot will get it to boil much faster. Just check on it often since the first clue it’s boiling might be the wort boiling out the top.
- Once boiling, add the fermentables. That is the malt extract and sugar if called for. Let it come back to a boil. Dry malt extract clings to moisture such as the steam from the boil, so you’ll probably find this step fussy. At this point you should have the pot open and exposed; no lid.
- Once it boils again, you can start that hopping schedule. Hop schedules are initially counterintuitive in that the times are counting down, not up. Let’s say you must add hops A at 60 minutes, B at 20 minutes, and then C at 5 minutes. What this means is you add A once everything is boiling again. You then have 60 minutes before your boil is finished. When there is 20 minutes left before the boil finishes, you add hops B; you add hops C with 5 minutes left to the boil. It is done this way because hops get more bitter the longer they boil. You are commited to a timetable as soon as the first hops go in. So for some reason if you wanted to boil down your beer awhile, do it before you add your first hops.
- Add 0.25 ounces of Hallertauer here. You now have 60 minutes of boil left.
- When the boil time is up, cut the heat, put a lid on the pot, and move it to a sink with some cold water in it. Let the pot chill this way, possibly changing the water once. If you have a thin pot you might get away with the initial filling of water. For a thicker pot, you’ll most likely need to change out the sink water once. Do not touch the wort since it’s now cooling into contamination range. Cooling lets some icky proteins settle out–never to become part of the greater beer again even if it gets into the bottles. It also gets the wort down to a safe fermentation temperature quickly.
II. Fermentation
- Sanitize the water jugs and funnel with the Oxyclean and thoroughly rinse.
Pour the beer off into the jugs through the funnel, leaving an even amount of space in each.
- Open your yeast packet(s) and pour roughly even amounts of yeast into each container.
- Judgement call–you can cover the beer up if you want. Perhaps you’re going to put this all in a dusty closet. You could wrap a paper towel over the top and secure it, or mount the original caps partially.
- Move the jugs into that cool part of your house. The best temperature for this particular beer lays around 65F. Don’t fuss it though. It should be outside of direct sunlight or else the beer will “skunk.” That’s good for Corona’s but not for this.
After a day, fermentation should be obvious and aggressive. There should be foam and a rush of tiny bubbles up the sides of the jug. Every day, pour some of the fermenting beer back and forth between the jugs to smooth their nuances. The shaking brings yeast back into contact with fermentables, and displaces a lot of the CO2. Let that burp out. Yeast don’t like CO2 as it’s basically their excrement. That and alcohol, surprisingly enough. If you’re very good you can get booze up in the 15% range, but it’s a dark art. If you want significantly more than that, you have to concentrate the alcohol, which will be illegal in its various ways in most places in the Western World.
III. Preparing to serve–bottling.
- When bubbling stops, cap the bottles. If they bulge or pop off the caps, fermentation is not yet complete. Continue doing this until the jugs stay inert for 12 hours.
- Sanitize your soda bottles and caps, rinse.
- Measure off an ounce of sugar and split evenly amongst the bottles to the best of your ability. Note that an ounce of sugar is a little over a quarter of a cup by my math. If you’re unsure if you’re playing with the same volumes as me, go for at most an ounce per gallon of final beer.
- Pour a little beer from the jugs into each bottle, leaving behind the gunk on the bottom. Screw on the caps. Contemplate buying a siphon; or use your siphon here if you got it.
- Move the bottles to a dark place again, but this time it can be warmer. You can try for a heating pad here. Warm fermentation can lead to off-flavors, but all the yeast are now taking on just little bit of sugar, so there’s not much for them to alter. Stop when the bottles are roughly as firm as they were when they had soda.
- If you want to drop out a lot of the gunk, stick the bottles in the freezer until they turn into ice bricks, then move to the fridge for a few days. Most shit will drop out.
The beer is now ready. At the least, you should consider chilling them to slow down any bonus yeast activity. Yes they can still explode, and that’s because we didn’t measure if fermentation was likely done using a hydrometer; just staring at it isn’t the best indicator.
They should be ready now, but they’ll do well to age. They should last about 6 months in those types of bottles before they start losing flavor.
A note about pouring: you don’t want the shit on the bottom in your cup. Tilt the cup as you tilt the bottle, and try to pour off everything without having to retilt the bottle back up. In this way you don’t disturb the sediment. This is slightly different from the “proper” pour which will glop out a little bit onto the top at the end to build the head.
The beer isn’t going to knock your socks off, but it’ll readily show you if you’re a bad enough dude for homebrewing. If you made it this far and the beer resembles beer, then you did it right! See Q&A section for some ideas of where to go next, or try other recipes.
Other Recipes:
Hefeweizen from the procedure
This is the most basic to prepare. It comes down to a light hopping regimen and a pound of wheat extract per gallon. You have two choices of flavor that depend entirely on what you do with the yeast. In advance I warn you to sanitize thoroughly if you want that banana flavor that is known in this style; you’re going to pitch less yeast than you normally should to cause the yeast to build up. The flavors in a Hefeweizen come from the yeast getting it on.
For a clean flavor that most are used to, use all the yeast. For those of you that want to get some flavor out of your yeast, use only a very little bit of the packet. Say, a pinch (but don’t use your fingers!). A lot of that clove/banana flavor are byproducts of that initial yeast growth. Nobody has a perfect rule for balancing clove against banana. I hear more that cooler=clove and warmer=banana, but I don’t think the jury’s in on that yet. A lot of this depends on yeast, and you really should get a wheat/Hefeweizen yeast.
For two gallons:
1.5 pounds wheat DME (Dried Malt Extract)
Yes I know that’s an odd number. Go ahead and throw the whole rest of the sack in if you want to get crocked. It’s not really to style but nobody’s watching.
Use a wheat beer yeast like Safebrew WB-06. This is a yeasty beer and if you use a yeast made for Hefeweizen then you’ll want to drink it young and cloudy with the yeast still suspended. You can crash chill if you want just to be safe though.
Hopping schedule
0.25 ounce Hallertauer 3.1% AA @ 60 minutes
IPA
Ehhh–what happened to my recipe? I will have to find this one. Sorry guys.
Note I normally don’t like these beers. However, I first tried this with my mother and she wanted something “brown, malty, hoppy, somewhat high alcohol” came out. So there that was. Raw calculations of this recipe show fits the style guidelines for an American Brown Ale, but note that this is being consumed young where the hops still have bite. It’s not really malty though.
This beer should be consumed “cellar temperature.” Say, 50-60F. Let it rest on the counter before pouring. If consumed too cold, it’ll be bitter and grassy. It is best sipped slowly.
Belgian Wit
There are a ton of ways to do this beer. Most of the debate comes into the spicing regimen. I have the basics here but let me defend my instructions. I assume nobody will do a secondary fermentation, where the spices would best impact the beer. I am putting all spices in the boil near the end to quickly sanitize them without driving off the flavor. A Belgian Wit is easy to get into the ballpark, but very hard to master particularly due to the spicing. In order to keep the color light, I use some sugar to get the proper alcohol rating, as well as dump a tablespoon of flour in to get the white, cloudy color characteristic of this style.
For two gallons:
One pound of wheat DME (Dried Malt Extract)
6 ounces of granulated sugar
(consider getting yeast nutrient and add according to directions. If there are no directions, add a teaspoon with less than 5 minutes left on the boil. Consider nutrient when adding straight sugar because yeast need other products than just sugar to maintain themselves.)
Aggressive Spice mixture
2 tsp coriander
2 tsp bitter orange peel
2 tsp camomile (straight from camomile tea bags if you must. Don’t fret if you can’t get it)
Crush together in mortar in pestle, coffee grinder, or rolling pin (good luck!)
Halve quantities if you want a more subtle spicing regimen.
Hopping/Spicing Schedule
5 pellets of Saaz AA 3.8% @ 60 minutes
1/3 spice mixture @ 20 minutes
0.2oz Saaz AA 3.8% @ 15 minutes
1/3 spice mixture @ 10 minutes
0.2oz Saaz AA 3.8% @ 5 minutes
Remaining 1/3 spice mixture @ 5 minutes
Best dry yeast would be Brewferm Blanche. More like you’ll find Safale S-58 on hand. If you want more spices, boil them with the bottling sugar and add them together.
Light American Lager
You might be surprised that “lawnmower beers” like Bud/Miller/Coors are amongst the hardest beers to homebrew. They are so light in flavor that any flaws cannot hide anyplace; I hear this is a marketing message for some brand of pilsener over in Europe, but it’s essentially true.
A note about lagering, you must ferment it at around 50-55 degrees. Generally, you then want to transfer to another container post-fermentation and cool the whole thing down to 35 degrees for months; that is what lagering is technically. If you wait that long, you risk oxidizing the beer if you use plastic jugs with poor seals. I think you won’t care if the beer is a little cloudy, but it might just clear off with a crash chilling. There is no wheat in this recipe so it’ll naturally want to clear. That and the yeast wants to drop out–it is a bottom fermenting yeast already. You can get clarifiers like gelatin to accelerate this. Check with your religion before you use clarifiers because gelatin or shellfish bladders–isinglass–can be a big turnoff.
American megabrewers tend to use adjuncts–unmalted, nonbarley grain that can provide extra sugars from the enzymes in the barley–because they don’t contribute color. It wasn’t necessarily done to be cheaper. From what I hear, Bud uses a lot of rice, and Coors uses a lot of corn. This recipe uses neither because I couldn’t match up a pound of extract either properly. However, table sugar is something people tend to have laying around and can measure off into odd quantities. As is the case with the Belgian Wit, add some nutrient if you can because yeast need more than sugar to thrive.
Consider getting an auto-siphon so you can pull the beer off the sediment more consistently. If you are making this for people I imagine they expect a clearer beer, so you should have an eye on that.
For two gallons:
One pound of Light DME (Dried Malt Extract). Extra-light might be overkill; you don’t want it to look like Sprite.
6 ounces of granulated sugar
Hopping Schedule
0.5 ounce Vintage Saaz @ 60 minutes (nobody will give you an alpha acid percentage for vintage saaz, but it’ll probably be < 1%)
The story is that Bud buys hops and then deliberately tells the growers to stash them away to age out. Vintage hops have lost their bittering power but retain their preservative effect and a very light flavor. You might even do without hops entirely, but you’ll probably notice it–particularly in the burp. Old hops can smell cheesy so they have to be in the boil for awhile or else that’ll show up in your beer.
Use a clean, dry lager yeast such as Saflager S23. If you want the beer to have the sulfury characteristic of a Corona before they got so popular, expose the bottled beer to sunlight for about an hour before putting in your regular refrigerator. If you’ve been following closely, this is deliberately skunking beer. Just don’t forget about them. If you don’t know what I mean, Corona’s come in clear bottles and used to get skunked out in the displays due to poor handling. Maybe they still do.
Primary fermentation should be at 45-55 degrees Fahranheit. You might have to do this in the basement, by an A/C vent, or a warm spot in your fridge.
“BUT I CAN’T LAGER/FERMENT COLD:” A very clean ale yeast will fool most people. Try Safale US-56. You will still need to ferment around 65F or lower. Don’t use a lager yeast at these higher temperatures.
Q&A
Q: Is this legal?
A: In the US, people 21 years or older can produce up to 50 gallons a year for themselves, or 100 gallons if they are in a household of two or more. I don’t have the legal definition for “household” in this case–a guy and a baby? I am unsure of the details in other countries. I believe they frown on it in Japan, but it’s OK in Anglo countries. New Zealand even allows home distillation! I learned how to malt from New Zealand sites for making whiskey. UPDATE: I think it’s now 100 gallons/year for themselves and 200 gallons/year for a household of two or more.
Q: I am a college kid that wants to get knocked off my rocker for pennies. What can I do?
A: I was never into this in college nor was I drinker in college, but here’s what I would try. Pull gallon jugs and soda bottles out of your recycleables, full the jugs with tap water, and use potassium metabisulphite (the homebrew store will have it) in light amounts in each in a well-ventilated place. Good God open the packet briefly and hide it away to see if somebody has a reaction to it — that shit can put some people in the ER. It’s like MSG in a way in that 1 in 100 can get whacked from it. However, the chance of a severe reaction is rarer still. However (again), I saw an internet post in a winemaking thread about this happening to somebody’s roommate. Just the slightest hint of a pinch of that stuff will remove chloramine from a gallon. A campden tablet, the little, puny, pill form of potassium metabisulphite, can clear up to 20 gallons. For a recipe, try pre-hopped dry extract–don’t boil it long–or whatever extract is on sale, and cut it 50:50 with sugar. You should use a neutral ale yeast at least to get started, and then pitch distiller’s yeast or champagne yeast to get up to 12%. Beware that it will be tough to carbonate when you get that high. You’ll have to wait longer for it to prime.
Q: When ordering the dried malt extract, the store asked “which brand?” What do you recommend?
A: I have no recommendation. They’re pretty close to each other IMO. If you can get Hefeweizen extract, use that for the Hefeweizen. Outside of that, ask them what’s cheaper. If neither is cheaper (that should be a hint there it doesn’t matter), ask what they recommend. If they won’t recommend any (another hint there), ask for the list and pick one in the middle just to fuck with them.
Q: I asked for all this stuff in the homebrew store and they started to shit on me. What can I do?
A: Bring in the list and say you’re getting it for a friend. They’ll stop preaching. Either that or use mail order. Note that in-store prices are sometimes cheaper. Remember that making beer in such a crude way as this is beyond the imagination of a lot of homebrewers. They kind of forget that the word “homebrew” often implies McGuyver-like resourcefulness and a tolerance in quality. Stand your ground and turn down the $70 starter kit. If you are feeling frisky, buy an auto-siphon since that’ll help you leave the sediment (trub) behind.
And if they really have their heads up their asses then go somewhere else. You don’t need to be starting a rapport with that kind of crowd.
NQ (Not Question): You really need to get <this or this> and do <that or that> or it won’t come out right. This is a real “high risk brew.”
A: Talk to the hand. I’ve done this fine and dandy a few times already. BTW if you just got randomly offended by that then and don’t think you’re one of those types, then why did you get offended? <wink>
Q: Can I use liquid yeast? Why would I use this?
A: I normally use liquid yeast for my batches. For this simplified method, I felt dry yeast was easier to handle, and more likely to survive shipping if somebody has to order from pretty far away (weather considerations). Dry yeast doesn’t need to come with some nutrients and a suspension solution, although it comes with some activation chemicals.
So why do I normally use liquid yeast? There is a much wider inventory of them specific to what I do. They also used to be much more pure, but the story now is that has improved. Purer yeasts let me reuse that yeast over and over. I have reused a batch of yeast three times by skimming the trub out of my primary fermenter. After that it gets risky too. It’s the variety that is a bigger deal. You can get a yeast that is very much the one for your style. For example, White Lab’s Czech Budejovice is rumored to be the yeast Budweiser uses–I believe this less and less as time goes on but whatever. The lower viable yeast counts in liquid yeast can be offset by producing a starter. Conventional homebrewing culture recommends starters for a lot of stuff, but you know me… you don’t need it unless you’re going for the big booze stuff really anymore. Even most lagers don’t need it.
On top of that, if you want something like Hefeweizen then you might even consider adding even less yeast. The good flavors come from the yeast reproducing–ewww.
Q: I just made my batch and it came out peachy keen. I’m hooked and want to get into the hobby further. What is next?
A: Most people brew in the 5 gallon range. You should consider a food grade 6.5 gallon fermentation bucket for primary fermentation, and a 5 to 5.5 gallon glass carboy for secondary. You’ll need a larger pot, even if you plan to do a partial boil and dilute with the rest of the water later. Most importantly, you should get an auto-siphon so that you can transfer everything around without a fuss. In fact, that’s the first thing you should get because you can use that to leave all the “trub” (the shit on the bottom) behind. Also get a hydrometer so you can more accurately gauge how fermentation is going; staring at the fermentation really isn’t a good method. Finally, you’ll want to start bottling in glass if you get that far along.
Homebrew stores sell “starter” kits just for people like you. They’re generally pretty good. Before going in, you should know if you plan to have two batches going at once, if you think you might try wine, and if you think you’d get into kegging. These will influence the kit in some stores.
Somebody’s going to tell me I shouldn’t recommend a bucket because it’s not glass and blablablabla. Chris White (of White Labs’ fame) complains how American brewers seal up everything in primary fermentation. He recommends open fermentation because
1. It most easily lets the CO2 escape and
2. It lets in oxygen which yeast actually need in fermentation (egads!).
This is why I don’t force anybody to use airlocks in my procedure. For a secondary fermentation, it is fine to use an airlock, and it gives you some protection. You can do open fermentation in glass too but you can also spend a lot of money on this hobby. Most people are fine with the buckets as long as they don’t scruff them up when cleaning them.
At the next step, many people get a thin nylon or cloth bag to steep real, milled grains with their beer in order to adjust flavor. This is known as a “mini mash” to many and some would even consider it a “partial mash.” There is some pedantry over whether it’s really a partial mash, but that’s homebrewers for you.
I tend to do all-grain, which means no extracts whatsoever. That’s a much more complex procedure with a lot more time before you even get to the boil. It also gives me the most sources for evil mischief. Don’t act surprised.
You might be surprised to hear people agree that the single best equipment purchase they made was a kegerator or converted fridge for doing fermentation. Temperature control has an immensely positive impact on flavor.
Q: Do you have a recipe for [such and such]?
A: No but I’m familiar with a lot of styles and can scribble one up quick. Just ask. You can go online and look for recipes, but note most are making 5 gallon (and some more) batches; scale down accordingly. Extracts scale down linearly, but hops are a rough science. If you’re drinking these young, perhaps quarter the hopping schedule.
You can go look for Strangebrew, a beer recipe formulation program. There’s a lot of crazy stuff in that for a newbie though, but that never stopped anybody.
Note that there isn’t a lot of flexibility in extract brewing so it can be hard to hit some styles. For example, a nut brown beer won’t have any nut character at all, and it’s generally tough to make the lightest and darkest beers. If you really want Guiness, we’ll have to get into minimash so you can introduce roasted grain.
Q: But I really want to make Guiness…
A: I don’t have a real recipe, but I scribble up something yet to be tested. Sorry. But you’ll find plenty online. Something to consider–Guiness as we see it is a pretty sweet stout as stouts go. So the question is “Do you want Guiness, or just a stout?” You’ll never get the texture right due to the pouring system used with Guiness, but you can generally get the flavor.
I’m walking into a minefield here. Cloning any specific beer is trouble and I haven’t put any effort into cloning Guiness. I’ve done stouts in general, and I felt mine were generally dryer–except for my breakfast stout (bwahahaha). IMO a proper stout with extract requires steeping some roasted grain. Welcome to the world of the minimash. You will probably find the color of this beer more a dark, dark red than black. Honestly, all stouts are dark red if you look at it with good lighting. I am being conservative with the roasted grains since they need some time to age out properly. Meanwhile you’ll want to dig right in. This is an attempt at the base American Guiness, not the “extra stout.”
Minimash:
[You will need a mesh bag like a nylon bag; you can acquire this from your homebrew story]
1 oz Roasted Barley, milled
1 oz Black Patent, milled
3 oz Marris Otter, milled [Experienced brewers: It's just for enzyme conversion of whatever comes out of the roast grains, if anything]
Bonus to add during minimash: 1 tsp gypsum (a lot of Irish water is hard or something).
Main Fermentables:
2 pounds amber LIQUID malt extract. 1 pound of dry is not enough, and 1 pound of liquid is too much. Liquid extract fits in between somewhere.
For a minimash, you will need that bag and a kitchen thermometer. You will steep that grains in that bag for 30 minutes in one gallon of the water at about 155 degrees Fahrenheit. Let them circulate from time to time. After the time is up, pull the bag out and rinse with the remaining gallon of water. You can then shove that leftover grain up your butt or whatever you want to do with it (such as throw it in bread).
Hopping schedule
1/2 oz Fuggles 4.5% AA @ 60 minutes
Ferment with a dry English Ale yeast such as Munton’s Ale Yeast or Danstar’s Windsor Ale yeast. Reminder: No creamy head without nitrogen. No nitrogen without a nitrogen tank and some stuff that will cost more than all the ingredients you have bought. That’s a ways down the road in steps here. Don’t try to throw liquid nitrogen into the bottles–it doesn’t work that way.
Don’t come yelling to me if it doesn’t taste exactly like Guiness. I’ll augment the recipe though if it was way off.
Q: My beer tastes bad, did I mess it up?
A: Depends on the taste:
- Jet fuel. Fusel alcohol caused by too warm a fermentation. Dissipates a little over time; let it age a bit. It’ll never go away completely. can induce headaches and hangovers, and also get you drunk faster. I have a book here on moonshining and they actually like them there fusel oils “beading” on top of their shine.
- Hops are circulating in the beer. Let it settle more. If you hopped too much it’s going to stick around awhile.
- Vinegar. Infected with a wild vinegar microbe. Toss–if you don’t like it. Well it could be a wild critter that leaves a flavor like vinegar that isn’t vinegar, but good luck with that. I’d be surprised if you ever have this problem.
- Yeasty/rubbery. Let it settle some more. If you used bread yeast now you can kick yourself.
- Bandaids. Can be bacteria, but more likely chlorine. Didn’t rinse enough after using bleach, or brewed with tap water. Toss if you can’t stand it.
- Barn/horse/straw. Probably the wild yeast brettanomyces. It’s the uncle of brewing yeasts. It’s your call but it won’t get any more normal.
- Poop. Aerobic bacteria contamination. Toss–you probably didn’t need to ask.
- Wet Cardboard or olives. Went stale due to oxidation. This shouldn’t have happened even with the open fermenters unless you let the CO2 layer dissipate for a long time (CO2 is denser than air and wants to hang out in that jug). Either that or you waited months before bottling. What little exposure from pouring from one to another shouldn’t cause this. Some talk about “hot side aeration” that’s caused from the boil and afterwards, but that’s being really fussy (you know it’s bad when the homebrewing community thinks it’s fussy).
- Astringent/husky taste. Many things could happen. One could be bacterial contamination. Another is you extracted tannins from the grain husks. But wait–you weren’t brewing with grains. So that leaves the bacteria. You should probably toss. Another rare off-flavor to get from bacteria.
Q: I’m allergic to gluten but I want to brew. What can I do?
A: They tend to use rice, sorghum, and things like that to dodge gluten. They claim it turns out all right and I believe them. The problem is you need quite a setup to try that, and those ingredients can be tough to use–it might not be milled, for example. There’s some movement towards getting these grains in syrups; I’ll have to see how far that has come along. You could make a beer from corn syrup and rice solids, but there wouldn’t be any color.
Update: sorphum syrup has become more common, and I can get “rice solids” too. I suppose for darker beers you can always caramelize the syrup for a long time. Good luck with that.
Q: My yeast packets say they’re good for 5 gallons. Why am I using the whole thing for less than 2?
A: Overwhelming the wort with yeast causes two big things to happen. First, the yeast rapidly will outcompete any wild organisms and prevent them from infecting it. Second, they show fermentation activity much faster than a regular dosage. The biggest question I get from first-timers is “I don’t see any bubbles and foam, did I mess it up?” This gets things moving in just a few hours and saves you that paranoia.
NQ: Alton Brown “Good Eats” Homebrewing Episode! Alton Brown “Good Eats” Homebrewing Episode! Alton Brown “Good Eats” Homebrewing Episode! He threw ice in the wort!
A: Most people speak against throwing ice in the beer. I don’t see that stuff advertised as being sanitized. More important, I don’t see it claiming to be free of chlorine! Much of his advice is kosher but we’re following a procedure that doesn’t require any special equipment like he did. Didn’t he also use bleach in that episode? It was a good guide, but you’re reading this far since you are seduced about making beer with nothing but the particular ingredients.
Q: Can I use bread yeast? Can I use the brewer’s yeast in the bulk food isle?
A: Don’t use that brewer’s yeast. The cells aren’t intact, and it’s provided only for nutrition. The bulk brewer’s yeast should really be labelled “brewer’s yeast body parts.” Think of it being like Vegemite. Bread yeast will almost work but they don’t settle out, and bread yeast doesn’t come to such a sanitary standard as those packets of yeast. It also cannot hit too high an alcohol level. You will probably get a beer with a rubbery taste from bread yeast and find it difficult to settle out. It will, but you will want to drink it now rather than wait for the yeast. With all that bread yeast in suspension, you’ll probably fart like a siren.
Q: I have a batch going but now I have to go out/to feed my cat/on vacation/away for a few weeks/off to basic training. What should I do?
A: Plastic milk jugs weren’t mean for long term storage. Beer is pretty merciful though and you might get away without oxidizing the beer. I would say you can let those go for a month or two before starting to worry. For longer times, you can fit a bung and airlock on if you have time to get that, but you probably would be better off retrying this later. The whole idea was you’d have the beer done and all in your belly in two weeks at most.
