Home Brewing

By Kevin Forbes

If you like the idea of raising a glass of home-brewed mulled wine or Christmas ale on a cold winter's night, then this is the book for you. A complete guide to the home brewer's year, it describes how the brewing process works and the equipment you will need, before taking you through all the brewing seasons with delicious beer, wine, cider, perry and cocktail recipes.

Whether you are new to home brewing or whether you want to expand your range this book will have you savouring tasty brews all year round.

Topics include:
Equipment
Ingredients
Beer
Wine
Mead, cider and perry
Sloe gin and other infusions
Non-alcoholic drinks
Hangover cures

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcturus Publishing
• Release date: Feb 15, 2011
• ISBN: 9781848584426

Kevin Forbes

Kevin Forbes lives in East Sussex and is an RHS qualified gardener. He has a wide knowledge of horticulture and has embarked on a number of hobbies to widen his knowledge of the outdoors. He puts down his love of gardening and nature to his mother, whose enthusiasm has rubbed off on him. He is currently running his own gardening and property maintenance company.

Book preview

Beers

BREWING BEERS

Man has been brewing beer since the dawn of civilization, and it is still the third most widely-consumed beverage after water and tea. You can easily produce your own high quality beer at home and make it cheaper than it would be to purchase low-quality beer, mass-produced in a factory.

There are those that claim that it is not just coincidence that beer has been around since the dawn of civilization, but that beer was the catalyst for neolithic hunter/gatherers to have reason to settle in one place, start farming and form organized communities. Cereal was among the first and most important crops, and making beer was an important use of this crop (although some academics claim that making bread was the main purpose for this farming).

There is something very rewarding about brewing your own beer. Perhaps it is because it is not just any beer, but one that you have designed and created yourself. Brewing beer is an ideal hobby for people with busy lives as it really does not take too much time to create a really drinkable beer. Home brewing is an interesting hobby and a rewarding one as well, and what greater reward do you need than beer?

There are many and varied reasons for brewing your own beer, for example:

•   You can save money – most brews can be made more cheaply than the equivalent commercial beers.

•   Enjoy the challenge! Making beer from kits is easy but there is a skill and art in brewing a beer from the raw ingredients.

•   Make the type of beers you want to drink. It is very easy to find lagers but in some areas not so easy to find mild ales, bottle conditioned ales or trappist beers, so make your own!

•   Make beers to your taste. Choose how hoppy or malty you wish the beer to taste.

•   Make beer the strength you wish.

KITS OR MASHES

There are a number of ways to brew beer at home but before going through the options let’s look at the basic brewing process broken down into four stages:

1.  Mashing: The soaking of ground malted barley in hot water, producing ‘sweet wort’.

2.  ‘Sweet wort’ is then mixed with hops, producing ‘hopped wort’.

3.  Yeast is added to the ‘hopped wort’ mixture and it is left to ferment.

4.  The beer matures in bottles or kegs with sugar or carbon dioxide added to increase carbonation.

BREWING FROM A KIT

Undoubtedly the easiest way to start brewing is to use one of the many kits available. Essentially, these beer kits are concentrated hopped worts, so in effect steps 1 and 2 are done for you. These concentrates are produced in the same way a brewer would, but after the hops are added some excess liquid is evaporated under vacuum at low temperatures to preserve the delicate flavours, then the concentrate is pasteurized and canned. To continue the brewing process at home, all that is necessary is to dilute the concentrated wort back to its original density, ferment and then bottle or keg it.

Sometimes extra hops are included to restore aroma lost during production. Some cheaper kits require that you add a large amount of sugar to the concentrate before fermentation. These cheaper kits are alright if your budget is tight or if you are just starting out on your new hobby, but will not, in most cases, produce beers to the same quality as the more expensive, no sugar, all grain kits.

The advantage of brewing from a kit is the ease of obtaining all the ingredients you need. The recipe is taken care of for you and less equipment and space is needed than for other methods.

BREWING FROM MALT EXTRACT

This method is more complex than using a kit. The malt extract concentrate does not contain hops and when diluted and heated gives you the equivalent of sweet wort. You then add the hop flavour by adding a muslin bag (sparge bag) containing the hops to the sweet wort, for around 20 minutes towards the end of the heating process. The resulting hopped wort is then fermented and bottled or kegged.

HALF OR PARTIAL MASHES

Half mashes are a halfway house between the concentrated malt kits and a full mash.

The sweet wort is made from a combination of specialty grains soaked in hot water and malt extract.

The advantages of partial over full mash are that you don’t require quite so much space, equipment or skill. The advantages of partial over a malt extract brew is that you have more control over the finished beer.

BREWING A FULL MASH

At the other end of the scale of complexity from the home brew kit is the ‘full mash’. There certainly is craft and skill in brewing a full mash and the effort involved in acquiring these skills and brewing full mashes will reward you with the satisfaction of brewing beers as good, if not better than, commercial breweries.

To produce a full mash, first of all you need a ‘grist’. This a mix of crushed, dry grains that are mixed together before mashing. Typically, the major portion of this grist would be pale malt with maybe a small amount of crystal malt. Other widely used grains are wheat, maize and dark roasted malts.

The grist is then ‘mashed’, i.e. it is soaked in hot water for an hour or two. The purpose of mashing is to convert the starch in the grist (which isn’t fermentable by brewer’s yeast) into sugar (which is).

The mash is then ‘sparged’. Sparging is rinsing the mashed grains with water to get as much sugar out of the grain as is possible.

After sparging, the hops are added to the wort and the hopped wort is boiled for an hour or so. This boiling stage extracts flavour from the hops, sterilizes and helps clear protein debris from the wort.

The wort is then cooled to the appropriate temperature so the yeast can be added. Fermentation will take around 10 to 14 days.

When the resulting brew is bottled or kegged, a small amount of sugar is added to start a secondary fermentation. This is to provide carbon dioxide gas to create condition and promote head formation.

EQUIPMENT

CLEAN ALL EQUIPMENT!

Every surface that touches your beer during the brewing process should be clean and free from soap residues. Without proper cleaning, surface build up may harbour bacteria and other unwanted organisms. All stains, dirt and other visible contaminants must be removed from your brewing equipment. Unscented washing up liquid will do the job but make sure all detergent is thoroughly rinsed off.

Sanitize

Strictly speaking, the ‘sterilizing’ done by homebrewers is in fact ‘sanitizing’, as we don’t completely kill off all the micro-organisms on our equipment, but simply reduce them to a harmless level. After cleaning, all equipment that comes into contact with your beer after it has been boiled must be sanitized. It is not necessary to sanitize equipment that contacts your wort before and during the boil, as the process of boiling will sterilize both the beer and the boiling pot. There are a number of chemicals you can use to sanitize your equipment and there is more information on these later in the equipment section.

ESSENTIAL EQUIPMENT

As with many hobbies and pastimes there are some essential things you need and then there are some bits of kit that are useful but not strictly necessary. You need a lot more equipment for brewing mashes than you do brewing from a kit.

The bare minimum equipment for brewing from a kit would be a large kettle, long handled spoon, fermenting vessel, airlock and bung, syphon tube, bottles, caps and capper and sanitizer/cleaner.

When brewing from malt extract, add to the above a large boiling pan and a sparge bag. When brewing mashes you will also need a water boiler and sparger. A hydrometer and thermometer are not essential for even full mash brewing, but are very worthwhile investments.

Sanitizing chemicals

Sanitizers are not, stricly speaking, equipment, but are certainly essential. Detergent will do for cleaning equipment but this will not sanitize. There are a number of chemicals that will kill most of the micro-organisms found on homebrew equipment.

Probably the easiest to obtain is unscented bleach. You can use it at a rate of 3 tablespoons of bleach to 5 litres of water. After using bleach at this rate of dilution be sure to rinse carefully afterwards. Some brewers use bleach as a no-rinse sanitizer. This is not recommended because you need to be very exact about dilution rates and take into account the amount of active ingredients, which varies widely. You also need to know the pH of the water used to dilute the bleach as it affects the strength of the solution.

Another option is a proprietary homebrew cleaner. In the UK these include VWP and Bruclens which are basically chlorinated caustic powders. These cleaners also have to be rinsed off before the equipment is used.

No-rinse sanitizers, as the name suggests, are solutions that can be used to sanitize equipment without the need to rinse afterwards. This is either because they don’t leave any residue except water on the equipment, or because the residue that remains will not taint or harm the beer or anyone consuming it.

Kettle

A kettle (the larger the better) will do for brewing from a kit because you only need boil 5 to 10 litres of water. However, an electric water boiler/urn would be useful, as the cold water you use would be sterilized if you pre-boiled it.

Large capacity water boiler

When brewing mashes you really need to be able to boil about 19 litres of liquid at a time. A water boiler (the sort used in the catering trade to fill teapots) with a capacity of 25 litres (about 30 litres to the brim) would be ideal. As well as catering boilers you can also buy from homebrew shops, purpose-made devices which act as both mash tun and boiler and some can be used as fermentation bins as well. It should have a fine mesh stainless steel false bottom just above the draw off tap, to prevent the crushed grains from blocking it. These units enable you to set and automatically maintain an accurate mash temperature throughout the mashing period. Some sort of insulation blanket would be beneficial.

Insulated chest

Large insulated camping chests/coolboxes can be used for the mashing process if they are capable of withstanding temperatures of 85°C. These chests can be used as they come, but many brewers customize and improve them. This mainly consists of improving the insulation, adding taps and some filtration above the tap. When using these chests pre-heat them by filling with water that is 80°C and add the grain when the water is 75°C. This should mean the temperature of the mash will stabilize at an ideal 65°C for two hours.

Sparge bag

Also known as a grain bag which, as the name suggests, contains the crushed grains. Keeping them in a bag while you mash has many advantages including keeping the grain suspended off, out of the way of the boiler element.

Sparger

Sparging is the process of rinsing the grains after mashing. This requires a large amount (usually 19 litres) of hot water that can be dispensed quickly in a fine spray. You can use a well-insulated plastic bin or barrel with a tap on the bottom, to which is attached a hose with a fine shower head.

Fermenting vessel

Assuming you’re making 23 litres (40 pints is the most common size of kit), you’ll need something that holds at least 25 litres but preferably 27 to 33 litres. This will allow for some foaming during fermentation. Even if your first brew is less than 40 pints still go for a 27- to 33-litre bin as this is a more useful size for future use.

A good, purpose-made fermenting bin will be designed to be easy to clean and made from special, food grade plastic. They will come with either a screwtop or snap-on lid. Some bins come with graduated markings to aid the measuring of liquids. Handles are useful for ease of carrying. A fitted tap is very useful, otherwise you will need to syphon the brew off the yeast. Also useful, would be a hole bored in the lid – standard demijohn size rubber bung – for fitting an airlock.

Glass containers are another possible option for fermentation vessels. Glass fermenters are known as carboys or demijohns. In the UK a demijohn holds 1 gallon, and a carboy usually 5 gallons; however, this varies widely throughout the brewing world. A 1-gallon demijohn can be used for small batches and trial recipes but a carboy of 5 gallons or 23 litres is the most useful size. The disadvantages of glass containers include their fragility – it can be dangerous if they shatter while you are handling them. Glass containers don’t come with a tap, therefore you have to syphon your brew off the yeast. Although the glass material is easier to clean than plastic, glass containers generally have openings that are too small to get your hands in. So to give any stubborn stains a good scrub, you will need to use bottle brushes.

The main advantage of glass is that it is completely non-porous, making it easy to clean and sanitize. Glass is also preferred to plastic because the plastic is easily scratched and can harbour bacteria that is difficult to remove.

For a cheap fermenting bin, you can brew in a bucket if it is well covered. If the budget is really tight and you want a free fermenting bin, try asking a local catering businesses if they have any large food grade containers they don’t need.

Brewing spoon

You will need a brewing spoon. The spoon should be at least 45 cm long and made out of either plastic or stainless steel.

Airlock

The airlock allows carbon dioxide to escape during fermentation and prevents air from entering the fermentation vessel that may possibly contaminate the brew. The gas bubbling through the airlock gives an indication as to how hard the yeast is working.

Sometimes the water from the airlock is inadvertently drawn into the fermenter. If this water has not been sterilized there is a chance the brew may be contaminated by it. You can use pre-boiled cold water or some brewers use vodka in the fermentation lock to prevent contamination.

As well as an airlock you will probably need a suitable rubber stopper to seal the carboy/bin.

Bottle/keg filling equipment

The transfer of beer must be done as smoothly as possible. If you have a tap on your fermenting bin, a short length of tube from the tap would help cut down on foaming and therefore cut the risk of infection. You can improve further on this by using a bottle filler. This is also a tube that sticks on to the tap but it also has a valve at the bottom. This valve opens when you push the bottle up around it.

If you don’t have a tap on your bin you need a syphon tube or a jug to transfer your beer to bottles or kegs. If you use a syphon tube, a small tap on the filling end is invaluable for stopping flow while moving between bottles. A sediment trap (a