wineandbikes

Making your first homebrew is actually quite easy, especially once you know the general overview of what it is that you’re supposed to be doing.

So, it’s surprising that so few books and blogs on the topic of the brewing beer at home give a succinct and chronologically accurate overview of the steps required, followed by detailed instructions on what you specifically need to do.  (see: The Complete Joy of Homebrewing v3, Beer Captured, and the top 10 Google results for “your first homebrew”).

Even a visit to a brew-shop may not clarify things.  The folks at Maltose Express in Monroe, CT, while helpful, didn’t do much to help us figure out what we needed to do in what order — instead, we walked out of there with $200 in equipment and ingredients, a sinking feeling that this brewing beer was really complicated, and two sets of conflicting written instructions on what to do.

Maybe I’m the only one to consume “how-to” information in short step-wise fashion, followed by detailed instructions?  Or successful beer home-brewers just non-linear thinkers?  or drunk? or both?

The bottom line is that brewing beer can be incredibly simple.

For your first brew, you can get away with a very simple 2-day process using
– Hop Flavored Malt Extract
– Water
– Yeast

Day 1
Step 1: Add some malt extract to some water create wort, which you boil for about an hour.
Step 2: Cool the wort down, transfer to a fermentation vessel
Step 3: Add Yeast
Step 4: Ferment (7-14 days)

Day 2
Step 5: Add sugar and bottle
Step 6: Wait for bubbles to develop (7-14 days)
Step 7: Drink

While 2-day, rapid brewing is fast  it won’t likely generate beer that is particularly inspiring.

A slightly more complicated and time consuming  path requires:

– Malted Grains (for flavor & color)
– Dried and/or canned Malt Extract (for fermentable sugar, flavor, and color)
– Hops (possibly different kinds, for bitterness, flavor, aroma & “complexity”)
– Irish Moss (to clarify your beer)
– Water
– Yeast

Day 1
Step 1: Add your malted grains and let steep in water
Step 2: Bring the water to a boil and immediately remove the grains
Step 3: Add Dried Malt Extract, Canned Malt Extract, Hops, Irish Moss
Step 4: Boil for 45 Minutes
Step 4a: Add some more hops for more flavor complexity, boil for 15 mins
Step 4b: Add some more hops for more aromatic complexity, boil for 1 min
Step 5: Cool your wort
Step 6: Add yeast
Step 7: Ferment (7-14 days)

Day 2
Step 8: Rack your beer (remove from the lees) into another fermentation vessel
Step 9: Ferment (again, 3-4 weeks)

Day 3
Step 10: Add sugar & Bottle
Step 11: Wait for bubbles to develop (7-14 days)
Step 12: Drink

What kind of beer will result from the two above methods?  Ale!

It’s important to make clear, at the risk of oversimplifying things for the sake of novice homebrewing, that there are two kinds of beer: ales and lagers.  The main difference between the two? The type of yeast used — you guessed it ale yeast v. lager yeast –and the temperature at which these yeasts can ferment.  For ales, this temperature is 60-75 degrees, while for lagers, it’s 33-50.  The grains and hops used within a style of fermentation further define what kind of beer you’re making.

Examples of Ales:
Bitter (ordinary, special, extra special)
Mild
IPA
Brown Ale
Stout
Barleywine
Porter
Wheat Beers (Weizens/Weisse/White/Wit)
Kolsch
Lambic
Saison
Dubbels&Tripels

Examples of Lagers:
Pilseners (incl. everything from Budweiser to Oktoberfest)
German Bocks & Doppelbocks (incl. Helles & Dunkel)
Dunkel
Schwarzbier
Rauchbier
Dortmunder

Why so much German on the lager list? They were the ones to popularize the style in the late 19th century — the word “Lager” is approximately translated as “To Store or Warehouse” in German, which makes sense, because some lagers are matured for up to 3 months.

Now that you have an overview of the process, check out Joe Postma’s three very helpful Serious Drinks articles on grain, hops, and  yeast.

Next up: Brew day and the specifics of how to make the magic happen, with a minimum of fuss…