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Home  Homebrew Instructions Brewing Instructions Cont.
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Brewing Instructions Cont. |
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Written by Web Master
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Thursday, 19 April 2007 |
Basic homebrewing instructions continued. This is the list of step in brewing your batch of extract with specialty grains kit. Please be aware that there are several options while brewing, this is our process and it is easy and produces great beer. Give it a try!
1) Place any liquid malt extract in hot water(still in the package) in a sink and keep it hot. This will soften the extract and make it easier to pour. DO NOT DO THIS WITH DRY EXTRACTS!
2) Place specialty grains in a muslin/nylon grain bag. Many recipe kits come with a disposable grain bag. You want to make a tea bag of sorts to steep the grains.
3) In your brew pot, bring 2.5 gallons of your brewing water to about 150-160F and hold it there. You can either adjust your burner/flame to keep it here or do the heat on/heat off dance, either works just fine. What you want to do is suspend the "tea Bag" of specialty grains in this water and hold the temp for 45 mins. This step allows the grains to release its flavor and color into the water, just like making tea...a lot of tea.
Note: you will find that there are many variations to this step and they all work well. This is how I make mine and it works great and is a no brainer for simplicity. Simple first, then exploration.
4) After you steep for the 45 mins, pull the grain bag out and allow it to drain. There is no need to squeeze the liquid out, in fact I would rather you didnt. You can extract some tannins which we will talk about soon enough. Just drain the grains and toss them out.
5) Now turn up the heat and bring this tea to a boil. Once there, pull the brew pot off the heat and add in your extract. Stir constantly at this point to make sure you do not allow the extract to scorch on the bottom of the brew pot.<-----thats why you take it off the burner....When you get the extract fully dissolved, put it back on the heat and bring it back to boil.
Note: Very important!!! When your extract and tea come to boil, you have a great chance for a boil over. The now very hot wort (what you call beer before yeast is added- say wert) contains a bunch of sugar, and will make a huge mess if you are not attentive to the brew pot. I suggest skimming the top as it starts to heat up, you will see what to take off. In my experience this helps the wort not to get to violent during the boil, your experience may be different so heads up during this part. Please take special note of this as well because hot sugary stuff burns people very badly and that would not be good.
6) Set your timer to 60 mins.
7) Once you reach a boil and seem to have the boil over thing under control, its time to check your hop additions.
8) You will need to refer to your recipe instructions for hop times. In most cases you will add a hop addition at the start or 60 min mark of the boil. These are the bittering hops.
Note: Please note that not all beer recipe kits will require the hopping or boiling stages off these instructions.
9) Proceed with the boil, adding the hops at the times indicated in your recipe. Each recipe kit will differ in how the times are indicated for the hop additions. It is very common for hop times to be indicated by time remaining in the boil. For example. If the recipe calls for 3 additions of 1 oz of Kent Goldings at different times, it may look like this.
1oz Kent Goldings 60 min (These are the Bittering hops)1oz Kent Goldings 30 min (These are the Flavor hops)1oz Kent Goldings 5 min (These are the Aroma Hops)
This would indicate that you add the first ounce when the boil starts with the next coming at 30 left or 30 mins in and the last addition with 5 mins remaining or at 55min into the boil. Hope this makes sense.
10) When your 60 min boil is over its time to get that wort cooled. There are a few ways to accomplish this. First and fastest is to use a wort chiller. This is an optional piece of equipment so if you do not have one dont worry. If you have one, see the bottom of this article for instructions on use. The second way to cool the wort is to add some pre chilled water to the brew pot (place your remaining brewing water in the freezer or fridge for this purpose) then you place the brew pot in a sink with ice water around it. Please be careful when moving hot liquids around the kitchen. Kids should not be underfoot during this stage!!
Try to avoid splashing at this point as adding air into the wort while hot can cause some issues with flavor later on. Pour cold water in like a beer into a glass, on the side. Occasionally stir slowly and carefully to speed the cooling process. The goal here is to lower the temp of the wort to room temp or about 70F or so. Too hot and you risk killing your yeast but too cold and you could see longer lag times (time it takes for the yeast to begin fermentation) Try to shoot for room temp.
11) During the cooling process, this is the time to sanitize your primary fermenter (pail or carboy) lids and airlocks. Really anything that will touch the wort once cooled. If you skip this step, you risk infecting your wort/beer with nasties that will not make your beer taste good. No need to be obsessive, but make sure you use sanitized equipment.
12) Once your wort is cooled to room temp, add it to the primary fermenter. Go ahead and splash it now, air is good for healthy yeast. In cooled wort, air is ok just not while hot. We will talk about air and when it should and can be added without problems later on. OK now that you have the wort in the fermenter, add enough of the brewing water to reach the 5 gallon mark. Stir it up to make sure that the heavy, sugary wort is mixed up well with the water.
Note: When you pour your wort from the brew pot in the fermenter, you will see a bunch of hopmaterial. It is not a real big problem to allow this material into the fermenter, it will settle to the bottom. This sediment only presents a problem in long term fermentations or aging. I mean longer than a few weeks. So at this point I say dump it all in!
13) Now that you have the wort in the fermenter and mixed up nice with the brewing water, its time to take a Hydrometer reading. You hydrometer is a measuring instrument designed to measure specific gravity or SG you will need enough of a sample to allow the hydrometer to float. There are numbers on the hydrometer and the reading will be dependent on your recipe. Not going to go full on into the use of the hydrometer now. Write the reading down, this is your original gravity or OG.
14) finally its time to add the yeast and make this wort into beer. Go ahead and pitch (add) your yeast then give the fermenter a good stir and thats it. Now you need to place the lid and airlock on the pail or attach the airlock to your carboy and leave it be.
15) Fermentation should begin in 24 to 48 hours. Keep your fermenter in a room that has a constant temp in the mid to upper 60s is best warmer is ok but not too warm if it can be helped. If your temp gets over 80F you may notice some off flavors in the finished beer but no real harm. If you temp gets too low, the yeast may go dormant and stop fermenting too soon. To get it going again, bring the fermenter into an area with a 60F plus temp and gently stir with a sanitized spoon to rouse the yeast back into suspension. Make sure not to splash at this time again. If all is well your airlock will be bubbling away. Keep a look out for activity but do not fret too much if it takes a few days to get going. Once fermentation begins, allow 7 to 10 days for fermentation to complete. After 7 days if there is little or no activity in the airlock, we are ready to move on.
17) Take a hydrometer reading again. We are looking for a different number than the OG that we took at the start. It should be in the vicinity of 1.010, or check your recipe list for a target FG or final gravity. If you are close to that number, its time to bottle.
That's it! You have just completed your first batch of beer. We hope these simple homebrewing instructions help you get off on the right foot in this great hobby!
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 01 May 2007 )
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