Homebrewing ingredients are where your homebrewing equipment and the brewing process come together and become useful. Without the ingredients, your knowledge and equipment would be a waste. Enough talk, lets get to it. As we have mentioned, this site is devoted to providing information for new brewer but we hope some of the information will benefit more advanced brewers.

OK here we go. There are four main ingredients used for brewing. Malt, Hops, water and yeast. Of course there are many others that can and are used in both commercial and homebrewing. We are going to start with the four basics then touch base on some alternative ingredients.

Malt: Malt is the basis for your homebrew and is the main homebrewing ingredient. Malt can be separated into two categories which we will do here. First off malt is the grain or malted grain used in brewing and secondly, malt is in an extract form used primarily as a homebrewing ingredient but is used in commercial brewing in limited amounts.
Grain Malts: The malting process prepares the base grain for brewing. The short version of malting is that the grain is soaked warmed and allowed to germinate then stopped by gentle heating. This process unlocks the goods for us brewers, malting companies can control this process and make different types of malts for different purposes. We will get into much more detail on this subject. The most common malts used in brewing are malted barley and malted wheat but you will find others out there.

Malt Extract: simply put, malt extract is the result of mashing malted grains and then dehydrating the liquid that comes from this process. Mashing is what is done with malted grains to extract fermetable sugars and other useful goodness from the grain. Mashing is an advanced procedure and will not be covered at length here. Just keep in mind that someone mashed the grains that make the extract that will ultimately become your homebrew. Malt extracts will be the base of your homebrews and there are a few different types in the market today which allows you to customize your homebrew recipes.

Hops: Hops provide you with bitterness along with an unlimited palate of flavors and aromas for your homebrew. Hops are a cone like flower that grow on vines. The hop cones have oils that contain the bittering, flavor and aroma compounds that you need to balance your malty sweet brew into a complex beer. Hops come in three forms including, whole leaf, plug and pellets. We will talk about this more as time goes along.

Water: Not too much to discuss on this subject until you become more advanced. Water chemistry is of major concern to commercial brewers but of minor importance to homebrewers. Many homebrewers will spend some time in this area if they are trying to match a certain brewing style that requires certain mineral levels. In most beginner situations, this is unnecessary. The only concern for me in regard to my brewing water is to use a pure water source, that is one without chlorine or other conditioners. I typically will use bottled spring water purchased at the grocery store. Good rule of thumb is that if the water tastes good, you can make good beer with it.

Yeast: Yeast is the life of your homebrew, literally. Brewer's yeast is a live organism that consumes sugar (ferments) for its living and as a byproduct provides your beer with alcohol and Co2. Brewers yeast comes in dried (dehydrated) or liquid both with pros and cons. Choosing the yeast for your homebrew can be the determining factor in how good or great your homebrew is. Yeast is a homebrewing ingredient that will require much more conversation.

Brewing Adjuncts: Adjuncts are homebrewing ingredients like flaked grains such as corn, oats, barley, rye and rice. Other sugars such as honey, candi sugars and corn sugars(dextrose) are also considered adjuncts. Adjuncts are added to beer to affect the final flavor, mouth feel and body. We will talk more about the uses and results of each in more depth.

Now thats a very very quick run down of homebrewing ingredients. We will explore each section at detail in the future. As fast as I can, I will get the information posted. If you have questions about anything, please feel free to use the contact page to shoot us an email and we will do our best to get an answer to you quickly.