Welcome to Home Brewing! Get Ready for a New Taste Experience.
It can be intimidating to start home brewing your own beer, but with a little knowledge and dedication, you can soon be crafting delicious brews at home. Home brewing has become increasingly popular in recent years, with people of all ages taking a hobby in the art of brewing beer. Not only is it rewarding, but it also extends the brewer’s access to ever-increasing varieties of chosen beer style.
So why get into home brewing? Well, you are able to brew beer on your own schedule and brew beer with ingredients that you choose. Plus, when you make a beer that you truly love, you can make as much or as little of it exactly how you want it. There’s a great sense of accomplishment when you create your own beer, something that you can call entirely your own.
It’s also a great way to support the craft beer industry, and you might find that your friends are more likely to support an independent brew than a product from a store-bought. Home brewing puts more money directly into the individual’s pocket and also supports smaller businesses which could have a bigger impact on the industry than larger companies.
When you decide to start home brewing, the first step is understanding the basics of beer brewing. The most common types of beer brewed at home are ales, lagers, porters, stouts, wheat beers and Belgian beers. Though there are more than fifty styles of beer that you can brew, these are the most common.
Ales are generally the first beer style learned by new home brewers. They are relatively easy to make at home and you can use a variety of ingredients, making them incredibly versatile. The essential ingredients for brewing ales are water, grain, hops, yeast and a fermentation container. From there, many drinkers like to adjust the recipe slightly, using different types of malt, adding additional hops, or trying different strains of yeast.
Lagers are constructed similarly to ales, but with a few notable differences. The main difference is that lagers are brewed with bottom-fermenting yeast rather than the top-fermenting yeast used in ales. This type of yeast ferments at colder temperatures and produces a crisp, clean beer. Lagers also feature longer aging times, ranging from weeks to months depending on the style.
Porters and stouts are strong, full-flavored beers that are often associated with winter months. Porters and stouts can have similarities in flavor, but the main difference is that stouts are much darker and richer. Porters and stouts can take months to make and tend to benefit from aging further in the bottle.
Wheat beers have a unique taste that many people enjoy. This style is made from malted wheat, instead of the barley malt used in other beer styles. These beers tend to be light and flavorful, and some wheat beers even contain various spices or fruit.
Belgian beers are a fun beer style to make and tend to be appreciated by many beer lovers. Belgian beers can be made with a wide array of flavors and tend to have more of a bubblegum or fruity taste.
Once you have a good understanding of the beer styles available, choosing a recipe can be the most exciting part of home brew. Look for recipes that use malt extracts, as these are pre-processed and are typically easier to work with. Most first-time home brewers should also try to keep their recipe simple and only add additional ingredients like fruits or spices once they become more comfortable with the process of brewing.
Once you’ve chosen your recipe and ingredients, it’s time to start the brewing process. As with any recipe, following directions is essential in home brewing. To begin, you will need to dissolve the malt extract in a pot of boiling water and then add the hops. After that, it is time to cool the mixture before adding the yeast. Once the yeast has been added, it is time to transfer the mixture to a fermentation vessel and let the yeast begin to do its magic.
After a few weeks of fermenting, the beer should be bottled. Sanitizing the bottles and calculating the amount of priming sugar needed for carbonation are the last preparatory steps before bottling. After bottling the beer, it must be stored for a few weeks in order for the carbonation process to be complete.
Home brewing your own beer can be an incredibly rewarding experience. Even if your first attempt is not exactly what you had hoped for, the important thing is that you are being creative, exploring new flavor combinations and having fun. As you learn and practice your home brewing skills, the satisfaction you’ll get out of producing a great tasting beer will be priceless. So, dive right in and get brewing!