How To Brew Beer

http://www.brewbeeranddrinkit.com/
In this video I'm going to talk about how to brew beer, and basically I'm going to give you an overview of all the different methods that you can go about brewing your own beer at home.

It's really simple... the only ingredients you need is barley, hops, yeast and water...

I'm going to start walking you through the most complex method because it encompasses all the steps. All-grain brewing is the most complex method. The reason why it's the hardest is because it's the most involved method of brewing beer.

You have to take malted barley and convert the starches into sugars... this takes about 30 minutes to 2 hours plus the time it takes to rinse off the grains and separate the sugars from the barley...

You have to put together a recipe making sure you include base malt, which is malt that has starches that can be converted into sugar, and also specialty malts, which have already been converted into sugar, like caramel malt, chocolate malt, etc. used for flavoring.

You then throw all these grains into a mash tun, or a container where you can add hot water to it. The temperature of the mash needs to be within ten degrees farenheit of 150 F.

This then needs to sit for at least 30 minutes although an hour is standard time, and that will convert the starches into sugars. Lower temperatures will give you a drier beer, while higher temperatures will give you maltier beers. Either way, you have a lot of leeway to not screw up and make good beer.

The next step is to separate the liquid from the grains... the liquid will have the sugars mixed in the water. To do this you need a lauter tun. A lauter tun is just a term used to describe a container that has a false bottom, which acts like a strainer... it can be your mash tun... and it will keep your grains in the mash tun and allow you to drain the liquid mixed in with the sugar which you've converted from the grains...

That is the one extra step that separates all grain from extract brewing...

After that you boil that water with sugar, which is called wort... and you start adding hops.

Extract brewing is a simpler method of brewing beer and it starts at this step... instead of converting starches into sugars from malted barley, you buy dry malt extract or liquid malt extract, which is the sugar that has already been converted and you add that sugar to water, begin to boil and start adding hops... everything else is the same from here on out...

Hops are used to bitter beer and give it flavor and aroma. The longer you boil the hops the more bitter the beer becomes.

So if you are brewing a beer with a lot of sugar you want to use more hops to balance that out, or use less hops for beers with less sugars to keep it balanced.

The less you boil the more aroma and flavor your beer gets...

You can skip this whole adding hops and brew using an extract kit, which is a can of liquid malt extract, which has already been hopped... so there is no need to add any more hops or boil for longer than 15 to 20 minutes only enough to pasteurize it...

Once you boil, whether it's 60 minutes for all-grain or extract or 20 minutes for extract kits, then you cool down your wort to yeast pitching temperature.

Yeast pitching is just mixing in a yeast strain with your wort, whatever you have created during the boil. Yeast pitching temperature is about 70 degrees fahrenheit.

You then leave the beer to ferment, which lasts about 4 to 7 days, although you want to leave the beer sitting to allow it to condition and remove off flavors developed during fermentation...

After that you prime your beer, which means adding a little bit of sugar. Regular corn sugar works. You can add dry malt extract, molasses, honey, etc. They vary in weight that you need to add, but for dextrose, 4 to 4.5 oz mixed in with water (about a cup), and heated to create a syrup will be sufficient for most beer styles.

Some beer styles will use more or less sugar to carbonate higher or lower.

You take that syrup and pour it into your bottling bucket and pour the beer on top to mix it in and bottle it. That will create a second fermentation and create carbon dioxide for your bottles to carbonate.

Those are the three methods which you can use to brew beer. Some of my videos on my youtube channel show you more detailed steps for both extract and all-grain brewing.

You can also get more information on my blog Brew Beer And Drink It.

How to make beer at home

• Category

  Howto & Style

[scott garvey]

great videos...you seem to know your stuff did you go to school for this !?

[brewbeeranddrinkit]

no, but I've read a lot of brewing books and well wrote one myself... cheers!

[bhsbass]

Dude please drink that beer! I would have had it straight away!..

[brewbeeranddrinkit]

and that's how it went down behind scenes... Cheers!

[aboody006]

Hi! Im wondering how can I make carmelised beer ? I had one in Croatia and it was amazing. Couldn't find it in here. Thanks!

[brewbeeranddrinkit]

Hmmm... depends on what you mean by caramelized... If you're talking caramelized like a Scotch ale might be, then it's just a matter of caramelizing the wort by boiling a portion for a long time until it becomes syrup thick and darkens up. If you're talking about adding caramelized sugar for flavor only, then you take your sugar in a separate pot with enough water to cover it, a spritz of lime juice until it boils and begins to brown to your desired darkness... then add that sugar to the kettle

[oharanetworks]

Good job on the video!

[aboody006]

Thank you very much. Tried the second option. Hope it turns out well. :D

[brewbeeranddrinkit]

Starch to sugar conversion happens between 140 to 160 °F... at lower temperatures you produce simpler sugars which ferment easier and therefore you end up with a 'drier' beer... warmer temperatures produce more complex sugars which don't ferment as easy and therefore you end up with a 'sweeter' beer...

[Jay Bernen]

So 140 degrees? Im confused about that part