How to Brew & Ferment Beer

At its most basic level, beer is a combination of grain malt, yeast and hops. Beer with a strong, bitter or flowery taste is often described as "hoppy." Hops are flowers, available whole or crushed into pellets, that add bitterness to a beer and balance the sweetness of the malt. Yeast is a micro-organism that eats the sugars in the malt and produces alcohol and carbon dioxide. Brewing beer is both a science and an art, and you can do it at home without a lot of complex equipment.

Things You'll Need

• Stainless steel brew kettle, 4 gallons
• 2 cans liquid malt extract, unhopped
• 2 ounces hops
• Package of ale yeast
• Glass carboy fermenter
• Iodophor sanitizer
• Airlock
• Racking cane
• 6-foot vinyl siphoning hose that fits racking cane
• Food grade plastic bucket, 5 gallons (the bottling bucket)
• 2/3 cup corn sugar
• 2 cases clean beer bottles with caps
• Bottle-capper

Instructions

1. Boil about three gallons of water in the brew kettle. You can make more beer if you're using a brew kettle larger than four gallons, but remember to adjust the recipe accordingly. Aluminum will affect the flavor of the beer, so use a stainless steel kettle.

2. Stir in the malt extract once the water begins to boil. Keep stirring until the malt is fully dissolved. Later you can make your own barley mash to have more control over the character of your malt, but for your first brew it's easiest to use a prepared liquid malt extract. The malt and water solution is called the "wort," and it's the base for your beer. Bring the wort to a gentle boil. Too heavy a boil will caramelize the sugars and result in a sweeter beer with lower alcohol content.

3. Add an ounce of hops after the wort has started foaming, and set a timer for one hour. These hops will boil the longest, so they'll add bitterness but most of the flowery flavor and aroma will boil off. You don't need to measure the hops precisely. If you want to keep exact measurements, however, remember to take notes so you can modify your recipe next time.

4. Add more hops after the wort has been boiling for 45 minutes. Because these won't boil for as long as the first hops, they'll add a flowery, "hoppy" taste but not much bitterness. The amount is up to you. Add more for a stronger hops flavor, less for a lighter beer.

5. Add a little bit more hops five or so minutes before the end of the boil. These are called the "finishing" hops. They won't change the flavor much, but will add aroma.

6. Cool the wort by placing the kettle in a sink or tub full of ice water. Place the lid on the kettle to stop any contaminants from getting in. You need to cool the hops to approximately room temperature. Your packet of yeast will state its ideal temperature.

7. Use the iodophor to sanitize everything that is going to touch the wort. This includes the fermentation carboy, stopper, airlock and funnel, if you're using one. Follow the directions on the iodophor bottle to mix a sanitizing solution, and soak your fermentation gear in it. Rinse it thoroughly when you're done sanitizing.

8. Pour the wort into the glass carboy, and shake and stir it as vigorously as you can without spilling it to aerate the wort. The yeast will need oxygen as part of the fermentation process. Pour the wort into the carboy through a sanitized strainer to catch the hops.

9. Add the yeast to the fermenter, cap it and fit on the airlock.

10. Wait about two weeks for the beer to finish fermenting. While it's fermenting, you will be able to see the materials foaming and swirling around in the glass carboy. If about two weeks have passed and the production of foam has slowed to a crawl, you're done. Don't let the beer sit in the fermenter longer than two weeks, as contact with dead yeast will affect the flavor of the beer.

11. Sanitize all of your bottling gear, using the same method as before. You need to sanitize the bottling bucket, siphoning hose, racking cane, bottles, and caps.

12. Boil 2/3 cup of corn sugar in a few cups of water for 10 minutes so that the sugar is sanitized and completely dissolved. The sugar solution is fuel for the second fermentation, which will happen inside the sealed bottles and carbonate the beer.

13. Set the fermenter on a surface above ground level, and place the bottling bucket beneath it. Pour the sugar solution into the bottling bucket.

14. Connect the hose to the short end of the racking cane, plug the other end of the hose with your thumb and fill the hose and racking cane with water. Dip the racking cane into the beer, but keep the inlet near the surface and away from the sediment at the bottom.

15. Hold the end of the hose over an open jar at a level lower to the ground than the ilquid level in the fermenter, and take away your thumb. As long as the end of the hose is lower than the fermenter, liquid will flow out. Catch the water in the jar, and when beer starts to flow stop it up again.

16. Hold the hose over the bottling bucket, and remove your thumb to siphon the beer from the fermenter to the bottling bucket. Keep the inlet of the racking cane in the beer, because if air gets into the racking cane it will stop siphoning, but keep it near the surface to avoid transferring the sediment at the bottom of the fermenter. When you're getting near the bottom, tilt the fermenter so that you can catch more of the liquid. Don't worry if you can't siphon out every drop.

17. Stir the beer to mix in the sugar solution.

18. Follow the same process to siphon the beer from the bottling bucket into the bottles, leaving about an inch of space at the top of each bottle. Cap them using the bottle-capper. You need to use crimp-on crown caps, rather than screw-on caps.

19. Wait another week or two for the beer to finish fermenting inside the bottles. Waiting too long isn't a problem; the yeast will simply become inactive when it runs out of food. Pop open one of the beers to test it. If it hisses when you open it, foams when you pour, and smells like beer, then you've successfully brewed a batch of beer.

Tips & Warnings

• Sanitize absolutely everything that will come in contact with the wort. Any contaminant can completely ruin the batch.

• Take notes on the brewing process so that you can modify it the next time.

References

• Drink Craft Beer: How to Home Brew Beer in Your Kitchen
• Brew Your Own: New to Brew
• Beer to Brew: Extract Brewing