All About Malt & Hops for Brewing English Mild Beer

"Hi, I'm Mark on behalf of Expert Village. In this next segment, we are going to go over the ingredients used in brewing. There are four main ingredients in brewing. There is malt, hops, yeast, and water. Malt is usually going to come in two different forms. You have your malt extracts; you can get a dry version which is a little more concentrated than the liquid version but a little more expensive or you can get the liquid extract which is like a very, very thick syrup. The other forms of malts that you're going to be adding to really kind of flesh out the character of the beer that you are making are specialty grains. These are grains that have been roasted somewhat differently, maybe steamed for a little while. And basically, they are going to add some of your more complex flavors. When you get your specialty grains, your home brewing store will help you mill them like this. This will open up the grain allowing extraction of the sugar and the color. Next, we have hops. And there's two major forms of hops that are available. There's whole hops, which you can see right here. This is actually just the cone of a hop. And then there's also pellet hops which is basically all of your whole hops crushed up and then put into a condensed form. The differences between the two: whole hops tend to have a shorter shelf life where as pellet hops will last longer. You will also get a slightly better extraction out of pellet hops than you will out of whole hops. However, for todays purposes, in our brewing session, we are going to be using whole hops because they are a little easier to get out of the wort. Hops can add three things to your beer. First, they can add bitterness. Then, they can also add flavor. And finally, they can add aroma. Hops which are added early in your boil (around sixty minute-time frame) will add primarily bitterness as the flavor and aroma components are boiled off. Hops that are added in the twenty to ten minute time frame will add flavor. They will also add a little bitterness, but mainly flavor. And finally, the aroma hops which are added usually in the ten and under time frame down to actually just steeping will add mainly just aroma characteristics."