Brewing beer is not difficult and essentially more resembles cooking than anything else. Brewing from a kit rewards the brewer with beer, however brewing from ingredients gives the brewer complete control over what they create.
This method takes advantage of the small quantities being worked with. For example a 5L pot can be covered with a lid and towel to maintain mash temperature. Or using a sieve and jug is quite appropriate for 4L of wort. Whilst this approach may not achieve the efficiencies of larger brewing methods, it still enables all grain brewing on a small scale.
Mash
The enzymes in the grain need to be maintained at a specific temperature so they convert the carbohydrates into usable sugars for the brew. The sugars will leech in to the water and attach themselves to the grains.
- Place 1.7L (for 500g grains) in a pot.
- Heat water up to the strike temperate of 66C.
- Place the malted grains in the pot and ensure it is still at 66C.
- Using the oven or stove to regulate the temperature, keep the pot at 66C* for an hour.
* This temperature is selected because it allows the best extraction of sugar from the grains.
The grains and mash water at strike temperature
A suitably covered pot and termometer maintains heat for a long time
Sparge
Sparging the grains washes the sugars off them. I found having two pots for this stage particularly useful.
- With a ladle and sieve, transfer the grains from the mash pot into the sieve over the boil pot and shake off the wort.
- Repeat with as much grain as you can fit into the sieve.
- Return the grains to the mash pot and pour in water about 75C*.
- Wash the grains by giving them a good stir.
- Repeat 2-3 times or until your boil pot close to full.
* The temperature of the sparge water is important. Too hot and you will start extracting tannins from the grains which are undesirable.
I have also found a kitchen steamer with two layers to be very effective and simplifies the above process considerably.
Boil
The boil stage will sanitise the wort and provide an opportunity for unwanted volatile chemical compounds to be boiled off. Also at the boil, hops and other additions are added to flavour the wort.
- Bring the wort to the boil.
- Add hops and additions in sequence.
- Add Protofloc or Irish Moss at the appropriate time.
- Once the boil has completed, I reused the mash pot to strain the wort back through the sieve to remove the hops.
The wort at boiling temperature
Cooling
Cooling the wort is essential before pitching the yeast. This needs to be done quickly and efficiently to reduce the risk of the wort becoming infected with an unwanted bacteria or yeast.
- Fill sink of water to level below top of pot.
- Place the pot in a sink of water and allow it to stand for 10 minutes.
- Replace the water in the sink as needed.
- Wort needs to be 30C or below
Sanitising
The subsequent sections all deal with beer or wort that has been cooled down. At this stage anything that comes into contact with the brew should be sanitised. This will reduce the risk of the brew being infected with an unwanted bacteria or yeast. The process is the same for all equipment.
- 6L of water to 100ml thin bleach works well
- Pour bleach into vessel to be sanitised and leave to stand for 5-10 minutes
- Rinse 2-3 times with cold water until bleach smell goes
Fermentation
Once the wort is cooled below 30C, it is time to pitch the yeast. I generally avoid topping up the demijohn until its clear I know how the brew is going to ferment.
- Transfer the wort to the sanitised demijohn.
- Shake the demijohn for around 30 seconds to aerate.
- Pitch yeast (half a 11g packet is fine for 1 gallon).
- Sanitised bung and airlock
Foam from areation, yeast on top of foam
Fermentation complete, sediment settled to bottom
Bottling
After a month fermenting, the beer is ready for bottling. Homebrewers carbonate their brew by adding priming sugar to the beer before bottling. When given an extra two weeks of conditioning time, the beer becomes carbonated.
- Sanitise an empty demijohn and beer bottles
- Use a priming sugar calculator to work out how much sugar you need
- Add sugar to small cup with some boiled water to dissolve
- Add sugar water to empty demijohn
- Rack beer into demijohn, leaving sediment behind
- Rack beer into beer bottles
- Cap and label bottles
In two weeks time, these will be ready to drink
