Beginner’s Guide To Brewing Beer At Home
Are you new to being a home brewer? Maybe even you made it a 2011 goal is to begin the process of home brewing? If that’s you, this three-part series is definitely going to be right for you. My tutorial will take you through your first home brew from beginning to completion including what tools you’ll want, how to brew & ferment your beer, and even how to bottle and age it.
Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to spend a bunch of money on sophisticated, high-priced tools to brew your own beer.
Here’s a checklist of what you’ll need:
. Large Pot – will need to hold a minimum of 3 gallons. Go even bigger if you can because a bigger container will hold more, leading to a reduced amount of spillage.
. Tubing & Clamp – to transfer beer from containers & in bottles. A 5 foot portion of 5/16-inch ID (inner diameter) food grade tubing is going to do. The higher the diameter, the speedier you can siphon your beer. Make certain that the clamps you buy go with the ID (inner diameter) or OD (outer diameter) of your tubing.
. 5-Gallon Carboy – A carboy is essentially only a glass bottle. A 5-gallon airtight bucket also works, although I favor a glass carboy with a rubber stopper because a carboy’s airtight seal has never broken on me (that’s happened to me with plastic buckets).
. An Air Lock and Stopper – designs can vary; you should acquire one that matches your fermenter (carboy or plastic bucket).
. A Bottle Filler – be certain the tubing & clamps are sized to fit the bottler.
. A Thermometer – you should have one with a range of 0-100 degrees Celsius or 32-220 F. Floating thermometers are really a sensible alternative.
. Bottles – 5 gallons of beer should fill more or less 54 12-ounce bottles or 27 24-ounce bottles so strategize properly. You should not cut a corner here, try for high-quality bottles that aren’t shut with a plastic twist-off top. What you want is the ones that have to have a bottle opener to open.
. Bottle Brush – Hygiene is imperative! This may not be mandatory, but I advise it and I always encourage taking every step to be sure your home brewing equipment is as sanitary as it possibly can be!
. A Bottle Capper – a hand powered tool to cap your bottles
. Bottle Caps – this is pretty self-explanatory, but you will need as many caps as beer bottles. In addition, the vast majority of beer caps will fit most beer bottles so if you don’t find any measurements on the bottles you buy then they will most likely do the job. You might want to verify in case something goes wrong.
. Sanitizing Solution – Beer is greatly prone to to infection or contaminants so I can’t tell you enough how significant it is to totally disinfect before & after brewing. You could also use household bleach although you’ll need to rinse off thoroughly to avoid bleach contamination. I recommend iodophor or starsan. Personally, I use iodophor.
This is only half of part 1, later I’ll also walk you through the brewing process and also give you a collection of ingredients you’ll need to start brewing at home.Get more info at The Greatest Home Brew Resource In The World In parts 1 & 2, I’ll walk you step-by-step through the home brewing process so stay tuned!
Visit Back Yard Beer for the full article & for the continuation of this series. Come back often!
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