Home Brewing

Method for home brewing beer

This brewing method is used for most of the beer recipes listed thorughout the site.

This is a generalised brewing method that you can use for most of the beer recipes listed thorughout the site. You can ignore parts of the instructions that do not apply to your recipe. For instance, if your recipe includes finishing hops but no bittering hops or grain, you follow the directions for soluble ingredients and finishing hops but you skip over the directions for bittering hops and grain.

You can find all of our beer recipes here

Soluble ingredients

Note:

Soluble ingredients are:

  • Contents of the beer kit can
  • Liquid malt extract
  • Dried malt extract
  • Dextrose or glucose
  • Corn syrup or malto-dextrin
  • Mix the ingredients from the can together with any additional soluble ingredients with 2 litres of hot water in a sterilized bucket or pot.
  • Stir until they're completely dissolved.
  • Optional extra step: You can improve the quality of your beer if you can gently boil this mixture for 15min.

If your recipe contains grain

  • All grains need to be crushed before use so if you have whole grain, crush it so that each grain is broken open. You do not need to turn it into powder. An easy way to do this is to put the grain into a strong plastic bag and use a rolling pin or bottle to crush the grains.
  • Mix the crushed grain with enough water in a saucepan to allow it to slop around freely. Half a litre to 1 litre is usually enough. Heat the mixture to boiling point then leave it on a rolling boil for 20 minutes. Rolling boil means the mixture is moving around as it boils.
  • Pour this mixture through a fine strainer into the other hot ingredients. Panty-hose or a very fine wire mesh strainer will do this job.

If your recipe contains bittering hops

  • Mix the hops with enough water in a saucepan to allow it to slop around freely. Half a litre is usually enough.
  • Heat the mixture to boiling point then leave it on a rolling boil for 20 minutes. Rolling boil means the mixture is moving around as it boils.
  • Pour this mixture through a fine strainer into the other hot ingredients. Panty-hose or a very fine wire mesh strainer will do this job.

Note:

If you are also cooking grains, you can add the bittering hops to the grain mixture and cook them together.

If your recipe contains finishing hops

  • Mix the hops with enough water in a saucepan to allow it to slop around freely. Half a litre is usually enough.
  • Heat the mixture to boiling point and leave it to simmer gently for 2 minutes (or longer if indicated in recipe notes).
  • Turn the heat off and allow the mixture to stand for 10 minutes.
  • Pour this mixture through a fine strainer into the other hot ingredients. Panty-hose or a very fine wire mesh strainer will do this job.

Note:

If you are also cooking grains, you can add the aroma hops to the grain mixture at the end of the grain's 20 monite boil. Adjust the temperature to let the combined mixture simmer for 2 min then turn the heat off and allow it to stand for 10 min before adding it to the rest of your brew.

Making the final mixture

  • Add about 10 litres of cold water to your fermenter
  • Add all the hot ingredients to the fermenter
  • Add cold water to make your brew up to the specified final volume. This will usually be 23 litres but in some recipies, a lesser volume may be specified. Check your recipe to see what volume you should be making this time.
  • The temperature after you have done this should be about 25° to 30°C (no more)
  • Check the temperature to make sure it's no hotter than 30°

Note:

IF you are making your beer in a very warm climate, you need to take a slightly different approach… see further notes below.

Fermentation stage

  • Pour the yeast onto the brew and stir just enough to make it all sink below the surface.
  • Put the lid on, fit the airlock in the lid and half fill it with water.
  • Leave the fermenter in a warm place until the fermentation stops (the airlock stops bubbling).
  • Use your hydrometer to check the specific gravity and confirm that your beer is ready to bottle.

Bottling stage

  • Sterilize about 30 bottles (640 - 800ml) and put 1 large measure of sugar in each one. If you are using small bottles, you will need about 60 with 1 small measure of sugar in each. You will need a plastic priming scoop which has small and large measures specifically for this job.
  • Fill each bottle with beer leaving a 50mm (5cm) space at the top and seal it with a crown seal.
  • Put the bottles in a warm place for about a week then store them out of the way. You can start tasting your beer after 2 - 3 weeks.

A special note if you're brewing in hot weather:

Yeast can be harmed or killed if you put it into a brew that is too hot. Although it can stand temperatures between 30 and 40, we recommend you make sure the temperature of your brew is no higher than 30 when you add your yeast. If you are brewing in hot weather, you may find that the method above does result in your brew being too hot. Of course you can wait for it to cool but this is not recommended because it gives contaminating bugs time to invade your brew and ruin it. It's important to avoid delays at this stage so you need to modify your approach.

One way to do this is to use less hot water at the mixing stage. If you are starting with 3 - 4 litres of hot water to prepare your ingredients, reduce this to 2 - 3 litres and add more cold water. If this is not enough to do the job, try this:

Fill some plastic containers with water and freeze them (make sure they're not completely full or they might burst in the freezer). When you have made your brew up in the fermenter, take a frozen bottle, rinse the outside with sterilizer (and rinse the sterilizer off) then put this in the warm brew to cool it down quickly. You can use more than one if necessary.

Beer Recipes

Alcohol may be man's worst enemy, but the bible says love your enemy.

Frank Sinatra

In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is Freedom, in water there is bacteria.

Benjamin Franklin

Beer makes you feel the way you ought to feel without beer.

Henry Lawson

There can be nothing more frequent than an occasional drink.

Oscar Wilde