I’ve been into beer, its history and styles for years. Over time, I became interested in brewing it at home and I haven’t looked back since. It’s not a hobby for everyone, but I sincerely believe it’s worth trying out at least once. Below, I present a recipe that I made specifically for those who need a starting point in the homebrewing adventure, without the need to spend a fortune on gear and ingredients.
Recipe
Ingredients:
- 1 brewkit
- 1 can of unhopped malt extract
- 23 L (5.5 gal) of boiled and cooled down water
- 100-125 g (3.5-4.5 oz, or 0.5 cup to 0.5 cup + 2 tbsp) granulated sugar, depending on the desired carbonation level
Required gear:
- 2 30 L (8 gallon) fermenters with taps
- a paddle or a large slotted spoon
- an airlock
- silicone racking tube
- no-rinse liquid sanitiser
- bottles
- (optionally) a filter, e.g. a flat cotton nappy
- (optionally) bottle caps
- (optionally) a bottle capper
Caution: all gear that may come into contact with the wort or the beer must be washed and sanitised before use.
Add the water to a sanitised fermenter with a tap. The water should be at room temperature.
Open the brewkit and the unhopped extract. It’s a good idea to warm them up prior to opening, which will make the extract a bit runnier. Pour to an empty fermenter. Dissolve the remains of the extracts on the can walls using hot water and pour that in as well.
Fill the fermenter with as much water as the brewkit’s producer indicates in the instructions. While the water is pouring, open the provided yeast sachet and sprinkle the yeast into the wort. Keep stirring vigorously in order to aerate the wort.
Close the fermenter’s lid and mount the airlock in its grommet or stopper. Place the fermenter in a dark and not too warm spot for 4 weeks.
After the fermentation is done, prepare sugar syrup for bottle conditioning. Add the sugar to a container and pour boiling water over it. Stir until completely dissolved. Pour the syrup to an empty, sanitised fermenter.
Rack the fermented beer to the fermenter with the sugar syrup using the racking tube. Optionally, the beer can be filtered using a cloth filter, e.g. a flat cotton nappy. It’s important to sanitise the tap, tube and filter before use. Rack the beer carefully and try not to aerate it. Introducing oxygen at this stage will oxidise the beer. Leave the yeast cake on the bottom of the emptied fermenter.
Wash and sanitise the bottles before use. I sterilise them by placing them in a 180°C (350°F) oven for 15 minutes, but it should be sufficient to just fill them with sanitiser.
Fill the bottles with beer, leaving a bit of head space in the bottle necks. Close the bottles and keep them in a dark spot at room temperature for at least a week in order to carbonate the beer.
Additional Information
The gear in the recipe is a minimal set that enables a relatively comfortable brewing experience. It could be expanded, as it’s missing many of the items I use habitually, such as a refractometer, a tun, a chiller, various chemical compounds or a precision scale, but I wanted to assemble a set that’s as simple as possible, even at the price of sacrificing some flexibility or extra comfort.
At the same time, I would like to stress that this is not a challenge to reduce the amount of gear to a bare minimum. Theoretically, it’s possible to brew with just one fermenter, without a racking tube, without an airlock or without taps. However, I believe it’s important to invest in a minimum comfort level that will guarantee a pleasant brewing experience without turning everything into a chore.
Many brewkits are made with the addition of granulated sugar in mind, not additional malt extract. I replace the sugar, knowing perfectly well that the final beer will be slightly different from what the producer had intended. Still, in my opinion, beers made with a significant sugar addition aren’t as pleasant on the palate.
The most important aspect of brewing is cleanliness and sanitisation of everything that comes into contact with the wort or beer. Infections in home breweries are relatively common, so it’s better to overdo it with the sanitisation than to be sorry.
All of the gear and ingredients can be bought in a brew shop (maybe excluding sugar and the cloth filter). This applies to the sanitiser as well. It’s important to choose a no-rinse one. Its traces will make it into the beer, so it cannot influence the beer flavour and above all, it must not be toxic.
Video Transcription
Beer is possibly the oldest alcoholic beverage known to humans. Over the course of several thousand years, it evolved to the point of making it possible to brew it at home using very simple methods. I’m brewing such a beer today. I will be using a brewkit, or a hopped malt extract. The full recipe along with some additional information can be found on the blog.
The brewkit takes the form of a can containing approximately 1.5 kilos, or 3 pounds, of liquid malt extract. Under the cap, there’s a sachet of brewer’s yeast. I start by opening the can. I dip the can opener in a no-rinse liquid sanitiser. I need to work with sanitised equipment since the wort isn’t going to be boiled and I run an increased risk of infection.
The extract is a dark and thick liquid, with the consistency of honey. I disregard its dark colour. It’s very concentrated, but in reality, it’s possible to make pale beer out of it. The final product’s colour depends on the malts used to make the extract and additional sugars that I add to the wort.
Speaking of additional sugars, I will be using a can of unhopped malt extract. The brewkit’s producer suggests using a kilo of table sugar, so I know my beer will become darker. It’ll also have a fuller body than intended, but I don’t really like beers made with a large addition of sugar.
In order to dilute the extract, I need a fermenter, or a 30 litre bucket made of food safe plastic. It’s also been sanitised.
I have a bit of freshly boiled water in the kettle. I’ll need it in a second. I start by pouring the extract into the fermenter. I scrape the can’s sides with a sanitised paddle. Then I use hot water to wash the remaining extract from the can.
I repeat the same process with the second can.
The fermenter now holds all of the extract and a bit of hot water. I mix everything with a paddle to dissolve and distribute the thick extract.
The next step is filling the fermenter with additional water. I already have a bucket of boiled, and therefore sterile water. It’s been cooled down to ambient temperature.
I place my fermenter underneath the water bucket and open the tap. I fill the fermenter to the level indicated on the brewkit’s instructions. At the same time, I stir the wort with a sanitised paddle. I want to evenly distribute the extract while aerating the wort at the same time. The yeast will need the oxygen to multiply in the initial phase of the fermentation. This is why I stir so vigorously, creating a lot of foam.
Midway through adding water, I cut open the yeast sachet and sprinkle the yeast into the wort. Further stirring will disperse it evenly.
Wort made this way is ready to be fermented. I put the fermenter’s lid on and press it down. Inside the jug filled with sanitiser, I have a grommet. I fit it in the hole drilled through the lid.
Next, I fish out a sanitised airlock and mount it in the grommet. I happen to use three part airlocks since they’re quieter than one part ones, but that’s just a personal preference. The type of airlock has no influence over the fermentation.
I fill the airlock with a bit of sanitiser. Theoretically, I could use water, but in case of the airlock contents making their way inside the fermenter, which can happen while carrying it around, I prefer the liquid to be sterile. It reduces the likelihood of infection.
I place the fermenter somewhere dark and not too warm to let the beer ferment. I’m making an ale, or a top fermented beer, so I don’t need a fridge. Room temperature will suffice.
The wort has been inoculated with a brewer’s yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae. It’s the same species as regular baker’s yeast, but strains made for brewing have been carefully selected with beer quality in mind.
In the first phase of fermentation, the yeast cells use up oxygen dissolved in the wort. At this stage, they multiply. This is why aerating the wort is important. When the oxygen runs out, an anaerobic fermentation begins. The yeast cells don’t multiply anymore and actively focus on the consumption of a disaccharide, maltose, that’s present in the wort. They excrete a range of chemical compounds, the most important of which are ethanol and carbon dioxide.
The fermentation will take a few weeks. Some sources say one or two weeks are enough, but I never go below four weeks. A hasty termination of the fermentation can lead to the presence of compounds that cause unwanted aromas, such as acetaldehyde, diacetyl, hydrogen sulfide or sulfur dioxide. It’s also not uncommon to have some unfermented maltose left in quantities sufficient to overcarbonate the beer.
Four weeks have passed and my beer is ready for bottling. Before I put it in bottles though, I need to separate the beer from the yeast cake on the bottom of the fermenter, and also mix a bit of sugar in for bottle conditioning.
I pour the sugar into a mug and add a bit of boiling water. I stir until all of the sugar is dissolved. I end up with a sugar syrup, which I pour into an empty, sanitised fermenter.
Bottle conditioning requires adding a fermentable sugar to a flat, but otherwise ready beer. Glucose and sucrose are the most commonly used. The yeast cells left in the beer will consume the sugar and produce a small amount of additional ethanol. The ABV will go up by 0.2-0.5%. But the most important compound is carbon dioxide, which will carbonate the beer.
However, it’s necessary to remember to carefully calculate the required amount of sugar. If too much is added, the best that can happen is overcarbonation. In the worst case, the bottles may burst.
I sanitise a racking tube.
I spray some sanitiser over the fermenter’s tap. Next, I attach the sanitised tube. I wrap the other end of the tube in a filering cloth, a sanitised flat cotton nappy. The filter should stop any compressed chunks of trub from the fermenter’s bottom. In case of dry hopped beers, it also traps the hop debris.
I put the tube inside the fermenter with sugar syrup. I open the tap and carefully rack the beer, trying not to aerate it. Adding oxygen at this stage would likely result in oxidation, which creates off flavours and aromas. The racked beer swirls and moves around, so I expect the sugar to be evenly distributed without stirring.
I put the filled fermenter on the table and I sanitise its tap. It’s been sanitised a few minutes ago, but one can never be too careful.
I have a few types of bottles. A flip top bottle has an integrated porcelain stopper with a gasket. It’s the easiest to use since it doesn’t require a bottle capper. Other bottle types have wide or narrow collars. Not every bottle can be used with a given capper type. All of my bottles have been washed and sterilised before use.
In the case of a flip top, bottling is trivial. I open the tap and fill the bottle, leaving a bit of head space. Then I just close the stopper and I can grab the next bottle.
Wide collar bottles can be capped with a cheap manual capper. It’s got two arms that grab the bottle’s neck and close the cap.
I fill the bottle with beer. Again, I leave a bit of head space. I place the bottle on a folded towel so it doesn’t move during capping. Next, I place an open cap on the neck and use the capper to close it. I’m not used to this capper type, so I need a few attempts to cap the bottle corectly.
Regardless of the collar size, a table capper will work without issues. It’s bulky and somewhat expensive, but it’s my favourite. I place an open cap on the bottle’s next, then place the bottle on the capper’s base and press the lever. It requires some strength, but with a bit of practice, capping is very efficient this way.
The beer needs to wait for a week or two before the carbonation reaches its optimal level. Afterwards, the only thing left to do is to crack a bottle open and finally try the homemade beer.
Mine turned out darker than the brewkit’s producer had intended, but that’s not an issue. The taste is pleasant. Refreshing, with a marked hoppy bitterness, nicely balanced by the malty background. I realise this beer isn’t going to win any contests, but I will definitely enjoy drinking it.