Plum beer: recipes for low-alcohol drinks. Brew delicious beer at home

Beer is considered one of the oldest drinks in the world. You will not believe, but the recipes for making this drink have been known since ancient Egypt. Under the cut, the author will tell you in detail how to make delicious beer at home. Feel like a brewer!

Brewing beer at home is not a particularly tricky business, but it is charitable in every sense. First of all, it's very tasty. Secondly, homemade beer from natural raw materials gives an incomparably smaller hangover and cumulative harm to health is also smaller. Thirdly, when you treat friends and acquaintances, proudly declaring, “I cooked it myself,” then, seeing their round eyes, your ego swells to such an extent that it makes it difficult to walk. For some reason, people believe that brewing beer is something between severe alchemy and necromancy.

Equipment.
The first thing you need is a saucepan or a tank of 40 liters. It can be enameled, it can be made of stainless steel. Stainless steel is better, but more expensive. Enameled container is also nothing, but three times cheaper. I bought this miracle for 2000 rubles. I just found it, by the way. For home use, pots can be dispensed with when cooking up to 50 liters. Then you need to buy more serious equipment, since it is difficult and dangerous to carry 50 liters of boiling water with your hands.

According to the degree of hardcore, home brewing can be divided into two types: concentrate and all-grain (grain).
In the first case, we have the wort ready, in the form of an evaporated concentrate. It's not chemistry. This is what neither is a natural product. Now the choice of concentrates is very large, you can pick up something for every taste. They cost around 800 rubles for a can of 20 liters of finished beer.

In the second, we buy malt and mock it ourselves. There are, however, absolutely perfectionists, they themselves make malt from barley and prepare water, achieving the necessary mineralization. Well, for example, if some beer is brewed in the English village of Fuckthishole, then the mineral composition of the local water is found out and the same is made. This is over 80 level house. brewing. For lovers, it is enough to buy good water in a store or draw from a nearby well / spring / tap.

Next, you need to turn a banal pan into a wort mash. You can use two containers, one for mashing, the second for cooking, but in an apartment, the less bulky rubbish, the less the wife swears. Which is important for a brewer. We go to the nearest construction market and buy the necessary parts:

1. Half inch brass clamp, plus two locknuts, plus two silicone gaskets, plus two PTFE gaskets.
2. Ball valve with female thread also ½ inch.
3. American for soldering with a copper tube.
4. Elbow.
5. Three copper tees with a diameter of 15mm.
6. Four corners 15 mm.
7. Two meters of unannealed copper tube.
We drill a hole in the pan as low as possible (here, who has what kind of tool and hand-to-hand skill), trying to minimally damage the enamel, and assemble this design:

We first put a silicone gasket to the wall of the pan, and a fluoroplastic gasket on it. Otherwise, the nuts will seize the silicone.

Well, now the wort maker is ready. Now let's upgrade it to the mash. Here it is necessary to delve a little into the theory.
Mashing is the process of keeping the mash (water + malt) at a certain temperature. This holding is called a temperature pause. During this time, the enzymes in the malt break down the starch, which is a polysaccharide, into simpler sugars that the yeast can eat. The enzymes involved in this process are the so-called alpha and beta-amylases. According to the figurative expression of one of our colleagues, if we imagine starch as a tree, then beta-amylases bite small twigs (fermentable sugars), reach the fork of the branch and freeze, and alpha cuts randomly into arbitrary pieces (non-fermentable sugars). The thing is that these enzymes are most active at different temperatures. Beta-amylase at 60-65 degrees, alpha - at 70-75. Accordingly, if we let the beta work longer, we will get a wort of maximum fermentability, a high amount of alcohol, but an empty taste, because the yeast will turn all the sugars into alcohol and water. On the contrary, if alpha-amylases rule, then the beer will be dense, rich, but very light, because there will be practically nothing for yeast to eat there. By combining temperature pauses and achieve the desired balance between the body of beer and alcohol. Here, the theory is rough.
To turn our tank into a mash we need to assemble a filter element. This, unfortunately, requires some manual work.

To begin with, we take an American, a tee, a piece of copper tube and solder one to the other.

Soldering copper pipes is easy. You need solder, always lead-free, and flux. All this is freely sold in the markets or in plumbing stores. Solder look Sn97-Cu3. Without flux, soldering will not work, the solder will stupidly drain from the copper. If there is a gas burner for soldering, it’s good, if not, a gas stove will do. We clean the surfaces, apply the flux in a thin layer, put everything together and heat it up. When small droplets of tin appear on the parts smeared with flux, we bring the solder wire to the joint and the tin itself will be drawn into it under the action of capillary forces. Cool down and voila. Just remember, copper has exceptional thermal conductivity, work only with a tool, otherwise a severe burn is guaranteed. Copper cannot be thrown from hand to hand like an ember, even a short touch is a burn.

Here is such a shaitan device.
The last thing you need a hand-ass for is a cooler, or, as it is called, a chiller. Again we go to the market and buy 10-12 meters of annealed copper tube with a diameter of 10-12 mm and several meters (depending on how far the brewing will be from the connection point to cold water) of any hose, plus a couple of clamps. The annealed tube, in contrast, is easily bent by hand. So we bend, winding on something that is suitable in diameter. Then, carefully, with a large radius, so as not to break, we bring the end up. For rigidity, you can solder the coils to the vertical tubes, but I just wound it with copper wire (there should be an “ass” in the hand-ass).

Now let's move on to what is problematic to do yourself.

1. Hydrometer AC-3. This garbage is needed to measure the density of the wort. You can do without it, but it's better with it. Many use refractometers for this, but I myself have not used them, I will not say anything.
2. Fermentation tank. Now many online stores offer such 32-liter barrels with a water seal (4) and a faucet (5) at once. Also with a scale and a glued liquid crystal thermometer. You can buy it this way, or you can buy it separately. But, if in brewing shops this tank costs 300 - 350 rubles, then in offices selling plastic containers, it also costs 160 rubles. A matter of taste and laziness.
3. Mill for malt. Specifically, this one is called Comfort-500, made at the state farm named after the 47th anniversary of Mao, it looks scary, metal processing is at the level of the Stone Age, but it costs one and a half thousand and performs its function. The same, but made in Belgium costs already 3.500. Advanced two- or three-roll mills already cost from 5 to 9 thousand. No coffee grinders, meat grinders and blenders will work. I'll explain why a little later. A rolling pin will come up, but it will not be grinding, but the punishment of God and the seven plagues of the Egyptians.
4. ---
5. ---
6. Accurate digital thermometer with remote probe. Accurate at least within a degree. The thing is absolutely necessary. The one in the picture, I foolishly bought for 1500 rubles. Then it turned out that it was possible to buy a good Chinese thermometer for 300 rubles. On Avito.
7. Scales. It also needs to be more or less accurate. If within a gram, then perfect. In the picture Energy-403, weigh up to 5 kg, there is a tare function. Accuracy - grams. Well, that's how it's written.

The last thing we need is a meter and a half two SILICONE hose under the fitting on the pan. I did not draw it, a hose and a hose, such a transparent one. It is needed to drain the hot wort. PVC will not work, it stinks when heated and emits all sorts of muck from itself. We need a medical silicone hose suitable for sterilization. Where to get it - depends only on your imagination.
Actually everything. A microbrewery for the home, for the family, is ready. There are still all sorts of small things that make the process easier, but at first you can do without. The budget for all this mess ranges from 10 to 15 thousand.

Now, let's move on to the actual brewing of beer. I just want to clarify right away that in addition to equipment and ingredients, you will also need a lot of patience. The brewing process itself takes 6-8 hours, fermentation from 7 to 14 days, exposure from a couple of weeks to a year. That is, even in the simplest case, you will try your first beer not earlier than a month after brewing. But believe me, it's worth it.
And another important point. The room in which all this demonism takes place must be clean. No mold in the corners, no fermented milk products around. No animals. Wort is a super-nutrient medium for fungi and bacteria. Therefore, the cleaner the room, the less chance of beer contamination. I will write about the disinfection of equipment later.
So, we will cook the Black Rhinoceros. This recipe, being clearly in a state of enlightenment, was invented by a friend from one club house. brewers with the nickname Rhinoceros. Dark beer. Therefore, black.
We will need, based on 28 liters of finished beer (we are limited to a 32-liter fermenter):
Munich malt, Munich, with color EBC 25 (there will be “Munich-25” in stores) - 5.77 kg.
Melanoidin malt, Melano, EBC 80 - 0.87 kg.
Caramel malt, Cara, EBC 50 (you can Cara-150, it will be darker and richer) - 0.35 kg.
Traditional hops, also known as Traditional - 20 grams.
Hops Saaz or Saaz - 40 grams.
Yeast Fermentis Safale S-04 - one sachet about 11 grams.
First things first, the malt must be ground. We get our hellish mill and forward. You can twist it with your hands, you can attach a screwdriver, I acted more cunningly and plowed my small one. Six kilos of malt will require half an hour of time with smoke breaks.

The trick of grinding malt is that it is necessary to obtain not flour, but grains crushed into several parts and at the same time undamaged shells. That's why no coffee grinders are suitable. These shells, settling on the bottom of the mash, form a filter layer through which the wort is actually filtered. And it flows out through our filter system of copper pipes. The cuts are small enough for the husks to slip through, but large enough for filtering to take a reasonable amount of time. Without this husk, the grains will quickly clog the slots and the wort will be filtered before the onset of democracy in North Korea. This is what ground malt looks like:

This recipe uses a single mash at 72 degrees. Above, I talked about how temperature affects congestion. So this beer should turn out to be “full-bodied” with a small amount of alcohol. We put a filter in the tank, take four times more water (24 liters) relative to the amount of malt and heat it up to 78 degrees, when adding malt, the temperature will drop to the 72 we need. By the way, a degree there, a degree here is not fatal. But at more than 75, enzyme activity drops sharply. Overheat ninada.

We close the lid and wrap the tank in a blanket / padded jacket as tightly as possible.

We are waiting for an hour and a half. 1 hour, 30 minutes. Patience... Patience...
While the malt is mashing, prepare the yeast. Yeast is dry and needs to be rehydrated.
We take a jar, a flask or something similar, sterilize it in boiling water and pour about 250 ml of boiled water into it. The water temperature is 20-24 degrees. We fall asleep there yeast from a bag and plug the neck with cotton wool. Nutrients are added to the composition of dry yeast for the first time, so you can get by with just water. They will start wandering there in half an hour.
An hour and a half has passed. Now we need to conduct the so-called "iodine test". We take a bit of wort with a spoon and drip iodine there. If the color has not changed, then there is no more starch in the mash, everything is split into sugars. And this is gud. If it turns blue, it's not good at all. You can still try to hold the wort under the covers, but most likely this will no longer help. Although I have yet to see a quality imported malt turn blue after mashing on an iodine test.
Now it's time for the mystical process aptly called mash-out. We put the tank on the stove and stirring constantly - because it burns, we bring the temperature of the mash to 78 degrees. Turn off the heat and soak again under the covers for 15 minutes. This is necessary to stop the activity of enzymes. The breakdown of starch stops.
During these 15 minutes, we prepare water for washing. This is such a special water, which differs from ordinary water only in that it is heated to 80 degrees. When we drain the primary wort, a lot of sugars will remain in the spent grains. It is not good to throw away a good thing, so we will try to wash them out of there.

What is the hose for? The thing is that hot wort actively oxidizes when it comes into contact with air. And this gives an extraneous aftertaste in beer. To minimize contact with air, a hose is needed.
At first, the wort will go very cloudy - the husk has not yet settled properly to the bottom, so we return the first drained liters back. There is a subtlety here - it is important for us that a filter layer is formed, but pouring the wort back into the tank, we stir up the sediment again. Whatever it was, we put a large plate on top, let it sink, but everything will now pour on it and not disturb the pellet.
We drain slowly. As soon as the pure wort has gone, we stop returning it to the mash and begin to collect it in the fermenter.

At the same time, we make sure that the grain is not exposed. As soon as it appears, add flushing water. So, gradually, pouring and topping up, we need to collect 30-32 liters of wort. At the end, we stop pouring the washing water and simply drain everything that is. The first part of the Marleson ballet is completed. We throw out the grain, unscrew the filter, rinse the tank and pour the clean filtered wort into it. And let it boil. It will take a long time to heat up 30 liters, you can speed it up by covering it with a lid. But keep in mind, if you miss the moment of boiling, the wort will run away, and washing the stove from burnt sugar is hell and Israel. You will also hear from your wife a lot of interesting things about yourself, about beer and about the universe as a whole.
As soon as it boils, we weigh 20 grams of traditional hops and throw it in there. These are hops for bitterness. We detect 50 minutes, let it boil. In total, we need to cook for 90 minutes or an hour and a half. During this time, about 3-4 liters will boil away, any unnecessary will evaporate with steam, some of the sugars will caramelize and the walls of the room will be covered with drops of condensate.

Thoroughly wash the fermenter, fill it with water and pour a vial of 5% pharmacy iodine into it. We also throw a water seal with a cork there and push the lid of the fermenter. This is disinfection. Iodine decomposes quickly, so it does not leave foreign odors and tastes. Instead of iodine, you can use special disinfectants, specialized stores sell them in disastrous quantities. Let's leave it like that.
After 50 minutes, we weigh 20 grams of Žatec and add it to the wort. These are hops for flavor.
15 minutes before the end of the boil, we connect the chiller to cold water and lower it into the wort. This is so that he has time to sterilize with boiling water.

Five minutes before the end of cooking, we add the remaining 20 grams of Žatec. These are aroma hops. In total, we will get about 20 IBUs (Bitterness Units). This is such a mild, pleasant bitterness.
Part of the wort is poured into a 100 ml beaker, which I forgot to write about in the equipment, and separately cooled strictly to 20 degrees to measure the density. We put the hydrometer there so that it floats and look at the value of the initial density (NP). In this recipe, we need to get 13.5% NP. If there is more, just add boiled water. If less, boil more. Although less is unlikely. In general, the output should be 28 liters.

(Here, unfortunately, a photo from another brew, the hydrometer shows 14.5%)

Upon completion of cooking, turn on the water in the chiller, turn off the heat. The meaning of the chiller is that the wort must be cooled as quickly as possible from 100 to 20-24 degrees suitable for yeast. This copper spiral will do it in 15 minutes. If you take the tank to the bathroom and put it in cold water, it will take 40-50 minutes. And the longer the wort stays in contact with the air, the more likely it is to infect it with "wild" yeast or bacteria, which fly around in abundance.

During these remaining five minutes, we run to the fermenter, pour out the iodine solution from there. Those who wish can rinse with boiled water, but, in principle, it will do. Drain the chilled wort into a clean, disinfected fermenter. From a height of at least a meter.

The meaning of this action is that the wort, falling, is saturated with oxygen. Yeast, they are living creatures, they also need to breathe. For low initial gravity beers like this, this method will work, but high gravity beers require additional aeration.
We take the yeast in a flask, by this time they will already give abundant foam and pour it into the wort.
We close the fermenter with a lid, insert a water seal (without pouring anything into it yet) and for another five minutes, shake it for more aeration. Again, shaking a 30 kg container is a good exercise. We take the fermenter to a dark and cool place and only then pour either vodka or boiled water into the water seal. If you immediately pour liquid, then at the first attempt to raise the fermenter, this liquid will instantly be sucked in.
All. Now wait 14 days. And, one more clarification: S-04 yeast requires a fermentation temperature of 18-25 degrees. If less, fermentation will be sluggish. If more - during the fermentation process, they will release a bunch of esters, which will affect the taste and aroma of beer unpredictably. Therefore, it is desirable to maintain this interval during fermentation.

Here, they are wandering. Below - the previous brew is standing, carbonized.

Two weeks passed….
By this time, we went to the store and bought a pack of liter PET bottles with stoppers and a pack of glucose / dextrose. This sugar is better absorbed by yeast than the usual one and does not give a sour taste. Now it's time to bottle the "green" or "young" beer.
To begin with, we pour a bit from the faucet into a beaker and measure the final beer gravity (CP). I got 5%. Which, considering the temperature at which we mashed (more unfermentable sugars) is quite normal. According to the table we find the alcohol content - 4.5%. Light and "full-bodied" beer, as expected.
In order for the beer to be saturated with carbon dioxide, it is necessary to add a bit of glucose to each bottle, since everything in the wort has already been eaten. Having eaten this sugar in a closed bottle, the yeast will just saturate the beer with gas. This is called "natural carbonation", as opposed to artificial saturation with carbon dioxide under pressure in kegs. There is, in fact, no difference. In this recipe, comrade Rhinoceros indicated 7 g / liter, so add 7 grams of dextrose or glucose to each bottle.
We open the fermenter, a couple of minutes go crazy from the smell. Then we take our silicone tube (previously disinfected) or a special siphon, fill it with boiled water and, holding one end with a finger, lower the other into beer. The principle of the siphon, yeah, the fermenter should be higher than the bottles.
By the way, here, if a tube is still used, the help of another person is needed, preferably homo sapiens. All these gestures are in order to take the beer from above without touching the sediment, which will be 2-3 centimeters at the bottom.
Well, we remove the finger, wait until the water pours out somewhere and the beer goes and lower the tube to the very bottom of the bottle. Again avoid excessive contact with air. We fill the bottle. When three or four centimeters remain to the neck, we squeeze the bottle, squeezing out the air and close the lid. And so many times.
When everything is spilled, we leave these flounder-like bottles also in a dark and not necessarily cool place. One week for carbonation. During this time, the yeast will eat glucose, the bottles will inflate and become stone. By the way, it will also be a natural preservation. There is nothing to eat there, there is no oxygen either, there is no contact with air. Beer in PET bottles can be stored quietly for six months (no longer is necessary, after all, gas exchange occurs through the pores of plastic), and in glass for several years. After carbonation, the beer needs to be aged for another month, but I started opening it after a week. I'm not iron. Although after a month of exposure, it definitely got better. True, by that time half of the cooked was left ....

Wheat on the left, Black Rhino on the right.

Well actually everything. This method does not claim to be the only correct one. I wrote the way I did. There is an abyss of options here. But with this set of pots, you can cook whatever your heart desires. And my soul is capricious and restless.

You can buy beer in any store. However, at breweries, various dyes and preservatives are put into the drink so that the beer retains its marketable appearance longer. If you don't trust beer companies, you can make beer at home.

Why is homemade beer better than store bought?

You can cook it at home. If you carefully read the label on the bottle, you will find that manufacturers often put preservatives, flavors and dyes in the composition of the drink. And if the addition of preservatives can be somehow justified (natural beer spoils rather quickly, and yet it still needs to be bottled and delivered to the store), then the addition of flavorings and dyes is important for manufacturers only to improve the presentation of the product. Also, home-made beer compares favorably with draft beer with thick foam and rich hop-malty taste. Also, factories often resort to the procedure of clarification and pasteurization, which decomposes various vitamins and useful trace elements.

There is an opinion that a lot of special expensive equipment is needed to produce good beer. This is a myth that is actively supported by many brewing companies. They don't like home brewing. The only expensive tool that you cannot do without when brewing beer is an electronic thermometer. It will instantly determine the temperature of the liquid in which it was placed. It is really difficult to do without it, because at some stages of cooking it is necessary to maintain a strictly defined temperature.

Necessary equipment

To make beer, we need the following tools:

Pot for 25-30 liters for wort . Give preference to enamel pans without black burn marks. Before cooking, wash the pan well with a detergent, and then dry it in the sun. It is important that there is no detergent left in the pan - this will ruin your drink.

Additional fermentation tank for 20-25 liters . For this purpose, pots, bowls, various pottery will do. You can ferment the wort both in one container and in several.

Thermometer. It is impossible to make good homemade beer without a thermometer. Moonshine and wine do not require a special regime. But in brewing, a thermometer is indispensable. Give your preference to an electronic thermometer with a long spout. Yes, a thermometer can be quite expensive, but this acquisition will pay for itself.

Bottles for finished beer . Give preference to glass containers, as glass does not retain odor well. If glass bottles are not available, and their purchase will be expensive, you can pour beer into plastic bottles.

Fine Medium Hose . Give preference to silicone hoses. We will need this component to remove the foam.

Cooler for beer wort . For this purpose, you can use a large metal bowl filled with cold water. If you do not have a bowl of the required size, you can use a bathtub filled with ice or cold water.

Water seal . We need it for fermentation.

Gauze for malt bag and filtration . The size of the gauze should be 3-5 meters. She is inexpensive.

Wooden or metal spoon . We will need it to stir the drink while cooking.

Iodine and a clean white plate for sampling (optional, you can do without it).

A device for measuring the density of liquids - a hydrometer (also optional).

What is beer made from?

A standard brewing kit looks like this:

• Water- 25-27 liters. In it we will cook hops and malt.
• Hop with an acidity of 4.5% - about 50 grams. Hops can be obtained from any market. Russian hops are suitable for home beer. Hops will add bitterness and aroma to the drink.
• barley malt- about 3 kilograms. Barley malt can be obtained from any market or specialty store. However, remember that Russian malt is usually not of very high quality. Buy German or Czech malt. It can be ordered online. Malt will make the drink rich and tasty.
• Brewer's yeast- about 30 grams. Brewer's yeast can be obtained in any market or in a specialty store. Yeast can be bought and Russian. We need yeast for fermentation.
• Sugar. We need sugar with the calculation of 8 grams of sugar 1 liter of beer. Sugar is important for additional fermentation, as well as for saturating the drink with carbon dioxide.

How to Brew Homemade Beer in Six Easy Steps

There are many ways to make homemade beer. Next, we will look at how you can make beer at home in 6 steps. Even a beginner can master it.

First, carefully read all the cooking steps and tips, and only then proceed to the process itself.

Stage 1 - preparatory work

Check that you have the necessary components and equipment. Separately, check the thermometer - for this, boil water in a container.

Sterilize instruments. This is to keep unwanted bacteria out of the beer. Wash all equipment and dry it in the sun. While the equipment is drying, wash your hands with soap and water. Do not use alcohol or vodka as a sterilizing agent - this will harm the drink. Sterilization is vital. If you don't run it, there is a chance that you will introduce so-called "wild yeast" into the wort, which will turn your homemade beer into an unpalatable brew.

Pick up water. Give your preference to bottled or spring water. If it is quite expensive to get it, you can use tap water. If you use tap water, boil it a day before cooking, and then place it in a dry, cold place for settling. This must be done to get rid of various harmful components in the water. For example, tap water is often chlorinated, and during settling, chlorine will leave the water in a day.

Prepare your yeast. If your yeast is pressed, break the yeast brick into small pieces, then soak them in clean warm water for 5-10 minutes.

Stage 2 - prepare the wort for brewing

Take the malt, put it in the pan. Then take a crusher and grind it to a powder state. After that, the malt is ready for grouting. Sometimes malt is sold already in crushed form. However, experienced brewers do not advise buying such malt, as it very often contains artificial additives like starch or even flour to increase the weight of the product.

Double roller malt mill

Make a small bag out of gauze. Place grated malt there. Malt should not fall out of the bag. It is recommended to make a bag in 3 layers.

Pour 25 liters of water into a large saucepan, put it on fire. Place the tip of a thermometer into it from time to time. When the temperature is about 80 degrees, make the fire quieter.

Place the bag of malt in the water and cover the pot with a lid. Boil the malt for an hour and a half. The temperature must be maintained at about 67 degrees. Keep in mind that placing a bag of malt in a pot will cause the temperature to drop dramatically, so sometimes brewers turn the heat up a little.

Brewing at a temperature of 67 degrees will make the beer dense and soft on the palate. Its strength will be about 4%.

After an hour and a half, do an iodine test. It is done to determine the presence of starch in the drink. They make a sample like this: a few tablespoons (5-10 milligrams) of the wort are taken, they are poured onto a white plate; after that, a few drops of iodine are dripped onto the wort. If the color of the liquid has not changed, then it is considered ready. If the color of the liquid has turned dark blue, boil the wort for another 10-15 minutes. It is important that you do not need to do an iodine test - it is enough to boil the wort for an additional 15 minutes.

Bad and good result of iodine test

During brewing, the malt participated in natural fermentation. Now we need to stop this process. To do this, we make a larger fire so that the temperature in the pan is about 80 degrees. We cook 5 minutes.

After that, we take out the bag of malt from the pan.

Stage 3 - boil the wort

Make the fire bigger so that the liquid boils.

Add 20 grams of hops there. Don't put out the fire. After half an hour, add 15 grams of hops.

After another half an hour, add the remaining 15 grams of hops. You need to boil the wort for another half an hour.

Stage 4 - wort cooling

Our task at this stage is to cool the wort to 25 degrees very quickly. This must be done within 20 minutes so that wild bacteria do not have time to settle in it, starting wild fermentation.

1. Turn off the pot of wort, put on thick gloves, add some cold water to the bath.
2. After that, we take a pan with the wort and put it in the bathroom. After that, we fill the bathroom so that the water does not get into the pan. If there is ice in the refrigerator, add it to the bathroom.
3. After 15 minutes, use a thermometer to measure the temperature of the wort. If the temperature is 25 degrees and below, you can proceed to the next step. If not, wait a bit.
4. Now pour the chilled wort into the fermentation vessel, before passing it through cheesecloth several times.

Stage 5 - wort fermentation

Now you need to add yeast. There are two types of them (depending on the temperature regime):

Top fermentation - contribute at 20 degrees.
Bottom fermentation - contribute at 10 degrees.

For our case, top-fermenting yeast is suitable (if you want to add “bottom” yeast, cool the wort further).

The following actions:

Use the instructions on the yeast packet to calculate the amount of yeast you need.

Take a glass of cold water, pour yeast into it, stir it well.

After that, pour a glass of yeast into a saucepan with wort, mix the resulting mixture well.

Place the pot of yeast in a dark, cool place. Install a water seal to prevent excess oxygen from entering the tank.

Somewhere in 12 hours, fermentation will begin. Active fermentation lasts about 2-3 days, after which the process begins to fade.

After a week, remove the pan, remove the water seal and use a hydrometer to check the density of the liquid.

After half a day, remove the pan again, remove the water seal and use a hydrometer to check the density of the liquid. If the numbers are the same, fermentation is over. If they differ, let the liquid ferment further.

Stage 6 - plugging, adding sugar, getting carbon dioxide

Now you need to carbonize. This must be done so that the beer foams well and is carbonated:

1. We take glass or plastic bottles, add 8 grams of sugar per liter to each. After adding the beer, the sugar will cause a little extra fermentation, which will release some carbon dioxide.
2. Pour beer into bottles, tightly close the lid. The distance between the beer and the lid should be up to 2 cm.
3. When pouring, the bottles should not be shaken so as not to disturb the yeast. If you touch the yeast, the beer will turn out very cloudy (however, some people like it).
4. Place the bottles in a dark, dry place where the temperature will not exceed 24 degrees. Three weeks later, the beer will be ready. Shake the beer well every week. After that, move the beer to the refrigerator. The beer is ready to drink. In a good refrigerator, beer will keep for up to 9 months. After opening the bottle, the drink is stored for three days.

To make homebrewing easier, experienced brewers suggest the following:

• Russian malt is of rather poor quality. Therefore, give preference to foreign malts, such as German or Czech.
• Never buy ground malt, as vendors often add starch to it. Do not overpay extra money for starch.
• You can let the beer mature. To do this, at the final stage of preparation, do not put the beer in the refrigerator, but let it stand for another month. As a result of maturation, the beer will acquire a caramel flavor.
• While boiling the malt, remember to stir the pot with the mixture with a spoon. This will enhance the fermentation, which will have a good effect on the quality of the drink.

How to brew beer at home - a traditional recipe

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The article will tell you about the principles of making beer at home.

Simple Classic Hop and Malt Homemade Beer Recipe and Ingredients: Brewing Process

Beer has been one of the most beloved drinks of mankind for several centuries in a row. However, it should be noted that the classical natural beer is significantly different from those alcoholic synthetic drinks that are now presented in a wide variety. Natural beer is not only tasty, it is also healthy, as it consists only of products of plant origin.

Of course, in the modern world you can find many establishments (beer boutiques, bars and restaurants) that have their own brewery. This pleasure is not cheap, and therefore not everyone can afford to have “their own brewery” for the production of beer at home. However, remembering the old "grandmother's recipes", you are quite capable of making beer at home, it is only important to observe the accuracy of the steps and the number of ingredients.

You can buy the main ingredients, in particular hops and malt, in the markets, where summer residents and villagers often sell what they have grown on their plot. If you did not find these products, they are always presented in the assortment of online grocery stores. As equipment for brewing, you do not need a mini-brewery and the whole process will cost only a fermentation tank (glass bottle) and a saucepan.

You need to stock up for the recipe:

• Malt (only barley) - 4.5-5 kg
• Hops - 4.5-5 stack. (need fresh buds)
• Brewer's yeast - 50 g (fresh or dry can not be replaced)
• Sugar - 140-150 g (required for the fermentation process)
• Salt - 2/3 tbsp
• Purified water - 20 l (filtered or purchased, without impurities, cold boiled can be used).

Brewing beer:

• Soak the malt for about a day, dissolving it with all the purified water. Let stand until tomorrow.
• After infusion, the liquid should be poured into a large saucepan, it is not necessary to filter it. Turn on the fire and add salt.
• Boil the malt over moderate heat for about 2 hours.
• After that, pour the hops into the pan, mix and cook for another 25 minutes.
• Turn off the fire, cool the brew a little. Now it should be filtered. To do this, use gauze, folded twice or thrice. This is the must. Keep it warm, at about 30 degrees. Pour into a fermentation bottle.
• In the strained wort, you can now pour the yeast along with sugar (it is important to do this at the same time). Stir thoroughly with a long wooden spoon.
• Ferment beer should be up to 18 hours. The place where you place the bottle should be warm and dark.
• After 18 hours of fermentation, bottle the beer and put it in the pantry, the drink will be ready only after 12-14 hours

IMPORTANT: From 20 liters of water you get almost 20 liters of beer, if you do not need a drink in such a large amount, you can evenly reduce the amount of all ingredients by two or three times.

How to make wort for beer?

Properly prepared beer wort is the secret to delicious beer that you can get from the very first time. Its preparation begins in several stages and, observing each, you will definitely do everything right.

Wort preparation steps:

• Malt preparation. Malt is soaked grains of wheat. After they have sprouted, the liquid should be drained from them, and the grains themselves should be crushed. It is the malt that gives the beer a rich taste and body. You can crush it with a coffee grinder, meat grinder and even a blender (if there is such a function). The size of the crushed malt should be about half the size of a grain of buckwheat (this is very important for the entire brewing process).
• Mashing. This process includes pouring grated malt with purified water and boiling. The process got its name many years ago and in brewing it is still referred to as "mash". During the cooking process, the starch of the grains is split and the acidity changes.
• Readiness. The wort should be boiled for several hours. The characteristic sour aroma, richness of taste and color of the liquid will tell you about the readiness of the wort. After that, hops can be added to the wort and beer is brewed.

How to make homemade beer yourself without equipment in a saucepan: a simple recipe

A simple recipe for making homemade beer will not take you much time and effort. The method of brewing beer in a saucepan is simple and accessible to everyone. Adjust the amount of ingredients yourself, focusing on the required amount of the finished drink.

What do you need:

• Hops - 15 g buds
• Purified water - 5 l (plus 250 ml for sugar syrup).
• Sugar - 240-250 g.
• Dry yeast - 10 g (can be replaced with brewer's yeast).

Cooking process:

• Boil the water
• Add the hops to the pot and boil the liquid for exactly 1.5 hours.
• While the hops are cooking, prepare the sugar syrup (water and sugar in equal parts - 1 tbsp each).
• After 1.5 hours of boiling hops, pour the syrup into the liquid and continue boiling for another 20-25 minutes.
• Remove the saucepan from the heat and leave to cool completely (to room temperature).
• Pour yeast into liquid
• Cover with a lid, let it ferment for 10-12 hours
• After that, carefully strain the drink and bottle it. They must be closed tightly. Infuse the drink for another 2-3 days before drinking.

"Fast" house beer

Homemade Grain Dark Beer Recipe and Ingredients

Dark homemade beer will truly become your favorite "hoppy" drink, as it is not difficult to prepare, but the taste leaves an incredibly pleasant feeling.

What do you need:

• Dry hops - 50 g (crushed or cones)
• Chicory - 30 g (natural, without flavorings and flavorings).
• Lemon peel - from one fruit
• Grain mixture for wort - 450-500 g (barley, wheat).
• Sugar - 3.5-4 tbsp.
• Purified water - 10 l.

Brewing beer:

• Dry the sprouted grain (soak it in advance) in a frying pan, the sun or in the oven (at low temperatures).
• The sprouted grain mixture should be ground with a manual coffee grinder or meat grinder (there will be exactly the consistency that is needed).
• Mix the grated grain mixture with chicory. Do this ahead of time in a brewing pot.
• Pour the grain mixture with water and put on fire, boil.
• Dissolve sugar in the remaining water
• Pour water with sugar into a saucepan with the grain mixture
• Add the required amount of hops and finely grated zest from one lemon.
• Bring to a boil again and turn off the heat
• Let the brew cool for 3 hours
• Pour the cooled wort into a fermentation bottle (it should be twice as large as the pot in which you cooked).
• Leave the bottle to ferment in a warm place (about 25 degrees) for a few days. If fermentation has not started, pour in additional brewer's yeast and leave for another day.
• Fermented beer should be carefully filtered from the cake and only then poured into cleaned bottles, corked with lids.
• The beer infusion time is another 3 days in a cool place (during this time it will be saturated with gases).

Homemade Barley Beer Recipe and Ingredients

What do you need:

• barley grain - 500-600
• Hops - 5.5-6 st. cones
• Brewer's yeast or dry - 50 g.
• Purified water - 6 l.
• Sugar - 240-250 g.
• Rusks of black and white bread - 2 tbsp.

Brewing beer:

• Pour the grains into a glass jar
• Fill the grains with water and in this state let them stand for about 3 days so that they germinate.
• Drain the water from the grains, dry them. Remove the germinated parts.
• The grain should be ground, it is necessary for the preparation of the wort.
• After that, fill the ground grain with boiling water (1.5-2 liters) and let them stand for about an hour.
• After that, pour the black and white croutons into the malt (barley mass).
• Pour another 1-1.5 liters of boiling water and leave for another hour.
• After infusion, the liquid should be well filtered.
• Put on fire and add hops, cooking time 15-20 minutes over moderate heat.
• After that, cool the liquid again and strain again.
• Pour yeast into warm liquid and add sugar, mix well and leave to ferment for 2 or 3 days.
• After fermentation, the beer is bottled and sent to infuse for up to 2 weeks in a cool place.

Craft beer recipe at home

Craft in translation means “craft”, which means that “craft beer” is a drink produced at home and not in large quantities. In the modern world, "craft" beer can be called any beer that is made in personal and private breweries using traditional technologies. This is always an author's product and therefore you can always experiment with beer ingredients to get the most intense taste.

INTERESTING: Craft beer is often made from ready-made wort, which can be freely purchased on sale. In the assortment you will always find a variety of types of beer for brewing at home.

Simple homemade craft beer:

• Purchase 5 kg of barley wort
• Pour the wort with 35 liters of purified water and put on fire
• The liquid should be boiled and left to infuse
• Strain and boil again (about an hour)
• After half an hour of boiling, pour hops into the pan - 30 g (granules).
• 5 minutes before the end of the boil, add another 20 g of hops
• After boiling, cool the wort to 20 degrees
• Pour the wort into a glass bottle
• Add 10-11 g of brewer's yeast to the bottle
• At room temperature, the beer should be infused for up to 2 weeks, after which it can be cooled and drunk.

Important tips for making and drinking beer:

• Beer should only be drunk after a complete brewing and brewing process, in no case should the finished beer be diluted with water.
• No ingredients other than hops, malt, water, sugar, and yeast should be added to beer.
• Homemade beer, corked in bottles, can be stored in the refrigerator for no more than six months.
• Use only glassware for fermentation
• Crush the malt with a meat grinder or coffee grinder, the blender can turn the grain into flour, and this is bad for the beer fermentation process.

Video: "Brewing beer at home"

To become a homebrewer, all you need is the desire to brew beer. For the rest, the exorbitantly developed brewing industry will help, as well as this article. The collected material is a complete guide to brewing beer at home from malt and hops. More is not required.

Beer, conditionally, can be prepared in two ways: from malt extract and directly from grain. The first way is the easiest: you need to buy malt extract, mix it with water, boil it, add sugar and yeast, ferment the resulting wort and bottle it (we wrote a separate one). It doesn’t sound interesting, but it was malt concentrates that became a good tool for popularizing home brewing. Maybe that's where you should start. Now I will explain.

Malt concentrate is a concentrated beer wort. The very technology of beer production according to the traditional recipe is very time-consuming, mainly due to the stage at which the wort is prepared. At home, it takes 5-7 hours of nerves, dancing with a thermometer and extreme concentration. During these 5-7 hours, the malt is mashed with water, heated to a certain temperature with certain pauses, then filtered and only then brewed with hops and other ingredients.

Malt concentrate is prepared in a similar way, after which the hopped wort is concentrated - the liquid is simply evaporated until the very powder (or viscous mass) that is sold to us in beautiful jars with the “malt concentrate” label is formed. In other words, homebrewers have a unique opportunity to bypass the complex and time-consuming process of preparing beer wort.

But there comes a time when a brewer, having tried various concentrates and additives to them, begins to think about traditional brewing, which, oddly enough, is practiced by beer giants.

If you still think that large factories brew beer from "powder", then you are deeply mistaken. This . Malt concentrate is many times more expensive than ordinary beer malt, not to mention the organization of its production, so it is not profitable for beer giants to use them.

Well, let's brew our first beer from malt, hops, water and yeast!

In 1516, Germany passed the Reinheitsgebot "Beer Purity Law", according to which beer must be brewed exclusively from barley malt, hops and water. We do not suffer from purism, but it is from malt and hops that we will continue to dance, as well as from yeast, which we discovered much later. But we assume that any interesting ingredients can be added to the wort: unmalted grains, honey, herbs, fruits and juices from them, vegetables, even mushrooms and tree bark. Brewing is a creative process.

MALT

First of all, it is a convenient brew kettle, also known as a mash tun, enamelled or stainless steel, most often with a thermo-case. As a fermentation tank, a fermenter, which is basically called a "beer factory", plastic containers can be used, with a slot in the lid for a water seal, or plastic or stainless steel barrels equipped with faucets, thermometers, pressure gauges and other convenient pribludy.

Now collectively without what it is difficult to do:

• Scales or measuring cup for malt and hops.
• Container for soaking and filtering (bucket-basin for 5-10 l).
• Malt crusher (mill, meat grinder, coffee grinder).
• Wort kettle for 25-30 l.
• Spoon with a long handle - paddle (plastic).
• Accurate thermometer with scale up to 100˚С.
• Iodine - for malt sampling and disinfection (or special disinfectant).
• Fermentation tank with water seal.
• Hydrometer for measuring the density of the wort.
• Silicone tube for pouring beer.
• Glass or plastic bottles with tight lids.

Of all of the above, the most difficult thing to do without a thermometer. During the preparation of the wort, in particular its malting, it is very important to accurately observe the temperature pauses, otherwise the beer simply will not work. The bottles are convenient with a yoke cap, you can also use standard beer caps, but then you have to buy a crown capper and crown caps themselves (regular beer caps).

What else will be useful:

• Self-adhesive fermentation tank thermometer.
• Filter media, add. filter containers.
• Canvas or gauze bag for mashing the must.
• Chiller for rapid cooling of the wort (or ice bath).

We advise you to take a closer look at some of the products for brewing on the world-famous Chinese marketplace AliExpress. Recently, we have been running a section in which we publish selections of such products. For example, you will find links to penny measuring instruments necessary for comfortable brewing and much more (scales, thermometers, hydrometers, volumetric flasks, a mash bag, etc.)

Preparation

Cleanliness is the key to success! In this case, this is not an empty phrase. Beer wort is an ideal breeding ground for any microorganisms that in a matter of hours will develop colonies in it and beer will no longer work out of this. Always use sterile containers and utensils, and minimize wort exposure to air. During brewing, wash your hands thoroughly with soap and water, and preferably wipe them with alcohol, as you would with any tool that will come into contact with the wort.

Disinfection is the key to successful brewing.

The containers can be washed with iodine solution or with special disinfectants that are stocked in beer shops. You can also use a weak solution of bleach: 1 tbsp. l. for 5 liters of water. But still more reliable than special equipment. After using them, be sure to rinse the disinfected containers with plenty of water, preferably with hot water (be careful with plastic). After iodine, it is not necessary to rinse. Do not use several solutions at once - their reaction with each other can lead to the formation of toxic substances.

As a sterilizer, you can use heads from under any moonshine.

Preparation of beer wort

So, you bought or germinated quality beer malt, found aromatic hops, prepared water and sterilized all equipment. Now, in fact, it's time to learn how to brew beer at home.

First you need to make a recipe, namely, decide how dense and bitter your beer will be. PC brewing programs such as BeerSmith will help us with this. For trial purposes, you can use it for 21 days, then you have to buy a license, but it costs that money ($28). BeerSmith allows you to automatically calculate all the parameters of the future beer based on the given ingredients. It also includes 100 styles of beer from the BJCP guide. By the way, it would not be superfluous to acquire the BJCP manual itself, where the classification of beer is clearly described.

Malt preparation

First you need to measure the malt. For a classic beer recipe from malt and hops, 4 kg of malt is taken for 25 liters of beer. You can vary the amount of malt and water, thereby affecting the density of the drink and its taste. Malt must be winnowed, washed from dust and dirt.

Purified beer malt must be crushed into fine grits. To do this, you can use a malt grinder, but if it was not at hand, a regular meat grinder or other kitchen equipment will do: a blender, a food processor, a coffee grinder. However, practice has shown that it is much more convenient and practical to have a malt mill on hand.

Before mashing the wort, some brewers do the so-called "pre-mash" - soaking the malt with water for 12 hours. This procedure is necessary to give elasticity to the malt husk - it will not be damaged during crushing, which means that it will be more convenient to filter the wort. Also, "pre-mashing" activates enzymes. Grinding wet malt leads to corrosion of the metal parts of crushers, so not everyone resorts to this method. But soaking can also be done after grinding, right? Be that as it may, our main task is to prepare and grind our malt to the desired condition (the optimal grinding size is like that of barley groats).

Mashing malt infusion

Wort mashing is the most important process in beer brewing. At this stage, the crushed malt is mixed with water (mashed), as a result of which the malt enzymes go into solution and break down the starch into sugar, which the yeast will then process. Enzymes require a certain temperature to work. There are two fundamentally different methods of mashing: infusion and decoction. We will use infusion, which is a classic home mashing scheme, during which the wort is heated sequentially, while maintaining the temperature pauses necessary for the action of enzymes. The decoction method is used in factories as a cheaper one - part of the wort is boiled and added to the rest, raising its temperature to the desired one.

For a classic beer recipe, a 1/3 water ratio (1 part malt/3 parts water) is used. Therefore, to prepare 25 liters of beer, we need to take 4 kg of malt and 12 liters of water. Water must be boiled and cooled to 60 ° C. Pour the malt in a thin stream, thoroughly mixing the wort so that no lumps form. If you haven't got a convenient wort kettle with a filter system, you can make your first attempts to brew beer using the "in a bag" method - pour malt into a cloth bag and "mash" right in it.

At this stage, it is advisable to check the acidity of the wort using a pH test. For brewing, the optimal pH is 5.2..5.5. How to properly acidify. For this, any food acids are used.

After mixing hot water with malt, it's time to arm yourself with a thermometer and follow the temperature pauses. There are three of them, two of which are required:

1. Protein pause. The mash is kept for 15-20 minutes at a temperature of 25-55°C. This pause is not required. It is used if slightly modernized malt or “unmalted” is used. During the pause, the wort kettle (pot) must be insulated, and the wort should be periodically stirred. The protein pause promotes better protein digestion, reduces the turbidity of the wort, and facilitates further filtration. The density of taste slightly weakens, the amount of foam decreases.
2. Maltose pause. The mash is kept from 20 minutes to 1.5 hours at a temperature of 62-68°C. During this time, enzymes convert starch into maltose, a monosugar. At a low temperature and a long pause, more fermentable sugars are obtained, which means that the beer becomes stronger, while the density of taste is significantly lost. Higher temperatures and shorter pauses produce more non-fermentable dextrins, which give the beer a thick flavor. The fortress, accordingly, falls.
3. Pause saccharification. The mash is kept for 15 minutes at a temperature of 70-75°C. At this stage, the final saccharification of the wort takes place. Starch completely breaks down into dextrins, the breakdown of enzymes begins. With an increase in this pause, which makes sense only by reducing the previous ones, the strength of the beer drops and its taste density increases.

After the third pause, an iodine test should be done to check the completeness of saccharification. To do this, take a couple of drops of mash and place them on a white plate. Wait a few minutes and add a drop of iodine, then mix the drops. If there is no color change, then the wort is completely saccharified and can be put on fermentation. If the iodine turns blue, then there is still starch in the wort - the wort must be boiled for another 15 minutes at a temperature of 70-75 ° C. After that, it can still be boiled for 5 minutes at a temperature of 75-77 ° C and proceed to filtration.

Congestion filtering

If you originally mashed the wort in a bag, then there is practically no need to filter the wort. However, the grain (the undissolved part of the wort) still contains a lot of sugar, so it is advisable to rinse it. The optimum water temperature for flushing is 75-77°C. But more on that later. First you need to filter the wort and measure its density. Modern wort kettles are equipped with a filter system with a false bottom and a tap. All you have to do is place a large collection container under the tap and start draining the wort. The first wort will be cloudy, so it is best to drain it into a separate container until a clear liquid begins to flow from the tap. It is necessary to change the container to the main one, and return the first cloudy wort to the filter tank.

Malt grains work here, which is collected in a dense layer on the mesh bottom (if we are talking about a purchased wort kettle) and begins to play the role of a good filter. You can assemble your own filter system from a large tank and a sieve, but I will leave these engineering wisdoms to your conscience. After filtering, be sure to measure the density of the wort using a hydrometer. Typically, the density varies between 14-22%. It's time to bring the gravity of the wort up to the values ​​in our recipe using a rinse. The amount of water depends on the desired density.

For beer with a density of 12%, you should take the following amount of water at a temperature of 75-77 ° C (not higher):

During the filtration process, try to control the density of the wort using a hydrometer so as not to overdo it with the amount of wash water - at the end of the wash, more “useless” substances pass into the wort, which only increase the cloudiness.

Wort boiling and beer hopping

The resulting wort must be poured back into the wort kettle and boiled for 1-2 hours with the addition of hop cones. Brewing beer is needed to enrich the wort with hop bitterness and aroma. During boiling, all unnecessary microorganisms are killed, and the malt enzymes are finally destroyed. It is recommended to boil the wort for at least 1 hour. Boiling should be active, 10-15 minutes before the end of cooking, it is better to reduce the fire and cover the wort with a lid.

Put the wort on the fire, add hops for bitterness - about 80% of the hops rate. The bitterness that will transfer into the beer from hops depends on the amount of alpha acids contained in the buds (or granules). For example, to obtain a drink with a slight hop bitterness for 25 liters of wort, it is enough to take 25-50 g of hop pellets with an alpha acid content of 6.4%, for bitter beer - 60-100 g. The granules are simply put into the wort, it is better to put the cones into a cloth bag. 10-15 minutes before the end of the boil, you need to add hops for taste, and 5 minutes - for aroma. Irish moss is also added with flavor and aroma hops for better clarification of the beer.

Wort cooling

The boiled wort must be quickly cooled to a fermentation temperature of 16-18°C. It is important to cool quickly, in 20-30 minutes, - this reduces the risk of contamination of the wort with foreign microorganisms that can seriously compete with yeast. At home, this can be done with a cold water bath (with plenty of ice if possible).

If you are going to brew regularly, I advise you to purchase a chiller - a coil through which running cold water is supplied.

A chiller is the best way to quickly cool your beer after brewing.

Adding yeast with preparation

During cooling, it is advisable to ferment the yeast so that you do not have to wait later:

1. Pour a small amount of wort with a temperature of no more than 30 ° C into a sterile container and pour / pour yeast into it.
2. Cover with a sterile lid and let stand for 30-40 minutes. When signs of fermentation appear, the yeast can be added to the chilled wort.

But before adding yeast, the cold wort must be freed from suspensions, due to which the cold wort becomes cloudy. This process will have a positive effect on the final taste of the drink. To do this, stir the wort with a rotating motion using your mixing spoon. As a result of rotation, the suspensions will settle to the bottom in the center of the tank, and the wort can be poured into the fermentation brewery without any problems.

It is also important to saturate the wort with oxygen before introducing yeast cultures, which was all gone during the boil. To do this, the wort must be intensively mixed, and it is better to pour from a great height. Experienced brewers use aquarium compressors for aeration. Do not forget that everything should be as sterile as possible.

Main beer fermentation

Before setting the wort for fermentation, take a small amount of it to check the density. This information will come in handy later. The optimal density for light lager beer is 10-12%, for dense beer - 12-16%. Mix the wort well after pitching the yeast. Close the fermentation tank with a water seal lid and place it in the place where the beer will ferment. It should be a dry room with a stable temperature of 18-24°C.

Fermentation of beer lasts 5-8 days. The end of fermentation is characterized by the absence of carbon dioxide released through the water seal. We open the container, take a small amount of young beer to measure the density. For fermented beer, the density should drop to 2-2.2%. In a fermented beer, the gravity is constant because the sugars are no longer processed by the yeast. Knowing the initial and final density, you can calculate the final strength of the drink. If everything went well, the beer can be bottled and sent for maturation.

Overflow, fermentation, maturation

So we come to the most pleasant stage of brewing homemade beer. At this stage, the beer does not have a full taste. In order for this taste to develop, the beer must go through the process of maturation in tightly sealed bottles. Before pouring, you need to get rid of the yeast sediment - carefully drain the beer through a silicone hose, without moving the sediment. You can use an intermediate overflow: first, pour the beer into a container, which should be left at a low temperature (5-7 ° C) for a day, and then pour the completely clarified drink into bottles.

In order for the beer to ferment and be saturated with carbon dioxide, sugar or other substances that contain it are added to it, for example, honey or unhopped malt extract. For 1 liter of beer, it is enough to take 8-9 g of sugar or honey, malt extract - 11 g or 1.25 times more sugar. Of course, malt extract is preferable. Their sugar is better to cook syrup or use fructose-dextrose (6-7 g / 1 l). You can add sugar to each bottle, after which they need to be shaken well to completely dissolve, but it is better to mix the required amount of sugar / malt with beer in a separate container and pour the drink into bottles from there.

Beer is bottled in clean, sterile bottles. It is necessary to leave 3-4 cm from the neck for normal fermentation and carbon dioxide concentration. Glass bottles without tight corks should be sealed with new crown caps. Beer must be fermented in a dark room at room temperature. Ripening should take place in a dark, cool place for at least 1-2 weeks. In order not to get confused, it is better to label the bottles - indicate the type of beer on them, and the date when it was bottled. You can store it for 6-8 months, while the drink will remain “alive” all this time.

It's time to reap the fruits of your labors.

I will continue to cover the beer theme and hope for any possible help from you. Becoming a homebrewer is not difficult. For this, only one thing is required - the desire to cook. In conclusion, I would like to say that homebrewers are enthusiastic people who are not afraid to experiment. Do not limit yourself to anything other than consuming the results of your new hobby. For moderation is the best feast!

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Few people think about how to brew beer at home without equipment. After all, even the simplest recipe will take a lot of time and require certain financial costs.

But if you want to drink real alcohol without chemical additives, you can simplify the task by looking at a specialized store.

It is in it that you can buy special brewer's yeast, hops and malt for a dark or light version.

All stages of making traditional beer at home

Studying the technology and understanding how to brew beer at home without equipment in a simple way, it is important, first of all, to familiarize yourself with the equipment that will be required during the cooking process.

Need to purchase:

• a pot of 30 liters;
• gauze 5 meters long;
• containers in which the drink will ferment;
• silicone hose;
• container for cooling the wort;
• dark plastic bottles for storage.

Also, a thermometer, a hydrometer (for measuring sugar levels) and glass bottles, in which it will be stored in the future, will be useful. All devices must be thermally treated and wiped dry.

Ingredients:

• filtered water - 32 l;
• barley malt - 5 kg;
• hops - 45 g;
• brewer's yeast - 25 g;
• beet sugar (at the rate of 8 g per 1 liter of beer).

Cooking:

• We divide the hops into 3 equal parts so as not to be distracted by weighing the ingredient in the future. We collect ice water in the bathroom and put a container in it, prepare a piece of gauze for straining the wort.

• Pour 25 liters of water into the pan and heat to 80 degrees. We make a bag out of gauze, in which we put the malt and immerse it in a hot liquid. Next, we try to maintain the temperature from 65 to 72 degrees for 1.5 hours, setting the minimum fire, or turning the stove on and off. During this period, the malt will be sugared and the wort will become sweet.

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• We increase the warm-up to 80 degrees for 5 minutes. We take out the gauze and lower it into the remaining 7 liters of water to wash out the remaining sugars, squeeze. This liquid is added to the hot wort.
• Bring the water to a boil over moderate heat, remove the resulting foam and add ⅓ of the hops. We cook for 15 minutes.

• We lay the second portion and boil for 50 minutes. After adding the last part of the hops, brew the drink for another 10 minutes.
• We take the pan to, filter three times through cheesecloth from one container to another and cool.
• Dilute the yeast according to the instructions and add to the wort, mix and pour into a bottle or jar of 30 liters. We transfer to a room where it is possible to observe the temperature regime of 18-20 degrees. We close the water seal and leave to ferment for 7-10 days. If there is no such device, we put a medical glove on the throat of the container, having previously pierced a hole in it with a gypsy needle. We wrap it with adhesive tape at the base so that it does not fly off under the pressure of gases that will be released during fermentation.

• The process will start within the first day and gradually decline. When the gas stops emitting, you can remove the water seal.
• We add it to the bottles for storing beer according to the scheme indicated in the ingredients and proceed to the process of carbonization, namely filling the drink with carbon dioxide. To do this, lower the hose to the bottom of the beer bottle, but do not touch the bottom. We pull the air towards us and when the drink pours, we fill the bottles with it. It is important not to fill it up to the neck. We leave a couple of centimeters so that the beer “breathes” and tightly twist the lids. This will start the second fermentation process - carbonization.

We transfer the container to a room where the temperature is maintained at 20-23 degrees and leave it at rest for 2-3 weeks. After 7 days, the bottles should be shaken slightly and this procedure repeated until the end of the fermentation period. Then the low-alcohol drink can be transferred to the refrigerator or pantry.

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As it turned out, brewing beer at home without equipment is easy if you follow the instructions of a simple recipe and follow the manufacturing technology. A delicious drink will not contain preservatives and impurities harmful to the body.