LEARN TO BREW - OR BREW BETTER BEER
Everyone who gets the bug to start homebrewing has several decisions to make. The first decision is what kind of beer do you want to brew? Next, you will need a recipe. Finally, you will need some equipment for cooking, fermenting and storing what you make. Prices vary based on what direction you choose to go in your brewing adventures, but you should be able to get started for less than $200. The stuff is nearly indestructable. I have been using my first set-up for more than 20 years.
GREAT ONLINE RESOURCES FOR BEGINNERS OR GURUS
You can find many great websites with videos and instructions on how to get
started in hombrewing. I recommend the following:
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Great YouTube video that shows the whole process
FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO LIKE BOOKS
The homebrewer's number one resource has always beeen AHA godfather Charlie Papazian's classic tome, The Complete Joy of Home Brewing (now in its Fourth Edition).
You may want to consider these books as well:
<more coming soon>
EXTRACT? ALL GRAIN?
There is an easy way and a hard way to brew a beer. Easy is with a pre-packaged kit that you can find at many homebrew stores near you, or online. Everything is included in one neat package. If you have a homebrew store nearby, you might want to start out with an extract beer. These give you a little more ingredient flexibility than a kit, and the grain mashing process that creates the extract is already done for you.Extract beers taste great.
The hard way is to do all-grain brewing. It is only "hard" because of the extra time and expense involved. It gives you total control over all parts of the process if you find you have a need to do that. It takes a lot longer and there is a real science involved in converting grains into extract malt syrup and involves cryptic words like “decoction” and “sparging.”
There is a lot to learn about making beer, particularly in terms of consistency and sanitation, that need to become learned habits before you arise to the level of an advanced all-grain brewer.
WHAT STYLE SHOULD I MAKE?
So, the style of beer. There are two kinds of beer; ales (top fermented) and lagers (bottom fermented). Ales are generally easier to brew and require less time. They ferment at room temperature. Lagers generally take longer to ferment and need to be kept at a cooler temperature for best results. Ales are beers like Blondes, Wits, IPAs, ESBs, Ambers, Browns, Porters and Stouts. Lagers are beers like, Pilsners, Helles, Bocks, Kolsch, and of course Lagers.
The style of beer you decide to make determines the types of grains, extracts, hops and yeasts you will need and adjuncts specific to the style – like orange peel, or treatments for the water (e.g. Burtonizing). Generally you will want to use Spring Water, rather than distilled or tap water. It has less chlorine and other ingredients that can add undesirable flavors to the beer. I usually brew things I can’t get in bottle shops, or that are “seasonal” that I like to have year-round.
EQUIPMENT
You will need:
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a heat source (kitchen stove or free-standing gas burner)
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a cooking pot – most likely a three gallon soup pot or some such device
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a carboy – a glass vessel used to ferment the beer
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a variety of hoses for transferring the wort (cooked beer)
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a stirring spoon
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various steeping bags for grains and hops
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a thermometer
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a hydrometer
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an airlock
Once the beer is done cooking, you will put it into a carbouy or other
fermenting vessel. After fermentation is complete you will need to
carbonate it. You can do that by adding some priming sugar and stor-
ing the beer in bottles (12 oz or 22 oz) for a couple of weeks, or in a
5-gallon corny keg. If you decide on bottles, you will need the bottles,
bottle caps, a capper and a siphon hose. If you decide to put it in a
keg, you will need a regulator and CO2 tank.Either way, you need to keep everything sterile during the transfer process or you will end up with “infected” beer, that not only will taste bad, but could explode all over your storage room. (Been there. Done that.)
PRIMARY AND SECONDARY FERMENTATION
After the wort undergoes its intiatial fermentation in the carboy, some homebrewers like to rack it into a second carboy for a few more days. This can help to clarify the beer and is often used on more complex styles of beer. Lagers and lambics take a lot longer to ferment and develop than basic ales, and also have some lower temperature aging requirements.
BOTTLES OR A KEG
Bottles make your beer easily transportable. But it takes a lot of bottles and a lot of time to sanitize, fill and cap the beer. If you are primarly going to consume your beer at home, you can use a cornelius keg, regulator and CO2 set up. Also, bottle-conditioning your beer will take two weeks to achieve proper levels of carbonation of the fermented beer. You can force carbonate your beer in a keg and cut the time you have to wait to drink your beer by a couple of weeks, You can always transfer beer from the keg into bottles if you want to take a few bottles over to a friend's house or enter it into a competition. Bottle-aged beer often has some residual sedimentation that you will not want to pour into your glass.
HOMEBREW SUPPLIES - WHERE TO BUY
Here are some suggestions for online brewing supply shops who can set you up with everything you need:
Larry’s Brewing Supply in Tukwila, WA, has pretty much everything the homebrewer needs. They also sell online.
They have been serving the home and professional brewer of beer, wine, soda pop and coffee since 1990. Larry’s is committed to providing the best quality ingredients and equipment, from parts and pieces to complete brewing kits and systems.
Northern Brewer supplies homebrewers all over the country. They have a ton of great info on how to brew, or how to run a homebrew club on their web site.
If you prefer to pick out your ingredients yourself, there are several good brewing supply retail shops nearby for Renton Area Homebrewers.
WANT AN EVEN EASIER WAY TO GET STARTED?
There are these wonderful places where you get all the fun and they get all the messy clean up and vigilance over the fermenting process. It is called (brass fanfare - ta tata tahhh) The U-Brew Store. These business have recipes, ingredients and all the equipment you could ever want, at their place. So if space is a problem where you live, check out a U-Brew near you. You do all the work to brew the beer. They store it for you and make sure it gets fermented properly. You come back in about 10 days with your CLEAN bottles and they fill them up for you. Pretty sweet.
