Have you ever wondered about how to make beer? If you are one of those people who enjoy having a sip of alcohol beverage, then read on and learn how to make beer. Who knows, after having created a perfect homemade beer, you can enter it in beer-making contests and might even get a chance at the pot.
Ingredients and Equipments
It is easy to make a homemade beer. For this, you will need light dried malt extract (three pounds), crushed crystal malt (eight ounces), Northern Brewer pellet hops (one ounce), brewers yeast (one package), and finally sugar for bottling (three eights of a cup). This will give you about 2.5 gallons.
You will also need a brew pot, strainer, funnel, kitchen thermometer, containers, and bottles for your beer.
The Process of How to Make Beer
Place your crystal malt in a freezer bag and crush them, but just enough that they look like broken grains not like flour. Next is called steeping wherein you place your crushed grains into about 2.5 gallons of water and then heat it to about 155 degrees.
After it has reached that temperature, turn off the heat and let it sit for at least 30 minutes, making sure that you have covered the pot, then strain it. Once done, boil the liquid. Once boiling, turn the heat off and pour in your malt extract and stir. Turn the heat on once more and let it boil again. Add in about two thirds of an ounce of your hop pellets while it is still boiling and leave it for about an hour.
After an hour, add in the rest of the hop pellets before covering the pot with an air lock and letting it sit for another 10 minutes. This allows the carbon dioxide to go out while still at the fermentation stage.
After it has cooled, you now have an unfermented beer or wort, which you will strain using a strainer and funnel, making sure that it does not spill over the fermentation bottle, before adding in the yeast. Let it sit in a cool and dim area for about a week to ten days (called fermentation process). During this stage, you will see foam and bubbles form.
After this is the priming stage wherein you will add your sugar to about a cup of water and let it boil for five minutes. Let it cool first before you place it in a new container that will hold the fermented beer. In transferring the fermented beer to the new container, you should transfer it carefully, making sure that you take no sediment that has accumulated in the bottom with it.
You now have a finished product, but before you go and share them with friends and families, you should let it age first for about another week in the cool and dim area. This also allows for carbonation of the beer.