Beer, like food, can be as easy or as hard to make as you like.
You can spend a few minutes on a simple home brew, or spend hours and hours of tinkering, adjusting, and providing of tender loving care…. there is no “right or wrong” here as far as making your own beer is concerned.
Here is a very simple, bare bones method of homebrewing.
The key ingredient is a “Brew Can” – a can of premade sticky molasses stuff available at almost all supermarkets in many of your favourite beer brands and styles. These “Brew Cans” include instructions. If you follow them, you’ll have a pretty good beer ready for drinking in a month or two.
Oh, yes – you’ll need a brew making or home brew kit too – also available at your local supermarket or larger variety store.
Simple Beer Recipe
Ingredients:
- 1 can of your favourite “Brew Can” – available at your local supermarket.
- 1.5 kg of Sugar (or there abouts).
- 1 packet of yeast (usually included on the “Brew Can”).
- Some cold and some boiling water.
Brewing Instructions:
1. Clean and sanitize ALL equipment / components of your Home Brew Kit.
2. Mix the contents of your Brew Can in 2 litres of hot water in the home brew kit “barrel”.
3. Add cool water to the 10 litre mark and stir vigorously.
4. Add the sugar – keep stirring.
5. Add 20 – 22 liters of cold water – keep stirring.
6. Sprinkle yeast on the surface and seal.
7. Store your barrel in a cool, dry place that has a consistent temperature preferably at 20degC or less. Fermentation should begin over the next day or two.
8. Leave your brew for at least a week, and preferably two weeks – until the bubbling / foaming stops.
9. Bottling – clean and sterilise ALL bottles.
10. Add one teaspoon of sugar into each bottle – most Home Brew Kit barrels hold enough beer for approx 30 bottles.
11. Carefully fill each bottle – your home brew barrel should have a tap or bung at the bottom for this.
12. Carefully cap each bottle. Most Home Brew Kits include a simple capping gizmo that you bang with a hammer. Don’t whack it too hard, or your bottle will smash !
13. Carefully and slowly mix the sugar and beer in the bottle together – a slow up-ending of each bottle a few times will do.
14. Store your new beers in a cool, dry place – preferably upright. Secondary fermentation will begin (ie the adding of the bubbles !!) in the bottle. Leave them alone for at least a month….. As tempting as it may be, the longer you leave it, the better your homebrew beer will taste. Try to resist for 2 or 3 or even 4 months.
15. Grab a few bottles and stick ‘em in the ‘fridge.
16. Invite 2 or 3 of your closest friends over. Make a speech. Open a bottle, pour into a glass. Make another speech. Toast your friends, their partners, a political or royal figurehead, yourself. Drink. If it tastes good, you will be a hero. If it tastes bad, your friends are perfectly within their right to laugh at you.
17. Optional – as a suggestion, before your friends arrive in Step 16 above, run down to the bottle shop and buy a six pack of commercially available beers “just in case”….
Thanks,
Matthew – http://www.FortyBeers.com
P.S. – If you need some further video instructions on brewing your own beer, then Click Here .
Tags: Beer Recipes, Brew Beer, Homebrewing
