|
Beer Brewing at Home
Believe it or not, you can make superb-tasting
beers in your own home. In fact, you can
create home brews that stand up very well
against the best commercial products.
There are a number of excellent
books and
magazines on home brewing. Some
are basically
cookbooks that help you copy
noteworthy commercial
products. Others delve more deeply
into the
chemistry and theory of home
brewing.
Home brewers fall into 2 camps,
broadly speaking:
- Whole-grain brewers "make it from scratch.".
The standard batch in recipes is 5 gallons
of beer, which yields just over 50 12-ounce
bottles. A batch this size requires roughly
9 to 12 pounds of whole grains, which must
be steeped in hot water to release their
sugars. To do this correctly, you need a
very large, unwieldy pot. You must monitor
water temperatures precisely to get the desired
result.
- Extract brewers take a critical shortcut.
"Extracts" are either dry (a sweet,
flour-like powder, like the malt used in
malted milk) or liquid (a sweet, thick syrup
that comes in cans and has the consistency
of molasses). The typical 5-gallon batch
requires about 6 pounds of extract, which
is about a gallon in volume. All this extract,
in turn, needs to be dissolved and cooked
in about 2.5 gallons of water. You can split
this between 2 large-sized pots.
Extract brewers cannot entirely escape using
whole grains. Most extract-based recipes
will require them to steep about a pound
of grains to get the proper flavors. Still,
that is much easier to handle than the bulk
involved in whole-grain brewing. Moreover,
extract-based home brews can taste as fine
as whole-grain beers.
There is another big divide in
home brewing:
- Ales are relatively easy to produce at home,
since they ferment and age at room temperature.
- Lagers require specialized refrigeration
equipment, or especially cold cellars, since
they must ferment and age at temperatures
well below 50º F.
If you have a home brew supply
shop near
your home, or a home brewing
club in your
area, they can help you get started
by showing
you the ropes. The equipment
that you need
to get started is relatively
inexpensive
(roughly $100 or so) and does
not require
much space to store (the bulkiest
items are
a pair of large glass carboys
for fermentation
and aging). Shops also do mail
orders, so
the absence of a nearby supplier should be
no impediment. They also are
expert at creating
"kits" that include
all the necessary
ingredients to produce a given
type of beer.
Cheers! |
| Where to Shop (click to visit) |
 |
|
|
