Brewing beer is nothing more than turning sugars from barley into alcohol… this can be done three ways, all-grain brewing, extract brewing and kit brewing…
Extract brewing and kit brewing are easier because the starches from barley have already been converted into sugar… all a brewer must do is add the sugar to water, boil it and ferment it…
Kit brewing is even easier because the sugar from extract kits is already bittered with hops… extract brewing on the other hand uses dry malt extract or liquid malt extract, which is nothing but sugar from barley and needs to be bittered with hops… therefore extract brewing requires an extra step, which is adding hops during the boil…
Although kit brewing is the easiest, you don’t have any flexibility to create your own recipes… extract brewing on the other hand allows you to brew virtually every style all-grain brewers can…
You can click this link for complete instructions on how to brew beer using extract…
or if you are a bit more advanced, you can read these instructions on how to brew all grain beers…
In summary, you take malted barley and soak it in hot water (around 150 °F) and leave it at that temperature for at least 30 minutes… this converts starches into sugar and you get water with sugar at the end… extract brewing skips this step and you simply add the sugar to the water and voila, everything else is the same…
You boil to coagulate proteins and to get bitterness out of hops…
This lasts for about 60 minutes and after that, you cool down your sugar water (called wort), and you add yeast…
The most important step is fermentation…
Most new brewers focus on mixing ingredients and boiling and forget about fermentation… experienced brewers focus on fermentation…
If you keep the fermentation temperature constant, you will brew cleaner and tastier beers and avoid any stuck fermentations or lack of airlock activity…
There are other techniques to improve your beer by controlling the temperature including lagering your beers…
After fermentation is complete you either bottle your beer or keg it…
The purpose of both is to carbonate your beer which is also a very important step most new brewers disregard… 80% of recipes will suggest 5 ounces of corn sugar to prime your beer with… this fits many beer styles, but some beer styles are better off with lower carbonation levels and some need higher carbonation levels…
Low carbonation levels can bring the maltyness of a beer out, while high carbonation levels tends to hide it… however, higher carbonation levels are good for aromatic beers, like IPAs which usually have strong hop aroma…
So if you want to start brewing beer, you must first determine what method you are going to use… extract or all-grain?
I don’t recommend kit brewing at all… I suggest you start out with extract and master the ‘cold’ side of brewing, which includes fermentation and carbonation of beers…
Once you have that down, then you can move up to all-grain brewing… there are no significant advantages to all-grain brewing other than the satisfaction of starting from scratch… since you have more variables that can affect the flavor of beer with all grain, a new brewer will have more trouble troubleshooting bad batches of beer…
All-grain brewing also requires more equipment, and the nice thing about extract brewing is that you can use all the equipment to brew your all-grain batches…
If you want to learn more about brewing your own beer and get tips and techniques to brew better beer then join our newsletter below where I share tips and tricks I currently use to brew my own beers…
