How to brew beer from malt and hops at home

To become a homebrewer, all you need is the desire to brew beer. For the rest, the exorbitantly developed brewing industry will help, as well as this article. The collected material is a complete guide to brewing beer at home from malt and hops. More is not required.

Let’s start with the fact that beer is one of the most difficult alcoholic beverages to prepare. Chances are your first homemade beer won’t turn out the way you envisioned it. To be afraid of this means to leave forever the idea of ​​​​mastering home brewing, which means that this article does not make sense for you to read further. If you are not afraid to take risks, are ready to work and experiment, then the following should help you master a new craft, which has recently become a common male hobby. With thousands of like-minded people, of course.

Beer, conditionally, can be prepared in two ways: from malt extract and directly from grain. The first way is the easiest: you need to buy malt extract, mix it with water, boil it, add sugar and yeast, ferment the resulting wort and bottle it (we wrote a separate guide on beer from malt extracts). It doesn’t sound interesting, but it was malt concentrates that became a good tool for popularizing home brewing. Maybe that’s where you should start. Now I will explain.

But there comes a time when a brewer, having tried various concentrates and additives to them, begins to think about traditional brewing, which, oddly enough, is practiced by beer giants.

If you still think that large factories brew beer from “powder”, then you are deeply mistaken. This is myth number 8. Malt concentrate is many times more expensive than ordinary beer malt, not to mention the organization of its production, so it is not profitable for beer giants to use them.

Well, let’s brew our first beer from malt, hops, water and yeast!

Ingredients for brewing beer

In 1516, Germany passed the Reinheitsgebot “Beer Purity Law”, according to which beer must be brewed exclusively from barley malt, hops and water. We do not suffer from purism, but it is from malt and hops that we will continue to dance, as well as from yeast, which we discovered much later. But we assume that any interesting ingredients can be added to the wort: unmalted grains, honey, herbs, fruits and juices from them, vegetables, even mushrooms and tree bark. Brewing is a creative process.

MALT

HOP

YEAST

WATER

An equally important ingredient that will ultimately affect the quality of homemade beer. Ideally, water should be taken from clean natural sources. It is believed that it is better to use soft water for brewing beer. Tap water must be defended and passed through filters or boiled.

Equipment for brewing beer

By and large, all you need to brew beer is an enamel pot, as well as a fermentation tank, which can be used as glass bottles. However, this is a matter of convenience. Today in online stores you can order everything you need for a home brewery, which will greatly simplify your life (a set of tools needed for brewing beer is called a home brewery).

First of all, it is a convenient brew kettle, also known as a mash tun, enamelled or stainless steel, most often with a thermo-case. As a fermentation tank, a fermenter, which is mainly called a “beer factory”, plastic containers can be used, with a slot in the lid for a water seal, or plastic or stainless steel barrels equipped with faucets, thermometers, pressure gauges and other convenient pribludy.

Now collectively without what it is difficult to do:

We advise you to take a closer look at some of the products for brewing on the world-famous Chinese marketplace AliExpress. Recently, we have been running a section in which we publish selections of such products. For example, in this article you will find links to penny measuring instruments necessary for comfortable brewing and much more (scales, thermometers, hydrometers, volumetric flasks, a mash bag, etc.)

Prepare

Cleanliness is the key to success! In this case, this is not an empty phrase. Beer wort is an ideal breeding ground for any microorganisms that in a matter of hours will develop colonies in it and beer will no longer work out of this. Always use sterile containers and utensils, and minimize wort exposure to air. During brewing, wash your hands thoroughly with soap and water, and preferably wipe them with alcohol, as you would with any tool that will come into contact with the wort.

The containers can be washed with iodine solution or with special disinfectants that are stocked in beer shops. You can also use a weak solution of bleach: 1 tbsp. l. for 5 liters of water. But still more reliable than special equipment. After using them, be sure to rinse the disinfected containers with plenty of water, preferably with hot water (be careful with plastic). After iodine, it is not necessary to rinse. Do not use several solutions at once – their reaction with each other can lead to the formation of toxic substances.

As a sterilizer, you can use heads from under any moonshine.

Preparation of beer wort

Malt preparation

Mashing malt infusion

Wort mashing is the most important process in beer brewing. At this stage, the crushed malt is mixed with water (mashed), as a result of which the malt enzymes go into solution and break down the starch into sugar, which the yeast will then process. Enzymes require a certain temperature to work. There are two fundamentally different methods of mashing: infusion and decoction. We will use infusion, which is a classic home mashing scheme, during which the wort is heated sequentially, while maintaining the temperature pauses necessary for the action of enzymes. The decoction method is used in factories as a cheaper one – part of the wort is boiled and added to the rest, raising its temperature to the desired one.

For a classic beer recipe, a 1/3 water ratio (1 part malt/3 parts water) is used. Therefore, to prepare 25 liters of beer, we need to take 4 kg of malt and 12 liters of water. Water must be boiled and cooled to 60 ° C. Pour the malt in a thin stream, thoroughly mixing the wort so that no lumps form. If you haven’t got a convenient wort kettle with a filter system, you can make your first attempts to brew beer using the “in a bag” method – pour malt into a cloth bag and “mash” right in it.

At this stage, it is advisable to check the acidity of the wort using a pH test. For brewing, the optimal pH is 5,2..5,5. How to properly acidify. For this, any food acids are used.

After mixing hot water with malt, it’s time to arm yourself with a thermometer and follow the temperature pauses. There are three of them, two of which are required:

1. Protein pause. The mash is kept for 15-20 minutes at a temperature of 25-55°C. This pause is not required. It is used if slightly modernized malt or “unmalted” is used. During the pause, the wort kettle (pot) must be insulated, and the wort should be periodically stirred. The protein pause promotes better protein digestion, reduces the turbidity of the wort, and facilitates further filtration. The density of taste slightly weakens, the amount of foam decreases.
2. Maltese pause. The mash is kept from 20 minutes to 1,5 hours at a temperature of 62-68°C. During this time, enzymes convert starch into maltose, a monosugar. At a low temperature and a long pause, more fermentable sugars are obtained, which means that the beer becomes stronger, while the density of taste is significantly lost. Higher temperatures and shorter pauses produce more non-fermentable dextrins, which give the beer a thick flavor. The fortress, accordingly, falls.
3. Pause saccharification. The mash is kept for 15 minutes at a temperature of 70-75°C. At this stage, the final saccharification of the wort takes place. Starch completely breaks down into dextrins, the breakdown of enzymes begins. With an increase in this pause, which makes sense only by reducing the previous ones, the strength of the beer drops and its taste density increases.

After the third pause, an iodine test should be done to check the completeness of saccharification. To do this, take a couple of drops of mash and place them on a white plate. Wait a few minutes and add a drop of iodine, then mix the drops. If there is no color change, then the wort is completely saccharified and can be put on fermentation. If the iodine turns blue, then there is still starch in the wort – the wort must be boiled for another 15 minutes at a temperature of 70-75 ° C. After that, it can still be boiled for 5 minutes at a temperature of 75-77 ° C and proceed to filtration.

Congestion filtering

If you originally mashed the wort in a bag, then there is practically no need to filter the wort. However, the grain (the undissolved part of the wort) still contains a lot of sugar, so it is advisable to rinse it. The optimum water temperature for flushing is 75-77°C. But more on that later. First you need to filter the wort and measure its density. Modern wort kettles are equipped with a filter system with a false bottom and a tap. All you have to do is place a large collection container under the tap and start draining the wort. The first wort will be cloudy, so it is best to drain it into a separate container until a clear liquid begins to flow from the tap. It is necessary to change the container to the main one, and return the first cloudy wort to the filter tank.

Malt grains work here, which is collected in a dense layer on the mesh bottom (if we are talking about a purchased wort kettle) and begins to play the role of a good filter. You can assemble your own filter system from a large tank and a sieve, but I will leave these engineering wisdoms to your conscience. After filtering, be sure to measure the density of the wort using a hydrometer. Typically, the density varies between 14-22%. It’s time to bring the gravity of the wort up to the values ​​in our recipe using a rinse. The amount of water depends on the desired density.

For beer with a density of 12%, you should take the following amount of water at a temperature of 75-77 ° C (not higher):

During the filtration process, try to control the density of the wort with a hydrometer so as not to overdo it with the amount of wash water – at the end of the wash, more “useless” substances pass into the wort, which only increase the cloudiness.

Wort boiling and beer hopping

The resulting wort must be poured back into the wort kettle and boiled for 1-2 hours with the addition of hop cones. Brewing beer is needed to enrich the wort with hop bitterness and aroma. During boiling, all unnecessary microorganisms are killed, and the malt enzymes are finally destroyed. It is recommended to boil the wort for at least 1 hour. Boiling should be active, 10-15 minutes before the end of cooking, it is better to reduce the fire and cover the wort with a lid.

Put the wort on the fire, add hops for bitterness – about 80% of the hops rate. The bitterness that will transfer into the beer from hops depends on the amount of alpha acids contained in the buds (or granules). For example, to obtain a drink with a slight hop bitterness for 25 liters of wort, it is enough to take 25-50 g of granulated hops with an alpha acid content of 6,4%, for bitter beer – 60-100 g. into a cloth bag. 10-15 minutes before the end of the boil, you need to add hops for taste, and 5 minutes – for aroma. Irish moss is also added with flavor and aroma hops for better clarification of the beer.

Cooling beer wort

The boiled wort must be quickly cooled to a fermentation temperature of 16-18°C. It is important to cool quickly, in 20-30 minutes, – this reduces the risk of contamination of the wort with foreign microorganisms that can seriously compete with yeast. At home, this can be done with a cold water bath (with plenty of ice if possible).

If you are going to brew regularly, I advise you to purchase a chiller – a coil through which running cold water is supplied.

Adding yeast with preparation

During cooling, it is advisable to ferment the yeast so that you do not have to wait later:

1. Pour a small amount of wort with a temperature of no more than 30 ° C into a sterile container and pour / pour yeast into it.
2. Cover with a sterile lid and let stand for 30-40 minutes. When signs of fermentation appear, the yeast can be added to the chilled wort.

But before adding the yeast, the cold wort must be freed from suspensions, due to which the cold wort becomes cloudy. This process will have a positive effect on the final taste of the drink. To do this, stir the wort with a rotating motion using your mixing spoon. As a result of rotation, the suspensions will settle to the bottom in the center of the tank, and the wort can be poured into the fermentation brewery without any problems.

It is also important to saturate the wort with oxygen before introducing yeast cultures, which was all gone during the boil. To do this, the wort must be intensively mixed, and it is better to pour from a great height. Experienced brewers use aquarium compressors for aeration. Do not forget that everything should be as sterile as possible.

Main beer fermentation

Before setting the wort for fermentation, take a small amount of it to check the density. This information will come in handy later. The optimal density for light lager beer is 10-12%, for dense beer – 12-16%. Mix the wort well after pitching the yeast. Close the fermentation tank with a water seal lid and place it in the place where the beer will ferment. It should be a dry room with a stable temperature of 18-24°C.

Fermentation of beer lasts 5-8 days. The end of fermentation is characterized by the absence of carbon dioxide released through the water seal. We open the container, take a small amount of young beer to measure the density. For fermented beer, the density should drop to 2-2,2%. In a fermented beer, the gravity is constant because the sugars are no longer processed by the yeast. Knowing the initial and final density, you can calculate the final strength of the drink. If everything went well, the beer can be bottled and sent for maturation.

Overflow, fermentation, maturation

So we come to the most pleasant stage of brewing homemade beer. At this stage, the beer does not have a full taste. In order for this taste to develop, the beer must go through the process of maturation in tightly sealed bottles. Before pouring, you need to get rid of the yeast sediment – carefully drain the beer through a silicone hose, without moving the sediment. You can use an intermediate overflow: first, pour the beer into a container, which should be left at a low temperature (5-7 ° C) for a day, and then bottle the completely clarified drink.

In order for the beer to ferment and be saturated with carbon dioxide, sugar or other substances that contain it are added to it, for example, honey or unhopped malt extract. For 1 liter of beer, it is enough to take 8-9 g of sugar or honey, malt extract – 11 g or 1,25 times more sugar. Of course, malt extract is preferable. Their sugar is better to cook syrup or use fructose-dextrose (6-7 g / 1 l). You can add sugar to each bottle, after which they need to be shaken well to completely dissolve, but it is better to mix the required amount of sugar / malt with beer in a separate container and pour the drink into bottles from there.

Beer is bottled in clean, sterile bottles. It is necessary to leave 3-4 cm from the neck for normal fermentation and carbon dioxide concentration. Glass bottles without tight corks should be sealed with new crown caps. Beer must be fermented in a dark room at room temperature. Ripening should take place in a dark, cool place for at least 1-2 weeks. In order not to get confused, it is better to label the bottles – indicate the type of beer on them, and the date when it was bottled. You can store it for 6-8 months, while the drink will remain “alive” all this time.

I will continue to cover the beer theme and hope for any possible help from you. Becoming a homebrewer is not difficult. For this, only one thing is required – the desire to cook. In conclusion, I would like to say that homebrewers are enthusiastic people who are not afraid to experiment. Do not limit yourself to anything other than consuming the results of your new hobby. For moderation is the best feast!