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I love beer and, perhaps, I can call myself a connoisseur of this drink. I can always distinguish a good craft drink from a so-called spill.
And somehow my godfather interested me with the offer to brew beer ourselves. The procedure seems to be nothing complicated, so why not try it?
I’ll make a reservation right away that beer drinks with the addition of any fruit syrups are not mine, I can’t call it beer at all.
The beer should be malty and thick, it should not be water. From these introductory we began to build on.
This story was sent by my subscriber Kirill.
Preparing everything you need – the first step
We decided to take the budget route, since in a local store where you can buy everything for home-made alcohol, normal ground barley malt cost from 80 r / kg.
Therefore, 3 kg of unground barley malt was purchased at 45 rubles per kg and 5 kg of ordinary barley groats for 80 rubles.
The only thing I refused to save on was yeast, Safale S yeast, they cost me 310 rubles per stove, I also bought granulated hops by weight for 150 r in the store – this is approximately 50 g.
Upon returning home, the malt was passed through a grist, and the grits were poured into a saucepan and filled with ordinary cold water. I believe that cooking is a pointless step, because after three hours of soaking, the effect is the same.
Heating, saccharification and alcohol pause – the second stage
Having poured malt into the infused groats, the whole thing was put on the stove on the smallest fire.
It is worth mentioning that I no longer cooked in a saucepan, but in the same cube where I usually make moonshine, as it contributes to more uniform heating. I brewed with a few pauses, which I read about on the forum of Rostov brewers.
Allegedly, they contribute to the maximum saccharification of cereals with malt. There were 5 pauses in total:
- 43⁰С – 20 minutes.
- 53⁰С – 30 minutes.
- 63⁰С – the so-called alcohol break, 60 minutes.
- 72⁰С – 15 minutes.
- 80⁰С – mashout (an important stage during which inactivation of all enzymes occurs) 10 minutes.
All this time I did not climb into the cube and did not interfere with the contents, I mixed it only before draining the wort. I poured it through a colander into a separate barrel, and then washed the cube and put it on the stove again, pouring all the wort into it.
Malt brewing in a cube
Cooking – the third stage
Most of all, I liked the cooking process, as it is dynamic and you do not have to sit idle.
Putting the cube with the wort on the stove, the whole thing boiled only after 30 minutes. During this time, I divided all the hops into three equal parts of about 15 grams each, and also started the yeast.
In total, I got about 30 liters of wort, the wort looks like a brown substance that does not at all resemble beer. After boiling the wort for about 40 minutes, I added 2 portions of hops, mixing everything thoroughly.
After that, it was necessary to cool the wort, and this must be done as quickly as possible. As connoisseurs write on the forums, beer is a very “painful” product, therefore, if it is cooled for a long time, it can “get sick”, i.e. pick up germs from the air.
In order to cool the wort, I have my own technique – I simply freeze several bottles with ice in advance and place them in a cube. After 3-4 minutes I change them for new ones, and after 10 minutes the wort has a temperature of 33-34⁰С.
Fermentation and result
After cooling, I poured the malt into the barrel, poured half a pack of yeast, closed the lid as tightly as possible, installed a water seal and left it as it is.
Fermentation was completed in a week, from which I can conclude that the yeast was of a fairly high quality.
My “brew” is fermenting
When it came time to drain, I prepared 15 two-liter bottles, poured 20 grams of glucose into each of them, this is necessary to restore the alkalinity of the product.
I managed to drain 12 out of 15 bottles, respectively, 24 liters. Already in the evening the beer could be tasted. To be honest, you can drink, of course, but this is far from the most delicious beer that I could taste. There was not enough carbonation and there was a bitter aftertaste.
I do not know what exactly I did wrong, or it should be so, in this matter I am not an expert. Maybe you have some guesses?