The Naked Pint (48 page)

The basic brewing process consists of these steps: making the wort, fermenting, conditioning, bottling, and drinking. It’s really that simple. The complexity depends on the recipe, the ingredients, your equipment, your patience, and proper sanitation. There are a ton of great resources out there with extensive details that will help you learn how to brew well. We offer a quick, basic step-by-step here but encourage you to pick up some of the books mentioned at the end of this chapter, and visit the many homebrew websites on the Internet.

First, gather your equipment and your ingredients based on a recipe. Start with something simple; nothing with fancy yeast or spices or fruit. Some styles are easier for homebrew, like a Pale Ale or a Porter, but don’t assume that darker brews are harder to brew. Everything is hard to perfect or do as well as a professional brewer, but some beers are good starter styles. An ale is easier for a beginner than a lager because, as you know, a lager needs to ferment at a steady low temperature for a long time. This requires some sort of large refrigerator for your homebrew, which most people don’t have. Ales can ferment at a high room temperature, and they take a shorter amount of time. We suggest brewing small batches; five gallons is standard for a homebrew and still makes a lot of beer.

The following steps are for brewing with malt extract instead of malted grains because extract is the best jumping-off point for beginners. Consult more advanced homebrew books if you feel you are advanced enough to graduate to all-grain brewing.

Sanitize your equipment. Again, we know how annoying this may seem, but you
must
do it. Bacteria can ruin your brew, and it’s a shame to go through the process and wait for your beer to be ready only to find it tastes off because of bacteria. You need to soak
all
of the equipment you are going to use in a sanitizer/water mix (1 ounce per 5 gallons of water). This means you need a soaking tub or big sink. Soak for about 15 minutes, then rinse everything thoroughly so that the sanitizer doesn’t end up in your brew.

Get the water boiling. Fill up your brewpot, leaving some room (about 6 inches) at the top. When you add the ingredients, the water level will rise, and you don’t want the dreaded boilover. You will eventually add the boiled liquid, or wort, to more water after the boil, but try to boil as much of the water as you can, for sterilization reasons.

Add your malt extract. Remove the water from the heat first so that you don’t get boilover when you add the malt. You will most likely be dumping this syrupy substance (taste it, it’s yummy!) from a plastic container. Use some of the boiling water to rinse the container and get all of the extract out. Stir this mix and bring back to a boil. Don’t leave it alone because you don’t want the extract to burn on the bottom of the pot. Let the mixture boil for 15 minutes. You will add hops (probably hop pellets, but possibly whole hops) at certain increments based on the recipe you’re following. This will vary. After the hop additions, you will boil for a while, stirring occasionally.