Classical brewing technology is quite complicated, it requires special equipment and strict observance of the brewing temperature. But having hops and malt (preferably), you can make a drink according to a simplified scheme, which will resemble the original in taste and color. We will look at the simplest recipes for homemade beer.
Hops and malt are easiest to buy online. Ideally, it is good to have a mini brewery, but due to the high cost, not everyone can afford this device. The proposed recipes do not require additional devices, a saucepan and a fermentation tank are enough.
Beer made from hops and malt
Ingredients:
- barley malt - 5 kg;
- water - 20 liters;
- fresh hop cones - 5 cups;
- brewer's yeast - 50 grams;
- sugar - 150 grams;
- salt - 1 tablespoon.
1. Dissolve barley malt in water and leave for a day.
2. The next morning, pour the mixture into a cooking pot and add salt.
3. Boil the dissolved malt for 2 hours.
4. Add hops and boil for another 20 minutes.
5. Strain through a sieve, then cool the wort to room temperature (necessarily below 30 degrees).
6. Add brewer's yeast with sugar, stir and leave to ferment for 12-18 hours in a dark, warm place.
7. Pour the drink into bottles. After 12-14 hours, the beer will be ready.
Hops and malt recipe The result is a natural home-made product that is close to traditional technology. If 20 liters of beer are not immediately needed, the proportions can be reduced several times. Some homebrewers do not even use special containers, making do with a regular bucket.
Recipe for beer without yeast (honey or fruit)
Ingredients:
- overripe strawberries or strawberries - 2 kg;
- honey or candied jam - 4-5 kg;
- hops - 25 grams;
- water - 25 liters.
1. Pour 25 liters of warm water into a container, add honey (jam), stir until honey dissolves in water.
2. Add pre-cooked strawberries (berries must not be washed to leave wild yeast on the surface), which is used as a starter, replacing brewer's yeast. Add hops and mix again.
3. Leave in a warm place for 5-7 days for fermentation, tying the neck with gauze.
4. Close the container with a lid and leave to ferment for 30-40 days. Fermentation will end when the berries sink to the bottom of the container. At this stage, the wort needs to be stirred every day.
After 14 days, try the taste, if the drink is not sweet enough, add another 1 kg of honey to resume fermentation.
5. 5-7 days after the end of fermentation, filter the wort through gauze and pour into three-liter jars.
6. Put the jars in a cold place for 1-1.5 months. During this time, sediment forms at the bottom.
7. Pour beer into bottles for storage. It is very important that the sediment does not get into the bottles, so the container must not be shaken before pouring.
Store corked bottles of honey beer in the cellar.
Strawberry beer without yeast The classic technology for making honey beer is shown in the video.
Easiest homemade beer recipe
If you need to quickly brew beer, I advise you to familiarize yourself with the following method:
1. Boil for 90 minutes in 5 liters of water 15 grams of hop cones.
2. Dissolve 250 grams of sugar in a glass of water.
3. Add sugar syrup to the hops decoction and cook for another 20 minutes.
4. Strain the liquid, cool to room temperature, add dry yeast (10 grams).
5. After the end of fermentation, bottle the beer, cork and hold for three days. After that, the drink is ready to drink.
fast beer
Early maturing beer with dark molasses
Cooking:
Grind the malt well with hops, pour it into a bag and keep it with a wide opening under the tap of the samovar during its boiling, and place a tub under the sharp sewn end. It is necessary that 12 bottles of boiling water flow out of the samovar and that it does not flow quickly (do not turn off the tap too much). Cool the wort in a tub to the warmth of fresh milk, pour molasses and dissolved yeast into it, and when the quick homemade beer ferments, pour it into bottles, cork and keep in a cold place until use.
Early maturing beer with light molasses
Ingredients:
- 5 liters of water
- 600g light wheat malt
- 200g wheat flour, 100g hops,
- 2 cups light molasses
- 0.5 cups of yeast.
Cooking:
Put malt, hops and flour into a deep saucepan, tub or other container, mix them well and pour boiling water over them. Then cool to a temperature of 30-40 ° C, add molasses and yeast, cover the container with a lid or clean canvas and place in a warm place for 4-5 days. After the instant beer has fermented, pour it into bottles, cork tightly and keep in a cold place until drinking.
How to quickly make homemade beer
Quick ginger beer
Ingredients:
- 4.5 liters of water,
- 25 g ginger root
- 15 ml of wine
- 400 g sugar
- 15 g yeast.
Cooking:
In a saucepan, mix sugar with crushed ginger root, pour in wine, pour hot boiled water and cool. Introduce yeast into the cooled mixture, let it ferment, strain, pour into bottles, cork tightly with scalded corks and strengthen them with wire. Using this quick homemade beer recipe, you can drink the drink the very next day.
Early maturing beer in 5 days
Ingredients:
- 1.8 liters of boiled water,
- 300g of dropped and crushed grain (barley or rye),
- 10 g hops
- 100 g of granulated sugar,
- 50 g burnt sugar,
- 1 g yeast.
Cooking:
In a large bowl, mix hops, grain and sugar, grind them well, pour into a saucepan, pour 0.4 liters of water into it, put on fire, bring to a boil and cook for 30 minutes. Then, having cooled to a warm state, add burnt sugar and yeast, mix thoroughly, pour into an enameled bucket, add the remaining (1.4 l) water, stir, tie with a dense cloth (canvas) and leave for 5 days at room temperature.
beer champagne
Ingredients:
- 12 liters of water
- 1.2 kg of sugar,
- 100-200g hops,
- 1 cup yeast
- 25-30 g ginger,
- lemon or orange zest (raspberry or strawberry juice) - to taste.
Cooking:
Pour boiled water into a tub, add sugar there and let it dissolve completely, then cool the liquid to room temperature, add liquid yeast, stir well and put in a warm place for 2-3 days (until fermentation ends). During this time, the foam formed on the surface must be removed regularly. At the end of fermentation, pour the beer into bottles, adding lemon or orange zest (or raspberry, strawberry juice) to each to improve the taste, cork tightly, fix the corks with wire and store in a cold place. Optionally, to prepare this fast beer at home, you can add hop decoction and ginger root before fermentation begins.
Few people think about how to brew beer at home without equipment. After all, even the simplest recipe will take a lot of time and require certain financial costs.
But if you want to drink real alcohol without chemical additives, you can simplify the task by looking at a specialized store.
It is in it that you can buy special brewer's yeast, hops and malt for a dark or light version.
All stages of making traditional beer at home
Studying the technology and understanding how to brew beer at home without equipment in a simple way, it is important, first of all, to familiarize yourself with the equipment that will be required during the cooking process.
Need to purchase:
- a pot of 30 liters;
- gauze 5 meters long;
- containers in which the drink will ferment;
- silicone hose;
- container for cooling the wort;
- dark plastic bottles for storage.
Also, a thermometer, a hydrometer (for measuring sugar levels) and glass bottles, in which it will be stored in the future, will be useful. All devices must be thermally treated and wiped dry.
Ingredients:
- filtered water - 32 l;
- barley malt - 5 kg;
- hops - 45 g;
- brewer's yeast - 25 g;
- beet sugar (at the rate of 8 g per 1 liter of beer).
Cooking:
- We divide the hops into 3 equal parts so as not to be distracted by weighing the ingredient in the future. We collect ice water in the bathroom and put a container in it, prepare a piece of gauze for straining the wort.
- Pour 25 liters of water into the pan and heat to 80 degrees. We make a bag out of gauze, in which we put the malt and immerse it in a hot liquid. Next, we try to maintain the temperature from 65 to 72 degrees for 1.5 hours, setting the minimum fire, or turning the stove on and off. During this period, the malt will be sugared and the wort will become sweet.
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- We increase the warm-up to 80 degrees for 5 minutes. We take out the gauze and lower it into the remaining 7 liters of water to wash out the remaining sugars, squeeze. This liquid is added to the hot wort.
- Bring the water to a boil over moderate heat, remove the resulting foam and add ⅓ of the hops. We cook for 15 minutes.
- We lay the second portion and boil for 50 minutes. After adding the last part of the hops, brew the drink for another 10 minutes.
- We take the pan to, filter three times through cheesecloth from one container to another and cool.
- Dilute the yeast according to the instructions and add to the wort, mix and pour into a bottle or jar of 30 liters. We transfer to a room where it is possible to observe the temperature regime of 18-20 degrees. We close the water seal and leave to ferment for 7-10 days. If there is no such device, we put a medical glove on the throat of the container, having previously pierced a hole in it with a gypsy needle. We wrap it with adhesive tape at the base so that it does not fly off under the pressure of gases that will be released during fermentation.
- The process will start within the first day and gradually decline. When the gas stops emitting, you can remove the water seal.
- We add it to the bottles for storing beer according to the scheme indicated in the ingredients and proceed to the process of carbonization, namely, filling the drink with carbon dioxide. To do this, lower the hose to the bottom of the beer bottle, but do not touch the bottom. We pull the air towards us and when the drink pours, we fill the bottles with it. It is important not to fill it up to the neck. We leave a couple of centimeters so that the beer “breathes” and tightly twist the lids. This will start the second fermentation process - carbonization.
We transfer the container to a room where the temperature is maintained at 20-23 degrees and leave it at rest for 2-3 weeks. After 7 days, the bottles should be shaken slightly and this procedure repeated until the end of the fermentation period. Then the low-alcohol drink can be transferred to the refrigerator or pantry.
As it turned out, brewing beer at home without equipment is easy if you follow the instructions of a simple recipe and follow the manufacturing technology. A delicious drink will not contain preservatives and impurities harmful to the body.
Home-brewed beer compares favorably with cheap store-bought counterparts with a richer taste, thick foam and the absence of preservatives. It turns out a drink that does not contain anything superfluous. I will show you how to brew beer according to the classic recipe using only traditional ingredients: hops, malt, water and yeast. In order to preserve the original taste, we will not resort to filtration and pasteurization.
It is believed that to make real beer you need to buy a mini brewery or other expensive equipment. This myth is imposed by manufacturers of such products. Together with the brewery, such offices will gladly sell a ready-made concentrate, which only needs to be diluted in water and fermented. As a result, a novice brewer pays exorbitant prices for beer, the quality of which, at best, is slightly higher than cheap store brands.
In fact, you can make homemade beer without special equipment, using improvised means: a large brewing pan, a plastic or glass fermentation vessel, any bottles and other available devices, the full list of which is published below.
You will have to buy only hops, malt and brewer's yeast. I do not insist on choosing a particular company or brand. The range is quite wide, buy any product you like.
Theoretically, malt and hops can be grown at home. But these processes are beyond the scope of the article. Further, we will assume that all the necessary ingredients are available: homemade or purchased. The only thing is that I do not advise you to experiment with brewer's yeast, but immediately choose the best strains in the store, since beer differs from grain mash precisely in special yeast.
Ingredients:
- water - 27 liters;
- hops (alpha acidity 4.5%) - 45 grams;
- barley malt - 4 kg;
- brewer's yeast - 25 grams;
- sugar - 8 grams per liter of beer (needed for natural saturation with carbon dioxide).
Necessary equipment:
- 30-liter enamel pot - for boiling the wort;
- fermentation tank - for fermentation;
- thermometer (required) - if moonshine from sugar or wine can be made only by approximately controlling the temperature, then with beer this is an initially failed undertaking;
- bottles for pouring finished beer (plastic or glass);
- silicone hose of small diameter - for removing beer from the sediment;
- ice water bath or wort cooler;
- gauze (3-5 meters) or a bag of cloth;
- iodine and a white plate (optional);
- hydrometer (optional) - a device for determining the sugar content of the wort.
Brewing home beer
1. Preparation. The first stage, during which the brewer checks the availability of the right ingredients and the readiness of the equipment for work. I also advise you to pay attention to the following points.
Sterilization. Wash all used containers and accessories well with hot water and dry. Before working with the ingredients, the brewer thoroughly washes with soap and dries his hands dry. It is very important not to infect beer wort with wild yeasts and pathogens, otherwise you will get mash instead of beer. Neglect of sterilization eliminates all further efforts.
Water. It is better to use spring or bottled water. In extreme cases, ordinary tap water is also suitable. Before brewing beer, tap water is defended for a day in open containers. This time is enough for the chlorine to evaporate, and heavy metals and salts to settle at the bottom. Subsequently, the settled water is carefully drained from the sediment into another container through a thin tube.
Yeast. For normal fermentation, 15-30 minutes before adding to the wort, brewer's yeast is activated with a small amount of warm water (temperature not higher than 28 degrees). There is no universal method that allows you to properly dilute any brewer's yeast. Therefore, you must follow the instructions on the package.
2. Mashing the wort. This term refers to the mixing of crushed malt with hot water to break down the starch in the grains into sugar (maltose) and solubles (dextrins). Sometimes the malt is sold ready for brewing, crushed, which makes things a little easier. If not, the dried sprouted grain must be ground on its own using a grain crusher or a mechanical meat grinder.
Attention! Grinding does not mean grinding into flour, you just need to grind the grains into small pieces, be sure to save particles of the grain peel, which will then be required to filter the wort. The correct grinding option is shown in the photo.
Correct grinding 25 liters of water are poured into an enamel pan and heated on the stove to 80°C. Next, the ground malt is poured into a fabric or home-made bag measuring 1 by 1 meter, made from 3-4 layers of gauze. A bag of malt is immersed in water, the pot is covered with a lid and boiled for 90 minutes, maintaining a stable temperature of 61-72°C.
Malt grouting at 61-63 degrees promotes a better yield of sugars, increasing the strength of home-brewed beer. At 68-72°C, the density of the wort increases, although the alcohol content in the drink will be slightly lower, but the taste will be richer. I recommend sticking to the temperature range of 65-72°C, which results in a tasty dense beer with a strength of 4%.
Brewing malt in a bag After 90 minutes of boiling, an iodine test is done to make sure that there is no starch left in the wort. To do this, 5-10 milligrams of the wort is poured onto a clean white plate and mixed with a few drops of iodine. If the solution has turned dark blue, you need to cook the contents of the pan for another 15 minutes. If the iodine hasn't changed the color of the wort, you're done. You can not do an iodine test, but simply increase the mashing (brewing) time by 15 minutes, the quality of the drink will not suffer from this.
Then the temperature is raised sharply to 78-80°C and the wort is boiled for 5 minutes to completely stop the work of the enzymes. Next, the bag with malt residues is removed from the container and washed with 2 liters of boiled water at a temperature of 78 degrees. So the residues of extractive substances are washed out. Wash water is added to the wort.
This method of mashing is called "in a bag" and allows you to do without filtration - the separation of grains (undissolved malt particles) from the main wort. In turn, filtration requires specific equipment (cleaning systems) and reusable transfusion of wort from one container to another. Mashing in a bag does not affect the quality of the brewed beer in any way, but takes much less time.
3. Boiling the wort. The contents of the pan are brought to a boil and the first portion of hops is added, in our case it is 15 grams. After 30 minutes of intense boiling, the next 15 grams are added, and after 40 minutes the remaining 15 grams of hops are boiled for another 20 minutes.
Depending on the chosen beer recipe, the time intervals and the amount of hops may vary. But, adhering to the indicated sequence and proportions, you are guaranteed to get a normal result.
Boiling takes an hour and a half, during all this time it is important to maintain intense heating so that the wort gurgles.
Adding Hops 4. Cooling. Beer wort needs to be cooled quickly (in 15-30 minutes) to 24-26°C. The sooner this is done, the less risk there is of contaminating the drink with fermentation-damaging bacteria and wild yeasts.
You can cool the wort with a special immersion cooler (one of the possible designs in the photo) or carefully transfer the container to a bath of ice water. Most beginner brewers use the second method. The main thing is not to accidentally turn over a hot pan, scalding yourself with boiling water.
Cooler design The cooled wort is poured through cheesecloth into a fermentation tank.
5. Fermentation. Diluted brewer's yeast is added to the wort and mixed well. In this case, it is very important to observe the temperature and proportions indicated in the instructions on the sachet label.
There are top-fermenting yeasts, which are fermented at a temperature of 18-22°C, and bottom-fermenting, working at 5-16°C. These two types make different beers.
The filled fermentation tank is transferred to a dark place with a temperature recommended by the yeast manufacturer. In our case it is 24-25°C. Then a water seal is installed and left alone for 7-10 days.
Example of a fermentation tank After 6-12 hours, active fermentation will begin, which usually lasts 2-3 days. At this time, the airlock actively bubbles, then the frequency of carbon dioxide release slowly decreases. At the end of fermentation, young homemade beer becomes light. Readiness is determined by two methods: a saccharometer (hydrometer) and a water seal.
In the first case, the readings of two hydrometer samples for the last 12 hours are compared. If the values differ slightly (by hundredths), then you can proceed to the next step. Not everyone has a sugar meter, so at home they often just look at the water seal. The absence of bubbles within 18-24 hours indicates the end of fermentation.
6. Plugging and carbonation. Carbonization of beer is the saturation of the drink with carbon dioxide, which contributes to the improvement of taste and the appearance of thick foam. Despite the complicated name, the process itself is very simple.
Sugar is added to beer storage bottles (preferably dark ones) at the rate of 8 grams per 1 liter. The sugar will cause a slight secondary fermentation, which will saturate the beer with carbon dioxide. Then the beer is drained from the sediment through a silicone tube, filling the prepared bottles.
The spill is completed One end of the tube is lowered to the middle of the container with beer, the other - to the very bottom of the bottle, this minimizes the contact of the drink with air. It is important not to touch the yeast, which, depending on the type, can settle to the bottom or accumulate on the surface, otherwise the beer will turn cloudy. The bottles are not topped up 2 cm to the neck and tightly corked.
The easiest way is to use a plastic container, since the lids for it can be twisted by hand. For glass bottles, you need yoke corks or a special device for corking ordinary beer corks (pictured).
Bottle with yoke stopper 
Closing device for regular corks The bottles filled with beer are transferred to a dark place with a temperature of 20-24°C and left for 15-20 days. Once every 7 days, the containers must be shaken well. After that, the drink is placed in the refrigerator.
7. Ripening. Homemade beer is ready. But if you let the drink stand for another 30 days, the taste will improve significantly.
Beer can be stored in the refrigerator for 6-8 months, an open bottle - 2-3 days.
Another method of brewing beer without special equipment is shown in the video.
Beer is considered one of the oldest drinks in the world. You will not believe, but the recipes for making this drink have been known since ancient Egypt. Under the cut, the author will tell you in detail how to make delicious beer at home. Feel like a brewer!
Brewing beer at home is not a particularly tricky business, but it is charitable in every sense. First of all, it's very tasty. Secondly, homemade beer from natural raw materials gives an incomparably smaller hangover and cumulative harm to health is also smaller. Thirdly, when you treat friends and acquaintances, proudly declaring, “I cooked this myself,” then, seeing their round eyes, your ego swells to such an extent that it makes it difficult to walk. For some reason, people believe that brewing beer is something between severe alchemy and necromancy.
Equipment.
The first thing you need is a saucepan or a tank of 40 liters. It can be enameled, it can be made of stainless steel. Stainless steel is better, but more expensive. Enameled container is also nothing, but three times cheaper. I bought this miracle for 2000 rubles. I just found it, by the way. For home use, pots can be dispensed with when cooking up to 50 liters. Then you need to buy more serious equipment, since it is difficult and dangerous to carry 50 liters of boiling water with your hands.
According to the degree of hardcore, home brewing can be divided into two types: concentrate and all-grain (grain).
In the first case, we have the wort ready, in the form of an evaporated concentrate. It's not chemistry. This is what neither is a natural product. Now the choice of concentrates is very large, you can pick up something for every taste. They cost around 800 rubles for a can of 20 liters of finished beer.
In the second, we buy malt and mock it ourselves. There are, however, absolutely perfectionists, they themselves make malt from barley and prepare water, achieving the necessary mineralization. Well, for example, if some beer is brewed in the English village of Fuckthishole, then the mineral composition of the local water is found out and the same is made. This is over 80 level house. brewing. For lovers, it is enough to buy good water in a store or draw from a nearby well / spring / tap.
Next, you need to turn a banal pan into a wort mash. You can use two containers, one for mashing, the second for cooking, but in an apartment, the less bulky rubbish, the less the wife swears. Which is important for a brewer. We go to the nearest construction market and buy the necessary parts:
1. Half inch brass clamp, plus two locknuts, plus two silicone gaskets, plus two PTFE gaskets.
2. Ball valve with female thread also ½ inch.
3. American for soldering with a copper tube.
4. Elbow.
5. Three copper tees with a diameter of 15mm.
6. Four corners 15 mm.
7. Two meters of unannealed copper tube.
We drill a hole in the pan as low as possible (here, who has what kind of tool and hand-to-hand skill), trying to minimally damage the enamel, and assemble this design:
We first put a silicone gasket to the wall of the pan, and a fluoroplastic gasket on it. Otherwise, the nuts will seize the silicone.
Well, now the wort maker is ready. Now let's upgrade it to the mash. Here it is necessary to delve a little into the theory.
Mashing is the process of keeping the mash (water + malt) at a certain temperature. This holding is called a temperature pause. During this time, the enzymes in the malt break down the starch, which is a polysaccharide, into simpler sugars that the yeast can eat. The enzymes involved in this process are the so-called alpha and beta-amylases. According to the figurative expression of one of our colleagues, if we imagine starch as a tree, then beta-amylases bite small twigs (fermentable sugars), reach the fork of the branch and freeze, and alpha cuts randomly into arbitrary pieces (non-fermentable sugars). The thing is that these enzymes are most active at different temperatures. Beta-amylase at 60-65 degrees, alpha - at 70-75. Accordingly, if we let the beta work longer, we will get a wort of maximum fermentability, a high amount of alcohol, but an empty taste, because the yeast will turn all the sugars into alcohol and water. On the contrary, if alpha-amylases rule, then the beer will be dense, rich, but very light, because there will be practically nothing for yeast to eat there. By combining temperature pauses and achieve the desired balance between the body of beer and alcohol. Here, the theory is rough.
To turn our tank into a mash we need to assemble a filter element. This, unfortunately, requires some manual work.
To begin with, we take an American, a tee, a piece of copper tube and solder one to the other.
Soldering copper pipes is easy. You need solder, always lead-free, and flux. All this is freely sold in the markets or in plumbing stores. Solder look Sn97-Cu3. Without flux, soldering will not work, the solder will stupidly drain from the copper. If there is a gas burner for soldering, it’s good, if not, a gas stove will do. We clean the surfaces, apply the flux in a thin layer, put everything together and heat it up. When small droplets of tin appear on the parts smeared with flux, we bring the solder wire to the joint and the tin itself will be drawn into it under the action of capillary forces. Cool down and voila. Just remember, copper has exceptional thermal conductivity, work only with a tool, otherwise a severe burn is guaranteed. Copper cannot be thrown from hand to hand like an ember, even a short touch is a burn.
Here is such a shaitan device.
The last thing you need a hand-ass for is a cooler, or, as it is called, a chiller. Again we go to the market and buy 10-12 meters of annealed copper tube with a diameter of 10-12 mm and several meters (depending on how far the brewing will be from the connection point to cold water) of any hose, plus a couple of clamps. The annealed tube, in contrast, is easily bent by hand. So we bend, winding on something that is suitable in diameter. Then, carefully, with a large radius, so as not to break, we bring the end up. For rigidity, you can solder the coils to the vertical tubes, but I just wound it with copper wire (there should be an “ass” in the hand-ass).
Now let's move on to what is problematic to do yourself.
1. Hydrometer AC-3. This garbage is needed to measure the density of the wort. You can do without it, but it's better with it. Many use refractometers for this, but I myself have not used them, I will not say anything.
2. Fermentation tank. Now many online stores offer such 32-liter barrels with a water seal (4) and a faucet (5) at once. Also with a scale and a glued liquid crystal thermometer. You can buy it this way, or you can buy it separately. But, if in brewing shops this tank costs 300 - 350 rubles, then in offices selling plastic containers, it also costs 160 rubles. A matter of taste and laziness.
3. Mill for malt. Specifically, this one is called Comfort-500, made at the state farm named after the 47th anniversary of Mao, it looks scary, metal processing is at the level of the Stone Age, but it costs one and a half thousand and performs its function. The same, but made in Belgium costs already 3.500. Advanced two- or three-roll mills already cost from 5 to 9 thousand. No coffee grinders, meat grinders and blenders will work. I'll explain why a little later. A rolling pin will come up, but it will not be grinding, but the punishment of God and the seven plagues of the Egyptians.
4. ---
5. ---
6. Accurate digital thermometer with remote probe. Accurate at least within a degree. The thing is absolutely necessary. The one in the picture, I foolishly bought for 1500 rubles. Then it turned out that it was possible to buy a good Chinese thermometer for 300 rubles. On Avito.
7. Scales. It also needs to be more or less accurate. If within a gram, then perfect. In the picture Energy-403, weigh up to 5 kg, there is a tare function. Accuracy - grams. Well, that's how it's written.
The last thing we need is a meter and a half two SILICONE hose under the fitting on the pan. I did not draw it, a hose and a hose, such a transparent one. It is needed to drain the hot wort. PVC will not work, it stinks when heated and emits all sorts of muck from itself. We need a medical silicone hose suitable for sterilization. Where to get it - depends only on your imagination.
Actually everything. A microbrewery for the home, for the family, is ready. There are still all sorts of small things that make the process easier, but at first you can do without. The budget for all this mess ranges from 10 to 15 thousand.
Now, let's move on to the actual brewing of beer. I just want to clarify right away that in addition to equipment and ingredients, you will also need a lot of patience. The brewing process itself takes 6-8 hours, fermentation from 7 to 14 days, exposure from a couple of weeks to a year. That is, even in the simplest case, you will try your first beer not earlier than a month after brewing. But believe me, it's worth it.
And another important point. The room in which all this demonism takes place must be clean. No mold in the corners, no fermented milk products around. No animals. Wort is a super-nutrient medium for fungi and bacteria. Therefore, the cleaner the room, the less chance of beer contamination. I will write about the disinfection of equipment later.
So, we will cook the Black Rhinoceros. This recipe, being clearly in a state of enlightenment, was invented by a friend from one club house. brewers with the nickname Rhinoceros. Dark beer. Therefore, black.
We will need, based on 28 liters of finished beer (we are limited to a 32-liter fermenter):
Munich malt, Munich, with color EBC 25 (there will be “Munich-25” in stores) - 5.77 kg.
Melanoidin malt, Melano, EBC 80 - 0.87 kg.
Caramel malt, Cara, EBC 50 (you can Cara-150, it will be darker and richer) - 0.35 kg.
Traditional hops, also known as Traditional - 20 grams.
Hops Saaz or Saaz - 40 grams.
Yeast Fermentis Safale S-04 - one sachet about 11 grams.
First things first, the malt must be ground. We get our hellish mill and forward. You can twist it with your hands, you can attach a screwdriver, I acted more cunningly and plowed my small one. Six kilos of malt will require half an hour of time with smoke breaks.
The trick of grinding malt is that it is necessary to obtain not flour, but grains crushed into several parts and at the same time undamaged shells. That's why no coffee grinders are suitable. These shells, settling on the bottom of the mash, form a filter layer through which the wort is actually filtered. And it flows out through our filter system of copper pipes. The cuts are small enough for the husks to slip through, but large enough for filtering to take a reasonable amount of time. Without this husk, the grains will quickly clog the slots and the wort will be filtered before the onset of democracy in North Korea. This is what ground malt looks like:
This recipe uses a single mash at 72 degrees. Above, I talked about how temperature affects congestion. So this beer should turn out to be “full-bodied” with a small amount of alcohol. We put a filter in the tank, take four times more water (24 liters) relative to the amount of malt and heat it up to 78 degrees, when adding malt, the temperature will drop to the 72 we need. By the way, a degree there, a degree here is not fatal. But at more than 75, enzyme activity drops sharply. Overheat ninada.
We close the lid and wrap the tank in a blanket / padded jacket as tightly as possible.
We are waiting for an hour and a half. 1 hour, 30 minutes. Patience... Patience...
While the malt is mashing, prepare the yeast. Yeast is dry and needs to be rehydrated.
We take a jar, a flask or something similar, sterilize it in boiling water and pour about 250 ml of boiled water into it. The water temperature is 20-24 degrees. We fall asleep there yeast from a bag and plug the neck with cotton wool. Nutrients are added to the composition of dry yeast for the first time, so you can get by with just water. They will start wandering there in half an hour.
An hour and a half has passed. Now we need to conduct the so-called "iodine test". We take a bit of wort with a spoon and drip iodine there. If the color has not changed, then there is no more starch in the mash, everything is split into sugars. And this is gud. If it turns blue, it's not good at all. You can still try to hold the wort under the covers, but most likely this will no longer help. Although I have yet to see a quality imported malt turn blue after mashing on an iodine test.
Now it's time for the mystical process aptly called mash-out. We put the tank on the stove and stirring constantly - because it burns, we bring the temperature of the mash to 78 degrees. Turn off the heat and soak again under the covers for 15 minutes. This is necessary to stop the activity of enzymes. The breakdown of starch stops.
During these 15 minutes, we prepare water for washing. This is such a special water, which differs from ordinary water only in that it is heated to 80 degrees. When we drain the primary wort, a lot of sugars will remain in the spent grains. It is not good to throw away a good thing, so we will try to wash them out of there.
What is the hose for? The thing is that hot wort actively oxidizes when it comes into contact with air. And this gives an extraneous aftertaste in beer. To minimize contact with air, a hose is needed.
At first, the wort will go very cloudy - the husk has not yet settled properly to the bottom, so we return the first drained liters back. There is a subtlety here - it is important for us that a filter layer is formed, but pouring the wort back into the tank, we stir up the sediment again. Whatever it was, we put a large plate on top, let it sink, but everything will now pour on it and not disturb the pellet.
We drain slowly. As soon as the pure wort has gone, we stop returning it to the mash and begin to collect it in the fermenter.
At the same time, we make sure that the grain is not exposed. As soon as it appears, add flushing water. So, gradually, pouring and topping up, we need to collect 30-32 liters of wort. At the end, we stop pouring the washing water and simply drain everything that is. The first part of the Marleson ballet is completed. We throw out the grain, unscrew the filter, rinse the tank and pour the clean filtered wort into it. And let it boil. It will take a long time to heat up 30 liters, you can speed it up by covering it with a lid. But keep in mind, if you miss the moment of boiling, the wort will run away, and washing the stove from burnt sugar is hell and Israel. You will also hear from your wife a lot of interesting things about yourself, about beer and about the universe as a whole.
As soon as it boils, we weigh 20 grams of traditional hops and throw it in there. These are hops for bitterness. We detect 50 minutes, let it boil. In total, we need to cook for 90 minutes or an hour and a half. During this time, about 3-4 liters will boil away, any unnecessary will evaporate with steam, some of the sugars will caramelize and the walls of the room will be covered with drops of condensate.
Thoroughly wash the fermenter, fill it with water and pour a vial of 5% pharmaceutical iodine into it. We also throw a water seal with a cork there and push the lid of the fermenter. This is disinfection. Iodine decomposes quickly, so it does not leave foreign odors and tastes. Instead of iodine, you can use special disinfectants, specialized stores sell them in disastrous quantities. Let's leave it like that.
After 50 minutes, we weigh 20 grams of Žatec and add it to the wort. These are hops for flavor.
15 minutes before the end of the boil, we connect the chiller to cold water and lower it into the wort. This is so that he has time to sterilize with boiling water.
Five minutes before the end of cooking, we add the remaining 20 grams of Žatec. These are aroma hops. In total, we will get about 20 IBUs (Bitterness Units). This is such a mild, pleasant bitterness.
Part of the wort is poured into a 100 ml beaker, which I forgot to write about in the equipment, and separately cooled strictly to 20 degrees to measure the density. We put a hydrometer there so that it floats and look at the value of the initial density (NP). In this recipe, we need to get 13.5% NP. If there is more, just add boiled water. If less, boil more. Although less is unlikely. In general, the output should be 28 liters.
(Here, unfortunately, a photograph from another brew, the hydrometer shows 14.5%)
Upon completion of cooking, turn on the water in the chiller, turn off the heating. The meaning of the chiller is that the wort must be cooled as quickly as possible from 100 to 20-24 degrees suitable for yeast. This copper spiral will do it in 15 minutes. If you take the tank to the bathroom and put it in cold water, it will take 40-50 minutes. And the longer the wort stays in contact with the air, the more likely it is to infect it with "wild" yeast or bacteria, which fly around in abundance.
During these remaining five minutes, we run to the fermenter, pour out the iodine solution from there. Those who wish can rinse with boiled water, but, in principle, it will do. Drain the chilled wort into a clean, disinfected fermenter. From a height of at least a meter.
The meaning of this action is that the wort, falling, is saturated with oxygen. Yeast, they are living creatures, they also need to breathe. For low initial gravity beers like this, this method will work, but high gravity beers require additional aeration.
We take the yeast in a flask, by this time they will already give abundant foam and pour it into the wort.
We close the fermenter with a lid, insert a water seal (without pouring anything into it yet) and for another five minutes, shake it for more aeration. Again, shaking a 30 kg container is a good exercise. We take the fermenter to a dark and cool place and only then pour either vodka or boiled water into the water seal. If you immediately pour liquid, then at the first attempt to raise the fermenter, this liquid will instantly be sucked in.
Everything. Now wait 14 days. And, one more clarification: S-04 yeast requires a fermentation temperature of 18-25 degrees. If less, fermentation will be sluggish. If more, during the fermentation process they will release a bunch of esters, which will affect the taste and aroma of beer unpredictably. Therefore, it is desirable to maintain this interval during fermentation.
Here, they are wandering. Below - the previous brew is standing, carbonized.
Two weeks passed….
By this time, we went to the store and bought a pack of liter PET bottles with stoppers and a pack of glucose / dextrose. This sugar is better absorbed by yeast than the usual one and does not give a sour taste. Now it's time to bottle the "green" or "young" beer.
To begin with, we pour a bit from the faucet into a beaker and measure the final beer gravity (CP). I got 5%. Which, considering the temperature at which we mashed (more unfermentable sugars) is quite normal. According to the table we find the alcohol content - 4.5%. Light and "full-bodied" beer, as expected.
In order for the beer to be saturated with carbon dioxide, it is necessary to add a bit of glucose to each bottle, since everything has already been eaten in the wort. Having eaten this sugar in a closed bottle, the yeast will just saturate the beer with gas. This is called "natural carbonation", as opposed to artificial saturation with carbon dioxide under pressure in kegs. There is, in fact, no difference. In this recipe, comrade Rhinoceros indicated 7 g / liter, so add 7 grams of dextrose or glucose to each bottle.
We open the fermenter, a couple of minutes go crazy from the smell. Then we take our silicone tube (preliminarily disinfected) or a special siphon, fill it with boiled water and, holding one end with a finger, lower the other into beer. The principle of the siphon, yeah, the fermenter should be higher than the bottles.
By the way, here, if a tube is still used, the help of another person is needed, preferably homo sapiens. All these gestures are in order to take the beer from above without touching the sediment, which will be 2-3 centimeters at the bottom.
Well, we remove the finger, wait until the water pours out somewhere and the beer goes and lower the tube to the very bottom of the bottle. Again avoid excessive contact with air. We fill the bottle. When three or four centimeters remain to the neck, we squeeze the bottle, squeezing out the air and close the lid. And so many times.
When everything is spilled, we leave these flounder-like bottles also in a dark and not necessarily cool place. One week for carbonation. During this time, the yeast will eat glucose, the bottles will inflate and become stone. By the way, it will also be a natural preservation. There is nothing to eat there, there is no oxygen either, there is no contact with air. Beer in PET bottles can be stored quietly for six months (no longer is necessary, after all, gas exchange occurs through the pores of plastic), and in glass for several years. After carbonation, the beer needs to be aged for another month, but I started opening it after a week. I'm not iron. Although after a month of exposure, it definitely got better. True, by that time half of the cooked was left ....
Wheat on the left, Black Rhino on the right.
Well actually everything. This method does not claim to be the only correct one. I wrote the way I did. There is an abyss of options here. But with this set of pots, you can cook whatever your heart desires. And my soul is capricious and restless.
