Hobby – Home Brewing For Newbies

For anybody who is a beer enthusiast, there can be nothing more satisfying than brewing a batch of your own beer that you have made – not exactly from scratch – but from some standard ingredients that you can buy in any home brew store on the high street and nowadays even from some of the bigger supermarkets.

First-time home brewers would be well recommended to purchase a kit from one of the many places where they can be found. There are various types of starter kits usually ranging from about 20 for the most basic.

In general, a starter kit should contain the basic items you need at least to perform the first fermentation of your brew. The items needed are generally a bucket for fermentation, a syphoning tube, yeast, malt extract and sugar. You will find that most starter kits will not contain sugar, but if you spend a bit more, you will probably get some brewers sugar, as opposed to using normal household sugar. Usually, but not always, they will provide something to put it in afterwards.

To prepare your brew, it is first necessary to mix your ingredients in the fermentation bucket: malt extract mixed with hot water and the sugar. Then you will need to add up to another 19 litres of cold water and to allow the mixture to come to somewhere near room temperature before adding the yeast. Add your yeast and then it will take up to 6 days to transform the sugar to alcohol.

Fermenting the mixture in the bucket is known as the first fermentation process and once this is finished after approximately 4 to 6 days, the brew will require transferring for the second fermentation either to bottles or to a pressurised barrel. The mixture should then be stored for a further 2 weeks until it is ready, but it must be primed with some extra sugar (about 1 teaspoon per litre) in order to complete the fermentation in the receptacle(s).

Find out more about purchasing home brewing supplies online!