Passionate for craft beer? Here's how to brew it yourself! 

 

       

Equipment you’ll need to brew your first batch:

 

- 5 gallon steel pot- $45-$50
- Bottling bucket -$20-$25
- Fermentation bucket or glass carboy- $15-$20
- Phil’s False Bottom- $40-$45
- Tubing - $1 (per inch of tube)
- Stopper- $2
- Clamp for the tubing- $5

- Auto-siphon- $10-$15
- Hydrometer- $10-$15
- Glass beer bottles- $20-$25 (per 12x650ml bottles)
- Caps for the bottles- $1 (per cap)
- Capper -$20 (for twin lever capper)
- Bottling wand- $5
- Iodophor (for sanitizing)- $8 (per 120ml bottle)

 

 

Step by step instructions of how to brew your own beer:

 

Step 1: Turn on your burner and heat the water. Heat 1 quart of water per pound of grain. You can either use your kitchen stove or a dedicated outdoor burner.

 

Step 2: Heat water to 160 degrees. Once you reach this temperature, add your grain. This is called “mashing in" and the consistency should be that of thin oatmeal. Once grain is added temperature will drop to around 150 degrees.

 

Step 3: You will want to maintain the temperature of your mash between 142-160 degrees for 60 minutes. Stir every 10 minutes or so and take temperature readings from multiple locations. Get it up to temperature, and then put a lid on it to keep in heat. The hotter you mash at, the more body your beer will have due to higher temperatures producing more unfermentable sugars.

 

Step 4: Heat up the mash to 170 degrees Fahrenheit, while stirring constantly to prevent the grain from scorching. At 170 degrees, you end the process where the enzymes convert starch into sugar. 

 

Step 5: To begin the sparge process, convert your bottling bucket into a lauter tun. How to build a lauter tun:
a) Insert Phil’s False Bottom attached to stopper and hose 
b) Fit stopper to hole in bottling bucket 
c) Clamp off hose

 

Step 6: First, you will add 170 degree water to your lauter tun, filling to at least 3 inches above the Phil’s False Bottom. This will help prevent a stuck sparge.

 

Step 7: It’s time to brew! Keep boiling until you hit your hot break. You will know you’ve hit your hot break as the wort will foam, hence you may need to reduce your heat slightly to avoid boil over. After a few minutes the foaming will lower. Continue to stir occasionally throughout the boil. 

 

Step 8: Once you’ve passed the hot break you can now add your bittering hops. Start your timer here and your boil will last 1 hour. 

 

Step 9: At 45 minutes into the boil you will add your flavoring hops. 

 

Step 10: At 55-59 minutes into the boil you will add your finishing hops (aka aroma hops). This addition will leave all the volatile oils in the beer. This will be the hop smell you get.

 

Step 11: Once your boil is complete, you want to cool your wort as fast as possible. A tub or sink full of ice water will achieve this. Cool your wort to 65-75 degrees according to the strain of yeast you are utilizing.

 

Step 12: Once your wort is cool, transfer your wort to a carboy or fermentation bucket. During this step, pour a little into a tube and check your Original Gravity (OG with a hydrometer. The gravity is a measure of how much sugar is dissolved in the water of your wort.

 

Step 13: Add yeast to your wort, aerate vigorously and secure a blow-off tube into a bucket of sanitizer. You are now fermenting your beer.Leave your beer alone until you hit your Final Gravity (FG) (two weeks is usually a safe bet on beers under 8% abv). If you think you’re close, use a sanitized auto-siphon or beer thief to take a sample and check gravity.

 

Step 14: For 5 gallons of beer, dissolve 2/3 of a cup of white sugar in just enough water to leave no sugar grains, and boil for 10 minutes. Add this solution to your bottling bucket. In primary fermentation, the yeast converted all the fermentable sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide. This carbon dioxide just escaped into the air, though. Adding this little bit of sugar will give the yeast some more food, which will provide them with the fuel to produce more carbon dioxide. Because you will cap your bottles of beer so that air can’t get out, this carbon dioxide will carbonate the beer.

 

Step 15: Once the sugar is added, use an auto-siphon to siphon your beer into your bottling bucket. Once all your beer is in the bucket and the sugar is evenly dispersed, you can begin bottling. Insert the bottling wand into each bottle and fill. You’ll want about an inch of space left after you pull the wand out. Do a few and you’ll get the hang of it. 

 

Step 16: Wait 1-2 weeks or so and open a beer. If it hisses and if it foams you have just homebrewed your own beer. Sit back, drink and enjoy!