By Rawley R. Macias: Do you appreciate good beer? Ever wonder if you could it make at home? If so, you are in luck; brewing beer at home can be as easy or complex as you want. A person can get into home brewing for as little as $100. Online homebrew stores like Morebeer.com make it easy by offering basic startup kits. They usually include a 3-5 gallon pot to heat the beer in, a 5 gallon glass or plastic vessel to ferment the beer in, a handheld hydrometer to measure alcohol content, bottling equipment, and a step-by-step instruction guide. Once you get going, home brewing kits can be upgraded to suit your own brewing style.
A delicious beer typically consists of five ingredients: grain to give the beer its malty backbone, hops to add some bitterness and aroma, yeast to convert the sugars to alcohol, water, and time. Homebrew supply shops offer kits for all styles of beer. Patience is also a virtue with homebrewing as a typical brew takes about three weeks before it is ready to enjoy. The process can be divided into three main events: the brew day, the fermentation period, and the bottling day. The process starts with the brew day which usually takes anywhere from 2-5 hours to make the wort. Wort is the sweet liquid produced from the malted grain which will later be fermented by the yeast. Once the wort is produced, it is cooled, transferred to a fermentation vessel, and brewer’s yeast is added. And then you wait…for approximately 2 weeks for the yeast to consume the sugar in the wort producing the alcohol. Once the fermentation period is complete, it is time to move onto the bottling day. Bottling day typically consists of transferring the fermented beer into individual bottles and introducing a small amount of corn sugar. The corn sugar provides a little food for the yeast to consume to create carbon dioxide which carbonates the beer. After about a week of sitting in the bottle, the beer is ready to refrigerate and enjoy. It is that easy!
Most homebrewers start off with a simple system but often upgrade and individualize it as time goes on. Brewing beer at home is a great way to impress your friends and tailor the beer to your taste buds. Cheers and happy brewing!