Home Beer Brewing

Here’s a quick, informative post on how home beer brewing works – particularly how beer is made, and a quick overview of the overall process.

As you know, making beer isn’t very straight forward.  There are a lot of variables to consider, and unless you have a tried and tested strategy, it’s going to be very difficult for you to make it taste good (not to mention consistent, because who wants beer that changes how it tastes each time?)

The beer that you drink has four necessary ingredients: Water, Hops, Barley, and Yeast.

Barley is a kind of grain (actually, it’s a seed.)  But before you can even use the barley, you have to let it germinate.  You can do this, generally, by allowing it to soak in water for a week or so.  From that point you can drain it and sit for a couple more days.

Without getting more technical, that’s generally what the Barley needs before you can use it in beer.  It’s really easy to do the above, but you have to wait a little while before you can use it in your recipe.

Now for hops.  These are the flowers of a vine called Hop.  They have a lot of acids which generally give beer the authentic bitter taste, and it also contributes oils which help the flavor.  Ultimately, though, hops will help to defend against other bacteria which can ruin your beer.

Yeast is a living organism which literally creates the alcohol that we find in beer.  This helps to keep the beer clean, and obviously makes it into what we love to drink today.

There are generally 7-10 steps in the brewing process, and we can go over them briefly below.

The first step is malting, which prepares the barley for brewing.  Next is milling, which helps to make the grains easier to absorb water, and sucks the sugars out of the malt.

Mashing comes after that, which concerts starches in the beer to sugars, and that will be fermented (or turned to alcohol.)

From this point on there are a few more steps, such as lautering, boiling, fermenting, conditioning, filtering, packaging, and (of course) drinking!

There are some very specific guides out there which have pictures, video, and other means of helping you understand exactly what you have to do to brew your own beer.

It’s nice and fun to get a kit which simplifies things, but it’s way better to have an expert teach it to you as if they were at your own home.  From what we’ve seen, it really helps the person to learn much faster than they would have otherwise, since it gives you a recipe that is tried and tested.

Nothing is more frustrating than brewing beer over the course of a few weeks, only to be disappointed by the taste or consistency of it.  You can avoid that by using a step-by-step guide, which we will try and share with you in the upcoming post next week.

I hope this helps to give you an introduction, there will be much more info which will skyrocket you into becoming a home beer brewing expert, so look out for that!

Thanks!

Jack
HomeBeerBrewing.org

Let’s face it – beer can get expensive.  Especially if you love beer.

How do we deal with this?

For a lot of people, and very recently, people have been learning about home beer brewing, and it’s a fantastic alternative.  For the most part you can spend way less money for way more beer, and there are even more benefits that we’ll go into below.  So if this sounds like something up your street, continue reading on.

The Cost Benefit – Home Beer Brewing Is Way Better

Making beer at home will end up being way cheaper because of the materials that are required.  You are making it on a mass scale, whereas you generally buy beer at a store one at a time.  They’re able to charge you a lot of money since it’s the consumer level.  Buying things, and making it, in mass, gives you a huge advantage.

Here’s some proof: You know those times that you go to the bar and they have 50 cent beers?  Why on earth would they do that?  Are they still making money?  You betcha.  That’s probably much closer to their profit margin than the $3.00 that they normally charge, but you definitely can see how cheap it costs them to buy it from the supplier, and how much profit they can make per drink.  In the end, it just paints a clear picture for us: it’s much cheaper to make beer than buy it at a store.

Can You Get Great Tasting Beer?  Definitely.

Another common question and concern is the taste.  Can you get something that tastes good, brewed from home?  Yeah, you sure can.

It may take some experimentation, and maybe a little while – but you can definitely make beer that tastes amazing.  In fact, there are some guides out there which basically tell you how people have made beer which surpasses what you would have at a store.

If you think about it, it makes a lot of sense.  Commercial beer tries to make a lot of good tasting beer without spending a lot of materials per serving.

Imagine if you didn’t have that drawback?  And we surely don’t.  You can afford to pack your beer with whatever you want.

In the end, your beer should taste much richer than beer you buy at a store.  That’s because you aren’t thinking about mass scaling and watering it down to sell more.  You’re only thinking about taste, taste, taste.

Selling Your Own Beer?  Maybe.

This is for you to decide, of course – but remember – a lot of the beer you buy at stoers were, one day, pitched to the local bar or diner.  The Sam Adams beer, I believe, was a very publicized account of this.  The founder took his beer from store to store, and got contracts to sell them.  This grew over time, and now it’s a huge beer company

Could that happen for you?  It’s possible.  Do you want that?  Only you can decide.

The key is starting to make your own beer, and seeing where that takes you.  There are numerous kits available online, and we’ll probably get into a few of those and find out which ones are best for you to experiment with, along with what guides make a great companion and roadmap.

I hope this helps, we’ll get into a lot more detail in the future.

Thanks for reading!

Jack

This blog will soon be updated with home beer brewing information, reviews, and advice to help you get started in the hobby.  Check back soon!