Following on from danwrx1980's hilarious thread here, I present Andy's guide to Brewing It Properly - the illustrated guide that I wish I'd had when Mrs C and I started brewing our own beer a couple of years ago.

We're firmly of the opinion that there's no substitute for so-called 'full mash' brewing, which is exactly the same as the process that commercial breweries use to produce the finest real ales, and can achieve results of the same quality. Undeniably there's more work involved than diluting a can of sludge with hot water, but it's a fun and productive way to spend the day, and the results speak for themselves. So, without further ado:

First of all, you'll need to find yourself somewhere to use as a brewery. A sink and a heat resistant work surface are the essentials, and you should have enough clean space to keep sterilised equipment without it getting covered in last night's takeaway or pet fur:



To store the final product you'll want a pressure barrel:



...and to produce the beer in the first place, you'll need a boiler...



...a fermentation bin and a mash tun, which is an insulated box (basically a picnic cool box) with a tap fitted. You'll need some other kit too, of which more later.

Beer is basically made from malted barley, hops, yeast and water. Many beers also include small amounts of other cereals (though purists may argue that they're unnecessary or undesirable) or additional sugar. This recipe uses a little flaked maize, but the bulk of the grain (known as 'grist') is, as in most beers, pale malt.

Brewing ingredients, left to right: brewer's sugar, flaked barley, flaked maize, crystal malt, black malt, pale malt and (just visible) smoked malt.



Pale malt, close up:



Hops come dried and vacuum packed:





The first stage of the brewing process is called 'mashing'. For a 40 pint brew, about 15 litres of water are heated to 77 deg C in the boiler and transferred into the mash tun. The grist is stirred into the water to produce a kind of thick porridge, then the lid goes on the mash tun and the mixture is left at between 65 and 67 deg C for 1 1/2 hours. A well insulated mash tun can simply be left alone for this time, during which enzymes in the malt break down starch and release a mixture of sugars.

After mashing is completed, the tap is opened and the liquid (now known as 'wort') is slowly run off into the boiler. This hot, sugary liquid looks like beer but tastes nothing like it - it's very sweet and sticky.



Running off the wort slowly without disturbing the grain allows the mash bed to act as a filter, removing small particles and ensuring that the liquid is bright and clear:



A copper pipe with narrow slits is attached to the tap inside the mash tun and prevents the tap from being clogged. It also helps ensure a smooth flow of water throughout the whole mash bed, which makes the extraction of sugars more efficient.



At the same time as the water is run off, a process known as 'sparging' is used to wash the remaining sugars out of the grains, and make the volume of wort up to the final quantity. Water is sprayed gently over the surface of the mash bed by a rotating 'sparge arm', which is fed from a tank of hot (near boiling) water. This washes the sugars out of the grains without disturbing the mash bed and affecting its ability to filter the wort clean.



Once the full volume of wort has been collected, the next stage is to boil it up with the hops to add bitterness. The dried hops are added just as soon as the wort begins to boil:



A good strong, rolling boil is essential to keep the hops agitated to extract the bitter alpha-acids from them:



The boil lasts another 1 1/2 hours, and some more hops are added 15 minutes before the end. These add the hoppy aroma to the beer - the volatile compounds that give the aroma are driven off if left to boil for too long.

At the same time, some finings are added to help the finished beer 'drop bright', ie. become the clear liquid we want, rather than being left cloudy. I use Irish Moss, which is sold for this purpose:



The Irish Moss pulls pulls particles out of suspension and helps them sink to the bottom of the barrel - it doesn't end up in the finished beer.

Once the boil is complete, the wort has to be cooled and transferred into a fermenting bin. At this point, the wort is extremely vulnerable to microbial infection, so it's important to get it cooled quickly so that the yeast can be added ('pitched') soon. Once the yeast is established, it will help protect the beer from other microbes by first competing with them, and then poisoning them with alcohol.

To cool the wort quickly, we use a wort chiller - a copper coil through which cold water is passed. This is thoroughly steriilsed, plunged into the hot wort and attached to the cold tap via a short hose. The clean, hot water that emerges is collected in a bucket and used to wash the car





The other gadget in the photo is a hop strainer - this is attached to the tap inside the boiler and used to filter out the hop debris, so it doesn't clog the tap or get into the finished beer.

Once the wort is cooled (below 30 deg C), it can be transferred into the fermenting bin. As the wort flows it is encouraged to splash, to dissolve as much air into it as possible - although yeast only produces alcohol in the absence of air, it can only multiply when air is present.



Dried yeast is stirred in at this point too:





Now all that remains is to put the fermenting bin somewhere warm for a week or so, for the yeast to multiply and to turn the wort into beer. Once fermentation is complete - check with a hydrometer - it's transferred into the pressure barrel to condition for a couple of weeks.

Then there's only one thing left to do:



Cheers

 

 

That's a great photostory, but I like the ones where there are birds with half their kit off worrying about the VD they've caught, and whether they've given it to their partner.

 

Fúck that - just buy a pint

LOL

 

Excellent stuff

Made the marmite goo kits a few times, never really got anything good (well i got stuff that made me blind). Will give this a go

 

and as for the beer...COSTCO

 

I've messed about with a few of the syrup kits - but they always taste really yeasty...and I've never found anything to give the beer a good head (errr...) they always end up with a fizzy top, rather than a foamy top. Even tried injecting CO2...

 

You should only need to inject CO2 into the barrel if there's a leak, or if it's been shaken about a lot and the natural CO2 produced by the yeast has escaped through the safety valve. Sometimes you might need a little to maintain pressure as the barrel nears empty too.

I've never really cared much about the head on a pint, but it's mostly down to the method of dispense. To pour the pint in the photo, I opened the barrel just slightly, to get a slow but controlled flow of beer into the glass, then opened the tap fully for a couple of seconds at the end to froth it up and produce the head. It doesn't last long, though.

To produce a thick, stable foam like Guinness you'll need to add a foam stabiliser to the beer. I wouldn't bother, personally.

 

Smart stuff. Might have to give it a go one day.

John.

 

Hi Andy..

Thanks very much for the agony aunt page , just got back from up north and my beer looks as tho its coming along nicely!

I agree that mashing and truly making your own beer is the way to go, but for jim and I this is our first go so we thought we'd try it the easy way!!!!

It is our intention to progress onto the mashing etc, and for that your walk through talk through will be invaluable!!!!
I'll be back on the air with regular updates!!
Thanks again!

 

:hic:

 

and if you want to have it porring quick!

just transport it in a scooby!

nice to see the beer in progress!

 

Excellent

I have made lots of different 'Country wines' , which, as you have done above, need you to start from scratch with plain ingredients, and a couple of those horrid treacle beer kits (and that is what put me off !!) , may give the 'proper' way a try

 

Don't knock the "treacle" beer kits, there are some pretty good ones about these days. Avoid the ones that need sugar to be added, get the ones that only use concentrated wort to make the beer with. They're usually between £15 - £20 (40 pints), Woodfordes and Brupaks Microbrewery Series are my favourites.

Essentially when these kits are made they go through all the process above to make the wort then boil off all the water to concentrate it into the "treacle", you just add water back to it when you make the beer to turn in back into the wort.

Very easy to make and good results. Just pour the contents of the cans into the fermenter, rinse out the cans with boiling water and add two kettles worth of boiling water. Give it all a good stir to dissolve it. Top up to 40 pints, add yeast and leave somewhere warm for 5-7 days. The syphon into your pressure barrel, add a bit of brewers sugar or spay malt to help it pressurise, leave for a few weeks, drink and enjoy

You can also get Brupaks Brewers Choice kits which is a step closer to mashing, you get powdered malt and some hops, malt etc. in big tea bags. You boil these up to flavour the brew.

That said a full mash is always going to give the best results, just depends how much time and effort you want to put in. At the moment I don't really have the space or time for it. After we get our extension / big kitchen built next year I may be tempted to give it a go

Cheers

 

my dad used to make his own beer, how much do you reckon it works out to a pint

 

Jeez,wouldnt ram-raiding teh local offy be a darn site easier

 

Maybe, but you'd still only get the kind of sh*te that comes in cans, or if you're lucky, the metallic tasting fizz that you find in most bottles. This is proper draught real ale - works out to about 50-60p a pint once you have the kit.

 

What time do you want us round ?