How to make homemade beer recipe. Plum beer: recipes for low-alcohol drinks

The history of brewing exists since Ancient Egypt. Now this popular drink is everywhere, sold in large quantities in grocery stores and bars in many varieties.

It's quite can be cooked at home using only natural products and ordinary equipment. In this regard, a simple recipe can give better results than when prepared in production.

There are many beer recipes with interesting ingredients. In the traditional case, it consists of the following components:

Malt— barley grains, a natural filter during production. The raw material should be white, have a pleasant smell, and not sink when placed in water. It is ground, leaving the husk intact.
Hop divided by variety. Aromatic and bitter types are used, which are combined in the preferred proportion: either the beer will be bitter or with a hop aroma.
Yeast It is preferable to choose beer houses. Ordinary ones are also suitable if the required type cannot be found.
Spring, filtered or (worse) boiled water.
A little Sahara for carbonation, it improves taste and makes the foam dense. Homemade beer recipes also come with honey.

All products for making beer at home are easy to purchase. The requirement for yeast (like all other ingredients) is the best quality.

Interesting! The light beer recipe uses regular drying. And to dark varieties add 10% caramel, dried in the oven with light frying.

Home brewery equipment

All cooking recipes only require. Namely:

30 liter saucepan (preferably enameled);
fermentation;
thermometer for temperature control;
gauze up to 5 meters;
silicone hose to remove sediment from the drink;
chiller - a device for cooling wort or a bath with cold water;
a hydrometer that measures sugar content (optional);
bottles for the finished product.

Attention! Sometimes a tap is installed at the bottom of the pan through which the liquid is drained. How to brew homemade beer is described below.

Classic recipe

To implement the traditional method of brewing beer at home, you first need wash, dry, sterilize all the dishes. Product composition:

water - 32 l;
barley malt - 5 kg;
hops - 45 g;
brewer's yeast - 25 g;
sugar (sand) 8 g/l.

It is possible to prepare beer at home according to step by step instructions:

Pour 25 liters of water into a pan and heat it to 80°C. Ground malt is immersed in a gauze bag, covering the container with a lid. Keep the composition for 1.5 hours at a temperature of about 72°C, periodically turning on the heat under the pan.
Increase the temperature to 80 degrees and hold it for 5 minutes. After this, the bag of malt is removed, washed with 7 liters of remaining water, which is added to the wort in a large saucepan. Now all the sugars in the malt have been used.
Boil the wort, remove the foam and add 15 g of hops. Boil for 30 minutes, then add a second portion of hops - 15 grams. After boiling for another 50 minutes, pour out the last of the hops and simmer for up to 15 minutes, then turn off.
The wort must be cooled quickly (in no more than 30 minutes). The purity of the drink depends on this. The pan can be lowered into a bath with as cold water as possible. After this, the contents are poured into a new container through gauze.
Brewer's yeast is diluted according to the instructions on the package and poured into the wort with stirring. The container is transferred to a dark place where the contents ferment for a week (up to 10 days) with a water seal at a temperature of about 22°C.
After 12 hours, fermentation will become intense, lasting up to 3 days. Bubbles should come out of the water seal. As carbon dioxide escapes, the drink will become lighter in color. The absence of bubbles for a whole day is a sign of readiness.
Carbonation (saturation with carbon dioxide) improves taste and creates dense foam. Sugar (8 grams per liter) is poured into bottles and beer is poured using a narrow hose, eliminating sediment. Leave about 2 cm near the throat (for “breathing”) and seal. After this, secondary fermentation begins.
Bottles are stored for up to 3 weeks at temperatures up to 23°C in the dark, after which they are transferred to the refrigerator.

This recipe contains a step-by-step guide on how to brew beer at home. Product you can try right away, but if you keep it in the cold for a month, the taste will improve thanks to endurance.

Based on this cooking method for beginners (and not only) you can come up with other recipes.

Other DIY cooking recipes

Beer is prepared at home using recipes based on a variety of components.

It is made from grain, berries, bread or crackers, with or without yeast. The following methods will help you make homemade beer with original ingredients.

Cherry

Beer, the recipe of which includes cherry fruits, has long been produced in Belgium under the name scream. This is not the only type of cherry beer drink, but the most traditional.

In fact 30% liquid, from which it is prepared, is juice. The cherry beer recipe includes the following products:

Pilsen lager malt - 4 kg;
Crystal malt - 0.3 kg;
chocolate malt - 135 g;
corn flakes -700 g;
barley popcorn (puffed) -700 g;
20 g each of Whitbread Golding and Tettnang hop varieties;
Saaz hops - 10 g;
Irish moss - 10 g;
water - 28 l;
ripe cherries - 4.5 kg.

The preparation steps are as follows:

The wort is boiled for 1.5 hours, with the first two varieties of hops added at the beginning of the process. And 15 minutes before the end of the boil, add the Saaz variety. Irish moss is added 10 minutes before the end.
Cool to 22°C.
This is a beer without yeast. It is poured into barrels, where it is stored for up to 4 months, after which cherries are added.
Ripening lasts up to 8 weeks, while the strength increases.

Cherry beer can be made with yeast, but this method is preferable.

How to make rye?

There is rye beer dark and light depending on the type of malt. The shade can be copper-orange or dark red.

Making light beer at home involves reducing the proportion of rye malt to 50%, replacing it with barley or wheat, and also eliminating the light roasting of this ingredient.

rye malt - 3 cups;
honey - 2 cups;
hops - 100 g;
yeast - 1.5 sticks;
sugar - 1 tbsp. l;
water (boiling) - 10 l.

You need a container with the ability for liquid to flow out at the bottom, like a samovar.

The stages are as follows:

Grind hops and malt, place in a linen bag. Mix the yeast with a tablespoon of sugar and leave to rise.
Put honey in a saucepan, boil the samovar and pour water from it through a bag into a large container. Stir the malt.
When there is enough water in the pan with honey, you need to mix the contents, let it cool and add yeast.
The yeast will drop, after which you need to pour the liquid into bottles and keep in a dark place for up to 4 days. The drink is ready.

There are many other similar methods for making grain beer.

Bread based

Beer is also produced from bread, including the stages of brewing, fermentation and maturation. Compound:

malt - 400 g;
sugar - 200 g;
hops - 200 g;
crackers - 800 g;
yeast - 35 g;
pepper - peas;
water - 13 liters.

The recipe for homemade bread beer is implemented in the following steps:

In a large saucepan, mix half the sugar, malt and crackers. Add pepper to scalded hops with boiling water.
Dissolve the yeast in 6 liters of warm water, combine it with hops and pepper, and stir. Place in a dark place for a day, without covering. Add the remaining sugar and pour in warm water, 4 liters. Cook over low heat, without bringing to a boil, for 4 hours.
Boil the next day, then drain the liquid. Add 3 liters of boiled water to the porridge. After an hour, drain the liquid, combining it with the previous portion.
Boil the wort, remove the foam and filter. Fill the bottles with the product, close tightly, and place in a cool place for two weeks until ready.

Viennese

The recipe for Viennese beer will require the following composition:

Vienna malt - 3.8 kg;
Pilsen malt - 1 kg;
Istrinsky hops - 28 g;
hops “Early Moscow” - 20 g;
yeast (S-33);
2 oranges - zest.

Beer is prepared in the following steps:

Wort is made: malt is mashed and water is added. Cooking lasts 75 minutes at 65°C.
First, “Istra” hops are added, and after 20 minutes, “Early Moscow” hops are added. The beer is brewed for an hour, then cooled to 22°C.
Yeast is added, everything is mixed and left to ferment for up to 10 days. Temperature - from 18 to 25 degrees.
The composition is filtered, orange peel is added. The beer is left to mature for 2 weeks.
The composition is filtered. It's ready, but we can wait another month. The general storage period is up to six months.

Velvet

The recipe for making velvet beer deserves attention with honey and cinnamon. Compound:

rye malt - 12 kg;
wheat malt - 1.2 kg;
black bread - 4.8 kg;
yeast - 100 g;
cinnamon - 1 g;
molasses - 1 kg;
honey - 200 g;
raisins - 600 g;
hops - 140 g;
water.

It is prepared in the following steps:

Dry, grind the bread, mix with other ingredients except water. The hops are scalded with boiling water.
Water is added, the mixture is brought to a porridge state, after which it ferments for 6 hours.
26 liters of boiled water are poured in. In a tightly closed form, the composition settles for a day in a warm place.
The liquid is drained, water is added, 6 liters. The container is left for another 6 hours.
Drain again, mix the drained liquids and pour into sealed bottles.
Ripening is carried out in the cold 12 days.

But the same result that can be obtained using home technology will not work. That is why it is recommended to study the secrets of brewing.

Some people don't like store-bought beer. They enjoy brewing beer at home. Companies and enterprises are engaged in brewing. There is a wide range of brands and varieties on store shelves. People love this drink.

Beer is a low-alcohol drink characterized by a bitter taste and hop aroma. This is the first drink created by alcoholic fermentation. The ancient Sumerians, who lived 9,000 years ago, brewed a drink from barley malt. According to assumptions, the predecessor appeared in the Stone Age. In those days, people made it by fermenting cereals.

Home brewing is popular today, because a homemade drink tastes better than a store-bought one.

I'll tell you about the intricacies of cooking at home. Following these tips, you will prepare a treat in the kitchen. The main thing is to take the necessary ingredients: brewer's yeast, malt, hops and water.

Some people buy special hops, I use homemade ones. I have “female” hops growing in my dacha, which I collect and prepare. Hops ripen in August. The collected raw materials are dried and crushed.

Malt represents sprouted grains of wheat, barley or rye. I use barley. I brew beer from grain or malt extract. It’s not easy to grow malt; I buy it at the store.

Video tips

Classic recipe

To prepare beer, you will need a spacious vessel for wort, a fermentation container, a thermometer, a water doser, a wooden spoon, a siphon tube and, of course, bottles with corks.

Preparation:

I pour three liters of water into a saucepan, add a kilogram of sugar, stir and bring to a boil. Place the container with malt extract in heated water for 15 minutes.
Upon completion of the procedure, pour malt extract and sugar syrup into the fermentation vessel. I stir.
I pour 20 liters of pre-filtered water into the same vessel. The main thing is that the temperature of the solution is suitable for fermentation. It's 20 degrees.
I add yeast. The procedure is very responsible; the quality of the homemade drink depends on the quality of fermentation of the wort. Brewer's yeast is sold together with malt extract.
I pour the yeast into the container with the wort evenly and as quickly as possible. It is not recommended for the future drink to come into contact with air for a long time.
I close the lid of the fermentation vessel tightly so that air does not get inside. Then I install a water dispenser - a rubber stopper that closes the hole in the lid. I pour chilled boiled water into the device.
I move the closed vessel into a dark room with a temperature of 20 degrees. I age the wort for a week. I do not open the lid during fermentation.
After the specified time has passed, I bottle it and add hops, a natural flavoring agent. I put a few hop cones in each bottle, and only then do I fill the bottles.
I add sugar to each bottle at the rate of two teaspoons per liter. After the bottle, I cork it, shake it and leave it in a cool place for 14 days to ripen.
After this period, the homemade foamy drink is suitable for consumption.

If you're tired of store-bought beer or don't trust modern producers, use my recipe. By the way, you can give a glass of homemade beer to your guests as a New Year's gift.

Recipe for brewing beer from hops

The taste of homemade beer will surprise you, since it differs from store-bought beer; homemade beer has a different level of quality.

Ingredients:

yeast - 50 gr.
boiling water - 10 liters
dry hops - 100 gr.
sugar - 600 gr.
molasses - 200 gr.
some flour

Preparation:

I grind hops with flour and sugar.
I pour the resulting mixture into a vessel with 10 liters of boiling water, stir and leave for three hours.
I filter the liquid and pour it into a barrel. Add yeast and molasses to this and mix.
I leave it to wander. No more than three days.
Then I pour it into clean bottles and seal it.
All that remains is to send the beer to a cold place for one week to ripen.

How to make beer from bread

European monks began brewing beer in the 12th century. Later, their Russian colleagues borrowed the cooking technology. For a long time, home brewing was prohibited in our country, but with the advent of democracy, this opportunity became available to everyone.

I’ll look at two time-tested methods of making homemade beer, and you, choosing a convenient option, will prepare a wonderful nectar.

Preparation is divided into 3 stages: cooking, fermentation and ripening.

You can buy a mini-brewery and special beer wort to simplify the brewing procedure.

Ingredients:

sugar - 200 gr.
malt - 400 gr.
crackers - 800 gr.
hops - 200 gr.
yeast - 35 gr.
water - 13 liters
peppercorns

Preparation:

In a large bowl I mix 100 grams of sugar, 400 grams of malt and twice as much breadcrumbs.
I pour boiling water over two hundred grams of dry hops and add a few peppercorns.
I dilute 35 grams of yeast in 6 liters of heated water and add a mixture of pepper and hops. I stir.
I leave the container with the resulting pulp in a warm room for a day. I don't cover it with a lid. Then I add 100 grams of sugar and pour in 4 liters of heated water.
I put the dishes on low heat and cook for 4 hours. It shouldn't boil.
The next day I repeat the cooking. Afterwards, I drain the liquid and add 3 liters of boiled water to the slurry.
After 60 minutes, I drain the liquid again and add it to the first decoction. Then I boil the wort, skim off the foam and strain.
I bottle it and seal it tightly. Two weeks of aging in a cool place and homemade beer is ready.

Video of brewing real grain beer

Homemade instant beer

Ingredients:

malt - 200 gr.
hops - 200 gr.
yeast - 35 gr.
water - 10 liters

Preparation:

I mix two hundred grams of grated hops with the same amount of ground malt. I pour the resulting mixture into a linen bag.
I pour boiling water in a thin stream through the bag into a large container. I mix the grounds in a bag, filter and cool 10 liters of solution.
I add 35 grams of yeast diluted in warm water to the container with the solution. I leave it to ferment for two days.
Afterwards the yeast will sink to the bottom. I bottle homemade beer and seal it.
I put the bottles in the refrigerator for 4 days.

Own home brewery

Now you can prepare the drink at home. You are convinced that this does not require special equipment. What to drink it with, decide for yourself. In my opinion, homemade beer goes well with

More and more people are becoming interested in craft and home brewing. But this is not an easy matter, and beginners have plenty of open questions. We asked the author of the website nuBO.ru, a collector of beer paraphernalia Pavel Egorov, to tell us about the culture of home brewing, its origins, and where to start if you want to make your own beer.

Home brewing in Rus'

When did homemade beer appear? Initially, in Rus', brewing was home brewing; beer was brewed at home, on holidays, usually by sharing. Beer brewed in monasteries or on landowners' estates also bore a “homemade” imprint. More or less factory production arose only under Peter I, when beer began to be brewed en masse for the army and navy. But even during the 18th and early 19th centuries, brewing was a cottage industry. Only from the middle of the 19th century did factories begin to be built in Russia that were quite similar to modern ones (some of them, by the way, have survived to this day).

In the USSR, home brewing practically did not exist anymore. Although, of course, beer was still brewed in some villages according to ancient recipes, and in the Baltics, breweries were already producing concentrated beer wort, which means there was a small demand for it. In the USSR, homemade kvass was produced en masse from concentrated wort, but kvass is one of the types of beer where fermentation is simply not completed (which means its production takes a very short time compared to beer production).

More or less factory production arose only under Peter I, when beer began to be brewed en masse for the army
and the fleet.

Perhaps it is worth debunking one of the popular myths. What is the difference between beer brewed at the brewing giant and homemade beer? Because the brewing giants make beer from powder, unlike home brewers who brew truly real beer? Oddly enough, everything is exactly the opposite: large factories always use classic beer manufacturing technologies, but at home, for the sake of ease of production, they often skip many operations and actually make beer from “powder” (or rather, from concentrated beer wort, which is sold in powdered form). format).

Technology

Beer is one of the most difficult alcoholic drinks to make. Briefly, the technology of its production is as follows. First, malt is made by soaking and sprouting grain (usually barley), then the sprouts are separated and the finished product is dried. Why do they do this? When germinated, enzymes appear in the grain that will help convert the starch of the grain into sugar, and it is the sugar that is consumed by the yeast, turning it into alcohol and carbon dioxide. The second stage is mashing, when the malt is crushed and begins to dissolve it (mash) in water. Enzymes require certain temperatures to function, so mashing is a rather complex process (lasting about an hour or two) when the wort is heated, stirred until certain temperature pauses, held and the temperature raised until the next pause. After complete saccharification (when the starch has turned into sugar), the wort is filtered through a layer of grain husks (split grains), which can also take an hour or more. At the final stage, the resulting wort is boiled with hops to give it the necessary aroma and to precipitate the proteins contained in the grain. After filtering the hopped wort from proteins (broach) and hop grains, the wort is cooled and sent for fermentation.

According to the method of fermentation, beer is divided into beer with top (warm) fermentation, which is collectively called ale (and at home it is always ales that are brewed, since fermentation is carried out at room temperature) and with bottom (cold) fermentation, collectively called lager (this kind of beer dominates now in the world, but its production requires serious refrigeration equipment).

Malting, mashing, and wort boiling are the most complex, time-consuming and energy-intensive operations in the brewing process. But the resulting hopped wort can be concentrated by evaporating the water from it (up to obtaining a dry powder), and the resulting concentrate can be used to produce beer, bypassing all these stages of the technological process. Large factories never use such technology, because in this case there would have to be the same number of huge factories producing concentrate, which they would sell to breweries at a premium for themselves (and evaporation is not a cheap process). Therefore, it is more economical and easier to do this at the plant itself. But for home use, the concentrate greatly simplifies the process of making beer, and a significant increase in costs (a kilogram of malt, even in small retail, can be bought for less than 100 rubles, and a kilogram of concentrate usually costs from 500 rubles) for home production is not so critical.

The prospects for home brewing were first understood in the United States, where, already at the end of the 20th century, an extensive infrastructure to support home brewers began to be built. And now one million people in the United States are interested in this activity. Concentrates for home brewing arrived in Russia in the mid-1990s. In 1994–1995, the Teddy Beer company was formed, which began to actively promote the idea of home brewing to the masses. The company's name has become, in a sense, a household name; beer brewed from concentrates is often called “taddybrew.”

What do you need to brew beer from concentrate? You need a saucepan to dilute the concentrate, and you need a fermentation container in which the wort will be fermented with yeast (this container, the fermenter, is often called a “beer factory”). The yeast used is top yeast, ale yeast, whose operating temperature is room temperature (in contrast to grassroots, lager yeast, which ferments at a temperature of about 10 degrees and finishes fermenting at zero). After the main fermentation (which takes an average of a week), the beer is poured into bottles, to which a little sugar is added so that the fermentation continues slowly and the beer is saturated with the carbon dioxide released. Here it is worth debunking another persistent myth - that “live” beer cannot be stored for a long time. With this technology, beer is “alive”, because it really “lives”, slowly fermenting in the bottle. Moreover, the shelf life of such beer is very long. Light varieties can be aged for months, and strong varieties can be aged for years. Of course, for long-term aging you need to use glass bottles, not PET plastic ones. This technology is used not only by home brewers; since the late 1990s, many microbreweries have appeared in Russia, the productivity of which was measured not even in tons, but in hundreds of liters per month. The cost of such beer was high; according to existing technological instructions, sugar was usually added to the malt concentrate, often in a ratio of 1 to 1, so the taste was excessively fermented, and although such beer had its adherents, the term “teddybagging” began to acquire a somewhat negative connotation. Several such manufacturers still exist, although their lifespan is usually short-lived; due to their high costs, it is difficult for them to compete with classic breweries.

“Live” beer really “lives”, slowly fermenting in the bottle. Moreover, the shelf life of such beer
very big.

Home brewing

equipment and process

Preparation of water by filtration through a charcoal filter, a pan for boiling wort.
Cans of beer wort concentrates, beer fermentation container BeerMachine.
Electronic scales, beakers, thermometer and hydrometer (a device for determining the density of beer). Yeast is fermenting in one of the beakers.
BeerMachine beer fermentation container with thermometer.
Preparation of water by filtration through a carbon filter, coffee grinder for milking malt, pan for boiling wort.
Home brewing kit.
Home brewing kit - unhopped beer concentrate, malt, hops, yeast, dextrose.
Home brewing kit, beaker with thermometer and hydrometer.
Water filter, various containers.
Mashing malt in a bag.
BeerMachine fermentation container.
BeerMachine fermentation container, homemade beer in a glass and bottles with homemade labels.

Ingredients

At first, a limited number of malt concentrates were introduced in Russia; in fact, these were concentrates for light, amber and dark ales. But over time, the number of suppliers has increased significantly; now concentrates from America, Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, Finland, Belgium, and the Czech Republic are on sale. And most importantly, the number of types of beer that can be brewed from these concentrates has increased significantly. Several companies with stores in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Perm are already selling these concentrates; online trading is very active. To better satisfy homebrewers in their creative process, full-fledged brewing kits began to appear on sale, which used technology that was already close to classical, although simplified for home use. The kits consist of malts that need to be placed in a bag and infused in hot water. The resulting wort is mixed with unhopped malt concentrate and brewed with hops. The result is beer that tastes very close to industrial beer.

But there comes a time when a home brewer, having tried different types of concentrates and understanding all their advantages and disadvantages, begins to think, why not brew beer the way they do it in large factories? In general, this only requires time, a lot of time, and additional equipment is not necessary, although it is desirable. Of course, no one is involved in malting; getting malt is not a problem, and you can grind it with a meat grinder or coffee grinder (but you can also buy a real malt grinder, which are already on sale). Mashing can be done in a large saucepan, stirring the mash with a spoon and using a thermometer, monitoring the required temperature intervals and adjusting the burner. You can do it another way - infuse the mash in a thermos, adding boiling water to it to raise the temperature of the mash to the required pauses. You can filter the wort through a flour sieve, although you can make (or buy) a real filter tank, where at the bottom there will be a metal braid or plastic hoses with holes leading to the tap, and the wort will be filtered through a layer of spent grain, as in large factories . In a word, adapting the technology to your home needs does not seem to be a problem.

Boiling wort with hops is not a problem at all; you can cool it by placing the pan in a bath of cold water, or buy a special chiller - a copper tube that is lowered into the wort, passing cold water through it. Protein and hops can be separated by straining the wort through a nylon cloth or just cheesecloth. And here we have “whole grain” wort no worse than in large factories. The question arises - where to buy different types of malt, different varieties of hops, where to get the necessary yeast races? Now this is no longer a problem, and the same stores that sell beer concentrates offer a very wide range of ingredients.

But there comes a time when a home brewer, having tried different types of concentrates, begins to wonder: why not?
not brew beer the way they do it in big factories?

Home brewers

Who are they - home brewers? These are passionate people who did not want to limit themselves to store-bought beer, but decided to brew for themselves the one they like best. Homebrewers' associations arose back in the days of Teddy Beer's dominance, gradually leading to the formation of the Homebrewers Club. Sometimes a hobby turns into a profession. Several home brewers have already become head brewers in quite industrial productions. And such home breweries as Victory homebrew and Malz&Hopfen grew into industrial ones after purchasing large brewing equipment.

What kind of beer do home brewers brew? That light, light, filtered lager with which all the shelves of our stores are stocked is very difficult to brew at home (oddly enough), homemade beer is made up of various ales, that is, those types of beer that dominated until the mid-19th century. Nowadays, American, English and hop versions are very popular, especially after new and absolutely incredible in aroma American hops reached Russia. These are English-style stouts and porters, German-style wheat ales, pro-Belgian “white” ales, as well as “Abbey” ales. That is, for the most part, these are beers that are difficult to fit into any category, since nothing prevents a home brewer from experimenting with the most incredible combinations of different malts, hops, various additives in the form of aromatic raw materials, as well as fruits.

How to become a home brewer? To do this, in general, only one thing is required - the desire to brew beer. And if you have it, then don’t restrain yourself, but just take it and brew beer. Start with beer from concentrates, and after gaining experience, move on to grain brewing. Moreover, now on the Internet you can find information on all complex issues of brewing at home.

First of all, refer to brewiki in Russian; you will find quite a bit of information on the website of the oldest company serving home brewers, Teddy Beer. Many books devoted to this issue are being published - here, too, is a short but useful brochure from Teddy Beer, and a more serious and detailed book by J. Palmer, “The Art of Home Brewing.” Forbes K's book "Beer, Wine and Cider at Home. Secrets of Cooking" would have been a good help if it had not been spoiled by the terrible translation into Russian (Palmer's book also suffered partially from the translation). There is a lot of literature in English, but it’s worth starting with the “classic” of home brewing, the founder of the American Homebrewers Association, Charlie Papazian (“The Complete Joy of Homebrewing” / “The Complete Joy of Homebrewing”). And most importantly, try brewing your own beer - and you won’t regret it.

Art
home brewing

John Palmer

Beer, wine and cider at home. Cooking secrets

Beer is one of the oldest drinks, known to mankind since the Neolithic era, along with honey, kvass and wine. Some scientists even believe that grain crops began to be grown not for bread, but specifically for making beer. This article will discuss a method for preparing it at home, without specialized equipment.

How to brew beer at home - what you need

Two pans with a volume of 5-6 liters.
An aluminum colander, a piece of gauze, a 5-6 liter bottle of bottled water. And a thermometer for water up to 100 Celsius.

How to brew beer at home - ingredients

Pilsen barley malt approximately 1.5 kg, give or take depending on what kind of pans you can find.
6 gr. hops for bittering and 6 gr. hops for aroma. And, of course, yeast and water.

Brewing beer at home

The first thing we need to do is take a pan, pour 3 liters of water into it and heat it to a temperature of 66-67 degrees. After this, the heating must be turned off. Next, slowly add the malt and stir it at the same time. When adding malt, the water temperature should drop to approximately 62-63 degrees. Now close the lid and wrap for 40 minutes.
After 40 min. we need to add a little boiling water to our mash, thereby raising the temperature to 72-73 degrees. If you can’t raise the temperature with boiling water, you can turn on the gas or stove for a short while, while constantly stirring the mash and monitoring the temperature.
After raising the temperature, the mash needs to be wrapped again for about half an hour.
Half an hour has passed and now we need to put our beer base back on the fire and heat it to 78 degrees and wrap it again for five minutes, this is necessary to stop the processes.
At this time, pour 3 liters of water into the kettle and heat it to a temperature of 78 degrees. We will need it later for washing the wort.
Five minutes have passed, now we need to pour our mash through a colander into the second prepared pan, and slowly pour the remaining grain with water and combine it with our main wort.

We drained and spilled the wort, now we put the main pan back on the fire and bring it to a boil. After about 20 minutes, add bittering hops to the wort, and after another 50 minutes, add aroma hops and cook for another 10 minutes.
The entire brew took us 80 minutes and now we need to cool our wort in the sink to 50 degrees Celsius.

Pour the wort into the bottle through a funnel, after placing gauze in it.

Place the bottle under cold water and cool its contents to 20-28 degrees. You can just wait for it to cool naturally. We take our fermentation container out of the sink, check the temperature and if it is what we need, shake the bottle, saturating the liquid with air so that the yeast added further wakes up.
After adding the yeast, insert a water seal into the bottle cap to allow gas to escape, you can use a rubber glove and leave to ferment for 10 days.

Ten days have passed and we hope you were patient and didn't drink beer sooner. All that remains is to pour it into a suitable container and you can go to your neighbors.

Home-brewed beer compares favorably with its cheap store-bought counterparts due to its richer taste, thick foam and lack of preservatives. The result is a drink that does not contain anything extra. I'll tell you how to brew beer according to a classic recipe, using only traditional ingredients: hops, malt, water and yeast. To preserve the original taste, we will not resort to filtration or pasteurization.

It is believed that to make real beer you need to buy a microbrewery or other expensive equipment. This myth is imposed by manufacturers of such products. Together with the brewery, such offices will happily sell the finished concentrate, which only needs to be diluted in water and fermented. As a result, a novice brewer pays exorbitant prices for beer, the quality of which, at best, is slightly higher than that of cheap store brands.

In fact, you can make homemade beer without special equipment, using available tools: a large cooking pot, a fermentation container made of plastic or glass, any bottles and other available equipment, a full list of which is published below.

You will only have to buy hops, malt and brewer's yeast. I do not insist on choosing a specific company or brand. The assortment is quite wide, purchase any product you like.

In theory, malt and hops can be grown at home. But these processes are beyond the scope of this article. We will further assume that all the necessary ingredients are available: homemade or purchased. The only thing I don’t recommend is experimenting with brewer’s yeast, but immediately choosing the best strains in the store, since beer differs from grain mash precisely because of its special yeast.

Ingredients:

water – 27 liters;
hops (alpha acidity 4.5%) – 45 grams;
barley malt – 4 kg;
brewer's yeast – 25 grams;
sugar – 8 grams per liter of beer (needed for natural saturation with carbon dioxide).

Necessary equipment:

30 liter enamel pan - for boiling wort;
fermentation tank - for fermentation;
thermometer (required) - if moonshine from sugar or wine can be made only by approximately controlling the temperature, then with beer this is initially a failed idea;
bottles for dispensing finished beer (plastic or glass);
small diameter silicone hose - for removing beer from sediment;
ice water bath or beer wort cooler;
gauze (3-5 meters) or a fabric bag;
iodine and white plate (optional);
hydrometer (optional) – a device for determining the sugar content of wort.

Making homemade beer

1. Preparation. The first stage, during which the brewer checks the availability of the necessary ingredients and the readiness of the equipment for operation. I also advise you to pay attention to the following points.

Sterilization. Wash all containers and equipment used well with hot water and dry. Before working with ingredients, the brewer thoroughly washes with soap and wipes his hands dry. It is very important not to contaminate the beer wort with wild yeasts and pathogenic microorganisms, otherwise you will end up with mash instead of beer. Neglecting sterilization negates all further efforts.

Water. It is better to use spring or bottled water. In extreme cases, regular tap water will do. Before brewing beer, tap water is left to sit for 24 hours in open containers. This time is enough for the chlorine to disappear and heavy metals and salts to settle at the bottom. Subsequently, the settled water is carefully drained from the sediment into another container through a thin tube.

Yeast. For normal fermentation, brewer's yeast is activated 15-30 minutes before adding to the wort with a small amount of warm water (temperature no higher than 28 degrees). There is no universal method that allows you to properly dilute any brewer’s yeast. Therefore, you need to follow the instructions on the package.

2. Mashing the wort. This term refers to the mixing of crushed malt with hot water to break down the starch in the grains into sugar (maltose) and soluble substances (dextrins). Sometimes malt is sold ready for brewing, crushed, which makes the task a little easier. If not, you need to grind the dried sprouted grain yourself using a grain crusher or mechanical grinder.

Attention! Grinding does not mean grinding into flour; you just need to crush the grains into small pieces, making sure to save particles of the grain skin, which will then be needed to filter the wort. The correct grinding option is shown in the photo.

25 liters of water are poured into an enamel pan and heated on the stove to 80°C. Next, the ground malt is poured into a fabric or homemade bag measuring 1 by 1 meter, made of 3-4 layers of gauze. The bag of malt is immersed in water, the pan is covered with a lid and boiled for 90 minutes, maintaining a stable temperature of 61-72°C.

Mashing malt at a temperature of 61-63 degrees promotes better release of sugars, increasing the strength of homemade beer. At 68-72°C the density of the wort increases, although the alcohol content in the drink will be slightly lower, but the taste will be richer. I recommend sticking to a temperature range of 65-72°C, which results in a tasty, dense beer with an ABV of 4%.

After 90 minutes of cooking, an iodine test is done to ensure that there is no starch left in the wort. To do this, 5-10 milligrams of wort are poured onto a clean white plate and mixed with a few drops of iodine. If the solution turns dark blue, you need to cook the contents of the pan for another 15 minutes. If the iodine has not changed the color of the wort, it’s done. You don’t have to do an iodine test, but simply increase the mashing (cooking) time by 15 minutes; the quality of the drink will not suffer from this.

Then the temperature is sharply raised to 78-80°C and the wort is boiled for 5 minutes to completely stop the enzymes. Next, the bag with the remaining malt is removed from the container and washed with 2 liters of boiled water at a temperature of 78 degrees. This way, the remaining extractive substances are washed away. Wash water is added to the wort.

This mashing method is called “in the bag” and allows you to do without filtration - separating spent grains (undissolved malt particles) from the main wort. In turn, filtration requires specific equipment (purification systems) and repeated transfer of wort from one container to another. Mashing in a bag does not affect the quality of the brewed beer in any way, and takes much less time.

3. Boiling the wort. The contents of the pan are brought to a boil and the first portion of hops is added, in our case it is 15 grams. After 30 minutes of intense boiling, add the next 15 grams, and after 40 minutes, add the remaining 15 grams of hops and cook for another 20 minutes.

Depending on the chosen beer recipe, the time intervals and the amount of hops may vary. But by adhering to the specified sequence and proportions, you are guaranteed to get a normal result.

Boiling takes an hour and a half, during which time it is important to maintain intense heat to keep the wort bubbling.

4. Cooling. Beer wort must be cooled quickly (within 15-30 minutes) to 24-26°C. The faster this is done, the less the risk of contaminating the drink with bacteria and wild yeast that are harmful to fermentation.

You can cool the wort with a special immersion cooler (one of the possible designs in the photo) or carefully transfer the container into a bath of ice water. Most beginning brewers use the second method. The main thing is not to accidentally turn the hot pan over, scalding yourself with boiling water.

The cooled wort is poured through cheesecloth into a fermentation container.

5. Fermentation. Diluted brewer's yeast is added to the wort and mixed well. In this case, it is very important to follow the temperature and proportions indicated in the instructions on the bag label.

Yeast can be top-fermenting, which is introduced at a temperature of 18-22°C, and bottom-fermenting, which works at 5-16°C. These two types make different beers.

The filled fermentation container is transferred to a dark place at the temperature recommended by the yeast manufacturer. In our case it is 24-25°C. Then install a water seal and leave it alone for 7-10 days.

After 6-12 hours, active fermentation will begin, which usually lasts 2-3 days. At this time, the water seal intensively releases bubbles, then the frequency of carbon dioxide release slowly decreases. At the end of fermentation, young homemade beer turns light. Readiness is determined by two methods: a saccharometer (hydrometer) and a water seal.

In the first case, the readings of two hydrometer samples over the last 12 hours are compared. If the values differ slightly (by hundredths), then you can move on to the next stage. Not everyone has a sugar meter, so at home they often just look at the water seal. The absence of bubbles within 18-24 hours indicates the end of fermentation.

6. Capping and carbonation. Carbonation of beer is the saturation of the drink with carbon dioxide, which improves the taste and the appearance of thick foam. Despite the complex name, the process itself is very simple.

Sugar is added to beer storage bottles (preferably dark) at the rate of 8 grams per 1 liter. The sugar will cause a slight secondary fermentation, which will saturate the beer with carbon dioxide. The beer is then drained from the sediment through a silicone tube, filling the prepared bottles.

One end of the tube is lowered to the middle of the container with beer, the other to the very bottom of the bottle, this minimizes the contact of the drink with air. It is important not to touch the yeast, which, depending on the type, can settle at the bottom or accumulate on the surface, otherwise the beer will turn out cloudy. Bottles are not topped up 2 cm from the neck and are tightly sealed.

The easiest way is to use plastic containers, since the lids can be screwed on by hand. Glass bottles require yoke stoppers or a special device for sealing regular beer stoppers (pictured).

Bottles filled with beer are transferred to a dark place with a temperature of 20-24°C and left for 15-20 days. Once every 7 days, the containers should be shaken well. After this, the drink is placed in the refrigerator.

7. Maturation. Homemade beer is ready. But if you let the drink sit for another 30 days, the taste will improve significantly.
Beer can be stored in the refrigerator for 6-8 months, an open bottle for 2-3 days.

Another method of brewing beer without special equipment is shown in the video.