Brewing Beer At Home - Microbrewing

Brewing beer at home can be fun and rewarding. A feeling of accomplishment comes from being able to brew, share and taste your own beer. Enjoy it with your family and your friends. Besides a sense of acomplishmnet, microbrewing at home can save you a lot of money as well.

When brewing beer at home, the normal batch is about five gallons in volume. This is enough for 2 cases, or forty eight 12 ounce bottles of beer.

Basically, homebrewed beer is produced by boiling water with malt extract and hops in a large pot. After the ingredients are completely mixed together, usually after 1-2 hours, it is cooled and the yeast is added for fermenting. More experienced homebrewers will make their own extract from crushed malt barley using a more complex process which involves mashing of the grain in boiling hot water.

Either way, the wort is boiled for between 15 minutes to an hour. This helps to remove some of the impurities, dissolve the character of the hops, and dissolve some of the sugar. The wort is then cooled down to a 'pitching' temperature.

After your home brew beer is cooled, the wort is poured into the primary fermenter and shaken violenty to oxgenate the wort. The yeast is then added into the wort. The yeast requires a lot of oxygen at this point because this is the growth stage.

The primary fermentation takes place in a large 5 gallon plastic pail or a 'food bucket'. Sometimes, the top is left slightly open to allow the carbon dixoide gas to vent out.

The process of home beer brewing can sometimes be time consuming, but you'll find short cuts once you learn more about how the process works. If this is your first time brewing home brew, read through a couple of guides on microbrewing before attempting your first homebrew. Here's a Free Home Brew Guide for beginners in PDF format. This link opens in a new window, just close the page to come back here.

For the novice brewer, there are microbrew kits that are available on the market. These kits come with everything you need to get started. They vary in price from way under an hundred dollars to several hundred dollars. Each kit comes with different equipment.

One of the best things about brewing beer at home is the fact you can experiment with ingredients and brew your own creations. You can brew just about anything, provided you have the proper equipment and ingredients on hand. Think jalapenos, fruit or honey. You can grow your own ingredients. Check out Mr. Beer for equipment.

Mr. Beer offers a collection of Beer Making Kits, including malt extract, supplies, and merchandise for As Low As $39.99! They sell many different kits at great prices and offer Free Shipping on orders over $100.