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New category of posting here - and the category is “homebrew”!

I’ve made beer before a few times from kits, but wanted to get properly into making my own beer from scratch using malt and hops. It’s actually not as hard as you would maybe think (at least in theory) - the basic process is as follows:

1. Weighing the grain (malted barley or wheat)
2. “Mashing” the grain (keeping the grain in water at 64-69°C to allow enzymes in the grain to convert the complex sugars into fermentables.
3. “Sparging” the mash (rinsing the sugars out - this creates the sugary “wort”)
4. Boiling the wort with the addition of hops as required.
5. Quickly cooling the boiled wort.
6. Pitching the yeast .

Then, it’s a case of waiting for the yeast to do it’s thing and convert the sugars into alcohol - possibly the hardest part!

The recipe I used was based on one from “Brewing Beers Like Those You Buy” by Dave Line - this was his version of London Pride (not strictly correct as the hops are now different, but it’ll still taste good which is the idea!):

• Pale Malt (Maris Otter) : 3.75kg
• Crystal Malt: 275g
• Torrefied Wheat: 60g

Mash for 90min at 67°C, and sparge. Then boil for 90 minutes with:

• Demerara sugar: 250g
• Fuggles (4.5% AA): 24g (90 min)
• East Kent Goldings (4.1% AA): 50g (90 min)
• East Kent Goldings: 15g (15 min)
• East Kent Goldings: 12g (Steep at <80°C for 15 min)

Yeast: Danstar Nottingham

Everything went OK - I accidentally stopped the sparge too early (hydrometer read 1.006, but forgot to correct for temperature so was a little short of the planned 25L in the end), and I almost forgot the hop stopper before the boil. Still I landed up with almost 4.5 gallons of liquid at SG=1042 (after a little dilution after the boil), which is now fermenting well.

There is a large amount of trub in the fermenter which I have skimmed off the top of the krausen (the frothy yeast bubbles) twice - anything remaining will eventually settle out in the fermenter to be left behind when I rack it off.

Overall, I’m very pleased, and looking forward to taking things onto the second all-grain brew very soon - I am going to try water treatments in the next one, so hopefully will get a better efficiency in the mash due to the correct pH and mineral balance (our water has high carbonate levels which are generally undesirable for pale ales and bitters).

Here’s some pictures of the brewing process:

[Show as slideshow]

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 6th, 2008 at 9:54 am and is filed under homebrew, recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.