Brewing Beer : Step by Step

Step 1 – Prepare

Your first mission is to choose a day when you have plenty of time. The brew will take more than two hours and probably less than three, but if you have a time commitment right after your brew session, you might have a bit less fun because of time pressure. Also, if you experience a setback or slowdown, you might feel an urge to hurry, which is a bad idea around boiling liquids and for sanitary procedures. Take plenty of time; you’re doing this for fun!

Start with a clean kitchen (and be ready to clean it again when you’re done) and check over your equipment and instructions one more time.

Step 2 – Begin the Boil

Fill your kettle about two-thirds full of tap water and put it on your biggest burner on high. As the water gets hot, you can add the malt extract syrup, stirring constantly until the extract is completely dissolved into the water. Some hot water in the can or container will help get all the extract dissolved and into your kettle. After the liquid – now known as “wort” – begins to boil, the rolling action of the boil will keep things mixed up.

So what is malt extract? It is a processed product, yes, and some brewers eventually work their way up to starting with malted grain. But extract is simply barley malt that has been “mashed”; it has had its starch converted to sugar (a variety called, unsurprisingly, maltose) through a natural, temperature-triggered process. Then unusable husks were separated out, and the sweet liquid was concentrated into a syrup. Unhopped malt extract is made of barley and water – that’s all. Put your finger in there and try some – yummy, huh?

Some extracts contain a portion of dark-roasted grain to lead to roasty or coffee-ish flavor; some use malts that have caramel flavor. If you chose dark malt, your ale will be along stout or porter lines. Amber malts lead to amber ales. Light or pale malt makes paler or light beers, but even these will have a nice amber color, like a classic British pale ale.

You will boil this wort for a full hour. One of the main reasons you do this is to ensure that your wort is free of any living organisms that could spoil the finished product. You want brewer’s yeast consuming all that lovely malt sugar, not some funky bacteria that could be floating around your home; if bacteria gets into your wort, it could multiply and create funky flavors. By boiling wort, you’ve created a microbe-free environment. But it is at this point that you want to start thinking about sanitization. You want to be ready when the heat goes off and the wort cools down.