Brew It Yourself

Northern Brewer's guide to turning a simple mix of malt, hops and water into a craft brew you can call your own

Image credit: Emily J. Davis

Recommended by the Editor

It Takes a Village

Beer 101

By: METRO Staff |   February 2012   |  From the print edition

The Twin Cities is blessed with a host of great brewers who have made beer a full-time pursuit. Most of them started humbly, brewing out of their garages before becoming household names with taps in the corner pub. Let their stories serve as an inspiration, and try making a beer of your own using this quick guide to homebrewing, curated with the help of our friends at Northern Brewer.

The Basics

Brewing beer starts with boiling malt, hops and water to create a grainy, sugary liquid (called “wort,” pronounced “wert”). Yeast is added to the wort and the mixture ferments for one to two weeks, creating flat, warm beer. Sugar is added to the mixture—which sparks carbonation—and it’s bottled. After another week or two, you have drinkable beer.

What you’ll need

+ Sanitizing solution
+ Boil kettles
+ Fermentation vessel(s) and lock(s)
+ Hydrometer
+ Bottles, bottle caps and bottle cappers
+ Auto-siphon
+ Homebrew starter kit (several varieties are available at homebrew supply stores. Kits include malt, hops and yeast (some may also include special grains, sugars or spices)

Safety first!

Yeast is crucial to the creation of beer. Brewers want to keep yeast happy—which means it is allowed to eat away at sugars without any competition. Competition means yeast is unable to produce alcohol and, even worse, it means some other element—like bacteria—has entered the mix. Thus, cleaning and sanitizing is the most important part of brewing. Clean and sanitize everything your beer may come in contact with.

Preparing wort

Activate liquid or dry yeast according to package instructions. Set aside.
Fill brew kettle with 2.5 gallons of good-quality drinking water. Boil your malt, uncovered. A foamy substance will coagulate, rise and cover the kettle surface. This foam is a product of malt’s proteins; it will become heavy and drop to the bottom again after five to 25 minutes (this is referred to as the “hot break”). Add hops according to the “hop schedule” in your kit’s instructions. If wort froths up dramatically, immediately cut the heat and stir, as boilovers can damage your stovetop.

Chilling

Temperatures too cold or too hot will kill yeast. Wort will be too hot for yeast at this point, so set the kettle in a cold-water bath, replacing the water as necessary. During the water bath, keep the kettle covered almost all the way to protect the wort from airborne microbes. Sanitize your fermenting equipment while the kettle cools. When the wort temperature has fallen below 100 degrees, top it off with cold water to reduce the temperature to the appropriate range for your yeast.

(Graphic by Adam Marks; download a high-res version here)

Bottling

Sanitize siphoning and bottling equipment. You’ll need to siphon (or “rack”) the beer into a bottling bucket before bottling. When racking, your filled container must be several feet higher than the empty vessel you fill.

Add priming solution (sugar that will cause additional fermentation in the bottle, carbonating the beer) to the bottom of an empty bottling bucket. Make sure the bottling bucket valve is closed and siphon beer into the bottling bucket, leaving sediment behind.

With the bottling bucket several feet above bottles, siphon beer into bottles (using a bottle filler attached to the spigot with tubing), leaving about 3/4 inch of headroom at the top of each. Cap, and let bottles sit at room temperature for one to two more weeks.

Pitching yeast and fermentation

Pour two gallons of cool water into your sanitized fermentation vessel. Next, slowly pour in the cooled wort, leaving behind any thick sludge. Add more cool water to bring the total volume of your vessel to five gallons. Measure your brew’s original specific gravity (OG) with a hydrometer and record the number.

Sanitize a pair of scissors and the area where you will cut the yeast package. If using liquid yeast, pour directly into the wort. If using dry yeast, sprinkle it on the surface of the wort. Seal the fermentation vessel lid, fill the airlock with some of your sanitizer solution and move vessel into a dark, quiet spot free from temperature fluctuations. Fermentation has begun!

A cap of thick tannish foam called “krauesen” forms. One to two weeks from brew day, fermentation ends. Bubbles coming through the airlock become very slow or stop entirely, the specific gravity (which you should check again with the hydrometer before moving on to the next step) is stable and foam starts to subside.

Krausen remnants (called “trub”) can create undesirable flavors. To avoid this, use sanitized siphoning equipment to move the brew out of the first fermenter (leaving the trub behind) and into a new, sanitized vessel.

Chill a couple bottles and open. Carefully pour beer into a glass to inspect color, carbonation and smell (let remaining bottles sit longer if there is not enough carbonation). Yeast sediment at the bottom of the bottle comes from the priming solution, and is normal to see.

+ For more detailed instructions or to buy homebrewing supplies and equipment, visit Northern Brewer's website, or one of their two Twin Cities locations, 6012 Lyndale Ave., Mpls. (612.843.4444) and 1150 Grand Ave., St. Paul (651.223.6114).