My Beer Adventures...

Review: North Rim Wheat (1st Batch)

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 11:56:04 -0500

I’ve been busy, and haven’t really gotten a chance to review my first batch of beer. Overall it turned out really well, and I was extremely happen. First, I’m going to talk about how I’m going to review this beer as well as other beers that I brew. I’m not going to be as detailed as some descriptions on beer advocates.

How I’ll review:

Beer Specifics

Taste - This is the big factor to me and should be for everyone. I could care less if a beer was green, brown, or pink. If it tastes good, I’ll drink it. Possible total: 14 points. This is the stat that has the most “wiggle room”.

Color/Clarity - This is just an bonus. A good nice beer color just feels right even if its not needed. Possible total: 10 points, most beers should get at least 5-8 points here.

Smell - It’s debatable if smell actually affects taste or not. I’d say yes, and I don’t really care if it doesn’t. Possible total: 10 points, most beers should get at least a 3-5.

Drinkability - This is probably a trademarked phrase to Anheuser Busch, but they were on to something I think. Some beers are just dessert beers where you only want 1-3 of them before you’ve had to much or they are too sweet. Some beers are just too filling. This stat I’ll just rate how many beers you can easily have (if theres a limit). Possible total: 3 points, because this isn’t that important to the overall score it only counts for 3 points.

Kit Specifics

Ease - I’ll just rate if the kit was ease or not. 3 points, because this isn’t that important to the overall score it only counts for 3 points. It’s either easy, medium, or hard…

Cost/Value - I’ll rate if the kit cost was appropriate for the beer. Possible total: 10 points, drinking cheap good tasting beer is why I started homebrewing to begin with. If I have to spend over a hundred dollars for ingredients, then it better it better include plane tickets for October fest in Germany.

Then I’ll have a an overall score. I figure it will be appropriate to rate beers on 1 to 50 (beers instead of stars). Read more for my review of North Rim Wheat

North Rim Wheat Review

Purchased from: Home Brewers Outpost

Price: $ 27.99 + $ 8.99 = $ 36.98

Beers Brewed: 43* (I messed up could have gotten atleast 46-48)

Price per Beer: $ 0.86

Fermenting: 8 Days

Bottled before Drinking: 11 days

Taste - I’m a huge fan of wheat beers, so when I bought my equipment and had the option of several different kits. I decided to go with the north rim wheat. This kit was awesome for my first brew batch. I could compare it to slightly heavier Franziskaner, or other German style wheat beer more so than a Belgian. It turned out to be 4.7% ABV which to mean still had a great light taste. It was something you could drink year round whether it be 15 or 100 degrees outside. The only thing that will affect this score will be that I noticed a slight difference after about 3 weeks of sitting in the bottle, the taste became a tiny bit lighter. I only had about 9 beers left at this time so I wasn’t too worried about it, they still tasted really good though.

Smell - The smell was great. You could full appreciate the hops as well as the wheat.

Color - It had a good tan/brown hazy color to the beer. It was fairly cloudy, but still looked good.

Drinkability: Besides taste this is where this beer shined. I could drink these all night (…until they ran out or I passed out). I would drink 3-4 during hockey games, and 10+ on weekend nights. Needless to say this beer didn’t last long. You could easily drink between 1 and 12+ of these beers without getting full, heartburn, or any other issue that occurs when drinking certain craft/non-light beers.

Ease - For being my first time, the kit was extremely easy. I’ll admit that it shouldn’t be hard when dealing with non-mash kit. The kit comes with great instructions, however the instructions are not as good as Brewers Best kits.

Cost/Value - For $0.86 or less per beer, I just don’t think you can find a better full tasting beer for the price. I can get two cases of Natural or Milwaukee’s Best (or whatever your college/town prefers) for about the same price, so I think any kit that tastes this good for under 20$ a case is a great buy.

Taste: 8 out of 14

Color/Clarity: 8 out of 10

Smell: 8 out of 10

Drinkability: 3 out of 3

Ease: 3 out of 3

Value: 8 out of 10

Overall Score: 38 / 50

Ending Notes: I would defiantly buy this ingredient kit again.

First Time Brewing - Part 2

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 20:19:00 -0400

Racking & Bottling

Today I bottled my beer. It wasn’t as fun as I thought it would be especially cleaning everything up afterwards, anyway lets get into what I used and how I did it.

First what I used:

6.5 gallon bucket with spigot
Racking Cane - for siphoning without getting sediment
Tubing - used for bottling and siphoning
Springless Bottle Filler - used to fill bottles without spilling or having to stop the siphon manually
Bottle Caps
Bottle Capper - puts caps on fresh brewed beer
Sanitizer
Bottle Brush - cleans the bottles better and easier
Priming Sugar - Corn Sugar used to add carbonation from the existing yeast
5 Gallons of Feremented Beer - of course you need this before you can bottle

Sanitize all your bottles (atleast 48 of them), let them air dry while you begin boiling 16 oz of water.
Stir the boiling water with your priming sugar until the sugar dissolves completely.
Pour this dissolved sugar water in your sanitized bottling bucket with the spigot closed.
Place your sanitized racking cane in the fermented beer bucket that has been place on a high surface in order for gravity to do the siphoning.
Fill your tubing with sanitized water, connect it to the sanitized racking cane and lower the tubing to ground level and the sanitized water along with beer will be come out.
DO NOT SIPHON THIS IN YOUR BOTTLING BUCKET, let the sanitized water along with a little bit of feremented beer siphon in a cup before you start to siphon in your bottling bucket.
Siphon out as much liquid as you can from your fermenting bucket while leaving behind as much sediment as possible in your bottling bucket with the dissolved priming sugar.
You’re now done with your fermenting bucket and want to move your filled bottling bucket to a higher place so you can let gravity fill your bottles.
Connect your sanitized tube to your spigot that in the OFF position, and then connect your sanitized springless bottle filler to the other end of the tubing.
To fill your bottle all you have to do is press the bottle filler to the bottom of an empty sanitized bottle, it will automatically fill. You’ll want to leave about 1 1/2 inches of room in the bottle neck.
Cap the bottle by placing a sanitized cap on the top and using your capper to tightly seal your bottle cap.
Repeat approximately 47 times.

If you actually are following what I’m doing and look at the above picture you’ll notice I only have 43 beers out. I messed up, I was trying to be a little creative on my last 9 beers. I started boiling some fresh strawberries in 8oz of water and mashing them to attempt to create some strawberry wheat beer. A big strawberry somehow got itself stuck in my bucket’s spigot to the point I had to try using my racking cane again and when I tried to start re-siphoning I lifted my tube up too high, pouring a few oz. of sanitized water in my beer. I could have let it go and drank this, but since this is essentially something very similar to chlorox and water I decided to take the 5 bottle loss.

North Rim Wheat
IBUs: ~15
O.G: 1.044
F.G: 1.009

ABV: 4.7%

Thanks everyone who actually reads this. I’ll let you know how it turns out in about 12 days.

Day 8 Fermenting

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 16:57:37 -0400

Original Gravity: 1.044

IBU: ~15

———————————-

After 8 Days

Current Gravity: 1.009

Current Alcohol by Volume: 4.7%

1 Week Gravity Status

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 17:28:21 -0400

Original Gravity: 1.044

IBU: ~15

———————————-

After 7 Days

Current Gravity: 1.0099

Current Alcohol by Volume: 4.5%

First Time Brewing - Part 1

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 20:47:00 -0400

Creating Wort and Fermenting

Today was the big day, I brewed my first batch of wort and began fermenting. Lets start talking about what I did. The only thing I’m not really going to talk about is sanitizing. I’ve talked about this in almost every other post. I’ll simply say “put in your sanitized bucket” etc.

Step 1: Fill a muslin bag with the specialty grains. Then fill your brew pot with 2.5 gallons of water. Add your specialty grain bag to the water. The goal is to remove it just before it boils. I was aiming for 200 degrees.

Step 2: Turn off the heat and add the malt extract. I was using liquid extract, but I wouldn’t dare call it liquid it was the thickest syrup I’ve ever came into contact with. You want to bring this to a boil. *Caution: This is where boil overs can occur. I only almost had 1 boil over, and I should remind you I was using a 30 quart pot with only about 12 quarts of liquid in it. Avoid boil overs by stirring when the wort begins to foam up.

Step 3: After the boil begins, add your “bittering” hops. Then you’ll want to boil this wort for 60 minutes straight, only stirring to avoid boil overs. When you at minute 55 you’ll add your finishing hops.

(This is where I got lazy with the camera, I don’t have too many pictures of these next steps)

Step 4: Once you’re done boiling you’ll want to cool your wort as quickly as possible. I put my brew pot in a keg tub of ice cold water. This quickly brought my temperature down from 212 to 90 degrees within 10 minutes.

Step 5: Pour 2.5 gallons in your sanitized fermenting bucket. The colder the water the better so you don’t have to worry about cooling your wort as bad.

Step 6: Pour your wort into you fermenting bucket with the cold water. Add your brewing yeast and stir with a sanitized spoon.

Step 7: Secure your sanitized lid on your bucket and shake or rock your fermenting bucket for about 5 minutes which will allow the yeast to start activating.

Step 8: Take the lid back off, and either a) use your sanitized hydrometer and put it in your fermenting bucket and get a reading or b) extract a sample (about 8 oz) of your wort with a sanitized glass or measuring cup. Try not to touch the wort with your bare hands. Then you’ll put this sample in a test tube and use a hydrometer to get a reading. If you did step b it saves time in the future because you can pour this sample into a beer bottle and put a paper towel in the neck of the bottle. This bottle will still ferment and since we aren’t worried about getting bacteria, we don’t have to sanitize our hydrometer every time we want a reading. This is also the way we will test to see when our beer is done fermenting, but I’ll come back to this in a second.

Step 9: Put the lid back on the fermenting bucket, and put the sanitized airlock that’s half full with sanitized water in the opening in the bucket. Put the bucket in a fairly warm place (60 to 70 degrees). Different beers require different temperatures, but most ales do well in this range. Fermenting will begin in about a day and will continue for 4 to 7 days. The cooler the temperature the longer it will take.

Step 10: You’re essentially done at this point. You might be asking how do I know when my beer is done fermenting? And this is where we come back to the taking readings from our hydrometer. After about 5 to 7 days of fermenting you’ll want to start taking readings and recording them. If the readings stay the same for 2 days in a row, then fermenting is complete. If you’re not 100% sure then let it sit for another day and try again. To determine alcohol percentage, you’ll want to record the results on the first day and subtract it from the final alcohol percentage.

Step 11: This isn’t actually a step, but I suggest that you clean your brew pot immediately after store your fermenting bucket. The longer you let it sit, the harder it will be to clean.

Finishing Notes: Overall this was a great experience and I’d say if you like beer in any way then you should try it at least once. I also recommend that you have someone to help you. If my fiance wasn’t around it would have been tough to do alone for the first time. If you’re wondering, my beer should turn out to be between a 4.4-5.1% alcohol (I originally messed up my calculations). It was nice to brew outside on a nice day… My next post (in about a week) I’ll talk about bottling.

First Time Brewing: Preparation

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 07:30:00 -0400

Today I’m going to brew my first batch of beer. I originally wanted to film everything and upload a video demonstrating how to home brew. I think it will be easier on me (being that I’m still learning myself) to just take pictures and talk about each step. So here we go:

You’ll want to prepare everything you’ll need for the first 2 steps of the brewing process: creating wort and fermenting. Also you’ll need your ingredients.

Making Wort:

30 qt. Stock Pot - I messed up here, but it shouldn’t be too too bad. I bought an aluminum stock pot. I was reading that this should only be your third option compared to stainless steel and other coated steel pots. The reason why this is a third option is because highly acidic liquids can bring out an off flavor in the aluminum. As long as I watch what type of malts and hops I use, I should be ok.
1 gal. Pitcher - This is optional, I need one of these since I can’t fit my fermenting bucket or stock pot under my sink faucet.
Large Bucket - I don’t know what these buckets are actually called. I’ve always called them “keg” buckets, because I only seen people put ice and kegs in them. This will be used in quickly cooling wort with ice and water.
Ingredients - See below.

Ingredients:

6 lbs. of Malt Extract - This is the main ingredient, used to convert it’s sugar into alcohol.
8 oz. of Speciality Grain - Natural sugars in the grain help fermenting as well as add flavor and color.
2 oz. of Hops - 1.5oz is used as “bittering” hops and the other .5 oz is used as “finishing hops”
1 pkg. of Brewer’s Yeast - Without this I wouldn’t have beer.
3 Muslin or Hops Bags - Instead of just dumping my speciality grain and hops into my wort, I use these bags to steep the ingredients almost like a tea bag. This way I don’t have to worry too much about sediment or other particles being in my beer. If you’r trying to achieve an un filtered beer then you would NOT use these bags.

Fermenting:

6.5 gal. Fermenting Bucket with lid - This is the primary container that will store the beer while fermenting.
3-piece Airlock - This allows carbon dioxide escape the fermenting container without allow bacteria back in.
Crystal Thermometer - This is a sticker like thermometer that you can put on the side of your fermenter to tell what temperature the liquid inside the fermenter is.
Hydrometer - This allows you to measure your initial gravity levels.
Sanitizer - You normally use 1 Tbsp. of Sanitizer per gallon of water. You’ll need to use at least 5 gallons to adequately sanitize your fermenting bucket. You also need to sanitize anything the wort touches after its done boiling. So your stirring spoon (not pictured), fermenter, lid, airlock, a liquid measuring cup (not pictured) or your hydrometer depending on how you take measurements, and your pitcher because another 2.5 gallons of water is added after your wort stops boiling. You also will fill your airlock with sanitized water so that any bacteria that slips in will be killed.

This video demonstrates what I talked about in my last post...

Sun, 23 Oct 2011 22:39:23 -0400

This video demonstrates what I talked about in my last post about removing labels from bottles. This is my first video and it was shot on my cell phone. It isn’t the best quality and there are minor mess ups here and there, but the information presented is valid.

Cleaning and Removing Bottle Labels

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 09:44:00 -0400

I wish removing labels was as easy as cleaning… If you’re removing labels, you’ll want to do that before you start cleaning the bottles. Cleaning all you do is use a good soap that doesn’t leave a strong odor or taste. This is pretty common across dish soaps to not be able to taste anything in cups or glasses. I read online that oxy-clean (R.I.P. Billy Mays) is one of the better cleaners, so I was using a dish soap that had oxy-clean in it. You then just use soapy water and a bottle brush and use the brush inside the bottle especially at the bottom of the bottle where sediment lies. Once you’ve cleaned the bottle, fill the bottle then I shake the excess water out so that anything remaining doesn’t stick to the neck. Then I fill the bottle to the top once again, and dump it out and place the bottle upside down to dry. Pretty simple stuff.

Now the hard part, removing the labels…

What starts off as:

Quickly turns into a nightmare when trying to remove the labels.

Now I should definitely point out that some bottles are easier than others. I can go as far to say removing labels is effortless for some bottles. This is not the case for the far left bottle in the picture above, RumpelPilsen from Full Pint Brewing Company was the most frusting label to deal with, other Full Pint bottles such as their Chinookie IPA could just be pealed off without doing anything to the bottle at all. The label would come off clean without any residue or stickiness. I wish this would be the same for RumpelPilsen, this bottle’s label seemed like it was heat treated with a heat gun. They have a heavy plastic coat and almost laminated finish so you can’t just scrub them off, you have to peal them. When you peal them there was almost completely another label underneath that still was mostly plastic so you still couldn’t scrub it off. I tried steaming it, boiling it, and soaking it; nothing I did would help make scrubbing this label off any easier. I was able to scrub 2 of the RumpelPilsen labels off cleanly, but the other 2 will be used for testing alcohol percentages and experimental things.

What worked best?

As I said above, I tried steaming, boiling, soaking, and even freezing bottles with a little water in them to help in peeling the labels off. I found that soaking in a soapy water is what worked best. I soaked the bottles in warm soapy water for 4-6 hours, then used an SOS pad to remove the label. You can use anything thats rough enough to remove the label but wont scratch the bottle. This method works amazing for the Samuel Adams and Franziskaner style labels, they labels soak the water in and allow the SOS pad to scrap the labels off with extreme ease. Once the label is removed I’ll rinse the outside and inside, and then turn it upside down to dry for about 15 minutes. Then I go back over the bottle using a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser to remove any extra pieces I may have missed. This also sort of shines the bottle up too. Then I re-rinse the bottle and finally dry it, once it’s dry I put it in storage.

What do I suggest?

First be careful on your bottle selection. I cleaned and removed the labels from 72 bottles, and some labels just are easier to remove. I’d stay far way from plastic/laminated style labels like what Full Pint Brewing Company uses. The traditional paper style labels like what most beer companies use are a lot easier to remove after soaking.

Second, if you’re drinking beer to stock pile bottles try to peal the labels off as best as you can while you’re drinking. This will save you alot of time when you go to scrub the labels off.

Third, don’t use your kitchen sink like I did… When removing the paper labels you’ll have a ton of label pieces in your sink and they can possibly clog it up. Here’s how I’ll do it next time:

Get a cooler that can fit at least 12 bottles in it. - Coolers are isolated so they will continue to stay warm for 3+ hours.
Pour a little bit of dish soap over the bottles. - Selection isn’t critical since you’re only removing the label, we aren’t cleaning the bottles. There is too much label debris floating around to clean the bottles effectively.
Pour hot water over the bottles. This water should be as hot as possible from the sink. What I did was cover half the bottles with the hottest water I could get from my faucet, and then I boiled a gallon of water and poured it in with the hot water.
Once the water cools down (so you don’t get burned) you can try using the SOS pad on the bottle. The label should scrap off pretty easily.
Rinse the bottle, wait till it’s semi dry, then “polish” with a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser.
Re-Rinse the bottle, then let it dry, then store the bottle in a safe place.

Notes: You’ll probably want to throw away your SOS pad and use a new one every 18 or so bottles. The Magic Eraser should be good for about 2 cases.

My next post, I’ll try to post a video of me actually removing some labels and walking you through the steps.

Equipment List

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 22:08:00 -0400

If you wanted to make a bare bone equipment check list you would be looking for 4 basic things a stock-pot or a brew pot, something to ferment in, something to prepare for bottling, and actual bottles or a kegging system.

Continue reading for more information on the equipment required for home brewing.

Here my equipment list:

30qt Turkey Deep Fry Kit - 30 quarts will allow me to brew 5 gallons of beer which is about 48-50 beers, also I went with the deep fry kit because this was actually cheaper than buying a 30qt stock-pot. Also I don’t have to worry about potential boil-overs or creating a mess, or having to rely on my stove to keep a constant boil for 2 hours at a time. The deep fry kit includes a 12” long thermometer to accurately test the temperature of my wort. This is a 45,000 btus and can easily keep a boil for a long time. It should make for an interesting time to be brewing beer in snow outside.

Homebrewers Outpost Starter Kit - This kit includes everything you need to get started minus bottles and the brew pot. It’s rather cheap and replicas of this kit can be found around the internet and in other brew shops around the country for almost the same price, so you should call around cause the money you spend on gas could possibly be less than shipping. I’ll briefly describe whats in the kit:
- 6.5 gallon fermenting bucket with lid - this bucket is used for primary fermenting. As stated above, something to ferment in is absolutely required whether you buy this kit or not.
- 6.5 gallon bottling bucket with spigot - this bucket is used to store the beer before you bottle. If you want a fruit flavored beer you can add the fruit or extract into this bucket before bottling. This technically isn’t required but should be used.
- 3 piece airlock - Vital part to the fermentation process. Both wine makers and beer brewers use them. Basically allows air out without effecting air pressure. Also helps from allowing bad bacteria in that causes bad tasting beer.
- No-rinse sanitizer - This is where most first time brewers screw up, or sometimes it can take a few times to even perfect the “art” of sanitizing. Everything that the beer touches needs to be sanitized. Cleaning does exactly what it states: it cleans. This means cleaning removes left over bits of wort or stickiness. Sanitizing is removing the micro-bacteria that naturally occurs in the world. Something as small as a non-sanitized thermometer that you put in your beer can effect the taste of the entire 5 gallon batch.
- Siphoning package - When transferring beer from your fermenting bucket to your bottling bucket you just don’t want to pour it in there. You will use this siphoning or “racking” kit. This package also includes a springless bottle filler that allows you to quickly and easily fill your bottles.
- Liquid Crystal Thermometer - This is a just a thermometer that attaches to you fermenting bucket to closely watch the temperature. If you don’t know what a thermometer is then you should probably not be trying to brew your own beer.
- Bucket clip - helps hold you racking cane that’s included in the siphoning package.
- Bottle brush - Helps in the cleaning process of your bottles and racking/siphoning hose.
- Bottle Capper - This combined with bottle caps allows you to use pry-off (non-twist off) bottles and recap them for your usage. This is important when creating carbonation in your beer.
- “How to Brew” book - Exactly what it sounds like.
- Ingredient kit of your choice - You have the option to save money by not buying this kit, but I wouldn’t suggest it because this kit includes everything you need including 50 bottle caps. This kit has all the right measurements of ingredients and can’t really be messed up unless you don’t sanitize everything, or don’t follow the instructions.

Bottles - You’ll need bottles to store you beer. These bottles cannot be twist-off bottles that most beers are made in. They have to be pry-off. You can also use swing-top bottles that are extremely rare to find outside of a brew shop or a glass recycling factory. If you buy them from a brew shop they are extremely expensive. They range from 3 to 4 dollars per bottle. The great thing about swingtop bottles is they don’t use bottle caps. They have gaskets that create the seal on the top of the bottle. These gaskets do go bad after a long period of time however they are about 1/4th the cost of bottle caps. Regular pry-off bottles can be found at the beer distributor or recycling plant. If you buy these bottles from a brew shop you’ll pay a lot considering they are empty. 24 x 12oz bottles will cost you almost $25.00. You can find a cheaper case of beer at the beer distributor and at least get to drink the beer and have a good time. This is what I did. My personal experience is try to find a beer that has sub-par labels on it. I’m currently in the process of stripping 72 bottles labels off, and let me tell you it sucks…

My total cost:

30qt deep fryer - $59.99 + Tax
Starter Kit - $94.99 + Shipping ($15.00)
Bottles - 2 x Cases are needed (I bought 3)
- Samuel Adams Harvest Variety Pack - 30.99
- Full Pint Brewery Co Variety Pack - 28.99
- Franziskaner - 30.99
TOTAL: 229.96 + Tax

My next post, I’ll talk about my nightmare of cleaning and removing labels from bottles.

Why and What I've Learned

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 19:23:00 -0400

People start brewing their own beer for a variety of different reasons. I started looking into brewing my own beer to have great tasting beer that seasonal beers only offer a few months of the year, and most of the time these beers are rather expensive. I have spent the last few weeks trying to understand the steps involved in home brewing. I now have a better understanding that there are four major ingredients in a beer: grain, water, yeast, and hops.

Continue reading for more information on the ingredients in beer.

Grains can be broken into 2 categories: malted grain extract and specialty grains.

I originally wanted to brew my beer using malted grains made from scratch. This is actually one of the most complex and “science-y” processes of home brewing. You basically have to take a grain like wheat, rye, barley (most popular), or oats: soak them in water until germination occurs (basically converts the starch in the grain to sugar, this is why beer isn’t the most healthy thing to drink) then apply heat to stop the process. This brings out the science part of thing because the goal is to reach a high level of germination of the grain. Some grains simply will not germinate such as store bought processed grains, or if its done wrong they germination level will be too low resulting in poor tasting beer or extremely low gravity (alcohol percentage). Professional “malters” and big name beer companies will only use malts that have been germinated to 98% or higher. Specialty grains are used in the middle of brewing process to add color, flavor, etc. A good example of a specialty grain would be a roasted grain - this would add a slightly darker flavor and color to the beer. When most people start out brewing beer they purchase ingredient kits to further understand the brewing process and steps that include everything they need to brew. This kit normally contains both malt extract and specialty grain. The malt extract is the same for multiple kits, however the specialty grains will vary from every kit.

Yeast is the second most important ingredient in beer because it simply takes sugar (that you get from your malted starch) and converts it into alcohol and also carbon dioxide. Brewers yeast is almost identical to the yeast that’s in bread; they both are bacteria and small single-cell organisms. Brewers use two types of yeast: dry and liquid form. Liquid yeast doesn’t have as long of a shelf-life as dry yeast, but is a lot easier to use. Yeast “activates” at certain temperatures, which can cause some issues when dealing with the wort (I’ll talk about wort later) that’s boiling at 212 degrees and the yeast activates at a much lower temperature. You can either cool your wort quickly before you add the yeast for fermenting, or you can start your yeast in another source then add it to the wort. This cuts down on the initial fermentation time because most of the yeast organisms are already activated.

Water… sounds dumb; but there’s just a few things that can effect the outcome of your beer based on the water you use. Distilled water should never be used, spring water is ok for the most part, and tap water (if its safe to drink) or filtered water is best. Chlorine is the only thing that really hurt the beer but it’s pretty easy to filter out.

Hops add to the beer by giving it a bitterness and specific beer smell. Only a small amount of hops are used while brewing unless a “hoppy” bitter beer is the ultimate goal. All hops are “hops”, but there’s a huge variety of different types. While home brewing you can come across a variety of styles of hops: whole hops - dried hops, hop plugs - small and compress, hop pellets - hard, less absorbing, longer shelf life, and hop extract - oil/liquid based.

These 4 ingredients in one way or another can be found every single type of beer. Some beers might have more than others in certain ingredients like specialty grains or hops giving them their unique taste.

I’m extremely excited to start brewing my own beer. I think it has potential to become a great new hobby for me. The goal of this blog is to keep an on going “diary” about my adventures of brewing.

My next post: I’ll talk about the basic equipment requirements to home brew.

P.S. Despite what you read on the internet, you must be 21 years old to brew your own beer…