To make beer
A recipe to make 4.5 gallons of an original beer that Brian and I recently attempted.
In a large pot (4 gallons is good), put a large quantity of water. Soak a flavoring grain in the water for approximately 20 minutes in a mesh bag. This will serve the purpose of helping create your flavor, whether it will be a light beer or a dark beer, etc. Then begin heating the water to a low boil. Add 6 lbs malt extract. Malt extract is a form of sugar which will be consumed by yeast during the fermentation process. Malt extract is only around 80% digestible by yeast, so it will also contribute to the flavor of the beer. This is why beer is a “malt” beverage.
Heat the pot at a low boil for 1 hour. Place 1 oz hops in the beer at the beginning of the boil, and place another 1 oz hops of in the beer during the last 10 minutes of the hour. The first oz of hops will break down significantly during the boil, and contribute bitter flavor to the beer. The 2nd oz of hops will not have a chance to break down and will provide a direct “hoppy” flavor to the beer.
When the hour is finished, add 2 pounds of honey. If you have a hydrometer, this may be a good time to measure the density of your mixture. Your goal, when placed in a 5 gallon fermenting vessel, is to have a specific gravity of approximately 1.08. Unless you had a 5 gallon pot to begin with, you will probably be adding water in the vessel in addition to your pot mixture, so if your specific gravity is higher in the pot, this is fine, it should just give you an idea where you will end up and how much water you will need to add in the fermentation vessel.
Place the mixture in your vessel. Add water to reach a specific gravity of approximately 1.08. Wait until the mixture is 85 degrees F or cooler. Actively cooling to reach this quicker is good if you can. Place yeast into vessel. Place airlock on the vessel. The airlock allows air out of the vessel without allowing fresh air in. Yeast can survive and thrive in both an oxygen environment and non oxygen environment. When oxygen is available, they can undergo aerobic respiration, turning sugar and oxygen into carbon dioxide and water. When no oxygen is available, they can still harness energy and reproduce by breaking down the sugar into ethanol and carbon dioxide through anaerobic respiration. They actually undergo anaerobic respiration in oxygen environments, but not as much, and therefore do not make as much alcohol, so the airlock is important! Also, these terms aerobic and anaerobic respiration are very related to aerobic and anaerobic exercise. During aerobic exercise, such as jogging, your muscles burn sugar with oxygen to produce energy for movement, and during anaerobic exercise, such as sprinting, there is not enough oxygen in your body to supply the muscles, so they still burn the sugar but with a different end product, this time it is carbon dioxide and lactic acid in stead of alcohol. Probably fortunate, can you imagine everyone sprinting around to get drunk?
Alright, now just leave the fermentation vessel alone for two weeks, and hopefully you will have some beer! I have to wait another week to get to this point… but when that time comes, here are the next steps I believe.
Measure specific gravity. It should be below 1.02. If not, let ferment a bit longer. Mix in a pound..? of sugar or honey. Place vessel on a high surface, and begin a siphon. Use the siphon to fill your bottles. Cap bottles. Now allow the bottles to sit for another two weeks at least. The sugar added at this point is so that a bit of fermentation will happen within the bottles, producing carbon dioxide so that your beer is now a carbonated beverage, and will be good and fizzy.
That’s about it! This is definitely a very quick and dirty recipe, and I don’t even know if it is gonna work yet. Apparently serious people doing this do things like allow it ferment in one vessel for a week, then move it to a second vessel leaving behind a lot of yeast junk and producing a cleaner looking beer after another week. ehh. I am excited and cannot wait to taste a bottle in another three weeks!
The yeast is in and the air lock is air locking, this is ready to go.
[edit] The beer turned out very good! 4.5 gallons turned out to be a little much for a 5 gallon carboy, and a bunch of gross film spilled. Live and Learn. We then made another batch on top of the yeast in carboy with blue berries and a brown malt extract for a blueberry brown ale, which also was good, but not as good
Tags: beer recipie