Tips for beginners. (Home Brewed Beer Recipes)

Member Name: Bryn Pearson

Product:	Home Brewed Beer Recipes
Date:	04/07/01 (1912 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: great fun, cheap beer

Disadvantages: doing it from scratch is a lot of hard work., Ingredients can be hard to get.

If you fancy making beer, here are a few tips and bits of advice that should help you to get started.

Beer used to be the daily drink for everyone, back in the distant past. It's good drink, technically you can live on it! making it at home doesn't have to be too difficult and can be really good fun.

I would recommend that you start by investing in a good ber making book - Camra can supply you with one. this will give you ltos fo detailed information about not only the history of beer, but different techniques and recepies.

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Physical gear you will need: A big fermenting barrel - if you have one for winemakeing, you can use that. A pressure barrel - you will have to buy something dedicated. If you don't want to splash out, collect lots and lots of the plastic bottles that fizzy drinks come in - a fiddly solution, but it will do. A plastic tube - again you'll have one if you make wine. A thermometer. Measuring jugs. You will also need a special device called a hydrometer - a strange but very important device for emasuring. Don't ask, you just need to knwo that you need one.

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Real beer. Real beer contains water, barley, hops, yeast,sugar and either gelatine (made from cow heels) of isinglass (made fom fish swim bladders0 these are used tohelp the beer settle out. Processing barely is a long and complicated job, you have to be really dedicated. Getting hops is hard enough - they used to grow quite commonly, but are hard to find these days. "Real" beer is made from these raw ingredients and the process, for a lone beer maker is a hard one. If you want to have a go, invest in a good book and do plenty of reading first.

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Cheating: if you are having a go at making beer for the first time, I strongly recomend that you cheat. There are specialist brewing shops here and there, or else go to
a Boots chemist. You can buy a basic kit for beermaking - this will include your yeast, dried hops, isinglass and processed barley extract. Using your kit, you can go through the beer making process - all of the later stages are very similar and it gives you a chance to elarn a few of the tricks and skills. beer amde from kits is surprisingly nice, although not real ale, by any stretch. Kits vary a lot so you can easily find something that will suit your tastes. Once you are feeling a bit more confident about using the gear and storing the beer, you might want to try the more complicated method.

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How it works with kits: You will have specific intructions, but generally, you erhydrate the ingredients, add them all and allow a week or so in your big fermenting bucket. You test with the hydrometer to find out when your beer is ready to be moved. Syphon the beer into a pressured container (Now you see why one big one is better than lots of little bottles) It will need to stand for a month or two. If you move the beer too soon, it may cause your pressure container to explode, which is not pleasant - better to err on the side of caution.

Then ou get to drink it. Be warned, even beer from kits tends to be stronger than beer you buy in shops.

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