All things Selfsufficientish

How to make beer

Posted by Andy Hamilton - 11/03/09 at 10:03:33 am

I gave a talk last night on how to make beer. It was in the place that I live, Bristol (U.K) and I gave the talk as part of the Freeskilling evening program. Freeskilling is the brainchild of that bloke who is living for a year without spending any money – Mark Boyle. Whatever you think of him doing this it has to be said that (at least in Bristol), he has got people talking.

Anyway, freeskilling is exactly what it says on the tin. It is people teaching others some skills for free. So I did not make any money out of my talk last night and did it just for the love of it.

What I was aiming to get across last night is just how easy it is to make your own beer and to really take control of what you are drinking.

The average hop farmer sprays 14 times a year uding 15 different pesticides and only 0.04% of the UK hop production is organic. When I found this out it made me wonder about my hangovers, could I be realing from an actue pesticide poisioning? Ok I am being alarmist, but I do try to eat organic food whenever possible so why should I make a comprimise on a Saturday night.

I opened the talk with a statement, “I want you all to leave here knowing how to make Ale”. Hopefully, everyone did. I tried to keep it as simple as possible and broke it down to 12 steps.

Step by step

Step one: Decide on size of batch, is it for a party or at home. So do you make 10 pints or 100 pints?

Step two: Choose your ingredients. What flavours do you like, perhaps try some yarrow or just a hopped beer.

Step three: Steralize at your equipment due to all the airborne yeasts and other nasties that can cause a brew to be mouldy.

Step four: Pour in malt extract.

Step five: Pour in sugar or sugar equivalent – ie molasses, golden syrup, honey or whatever. If you want to use just malt extract then use 1.5 times the amount you would sugar.

Step five: Boil up your ingredient. (hops, rosemary, yarrow or whatever)

Step six: strain using a muslin cloth or jelly bag. Pour over malt and sugar in fementation bin

Step seven: top up with cold water. To make the right amount.

Step eight: If not cool enough allow to cool until hand hot.

Step nine: Sprinkle over yeast

Step ten: leave to ferment (a week to be on the safe side)

Step eleven: Pour sugar into bottles [or honey] (prime) then siphon.

Step twelve: leave for about a week then drink.

At the moment I am experimenting with loads of different ingredients instead of hops, thyme, rosemary, sage, dandelion, pine needles to name but a few. I replace the same weight in herbs for what I would use in hops and I wash and dry all the herbs I use.

Like the talk I want you to leave this blog knowing how to make Ale. So to reiterate and add some numbers and ingredients you might want to try this recipe below my simple and cheap beer recipe.

Ingredients

1kg (2lb) of Malt Extract
55g dried hops (2oz)
750g (1.5 lb) Sugar (brewing sugar preferably, otherwise granulated)
20g (1oz) Ale yeast
13 litres (3 gallons) of water

Other Equipment needed

Massive Saucepan/cauldron or two big pans
Muslin cloth or Jelly bag
Fermentation bin (at least 13 litres)
Big plastic spoon
Empty Beer bottles and caps.
Syphoning tube
Optional – Hydrometer and thermometer

Method

Get a really big pan/cauldron or if you don have that then two pretty big saucepans will do. Bring 7 litres of water to the boil then throw in the hops and keep boiling for 25-30 mins. The water should change colour and should taste bitter.

Steralise the fermentation bin, rinse and pour in the malt extract and Sugar.

Strain the hop liquid through the jelly bag. The hops should then be added to the compost heap as they are highly beneficial. Stir the wort to ensure that the sugar is all dissolved.

Pour over 6 liters of cold water and ensuring the temperature is below about 18c or 65f sprinkle on your yeast. The gravity (if using a hydrometer) should be roughly 1030.

Now put the top on the bin and seal it for a week or until fermenation stops.

Place a level teaspoon of sugar into each bottle and syphon the liquid into the bottles ensuring that you don’t syphon in any of the sediment.

Leave the bottles for 10 days then they are ready to drink.

The beer should be about 4.5% and the cost will vary depening on ingredients. It make approx 25 pints and my ingredients were £5 as they were all the best, a cost of about 20p a pint for a locally brewed organic beer you can’t buy cheaper than that.