Have you ever been in the situation where you would really, really like to go out on town drinking, even if you don't have the money for a single beer before leaving home? Or the times when you would like to have just one tiny little beer as company for an evening spent at home, but unfortunately you're fridge is completely empty of beer, and it's too late to go buy one in the stores? Both of these situations could have been avoided if you had already taken the time and pains to make your own beer at an earlier point in time which by now would have been finished, standing in the cellars just waiting to be drunk!

There are two ways of making beer:

Option 1

Buy a beer kit! In the kit you will find malt that you only have to mix with water, sugar and yeast and then put it to fermentation. Most of the beer kits you can buy will have an instruction booklet which tells you what to do to make the beer. Most of this home brewing beer kits will make about 20 liters of finished beer. It's much easier using such a beer kit than making it all by your self and is by far the most normal way of making your own beer, and is increasingly popular.

Option 2

Make it yourself from scratch! This includes making the malt, the malt extract/wort and everything. This is a much more complicated process but far more fun in the end when you drink it, and you can only blame a single person in the whole wide world for the terrible hangover you will most likely get the day after, that is yourself! In this way you don't need to go somewhere else to lay the blame on others either.

Preamble

A very important thing to remember is that all the equipment needs to be absolutely clean. This is extremely important to make the beer a success. Do not use household detergents for cleaning. It will invariably leave a foreign taste to the beer. Sterilising powder can be obtained from Home brew supplier particularly for this purpose. Equipment should be rinsed of thoroughly before use.

One of the most important ingredients in making good beer is the water. Generally speaking tap water in the UK is fine. However, if your water supply comes from a river as apposed to a reservoir, there will probably be traces of chlorine in it. This can react with the alcohol and produce a taste not unlike DDT. Chlorine neutralising tablets can be obtained if this is the case. Also boiling you water and allowing it to cool can also get rid of impurities in the water.

You will use of lot of water in making beer - both for the stuff itself and for the cleaning of equipment. Invariably some of it will get spilt, so do your beer making in a place where water spillage is not going to be a problem.

HOW TO MAKE BEER FROM A KIT

You will need:

A kit will consist simply of a can of malt and a sachet of yeast. The malt is simply tipped into the fermentation container and the can rinsed out with hot water. Resist the temptation to lick out the can as it will cut your tongue to shreds, but it does taste nice. Add I kilo of sugar and four liters of boiling water and stir well until all the malt and sugar has dissolved. Top up to the required volume with cold water - usually 20 liters or 40 pints. Check the temprature is around 70F and sprinkle the yeast over the top, stir and replace the lid. Allow the beer to ferment as described below.

HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN BEER FROM SCRATCH

To make about 20 liters of finished beer, all for just a few pennies! And of course, you can make as much or as little beer as you like!

To make the beer in this fashion you will need:

MAKING THE MALT

Malt is made from cereals, mostly from barley and some from wheat. Although one never or very seldom hear of beers made from other kinds of cereals, it's probably possible as well. To make the malt needed for 20 liters of beer, take the cereals (about 5 kilos), clean it thoroughly with and rinse it afterwards with water of any dust, dirt and similar things that may have stuck to it. After this you place it to soak in fresh water. The first three or so days you should change the water at least a couple of times a day and take away everything that floats up to the top of the container. When the cereals are soft all the way through, remove the grain from the water, and let it out on a board of some kind in a layer of about 8 to 10 centimeters thick. The temperature in the barley should be monitored, and should not rise above 20 degrees Celsius. The ideal temperature are said to be around 15-17 degrees Celsius. If the temperature is too low, collect the barley in a heap instead of actually laying it out in as thin a layer as 8-10 centimeters. The board should be clean. Let it stay on the board until the grain has spouted green buds at least one and a half the length of the cereal itself (this will take about 7 days). At this time, you will be ready to make the malt.

When the cereals have spouted green buds, take it out, dry off most of the water, and roast it. This will finish the malting process. You can use a normal oven, at about 80-130C, for about 5-7 hours, at which time it will be finished. The more heat you use, the darker the malt, and of course the darker the finished beer. So here you will be able to choose between the different types of beer and make the one you like the best. However, it may be very difficult to make sure that the malt will be either dark or light, since it is not possible to keep a constant temperature in a normal kitchen oven, which will influence the malting process. Actually, the making of the malt is the most difficult part of making the beer. It's said to be an art, and to make good malt yourself may take a lot of practice.

TO MAKE THE WORT

To make about 20 liters of beer, you will normally need 4 kilos of malt (about 5 kilos of cereals). More malt will give the beer a stronger taste while less will make the beer taste watery. Roughly crush or open the malt first. The main point with the crushing of the malt is to make the interior core in the malt to open up and give out its sugar and taste contents. Let the mix of water and malt stay at about 55-60 degrees Celsius and stir occasionally. It is supposed to stay like this for about 1 hour at a steady temperature. After this period, sift off the water from the malt, and add more water and sift it off also, to get as much of the malts taste and sugar content out and into the malt juice.

If you may, you can do this more than twice by adding even more water to the malt. After you've done this, you can throw away the malt. Add water to the malt-juice so that you boil as much as possible of what will later be the wort you will set for yeasting. The most ideal is that you will boil about 20.5 liters for a 20 liter brew. Heat the malt-juice you've got out of the mash so it boils well, it's not supposed to only simmer. After about 10-15 minutes, add hops to give bitterness to the beer (this hops is the bitter-hops). The more hops you add the more bitter the beer will be. The malt juice is supposed to boil for about an hour to make the wort. If you want, you can put more hops just some minutes before the boiling of the malt-juice is finished. This is said to give the finished beer a fresher taste of hops, and more aroma (therefore the name aroma-hops). You should take out all the small bits and pieces floating on the top while boiling the malt juice. When you have finished boiling the wort, sift it a couple of times so that all the leftovers from the malt and hops are removed from the wort. After this, cool it down as quickly as possible. The longer you let it stay cooling and in contact with air, the greater the chance of an infection of bacteria may infest the brew and destroy the beer. You're now almost ready to set the beer for fermentation.

Take the wort and mix it with water until you have the intended number of liters (about 20 liters of wort and water for this recipe). If you've been boiling 20 liters, some will have disappeared as steam and you will need to add more. You will need a big container either made from plastic or glass. Don't use a metal container. Mix it with cold water, so that it will not kill the yeast from heat. You may check the beer for its sugar-content (the more sugar, the more alcohol the beer will contain since the yeast makes alcohol out of the sugar in the brew). This is done by using a hydrometer. Add more sugar if you think the beer will be too weak. The sugar content in the brew will both come from the malt and the extra sugar you may have added. To find out what sugar-contents your beer has, you will have to use a hydrometer. The hydrometer measure the specific gravity of a liquid. In this case, the more sugar, the higher the spcific gravity. The hydrometer is also useful to check at what time your beer has finished fermenting.

Do not add to much sugar as it will have an adverse effect and not all of it will be turned to alcohol. You should be aiming for an OG (Original Gravity) of around 1040. Alcohol content above 11% will tend to kill of the yeast.

FERMENTATION

You are now ready to add the yeast. Stir it in, and close the container thoroughly. Put on a yeast lock to let the gases produced in the fermentation process out of the container, at the same time as air will not be allowed into the container. The normal thing to do is to let the beer ferment at a room temperature of around 20C. This temperature is easily maintained in a kitchen in the UK during the summer months. During the winter you may prefer to brew a larger type beer which is ideally fermented at a lower temperature. Heating belts can be obtained that will assist in keeping the wort at an ideal temperature but these are usually only needed in the winter.

At room temperature, a beer with about 4.5% alcohol will require something like a week to finish its fermentation process, although this may vary a bit. Check the specific gravity with a hydrometer. You should be looking for a reading of between 1004 and 1006 on two consecutive days. This indicates that the fermentation is complete and all the sugar has turned to alcohol the beer is ready for bottling or casking.

Sometimes the beer will finish fermenting before the hydrometer gets down to this level, however. If you don't check the sugar content of the beer when you transfer it to bottles, you may find that you've transferred it too early and the yeasting wasn't really finished. The result may be that the caps of the bottles fly off due to too much pressure, and you end up with having foaming beer all over the floor.

The above process is similar to the initial stages of making whisky. The difference is that the fermented wort is then distilled to give it its higher alcohol content.

STORING

At the time when your beer has stopped fermenting, you may drink it, although you have to be really thirsty since it will almost certainly taste pretty bad! The brew will still be unclear and a lot of sediments from the fermentation process will be floating about or lying in the bottom of the container. The best idea is to siphon the beer through a plastic hose into a new container, being careful not to stir up the sediments left from the fermentation process which for the most part will be lying on the bottom of the container. This should be left in the first container and washed out instead of being brought on with the brew to the new container. If you let it stay in the new container (still closed with a yeast lock) for about a week or two, the beer will have cleared up quite a bit, although doing this may make the yeast-culture in the beer die, and the last after-yeasting to be done on the bottles to make the beer fizzy can be quite difficult to do. The best idea will be to not siphon the beer into bottles before it's quite clear though, as this will improve the taste of the beer a lot and at the same time will make the level of sediments in the beer bottles pretty low.

When you decide that you've waited long enough for your beer you're ready to bottle it (so, hopefully, is the beer). Both plastic and glass bottles may be used. This is easy enough, only make sure you close the bottles thoroughly after you've filled them, and that they are absolutely clean. There are a number of ways to make them clean, from using a lot of special soap to boiling the bottles. To make your beer contain some funny fizzy bubbles, add about half a/whole teaspoon of sugar to each bottle before closing and shake it well so the sugar mixes with the beer. If you add too much sugar, the pressure in the bottles may become too high, and the caps may be flying off and beer floating all over your floor. To make the beer taste a bit better, it's advisable to store it in a cool, dark place for at least a week, although it may be a good idea to let it stay there for a couple of months. If you have the patience to store the beer for, say a month, the taste will improve quite a bit! This is actually a good idea, since a lot of the homemade beer made in a hurry taste terrible! And you don't want that to happen to your beer, do you?

An alternative to bottling you beer is to put it into a cask and have draught beer. Five gallon casks are available for this purpose. They are made of food grade plastic that does not impart any taste to the beer. After the first fermentation is complete as described above, the beer is siphoned of into the cask. A little sugar as added, about half a cup, to promote secondary fermentation. The cap of the cask will have a valve on it which can be used to inject carbon dioxide. Suitable gas cylinders can be obtained from home brew suppliers. The carbon dioxide has the advantage that it makes a layer of gas covering the beer, protecting it from contamination from the air and will act as a propellant to draw the beer from the cask. More carbon dioxide can be injected as required.

Once the beer is siphoned into the cask, leave it in a warm place for three or four days to promote secondary fermentation then remove to a cool place to allow the beer to settle and mature. This is where the patience comes in. Four to six weeks is ideal. It may be drinkable after two weeks, but will be better after four.

So, did this sound too hard? If you do like this way and start to get the hang of it, there is quite a lot of equipment that will improve the brewing process, make it a lot easier for yourself, and also heighten the quality of the finished brew a lot.

The biggest problem of brewing will most of the time is patience! The longer the beer stays before drinking, the better it will taste. And at the same time: the longer you wait, the thirstier you become! So enjoy your finished home brewed beer at the time when either you or the beer can't keep any longer!