Your First Home Brew Beer Recipe

Making your own home brew beer is something that you can do with just a little time and effort.  Once you find out that you can create great tasting beer at home, you will want to do it all the time. Forget buying beer at the store, you can have your own line of beer with flavors customized to your taste.

For your first home brew I recommend that you purchase a brewing kit with all the ingredients you need to make your first custom beer.  Once you have that under your belt you can buy all kinds of pre-made malt extracts pre-hopped or un-hopped or you can create your own wort (the liquid created in the mashing process) from a variety of grains and hops to bring out that specific flavor you are looking for.

If you are purchasing a full kit that includes the malt extract you will have to decide on what style of home brew you would like to make this varies from person to person and includes options like dark, pale and amber ales, English, German, American and even fruit beers, yes I said fruit.

Now that you have your equipment and your have chosen your style and flavor it is time to create the actual brew.

One of the most common mistakes made by beginning home brewers is that they overlook the importance of sanitation.  Everything and anything that will come in contact with your unfermented home brew beer needs to be completely sanitary.

Use of a commercial sanitizer is your best bet for this process.  Don’t rush this let the sanitizer have the time it needs to do its job and don’t forget to sanitize your stirring spoon as well as your fermenter.

Sanitizer can kill the yeast that will be critical to the creation of your home brew so you need to rinse everything very well to make sure the sanitizer is completely removed.

Combine your water and malt extract (either pre-made or your own custom mix) in your brew kettle and bring it to a good rolling boil.  Be careful that you don’t let it boil over.

The next step is to cool it down to below one hundred degrees Fahrenheit. A good way to do this is to place the brew kettle in a sink partially filled with cool water.

Now it is time to put your brew into your well sanitized, well rinsed fermenter and to top it off to the full mark (usually five gallons)

Then we will add the most important ingredient, the yeast. This not only make your home brew beer a true beer but it also has an effect on the flavor.  There is a wide variety of yeasts to choose from and again this will depend on your personal taste.

Let your home brew ferment from eight to ten days (usually until the bubbling stops) then let it stand at room temperature for a couple more days.  I know you want to try it right now but it is better to let it fully flavor.

Now you are ready to put your home brew into bottles.  Fill your bottles until you are about one inch from the top and put on the cap.  Depending on the brewing kit you purchased you might have to let it carbonate for a few days but some of the better brewing kits have carbonation pods on them so you can sample your brew earlier.

That’s it you are done and it is time to enjoy the fresh taste of your own home brew beer.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 19th, 2009 at 9:50 am and is filed under Home Brew Beer Recipe. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.