Last year, I went to a wedding where the bridegroom brewed his own beer and served it at his reception. I thought this was such a great idea! His beer turned out great -- we were all really impressed. I think he called it, "Bridegroom Brew." I decided to learn how to brew beer myself and share it with you.To start out, you could try a good beer brewing kit
and you'll need some Reusable Swing-Top Homebrew Bottles.Would you like to join my facebook group: Who Brews the Best Beer?
If you're feeling more ambitious, you can try the following recipe from an article I found on How to Brew Beer, using a drip coffee maker:
The process of brewing coffee, I discovered, was a good way to relate the brewing process to people. This became more than a useful analogy: with familiar kitchen equipment, you can repeat the steps of the process that goes on in breweries large and small-and make a very small batch of beer.
For this mini-homebrew, you'll need the following kitchen equipment:
An electric drip coffee maker with a water-heating compartment and a hot plate (Mine is a West Bend Quick Drip, and all the measurements here are based on that machine.)
A wooden rolling pin (marble is too heavy)
One coffee filter
A saucepan, larger than 2 quarts
2 1-quart canning jars with lids
2 6-inch squares of cheesecloth
Two rubber bands
1/2 gallon filtered-not distilled-water
Brewing ingredients: 1 1/4 cups malted barley. You can use all "base malt," such as 2-row or pilsner. Base malt provides the sugar content for fermentation. 5 to 7 hop pellets, which are the cones of the hop plant compressed into little nuggets. Hops add bitterness to the flavor of beer, and help preserve it. The variety is your choice.
1/2 packet of champagne yeast (or you can even use baker's yeast)
Cleanliness is very important! You don't want any microorganisms or residual chemicals can taint the beer. Make sure everything you are using is as close to sanitary as possible. Use a dishwasher if you have one. Set the drying cycle to heat dry with no rinsing agent.
In coffee and beer brewing coffee beans or grains of barley are steeped in hot water to extract soluble material. To make this extraction more efficient, you grind the coffee beans, or you mill the barley grains.
Measure 1 1/4 cups of malted barley. Using the rolling pin, gently apply just enough pressure to the grains to crack them.
Place the cracked grains into the coffee pot. Place 2 cups of filtered water into the coffee machine and turn it on. The temperatures of the water-heating chamber and hot plate-170 degrees F and 150 degrees F, respectively-are perfect for brewing! Let the coffee maker do its thing; it will keep the water/grain mix at a constant temperature for about an hour before it shuts off.
Strain the liquid through the coffee filter, and place the filter full of grain into the filter basket. Pour the strained liquid back into the water-heating chamber. Add 1 cup of water to the strained liquid in the chamber and turn the machine back on. After the liquid flows into the coffee pot, turn off the machine and pour the liquid back into heating chamber. Repeat five times, adding another cup of water each time. Keep a close eye to make sure it does not overflow.
Stir until you have a whirlpool. This will pull leftover sediment into the center of the pot. Carefully pour the wort into the canning jar, pouring down the side of the jar without splashing (you can use a upturned ladle to pour the liquid over into the jar to guide it where you want it to go). Splashing hot wort would allow unwanted air-borne organisms to get established.
Next, you need to bring the temperature of the wort down to a level where yeast-the organisms you want in your wort-will thrive. Place the jar into a sink filled with cold water.
Let it cool until the liquid reaches between 60 and 70 degrees F. Screw the top on the jar and shake vigorously; this aerates the wort. Take the top off the jar and add yeast.
The jar is now your fermentation tank. Place a piece of cheesecloth over the top of the jar and secure it with a rubber band; the cheesecloth will keep stuff from falling in your wort, and the carbon dioxide produced by fermentation should keep out other contaminants.
Place the jar in a cool, dark place. The sweet liquor will become beer in five to seven days.
(http://www.allaboutbeer.com/features/235coffee.html)There something about hard labor that makes you crave a cold beer. For some reason, yard work does that for us. What we like to do is place beer mugs
in the freezer, so they're frosty and ready to go. Its very refreshing.Easily learn how to brew your own beer with the Home Brewing Success Bundle!
