Friday, January 2, 2009

How To Brew Your Own Beer

Remember the Beer Kit I got Kevin for Christmas? Well, he decided to brew his first batch of beer on New Years Day. Since he is not as familiar in brewing beer as he is with wine, he did not experiment but followed the step by step standard brewing procedure provided by the Mr Beer kit.
This is basically what's inside the box. A brew keg with a lid and tap, a booster pack, the one step sanitizer cleanser, dry brewing yeast and the hopped malt extract ( there are many different types but we got the Canadian Draft from the International Series with our kit).

The first step in brewing a good batch of beer is sanitizing all equipment that comes in contact with your beer. This is to kill microscopic bacteria, wild yeast and mold that may cause off flavor in your beer. Fill up the keg with lukewarm water to the 4 quart mark on the back.

Then add in half a pack of the One- Step sanitizer. Save the other half to sanitize your bottles later on when you are ready to bottle your beer.

Screw on the lid and swirl the keg around. Open and close the tap into a big container so that you can sanitize your utensils in the container. Allow all items to soak for at least 10 minutes and then drain. This sanitizer doesn't require you to rinse.

Now, we are ready to brew! Fill the keg with cold water to the 4 quart mark on the back.

Place the unopened can of beer mix in hot water. This is to warm up the mix in order for it to pour out easily later on.

Pour 4 cups of water into a pot and slowly sprinkle in the Booster while stirring to avoid clumping. Once the Booster is fully dissolved, bring to a boil and remove the pot from heat.

Stir in the beer mix into the water and Booster mixture. Now we have a mixture that is called the wort. By now you will be able to smell the familiar smell of a microbrewery :D

Pour the wort into the keg.

Add in more cold water into the keg until it reaches the 8.5 quart mark. Stir vigorously to mix well.

Sprinkle yeast into the keg and allow it to sit for about 5 minutes. Stir vigorously again and then screw the lid on.

We placed the keg out of direct sunlight, in a corner of our kitchen where it has a consistent temperature of between 68F to 76F. We will let it sit and brew for about 14 days before we can bottle the beer. So now, we wait :)

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