The SIMPLEST way to start making BEER at home

if you're curious about making beer things just got a lot simpler today I'm going to show you just how easy it can be to make this delicious Hoy Citra ale like many home Brewers I got my start making my own beer with a kit but a lot of the beginner Brewer kits out there either try to dumb things down way too much or forget about some key aspects that make beer actually taste good I know my first few batches were straight dog dooky so I'm going to share some tips I've learned in the past 10 years of fermenting and Brewing to help you make the best tasting beer possible in your first batch it all starts with the beer kit and I'm using the claw hammer 1gallon beer kit claw hammer actually provided this kit for me and I got to say it's one of the better kits I've used but I'll talk more about what makes it great in a minute inside the kit comes a fermentor with an airlock all the ingredients for a citr p and cleaning and sanitizing products some things that you'll need Beyond this are a stock pot you might actually already have one but ideally a 2 gon pot to give us some extra room to work with another thing you'll want is a scale and a thermometer hopefully you have those as well in your kitchen but if not I'll have some links in the description with some good affordable options for all these the last thing I would recommend is a bottling kit you can always save bottles from beers that you've bought and then buy some caps and a cheap bottle Capper online or claw hammer has a bottling kit as an optional accessory which is a nice convenient way to ensure you have everything you need to package up this beer in the end so with everything in hand it's time to start making beer there's many ways to make beer but probably the easiest way is to use some form of malt extract for the fermentable sugars malt extract is basically condensed wart AKA unfermented beer and can either come in liquid malt or dry malt form but for both you really just need to add water to make warp and while it is convenient by itself it's really not that interesting thankfully this kit also uses some steep grains to add complexity and depth to the Beer the start to any good recipe is with water water makes up 95% of beer so water choice is actually quite important my recommendation is to avoid tap water it's simply too unpredictable to to know what's in your water unless you pull a water test or report the mineral content in the water can greatly impact its flavor mouth feel and even the general fermentation Health you can technically make good beer with tap water but you'll definitely want to add a Camden tablet this kit actually comes with one and it'll help to wipe out the chloramines in the water that can leave your beer with a plasticky almost Band-Aid flavor no thanks something you don't want in beer so what I recommend you do instead is to head to the grocery store and just buy some spring water its mineral content is much lower and it'll give you the clean needed to make a clean tasting beer start by heating up the water to 160° F brewing beer can be messy especially if you have a boilover so I decided to brew this one outside on the burner of my grill but you can totally do this in your kitchen it's just much riskier and your significant other will thank you trust me once the water is DET temp it's time to add the specialty grain bag inside this cloth bag is some caramel 40 malt and what this will do is add a depth of sweetness flavor and a bit of color to the finished beer by steeping grains at warm temperatures it helps extract those fermentable sugars flavors and colors to the water basically like making a big batch of tea and you'll see how quickly it can happen typically we try and mash between a certain temperature range usually between 148 to 156° F and we'll leave the grains in the hot water for anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes maybe even longer this gives it enough time to get all that goodness out for this recipe we're just adding in the bag right when we get to 160 turn off the heat add the bag and then add the lid to keep the temp stable then just let steep for 30 minutes after 30 minutes safely pull out the bag helps to have some tongs or a spoon or something and now prepare to add the dry malt extract be warned once the Heat or water comes in contact with the stuff it gets very very sticky even a little steam can make this dry malt Clump up into a mess another one of the reasons why we're outside with the heat still off slowly add it in and then give it a stir I have a big spoon but any spoon will work even a whisk would work great give it a really good mix to ensure it's fully dissolved we don't want any clumps at the bottom that will stick together and burn giving your beer a nasty scorched flavor it might take a few minutes to get it fully dissolved but once it is it's time to turn back on the heat and bring to a boil this is where you need to keep a close eye on the pot now that we have the Mt extract in there you're very likely to get a boil over if you're not careful if you notice it's about to boil over kill the heat immediately or you can try this trick I learned where you take some water in a spray bottle and sprits the top as it rises this should keep the foam in check and after after a few minutes of careful watch you'll hit the hot break which is basically where the foam finally falls down and it'll just boil normally now you can take a deep breath with a rolling boil it's time to add the Hops hop flavor Aroma and bitterness contributions are greatly impacted on when you add them to the boil the longer you boil the more bitterness you'll get the less you boil them for the more Aroma you might get out of them so for every recipe step one is to start a timer we'll boil for 60 minutes this recipe calls for a few additions which will give this beer a more complex hop presents starting with the 60-minute addition of 3 G of Citra hops this is where a scale comes in handy to measure out the precise amounts needed just drop the Hops in and keep an eye on the boil sometimes it might foam up a bit with this first hop Edition since these hops are boiling for 60 Minutes they'll give us most of the bitterness and it should really be smelling like beer now the next compeition comes with 15 minutes left in the boil 8 G of Citra Hops and then the last addition comes at the end of the boil turn off the heat and add the remaining 18 G of hops this is typically called a flameout addition and since we're not boiling these hops we should preserve more of the delicate flavors and Aromas now it's time to chill but our work's not done what I mean is that we need to chill this wart down to yeast pitching temps the yeast that will convert the sugars in the wart into beer through fermentation only work in a certain temperature range if the wart is too hot it'll likely just kill the yeast so I want to chill this down to below 70° F I found that the sweet spot for most ALS is around 6 67° and there's a few ways to chill it down first is to just let it sit with a lid on overnight but that comes with the risk of infection from Wild bacterian and yeast if you're not careful more on that in a sec you could also try sticking in the fridge for a couple hours if you got the space but the fastest way would be to make an ice bath in your sink and set the pot in it you should get down to the right range within an hour if not less one important thing to know is that after the boil ends the beer is susceptible to infections which can easily ruin your beer I know from experience many of my batches didn't turn out great because I ignored this so what this means is that nothing should touch your wart unless it's been sanitized thankfully this kit comes with these two vials one is a cleaner which is a powerful product that can remove beer Gunk from fermenters or kettles we don't need to worry about this right now but it'll come in handy later and the other is a sanitizer when this sanitizer is mixed with water it creates a solution that is very acidic and will help kill wild bacteria or Yeast that might be living on a Surface one tip that I have is for you to mix it with some water in a spray bottle this makes spraying down and sanitizing surfaces really easy just give it a spritz wait a few seconds for it to work its magic and then you can use it note that the sanitizer only works well if the surface is already clean but this spray bottle trick has made brewing a lot easier for me so back to the ice bath be careful not to let any water in putting the lid on will help with that then just add more ice as it melts you can help speed up the process by stirring the work occasionally with a sanitized spoon to disperse the cooler wart around and don't forget to sanitize your therometer if you stick it in the W once it's chilled down to around 67° F it's time to add it to the fermentor assembling this fermentor was pretty easy you just need to add the spigot which is one thing I really love about this fermentor a lot of beginner kits come with a glass Carboy or buckets without spigots which means you'll need an auto siphon to get the beer out and that can be pretty annoying and potentially risky for your beer so a spig it makes getting the beer out later a lot easier with the fer assembled make sure to sanitize it first by adding water and the sanitizer together you can do it right in the fer and give it a a good shake with the lid on I even Sav some of the sanitizer from this into a bottle for later use and then just dump it out with it sanitized you can now add in the chilled wart since we boiled the beer for a while we had some of the wart boil off reducing the volume so at this point just top up with a little more water to the 1.25 Gall Mark the added .25 Gall will give us some extra space since there'll likely be some tro left behind at the end tro is just a bunch of proteins hot matter or even yeast that will fall out of suspension to the bottom and take up space and we don't want that in our final product just the good stuff now finally we can add the yeast sprinkle it on and close up the lid give it a good Shake covering the hole with a sanitized hand or bung for about 60 seconds shaking aites the warp which brings in oxygen to help the yeast perform oh bung you ask these two parts are the bung and the airlock the air lock fits into the bung and together it goes on top of the fermentor creating a Tight Seal fill up the airlock with some of that leftover sanitizer if you've never seen an ear loock it helps to keep things from getting into your beer but since fermentation creates CO2 it also gives it a way to escape so the fermentor doesn't explode under pressure and with that brw day is done and beer is on its way not too bad just a few steps to follow set the fermentor in a cool dark place cool as in below 70° F you want to keep the fermentor temperature somewhat in check otherwise you might get some off flavors from hot overstressed yeast and darkness is important because sunlight is the enemy of hops if you ever tasted a skunked beer it's because the beer was exposed to the Sun and it's not really a good thing unless you like hinin kidding but just set it in a cold closet the important thing for you to do now is just wait it can take about a week or more for the beer to fully ferment and resist the urge to open it up this can lead to all kinds of issues one of them being oxidation at the beginning of the fermentation we need oxygen to help these perform but once the fermentation is going and through the rest of the process we want to avoid oxygen exposure exposure at all cost this is where I would say 90% of new Brewers mess up okay I totally made that set up but I'm guessing a majority of new Brewers don't really realize how badly this can mess up your beer oxidation leads to stale flavors some even say a cardboard like flavor or can make your beer sickly sweet and turn it a weird shade of purple it's basically death to your beer so just don't open it let the yeast do the work watch the ci2 bubble out of the fermentor in a week or so you'll notice that the bubbles will stop coming that's how you know you're just about done it's very important not to rush fermentation if you want I'd say you can let this sit for about 2 weeks to be sure if you rush and your fermentation is not done that can lead to bottle bombs later one piece of equipment that's not included in this kit is a tool to help precisely tell when fermentation is done and that's a hydrometer they're fairly cheap so if you think you'll do this more than once it might be worth picking one up a hydrometer measures the density of a liquid or how much sugar is in it by taking a sample of the war before fermentation and then another one at the end of fer fation you can determine how much alcohol is in the beer as well the way it helps determine if your fermentation is done is by taking a reading a few days in a row once you notice the bubbling stops if the reading is consistent then you're likely done fermenting if it changes then there's still a little more to go but since this kit doesn't come with one that's why you'll see the instructions recommending giving it a full 2 weeks to ferment either way that day will finally come and when it does it's time to bottle it up this process involves filling up the bottles with a little extra sugar and then capping them by adding more sugar will restart fermentation in the bottles which will create more CO2 which means pressure in the bottles and eventually bubbles when we open it up if you get the bottling kit from Climer it really simplifies this for you by giving you a set of bottles caps the crimper and even some of these awesome priming sugar tablets that are pre-portion for the bottles before we fill them we need to sanitize the bottles and caps if you got the spray bottle sanitizer it will make quick work of this or you can just fill up a bucket or your Kettle with some sanitizer and dunk them all in into each bottle drop in four sugar tablets it helps to remove the air lock so there's not negative pressure on the fermentor this kit also comes with a bottling wand and some tubing the bottling wand has a spring-loaded tip that when you press it into the bottle it allows the beer to flow through and when you let go it stops this is helpful so you don't make a mess in between bottles but if you didn't have this you could either just use a piece of tubing and crimp it between the bottles or just fill it from the spigot but that can lead to oxidation so probably best to just use bottling W plus the bottling W leaves a perfect amount of head space you want about an inch or two of head space from the top it'll help with consistent carbonation later whichever way you do it make sure to have some towser on cuz it can get messy and once you get them all filled add a cap on top and crmp it down this bottle Capper has a magnet that helps with alignment it just go slow and give even pressure on both sides you don't need to crank it down just enough to make a Tight Seal test it by moving around and then place the finished bottle into the box now that we're done with bottling it's a good idea to quickly talk about cleaning you'll probably notice that your fermentor might be a bit nasty looking this is where that other bottle of cleaner comes in handy what it is is a strong Brewery wash that specifically formulated to handle beer mess so grab a good sponge and mix it up with some hot water and it'll make quick work of the tough stuck on stuff the more you brew the more you realize that cleaning is actually kind of a big part of Brewing but if you take care of it now rather than later it'll be a lot easier since it won't be caked on okay enough of the boring stuff back to the bottles cation takes two full weeks to reach this peak which I know can seem like forever after all that work and that's part of the reason many Brewers that continue in the hobby go on to kegging it's faster to fill one keg versus many bottles and you can get to full carbonation in half the time sometimes even a few hours if you do some tricks I get a whole video on kiing if you ever get to that point but for a beginner bottling is the way that long wait makes it all worth it in the end and if you did everything right you should end up with something like [Music] this I'm pretty happy with this little kit it has everything you need to get started and the beer is a lot better than I remembered my first one being albeit I have some experience now but hopefully I can share some bits of wisdom to help you on your first brew as well I'll leave a link to this claw harmer kit in the description if you're interested in picking one up and the best part is you can take this kit and continue to Brew and Grow and expand to hopefully make even better beer or other fun fermentations moving forward and if you need ideas then I got the perfect video of the three easiest fermentations for any beginner to try check check it out cheers and happy bra

Channel: TheBruSho

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Keywords: thebrusho, the bru sho, the brew show, brew show, bru sho, how to brew beer, how to brew beer at home, how to make beer, beer brewing for beginners, beginner brewing, easy beer making, how to brew, extract beer, extract beer kit, clawhammer supply, partial mash beer, beer kit, simple beer kit, how to brew your first beer, beer recipe, easy beer recipe, simple beer instructions, beer 101, beer brewing 101

Id: RVGwcOIIb5s

Length: 14min 32sec (872 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 13 2023