Valentine Willinger: According to the German beer purity law, there are only four ingredients in Beer.BarleyWaterYeastHopsSo it's quite easy to make? No not really, but not super tough either.Easy way is to buy a beer kit from a home brew shop or online.If that is not an option you will need to improvise, get some malt extract from a health shop, bakers yeast from the supermarket, and hops from a florist.mix approx 1 gallon of warm water per pound of malt extract into a CLEAN food grade bucket add a teaspoon or so of yeast, and chuck in a couple of ounces of hops. Put a loose fitting lid on and leave in a warm place for a week or so, until it stops fizzing and clears (you will know when you see it)put the beer into plastic soda bottles and add 1 teaspoon of sugar per pint screw the lids on tight.leave for another week, and you will have beer!!!You can leave out the hops if you can't get them, but it will effect the taste.Good luck.EditAs I said, if that is not an option, ! improvise!Obviously we are not talking award winning beer, but it will do the job.Malt extract is basically the same as used in beer kits, and many, many people use bread yeast to brew beer. In fact a lot of moonshiners use nothing else.. Dry hopping is a very simple method of imparting flavour which works.If I see another person writing on here that yeast cannot use sucrose I will scream!For goodness sake just do a search for "sugar wash" There is no need to invert sugar!...Show more
Kimberlee Bowdish: Water, malt, hops and yeast are the base ingredients of all beer. You can also have adjuncts added such as wheat, corn, rice, beet sugars, brown sugar, lactose and oats among others . There are also various spices and flavoring agents used from time to time like coriander, clove, peppers, chocolate and fruits. The possibilities are endless really. The majority of the flavor will come from the malt, hops and yeast. The malt is roasted which will bring out flavors that r! ange from toasty oats like Cheerios to caramel to biscuit and ! coffee. The hops add the bitterness to the beer and there is just as wide a range of flavor from them. Hops can be floral (Flowery), citrus (grapefruit), earthy (wood/peat) and pine (spruce tree) among others. They are added at various stages during the brewing process. Typically three times. Once for bittering, once for flavor and once for aroma. You can also dry hop during fermentation, but we won't go into that here. The yeast (in my opinion) is the most important part and adds the greatest amount of flavors. Heck, you can even change the flavors the yeast adds by changing the fermentation temperature a few degrees. The yeast can add fruit flavors, sulfary flavors, floral flavors and even little to no flavor at all letting the malt shine. Picking the right combinations and ratios is a key part to brewing and is an art form. The alcohol content can range from 1% to 17%, after that it is considered to be a liqueur or barley/wheat wine...please note that I do NOT mean a Bar! leywine which is a specific style of beer. There are "beers" that are as much as 55% ABV. The universally accepted standard is 5% ABV, however. Most of your light beers will be about 4.1% ABV...give or take a few tenths of a percent.So, your best bet for making it is to first read the first few chapters of John Palmer's book How to Brew. The old edition is free online ( http://www.howtobrew.com/intro.html ), if you like it and brewing do John a favor and buy the book. The next step is to watch Alton Brown brew some on Good Eats ( http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2852527078... ), he has some real creative suggestions and give a good idea of what you need to get started. Third, buy equipment you can locate a local store on the AHA's (American Home Brewers Association) website ( http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/pages/direct... ) or you can order it online. I like this kit from Midwest Supplies ( http://www.midwestsupplies.com/brewing-starter-kit... ), for not much ! more than the base kit you get a carboy which will up the quality of yo! ur beer.Next, you'll want to pick a recipe. I recommend going with a simple extract or partial malt recipe. Going all grain at this point is not only difficult, but expensive. Go with a simple Pale Ale or Stout ( http://www.midwestsupplies.com/big-ben-pale-ale.ht... or http://www.midwestsupplies.com/irish-stout.html ) . Don't add any fruits or spices at this point. Get your skills in place before you experiment. Finally, start saving all your non-twist-off caps now. Bottles are the most expensive part about brewing and the more bottles you save the less a batch will cost. Soak them in warm water and baking soda and the majority or the labels will fall off by themselves, the rest will take minimal elbow grease. I won't lie to you...brewing isn't easy. It isn't hard either. The key to making a great homebrew is patience, sanitation, patience and following your processes...and sanitation. (I said patience and sanitation twice because the are SO IMPORTANT.) I can tell you that ! it is a really rewarding hobby and I love doing it. I know tons of people who also do...which brings up another point. After you do your first batch and decide you want to keep on brewing, find a local homebrew club and attend a meeting or two. Ask to help someone on brew day...offer to crush grains for them, we love when someone else mills the grains.Good luck and happy brewing,MAWEDIT - Don't get malt extract from a health food store and baker's yeast. That is a horrible suggestion and using a loose fitting lid will invite infection and make a mess if there is a foam over during fermentation. Adding hops during fermentation (called dry hopping) only works if you've also added it during the boil. If you do it that way the beer will be one dimensional at best. Yeast is bred to do specific things and baker's yeast is to breed to make bread not beer. The alcohol attenuation will be low and the ester will have unfavorable flavors. Finally, adding raw table sugar to the bottles! will do nothing, but sweeten your "beer". Table sugar is a disaccharid! e and is too complex for the yeast to properly digest. It must first be boiled into a simple syrup breaking it down to a monosaccharide. If you brew using any of those suggestions you will end up with something not completely entirely unlike beer, but it sure won't be drinkable by anyone with taste buds....Show more
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