How to Home Brew Beer

If you're curious as to how to home brew beer, hopefully it's not because you're underage and can't find anyone to buy beer for you. If that's the case, close this article right now and go clean your room. For the rest of you, finding out how to home brew beer is not that difficult, and once you get the hang of it, you'll find that you can not only make the best tasting beer you've ever had, but that you can easily tweak your recipes and mixtures in order to come up with something to your exact taste and liking.

The process involved when you home brew beer isn't not as terribly difficult as you might think, but does mean some special ingredients and procedures. Your first step is to make your wort, which is the term used for the liquid that will eventually turn into your beer. You make wort by boiling a large amount of water with a small handful of grains or malt that are in a mesh bag. This is kind of like making coffee or tea - you don't actually add the coffee beans or tea leaves to the water but steep them in a filter or bag. Your grains are important when you home brew beer, because each different type of grain will produce a different flavor or type of beer. These grains or malt are easily available at any home brewing retailer.

The next step when you home brew beer is to remove the grains and continue to boil this wort with some extra water added. You then add some hops. Hops add flavor and aroma to beer. When you add hops to home brew beer, you want to do so exactly according to the recipe that you've been given. If you boil the hops for any longer, your beer will be bitter, and for any less time and it will be too sweet.

When the wort is done boiling and has been cooled, you put this into what's called a fermenting container. When you home brew beer, you actually need two fermenting containers because down the road you'll transfer this liquid from one to another. You also add beer yeast to this mixture; when the yeast reacts to the sugars you've just produced by boiling your grains or malt, this is what will eventually become alcohol. This mixture is then allowed to sit for days or a full week before it's ready.

Obviously when you home brew beer there are a few more small steps and some additional ingredients and additives you'll need, but this is the basic process. Boiling, flavored water has yeast added to it and is allowed to sit for some time in order to steep properly and produce alcohol. If you think it sounds easy to home brew beer, you're right. And once you get the hang of it, you may very well find that this is the most enjoyable hobby you've ever taken up.