Beer homemade compares favorably with cheap store counterparts in a richer taste, thick foam and lack of preservatives. It turns out a drink that does not contain anything superfluous. I will show you how to brew beer according to the classic recipe using only traditional ingredients: hops, malt, water and yeast. To preserve the original taste, we will not resort to filtration and pasteurization.

It is believed that to make real beer you need to buy a mini-brewery or other expensive equipment. This myth is imposed by manufacturers of such products. Together with the brewery, such firms will gladly sell the finished concentrate, which only needs to be diluted in water and fermented. As a result, a novice brewer overpays exorbitantly for beer, the quality of which, at best, is slightly higher than the cheap store brands.

In fact, it is possible to make homemade beer without special equipment, using the tools at hand: a large pot for cooking, a plastic or glass fermentation vessel, any bottles and other available accessories, full list which is published below.

You will only have to buy hops, malt and brewer's yeast. I do not insist on choosing a specific company or brand. The assortment is wide enough, buy any product you like.

In theory, malt and hops can be grown at home. But these processes are beyond the scope of the article. Further, we will assume that all necessary ingredients available: homemade or purchased. The only thing, I do not advise you to experiment with brewer's yeast, but immediately choose the best strains in the store, since from grain mash beer is distinguished by its special yeast.

Ingredients:

• water - 27 liters;
• hops (alpha acidity 4.5%) - 45 grams;
• barley malt - 4 kg;
• brewer's yeast - 25 grams;
• sugar - 8 grams per liter of beer (needed for natural saturation with carbon dioxide).

Necessary equipment:

• enamelled saucepan for 30 liters - for boiling the wort;
• fermentation tank - for fermentation;
• thermometer (required) - if moonshine from sugar or wine can be made only by approximately controlling the temperature, then with beer this is initially a failure;
• bottles for bottling finished beer (plastic or glass);
• small diameter silicone hose - for removing beer from sediment;
• a bathtub with ice water or a cooler for beer wort;
• gauze (3-5 meters) or cloth bag;
• iodine and a white plate (optional);
• hydrometer (optional) - a device for determining the sugar content of the wort.

Making homemade beer

1. Preparation. The first stage, during which the brewer checks for the presence of the right ingredients and the readiness of the equipment for operation. I also advise you to pay attention to the following points.

Sterilization. All used containers and accessories should be thoroughly washed with hot water and dried. Before working with ingredients, the brewer thoroughly washes his hands with soap and wipes his hands dry. It is very important not to infect the beer wort with wild yeast and pathogenic microorganisms, otherwise you will get mash instead of beer. Neglecting sterilization negates all further efforts.

Water. Better to use spring or bottled water. As a last resort, a regular tap will do. Before brewing beer, tap water is defended for 24 hours in open containers. This time is enough for the chlorine to disappear and heavy metals and salts to settle at the bottom. In the future, the settled water is carefully poured from the sediment into another container through a thin tube.

Yeast. For normal fermentation, brewer's yeast is activated with a small amount of warm water 15-30 minutes before adding it to the wort (the temperature is not higher than 28 degrees). There is no universal method that allows you to properly dilute any brewer's yeast. Therefore, you need to follow the instructions on the package.

2. Mashing the wort. This term refers to the mixing of crushed malt with hot water to break down the starch in the grains into sugar (maltose) and soluble substances (dextrins). Sometimes malt is sold ready for brewing, crushed, which makes the task a little easier. If not, the dried sprouted grain must be ground up yourself using a grain grinder or mechanical meat grinder.

Attention! Grinding does not mean grinding into flour, you just need to grind the grains into small pieces, always preserving the particles of the grain skin, which will then be required to filter the wort. The correct grinding option is shown in the photo.

Correct grind

Pour 25 liters of water into an enamel pot and heat it on the stove to 80 ° C. Next, the milled malt is poured into a cloth or homemade bag measuring 1 by 1 meter, made of 3-4 layers of gauze. The bag of malt is immersed in water, covered with a lid and cooked for 90 minutes, maintaining a stable temperature of 61-72 ° C.

Grouting malt at 61-63 degrees Celsius promotes better sugar yield, increasing the strength of home-brewed beer. At 68-72 ° C, the density of the wort increases, although the alcohol content in the drink will be slightly lower, but the taste will be richer. I recommend sticking to the 65-72 ° C temperature range, which results in a tasty, dense beer with 4% ABV.

Bagging malt

After 90 minutes of boiling, an iodine test is made to make sure that there is no starch left in the wort. To do this, 5-10 milligrams of wort is poured onto a clean white plate and mixed with a few drops of iodine. If the solution turns dark blue, cook the contents of the pot for another 15 minutes. If the iodine hasn't changed the color of the wort, you're done. You can skip the iodine test, but simply increase the mashing (cooking) time by 15 minutes, the quality of the drink will not suffer from this.

Then the temperature is raised sharply to 78-80 ° C and the wort is boiled for 5 minutes to completely stop the enzymes from working. Next, the bag with the remaining malt is removed from the container and washed with 2 liters of boiled water at a temperature of 78 degrees. This is how the residues of extractive substances are washed out. The wash water is added to the wort.

This mashing method is called "in a bag" and allows you to do without filtration - the separation of grains (not dissolved malt particles) from the main wort. In turn, filtration requires specific equipment (purification systems) and multiple transfer of wort from one container to another. Mashing in a bag does not affect the quality of the brewed beer in any way, but takes several times less time.

3. Boiling the wort. The contents of the pan are brought to a boil and the first portion of hops is added, in our case 15 grams. After 30 minutes of intensive boiling, add the next 15 grams, and after 40 minutes the remaining 15 grams of hops and boil for another 20 minutes.

Depending on the selected beer recipe, the time intervals and the amount of hops may differ. But, adhering to the specified sequence and proportions, you are guaranteed to get a normal result.

Boiling takes an hour and a half, during this time it is important to maintain intense heat so that the wort gurgles.

Hop addition

4. Cooling. Beer wort should be quickly cooled (within 15-30 minutes) to 24-26 ° C. The sooner this is done, the less the risk of infecting the drink with bacteria harmful for fermentation and wild yeast.

You can cool the wort with a special immersion cooler (one of the possible designs in the photo) or carefully transfer the container to a bath of ice water. Most budding brewers use the latter method. The main thing is not to accidentally turn the hot pot over by scalding yourself with boiling water.

Cooler design

The cooled wort is poured through cheesecloth into a fermentation tank.

5. Fermentation. Diluted brewer's yeast is added to the wort and mixed well. In this case, it is very important to observe the temperature and proportions indicated in the instructions on the sachet label.

Yeasts are top-fermented, which is brought in at a temperature of 18-22 ° C, and bottom-fermented, operating at 5-16 ° C. The two make different beers.

Transfer the filled fermentation tank to a dark place at the temperature recommended by the yeast manufacturer. In our case, it is 24-25 ° C. Then a water seal is installed and left alone for 7-10 days.

Fermentation vessel example

After 6-12 hours, active fermentation will begin, which usually lasts 2-3 days. At this time, the water seal is intensively blowing bubbles, then the frequency of the release of carbon dioxide slowly decreases. At the end of fermentation, the young home-brewed beer turns pale. Readiness is determined by two methods: a sugar meter (hydrometer) and a water seal.

In the first case, the readings of two hydrometer samples for the last 12 hours are compared. If the values ​​differ slightly (by hundredths), then you can proceed to the next stage. Not everyone has a sugar meter, so at home they often just look at the water seal. The absence of bubbles within 18-24 hours indicates the end of fermentation.

6. Plugging and carbonation. Beer carbonation is the saturation of the drink with carbon dioxide, which improves the taste and the appearance of a thick foam. Despite the complex name, the process itself is very simple.

Sugar is added to bottles for storing beer (preferably dark) at the rate of 8 grams per 1 liter. The sugar will cause a slight secondary fermentation, which will saturate the beer with carbon dioxide. Then the beer is drained from the sediment through a silicone tube, filling the prepared bottles.

Spill completed

One end of the tube is lowered into the middle of the container with beer, the other - to the very bottom of the bottle, this minimizes the contact of the drink with air. It is important not to touch the yeast, which, depending on the species, can settle at the bottom or accumulate on the surface, otherwise the beer will turn out cloudy. Bottles are not topped up by 2 cm to the neck and are tightly sealed.

The easiest way is to use a plastic container, since the lids can be tightened to it by hand. For glass bottles you need drag corks or a special device for sealing ordinary beer corks (pictured).

Bottle with drag stopper
Closure device for conventional plugs

Bottles filled with beer are transferred to a dark place with a temperature of 20-24 ° C and left for 15-20 days. Shake well once every 7 days. After that, the drink is placed in the refrigerator.

7. Maturation. Homemade beer is ready. But if you let the drink stand for another 30 days, the taste will improve significantly.
Beer can be stored in the refrigerator for 6-8 months, an open bottle - 2-3 days.

Another method of brewing beer without special equipment is shown in the video.

- although it is alcohol, it is healthy. For a long time, our ancestors prepared barley beer and considered it the best, with excellent taste... Let's take a look at how to make this drink using a homemade barley recipe that has been known for hundreds of years.

Unfiltered beer is a natural beverage that does not contain preservatives and is healthy in reasonable amounts. Promotes clean skin, strong hair and nails, thanks to B vitamins.

To brew beer according to the rules, prepare the necessary ingredients:

• Barley malt it is not difficult to do it yourself, below you will find out about it.

Easier to buy ready-made dry and already ground malt... The internet offers a good selection today. Light malt needed.

• Hop. Home brewing involves hand-picked hop cones, either fresh or dried. However, this ingredient can also be ordered from websites that specialize in brewery products.
• Water, on the quality of which the color and taste of the final product directly depends. That's why the best choice- soft, additionally filtered, with a low mineral content.

A good choice - bottled water designed for baby food("Children's", "Baby", "Agusha", etc.). She is always soft.

• Sugar... Or replace it with honey (as was done in the old days). It will add a specific flavor to the drink.
• Yeast... Desirable - it is beer, although alcohol, bakery, dry and raw are also used.
• The drink is very tasty with breadcrumbs(better in half - white and black). Although this ingredient is optional, without it, color and flavor will be depleted.

Simple homemade recipe

Home-brewed beer according to this recipe is natural, without preservatives and pasteurization.

The taste and color largely depends not only on the proportions, but also on the ingredients used. For example, on black bread crumbs the drink will be darker, on white bread it will be lighter.

For 5.5 liters of water you will need:

• 600 g fresh and clean grain of barley;
• about 6 glasses of hop cones;
• 1 glass of sugar or the same amount of honey;
• crackers from one loaf of bread (you can - two halves of white and black);
• 50 g of raw yeast or 10 g of dry yeast.

Cooking malt

Homemade barley beer, the recipe for which we present, involves the production of malt.

V glass jar We fill in the washed barley, fill it with water and leave it in the room for a couple of days. Then we drain the water, spread the grain in a thin ball on a tray (baking sheet) and wait for the sprouts to reach about one and a half centimeters.

Now we dry the mass in an electric dryer at the maximum temperature or in an oven at 70 - 75 ° С. We grind dry grain in our hands, separating the sprouts (we do not use them), and grind the remaining malt.

If the first experience is successful and you plan to brew barley beer at home in the future, you can brew more dry malt and use it two to three times. It keeps well in the jar under the lid.

Brewing stages

Having made barley malt for beer, we proceed to the phased production of the drink, observing the technology.

1. Fill the chopped malt with 1.5 liters hot water(not boiling water), we insist for 1 hour. Then carefully pour the resulting infusion through a strainer into a bowl where you will cook.
2. Pour crackers with 4 liters of boiling water, insist, like malt, then strain through a sieve (colander with a mesh) into the same saucepan. Let the liquids mix for half an hour.
3. We turn on a low heat and cook at low boil for about 20 minutes. Add hops and boil for another 10 minutes.
4. Let it cool to a temperature of less than 30 ° C.
5. Add sugar (honey) and yeast.
6. Pour into a container where it will take place, filling the container by no more than two-thirds. There can be a lot of foam in the first step, so you shouldn't let it spill out. We leave it in normal room conditions for three days.
7. We pour it into bottles made of strong glass, seal it securely and take it to the cellar, where we keep it for two weeks.
8. We drink ourselves and treat our friends.

Note: you can pour it into bottles from under, tightly closing with a cork and securely tying it with a thin wire. There are also special corks for beer aging on sale: they are put on the bottle and fixed with a clip.

We brew unfiltered beer, so before bottling it is simply strained through cheesecloth.

Features of the recipe

Some recipes indicate different cooking times. Some brewers advise boiling the malt with water for 2-3 hours instead of 20 minutes. Thus, the wort is boiled down and becomes thick, the taste is enriched.

Hops can be boiled for half an hour to useful material managed to go to the drink.

Hops are needed for more than just a specific flavor. The substances contained in it inhibit extraneous microflora (molds, etc.) and at the same time serve as a source of nutrition for yeast, contributing to their reproduction and the early ripening of the drink.

Home-brewed beer classic recipes is called, which in translation from English means craft. The same term refers to unpasteurized beer produced in small batches in small breweries.

You won't be able to store such a hoppy drink for a very long time, so do not cook too much so that you can drink it quickly after two weeks of aging.

Useful video

Watch a clear video on how to make malt with your own hands, the whole process is detailed: germination, drying, roasting, caramelization, different types malt:

And this is beer from barley malt, how to cook at home in the kitchen in a saucepan, video in two parts:

You have learned how to brew beer from barley at home, it remains to try it in practice. Make barley beer in your kitchen, and tell your friends the recipe via social networks... We are waiting for feedback in the comments.

We continue to publish video reports about brews. This time, perhaps the most boring one - about the usual light barley ale.

Most people unfamiliar with the concept of craft beer do not even think about what they are buying in stores. And they buy lager - bottom-fermented beer. Let's not say that it is bad - everyone has different tastes. But beer from the store is rarely interesting.

Whether it's ale - top-fermented beer. Thanks to elevated temperature fermentation, yeast produces more esters. Without delving into the jungle of chemistry, let's just say that these substances give beer a variety of different flavor notes that feel like "floral" or "fruity".

As a result, ales are very different in taste. And if you add a drop of spices or fruit juice to the standard beer ingredients, you get truly unique and original drinks.

We will not play with the ingredients, but will simply prepare a high-quality and tasty barley beer from ordinary light malt. A sort of alternative to store-bought lager - beer for every day.

Barley malt for beer and other ingredients

We continue to use domestic malt from the Kursk Malt company. This time, since we are brewing the most ordinary light barley beer, we will do just two types of malt.

Specifically, these are:

Vienna malt (Vienna Malt) 7 kg;

Pilsner ( Pilsner) 7 kg.

Well, since we still have domestic malt, we reinsured ourselves and added 20 g of Irish moss (or 1 tablet) to the recipe to get rid of the extra bruch. As the practice of previous brews on the products of "Kurskiy malt" LLC shows, one tablet is enough to precipitate a bruch before draining the wort for fermentation. Looking ahead, I will say that our barley beer came out very transparent.

The planned bitterness of barley beer is 27 units. For this we need a little more than 100 grams of hops, namely:

65 grams of Hercules 15.6% for bitterness and taste;

and 50 grams of Saphire hops (3.5%) for flavor.

We use English yeast -BeerVingem,universal ale. One 10-gram sachet is not enough for us for 55 liters of wort. Therefore, we will make a starter with a magnetic stirrer.

Mashing

The calculated gravity of our barley beer is 13-14%, so we will do two mashing again. In principle, at our brewery you can try and in one - 13% can be achieved this way. But we did not risk it - it is better, as they say, to overlook =)

Already during mashing, it is clear what color the beer will be. You should not expect dark caramel shades from such a wort - only a classic amber color.

As for the pauses, we have only two of them: saccharification and mesh-out. Since we use Irish moss, we do not pause the protein, but simply pour the malt into the brewery at 52 degrees so that the enzymes work a little while heating the wort to the temperature of the beginning of saccharification.

We carry out saccharification in 70 minutes at a temperature of 70 degrees. Ten-minute mesh-out at 78 degrees.

Cooking

The barley beer is brewed for 90 minutes. After we have removed the grains, we wait for the brewery to raise the temperature of the wort to 98 degrees and start adding hops.

The order of filling is as follows:

at the start15 grams of Hercules;

at 75 minutes, add 50 grams of Hercules;

at the 88th minute, throw in 50 grams of Sapphire.

Also, 10 minutes before the end of cooking, you need to pour Irish moss into the wort, and immediately after it, lower the chiller into the hot wort so that it is disinfected by the time we start cooling the wort with it.

Fermentation

When the cooking is over, we cool the wort with the help of the chiller already placed in the boiler to 23-24 degrees. We pour it into the fermenter through a sieve and add the yeast, which was on a magnetic stirrer during the entire cooking.

Just pour yeast into the wort. You do not need to stir - they themselves will figure it out during the fermentation process.

Close the fermenter tightly with a lid. The fermentation temperature we need is 19-20 degrees. The fermentation time for barley beer is standard - two weeks.

P.S.

Our barley beer is already fermented and bottled. Here is a small report on the bottling.

P.P.S

And of course, a video report for those who are too lazy to read =)

It is believed that the most delicious beer is made from barley. Well, you have a wonderful chance to test it yourself by making delicious barley beer at home.

At first glance, the recipe for making homemade barley beer may seem a little complicated to some, but trust me, once you get down to business, everything will turn out to be much easier than it seemed. As for the beer itself and its taste, as a person who has tried, probably, all types of homemade beer, I can safely say that home option has a much softer and richer flavor. And if you add to this the fact that it is prepared from natural ingredients, then there is even nothing to compare.

Ingredients:
Water - 5.5 l
Barley grains - 600 gr
Hops - 5-6 cups
Yeast - 50 gr (half a matchbox)
Sugar - 1 glass
White and black crackers - to taste

Homemade Barley Beer Recipe

First, we transfer the barley grains into a two-liter jar and fill it with water. We leave it for 2 days and do not forget to change the water twice a day. Then we need to drain the water and germinate the grain for 3-4 days, turning it twice a day. When the shoots grow up to 1.5 cm, we need to dry it. To do this, we spread it in a thin layer and dry it naturally for a day, then dry it in a dryer at a temperature of 75-80 degrees.

After getting rid of the sprouts, we grind the beans in a coffee grinder. Fill with hot water (1.5 liters of water, temperature - 75 degrees) and leave for an hour. We pour the sweats into another dish, it will still be useful to us. Add white and black crackers to the malt (a common loaf in total) and pour 4 more liters of boiling water into the malt and also infuse for an hour.

We strain the second infusion and mix it with the first. Leave for half an hour and then simmer for 20 minutes over low heat. Add hops and cook for another 10 minutes. When the infusion cools down, we filter it again, add yeast and sugar, stir well. We put in a cool place for 3 days for fermentation. Then we bottle the beer and, tightly closed, put it in the basement for 2 weeks. Ready! After two weeks, you can taste it.

Many fans of the foamy intoxicating drink (especially its "live" varieties) are interested in how to brew beer. This refreshing, slightly bitter drink is brewed from barley, hops and water, but there are many additional components and brewing technologies that allow you to obtain different varieties beer. In the conditions of breweries, beer production includes several technological cycles: malt production, beer wort production, fermentation, beer maturation, filtration and bottling of the drink into containers.

You can also make beer at home, just like kvass, using a simplified method. The main thing when brewing beer is the correct selection and preparation of its components. Water, hops and malt should be High Quality, only then will homemade beer be delicious.

Water

It is from the search delicious water the history of many breweries began. The brewing water must be soft. You can determine the softness of water at home using the following methods:

• Soap dissolves and foams well in soft water;
• Such water does not leave sediment on the bottom and walls of the vessel;
• Vinegar or citric acid foams water;
• When boiled in soft water, the meat quickly becomes soft, while the fish, on the contrary, hardens.

Hop

Only large, dark yellow hop cones with a spicy, pungent odor are taken. When rubbing such buds, flour (lupulin) should be released, which contains the bitter substances necessary for brewing. The collected buds are dried under a canopy and stored in square boxes. These boxes are filled with hops in bags and pressed as much as possible. Store the compressed hops in a dry place.

Malt

Malt can be wheat, barley or rye, you can even brew beer from corn or oats, but barley is more preferable. It must contain the maximum amount of extractives, therefore there are special varieties of barley for beer. After the selection of the grains, they are soaked in a wooden vat. It is poured into it a few days before cold water up to half. Grain is poured into the vat gradually and at the same time constantly stirring. The water should cover the grain by 25-30 cm. After a while, empty grains, litter and grass blades float to the surface of the water. The remaining grains remain saturated with water. If beer is brewed in the summer, then the water is drained every 12 hours and changed; in cold weather, it is necessary to change the water every 24 hours. It is necessary to change the water until it becomes transparent. A sign of grain readiness is its swelling, that is, when the husk is easily removed from the pulp.

Further, the barley is grown. To do this, you need a room with a temperature not higher than 15 degrees and with good ventilation. The barley is covered with a layer of 20-25 cm and stirred every 8 hours. After the sprouts appear, the layer is increased to 35 cm, and after that the grain begins to warm up. The maximum heating of barley is 20 degrees. The growing of barley stops when the sprouts reach a length of 1.3-1.5 times the length of the grain itself, and they have lost their powdery taste. The more the grain has sprouted, the lighter the beer will turn out.

Then the grain is dried in the attic or under a shed until the sprouts are easily separated from the grinding of the grains, and a characteristic malt smell appears. Quality malt crunches and does not sink to the bottom in water; it is white and sweet when bitten. Then the sprouts are separated from the grains (using a mesh drum) and the malt is ground. To make beer at home, malt can be ground on a coffee grinder, and so that it does not turn into flour, the grains are sprinkled with water in a volume of 10-12% by weight of the grains.

Yeast

Yeast is also very important in brewing beer. At home, you can get fairly good quality brewing yeast.

Dry hop yeast is prepared as follows: one part of the hop is poured with hot water (two parts). Boil until the moment when the water becomes half as much, while it is necessary to constantly immerse the floating hops back into the water. Then the hop broth is cooled and sugar is dissolved in this warm liquid. It is taken at the rate of 1 tbsp. spoon in a glass of liquid. Then add half a glass wheat flour in a glass of liquid. All this is mixed and left in a warm place for 2 days. After that, the finished yeast is bottled, tightly closed and placed in a cold place.

Yeast is also prepared from light hops. Hops are poured into an enamel container, poured with boiling water and boiled for an hour. Then add 1 tbsp. a spoonful of salt, 2 cups of flour, 1 glass of sugar for 2 liters of warm broth (it must be filtered). Then add 2 boiled mashed potatoes to the solution and leave the yeast in a warm place overnight. Then they need to be bottled and stored in a cool place.

Malt yeast is prepared as follows: take 0.5 cups of sugar, a glass of wheat flour, 3 cups of malt and mix it all with 5 cups of water. The mixture is boiled for an hour, and after cooling it is bottled and corked. Yeast is left in a warm place for 24 hours, and then stored in a cold place.

You can also use baker's yeast. To do this, fresh yeast is crushed, dried and then ground in a coffee grinder. Then a pinch of dry yeast and sugar on the tip of a knife are mixed in 2-3 tsp. water and put in a warm place. Meanwhile, 100 grams of fresh white cabbage is poured with a glass of boiling water and cooked over low heat for 30 minutes. The broth is filtered and cooled, then prepared yeast is added to it. After 2-3 days, the beer setup is ready.

Clarification of beer

You don't need to clarify (filter the beer). Then it will be cloudy and with a specific smell. Flaxseed decoction can be used to lighten the beer. One part of flaxseed, washed with cold water, is used for 600 parts of finished beer. After washing, flaxseed is poured with 12 parts of water and boiled for an hour, adding water to the original level. It turns out a thick infused broth, which is added to the wort before adding the hops (30 minutes). Further, during boiling, the substances that make the beer cloudy settle together with the coagulated linseed slime to the bottom of the container.

You can also dissolve 10-15 grams of gelatin per 100 liters of beer, stir it into the beer and let it settle. Then the beer is carefully drained, leaving a residue.