If you dream of mastering the profession of a brewer at home, we recommend that you read the advice of experts. They will help you take the first steps towards mastery, tell you where to start.
A brewing experience should start with simple tasks and inexpensive ingredients. For example, you can try brewing pale ale. The cost of purchasing components for cooking is small, and the result will surely please you. It is more convenient for beginners to work with a ready-made mini brewery. A consultant from a specialized store will help you choose the optimal model. However, if the equipment is not available, you can assemble the brewing unit yourself. Detailed instructions can be found online.
For those who decide to buy a ready-made mini brewery, the question is relevant: “How much equipment to choose?”. The specialized market offers several options for brewing plants: 10, 20 and 50 liters. Experienced brewers recommend choosing a larger brewery, as its use reduces the cost per liter and there will be enough beer to treat all your friends. Do not be afraid that the finished beer will be lost if it is not urgently drunk. A properly brewed drink will keep in a cool place for many months without the risk of spoilage.
If you're making an extract beer, many sample instructions and some classic recipes suggest adding sugar to the extract. Experienced brewers do not strongly recommend doing this. Numerous professional experiments have proven that the addition of sugar gives the beer a mash taste and an empty body. Use glucose or fructose as an alternative to sugar.
Many professional recommendations advise the use of iodine disinfection. But this method often does not give a positive result. As a result, a batch of beer may be contaminated with pathogenic microflora. It is better to use specialized products developed for disinfection of equipment in the food industry. They are perfect for treating all surfaces that come into contact with beer wort.
Soft, purified water is a prerequisite for obtaining quality beer. Bottled or filtered water will do. If you use unprepared water, then you need to be prepared for the fact that the taste of beer will be spoiled, and the work of yeast is unpredictable.
Be sure to monitor compliance with the temperature regimes at different stages of brewing. If the temperature is too high, the yeast may die or give an unpleasant taste and smell to the finished product. And if the temperature is low, the fermentation processes will be slowed down.
Inexperienced brewers rely entirely on the water seal to control fermentation. But you can determine the beginning or end of fermentation with a hydrometer or refractometer, while let the water seal be an additional sensor.
Use sterile polyethylene or glass bottles to bottle beer before sending it for maturation and further storage. New plastic containers will not harm the nutritional quality of the drink, they do not require additional disinfection. It is convenient to transport a drink in such a container, and you can store it for more than a year.
Like any creativity, brewing opens up great opportunities for experimentation. Even if you are familiar with the processes using the extract, you can try adding some hop cones, fruit juice, zest, spices to it.
Enthusiastic brewers are happy to share their experience and success on thematic forums. On specialized sites you can find interesting articles and reviews. Read, learn, try, and everything will definitely work out for you!