SODZ Homebrewing Information

Homebrewing is a great hobby and home activity. With the ingreients, equipment, and brewing knowledge available today, you can brew any style of beer brewed anywhere in the world in your home today. You can find recipes, develop your own, reproduce beers you like, use unusual ingredients, and generally learn to make as good a beer or better than you can find commercially. It just takes good ingredients, sanitation, technique, and some patience.

Homebrewing is legal in the United States. This has been true since the 1970's since President Jimmy Carter signed a law making it legal. You can brew 100 gallons per year for your personal consumption at home. You can brew 200 gallons per household. You cannot sell it. There are also licquor law restrictions that prevent you from consuming your homebrew in establishments that are licensed to sell beer.

Homebrewing consists of a cooking and a fermentation process. It can be very simple - boil water, dump in the contencts of a can, boil for a period, chill, and pitch in some yeast. It can also become fairly complex - using different temperatures to convert grain starches into sugars, developing complex hop schedules, formulating recipes, and cultivating farms of your favorite varieties of yeast. There is a saying in homebrewing circles, "Give a man a beer and he'll give you his thanks. Teach a man to brew and he'll give you beer."

There are basically three popular techniques to brew beer at home - Extract, Partial Mash, and All-grain. You can make great beer with any of the techniques. The common volume of a homebrewed batch of beer is 5 gallons, although the effort remains about the same if the volume is 10 gallons or even more. The equipment and brewing space just gets bigger. The technique that best fits a homebrewer depends on the amount of time available, amount of space and equipement they want to have, and the amount of control they want to have over their batch of beer. The differences in time and compexity apply to the brew day. Once the yeast has been introduced, the time for fermentation is the same regardless of the brewing technique used.

Extract brewing requires the least amount of equipment and time. Essentially about half the final volume of water is brought to a boil. An extract is added to the water either in the form of a syrup poured from a can or bag or in the form of a dry powder. The extract was produced in a professional facility by hydrating malted grains and holding them at various temperatures for specific lengths of time. Enzymes present in the grian break down the starches into fermentable sugars. The resulting liquid is then dehydrated to syrup or dry powder form, wich is the extract you are re-hydrating.

Hombrewers typically boil for 60 to 90 minutes. During the boil, hops are added according to a schedule. Hops added early result produce bittering in the beer. Hops added within the last 20 minutes provide flavoring which varies with the hop variety. Hops add within the last minute or after the boil primarily provide aromas. After the boil is complete, the liquid must be cooled to 70 degrees or so to provide a viable environement for the yeast. This can be done by adding it to a fermenting bucket or glass carboy with the remaining volume of cold water or by using an ice bath to cool the mixture.

Once in the fermentor, the beer will be taken through a one or two stage fermentation process. Fermentation is typically done within a sealed vessel to keep out unwanted bacterial and airborne strains of yeast. An airlock is used to release presure from the fermentation process. The yeast is converting the fermentable sugars to alcohol and CO2. An airlock is used to relase the excess CO2, but prevent outside air from getting back in to the fermentor. As a rule of thumb, primary fermentation last 3-7 days. During this time the yeast become very aerobic and lots of CO2 can be released. After this time, there is a time of settling, clarification, and some residual activity. This is typically 1-3 weeks. Afterward the beer can be bottled or kegged. Sugar or extract is typically added during bottling to rewaken the yeast and product CO2 in the bottle to carbonate the beer.

Partial Mash brewing gets into the game of converting starches in the grain to sugars. Grains are placed in a mesh grain bag and placed into water which is raised to the appropriate temperature for conversion. Typically this is 145 to 158 degrees, which is the ideal range to promote enzyme activity. The grains are then held at this temperature for 30 to 60 minutes to effect the conversion. Afterward the grain bag is removed, the liquid is brought to a boil, extract is added, and the rest of the process follows that described in the extract brewing discussion.

All-grain brewing utilizes no extract. Grain is added to water that was heated to a specific temperature. The result achives a desired strike temperature for the combined ingredients. The grains are held at temperature for a length of time. The brewer has control of the specific grains used as well as the temperature ranges and durations that are used in the conversions. This can either be a simple temperature conversion or it could involve several temperature steps that favor different enzymatic reactions. The process takes more time, and requires equipment that can handled greater volumes of ingredients. Once the conversion is achieved and the liquid is drained and rinsed from the grains, the brewing process completes as described before.

The most typical path for a homebrewer progresses from extract to all-grain, althoug as said before, great beers can be made using any of the three techniques. Homebrewers tend to be tinkerers. A home brewery is never completed. There are always new gadgets to build and new things to try. Homebrewers can find interesting things to do with a whole bevy of kitchen utilsils. It is commonly accepted within the homebrewing community that your equipment will grow to fill or overfill the space allotted to your hobby.