If you’re a beer aficionado, chances are that you’ve tried a huge variety of the brews on the market to find one that makes your taste buds sing. But have you ever tried brewing your own beer? Making a batch of your own craft beer is easier than you think and requires just a handful of special equipment and ingredients. Plus, it’s a great way to impress your friends!
It’s also important to make sure that you have the right space and storage for brewing beer at home. Recipes tend to be for 20 litres or more, so you need a good amount of worktop and hob space. You’ll also need somewhere cold to cool the wort down. An ice bath is ideal and works well for this, but you can use the sink, a tub or any large container that will hold water and lots of ice.
The process of brewing beer starts with mashing the grain and rinsing it to extract the sugars that yeast will turn into alcohol. This is done in a mash tun and it’s here that the complex starches are turned into simple sugars. Once the mashing has finished, the wort is heated to boil and then cooled again in an ice bath to stop the temperature rising too quickly. It’s at this point that the yeast starts to convert the sugars into ethyl alcohol and carbon dioxide. The fermenting wort is then transferred into bottles, usually cleaned and sanitised fizzy drink bottles, and left to ferment for a few weeks.
