DIY Homebrew Beer

Brewing your own beer at home can be a fun and tasty activity. Supplies for home brewing are available online or at brewer supply stores. The flavor of your beer will depend on the ingredients you use, so experiment until you find a recipe you love.

• 1

  Fill 2/3 of a brew kettle with clean tap water and place it on the stove over high heat. The mineral content of your water will affect the taste of your beer.

• 2

  Once the water begins to boil, add both cans of malt extract and stir in until completely dissolved. The malt and water solution is called the wort, and will be the fuel for the fermentation process.

• 3

  Once the wort has started foaming, pour in 1 oz. hops and set a kitchen timer for one hour. The flavor of your beer will depend on the amount of hops you add. The hops added in this step will boil the longest and add bitterness to your beer, so add more for a more bitter beer, and less for a sweeter beer.

• 4

  Add additional hops after the wort has boiled for 45 minutes. These hops won't boil for quite as long, so they will add a complex, flowery flavor and not much bitterness.

• 5

  Add 1/2 oz. hops when timer has five minutes remaining. These finishing hops won't boil for long enough to add much flavor, but they will contribute to the aroma.

• 6

  Remove mixture from heat when the timer runs out and cool the wort by placing the kettle in an ice bath. Put the lid on the kettle to keep contaminants out. Let the wort cool until it reaches room temperature.

• 7

  Sanitize your fermentation gear while the wort cools. Follow the directions on your bottle of iodophor to prepare a sanitizing solution, and soak the glass carboy, strainer, funnel, stopper and airlock in it. Iodophor is a food safe iodine sanitizer that is commonly used in food service. Iodophor is a sanitizer but not a cleaner, so if your gear is dirty wash it in water and mild soap before sanitizing it. Thoroughly rinse the soap away before proceeding.

• 8

  Pour the wort through the strainer and into the glass carboy to filter out the hops flowers. Shake the carboy to aerate and oxygenate the wort.

• 9

  Pour the yeast into the carboy, cap it, and fit the airlock into the stopper. The airlock is a one-way valve that lets gas and foam escape, so that the fermenter doesn't explode, but it won't let anything in. You should see the fermentation process begin very soon after adding the yeast.

• 10

  Let the beer ferment for about two weeks. It's done when the wort looks clearer than it did during fermentation, and the production of foam has nearly stopped.

• 11

  Sanitize all of your bottling equipment with iodophor solution in the same way you sanitized your fermentation gear. You need to sanitize the bottling bucket, siphoning hose, racking cane, bottles, caps, and anything else that will come in contact with the beer.

• 12

  Place the fermenter on a surface above ground level, and place the bottling bucket below it. In order to siphon a liquid, the source needs to be higher than the receptacle.

• 13

  Boil 2/3 cup corn sugar and 2 cups of water for 10 minutes, sanitizing the liquid and completely dissolving the sugar. Then pour the sugar solution into the bottling bucket.

• 14

  Slide the short end of the siphoning hose onto the racking cane, and plug the other end of the hose with your thumb. Fill the hose assembly with water and plunge the racking cane smoothly into the fermenter.

• 15

  Hold the end of the hose, lower than the fermenter, over a spare jar or bucket and remove your thumb from the hose. Collect the water in the jar and stop up the hose with your thumb again when beer starts to flow. Hold the end of the hose over the bottling bucket and remove your thumb to siphon the beer into the bottling bucket. Stir the beer in the bottling bucket as you siphon it, to aerate and mix the beer and sugar solution.

• 16

  Bottle the beer in the individual bottles through the same siphoning method used to transfer the beer from the bottling bucket. Leave about 1 inch of space at the top of each bottle, and cap them using the bottle capper.

• 17

  Let the beer ferment inside the bottles for about a week, and enjoy.