How to brew beer at home - a traditional recipe. Homemade beer: myth or reality

19.10.2019

Live beer home cooking, fragrant and tasty, much better than store-bought, because you know exactly what products were used in the cooking process. It is pleasant to treat friends and relatives with such beer, because home brewing of beer is a very rare phenomenon in our life.

How to quickly and easily brew beer at home?

There is an opinion that home cooking technology requires special equipment. In fact, it is not at all necessary to buy a home brewery, you can completely get by with ordinary glassware, unless, of course, you are going to open a brewery. There is no need to brew barley or wheat malt and dry hop cones, it is much easier to buy ready-made ingredients in the store. Exist different recipes home beer, and to make a classic drink, you need malt or malt extract, hops, yeast and water. In some recipes, you can see molasses, honey, salt, marmalade, cornmeal, black pepper, bread and other products, since beer is a multifaceted drink that makes it possible to experiment with tastes.

Homemade malt beer according to an old recipe

It is malt that gives the beer fullness of taste, richness, pleasant color and persistent foam. To make beer, malt is mixed with water and heated to 75°C in a large saucepan. The resulting malt porridge is then filtered through a sieve to separate the undissolved grain particles. This is how beer wort is obtained - vegetable raw materials, ready for fermentation, to which crushed hop cones are added. The wort is boiled for another 2-3 hours with constant stirring, and then it is again cleaned through a sieve - now to remove hop residues. To save time and effort, you can lower the hops into the wort in a gauze bag, then you don’t have to filter. The resulting drink is infused for several hours, and then filtered again.

When it comes time to add yeast, you need to decide whether you want to brew top or bottom fermented beer. If the yeast is introduced into the wort at a temperature of 20–22 °C, then top fermentation begins, thanks to which the beer is prepared faster. Bottom fermentation lengthens the brewing process (and therefore shelf life) and gives the beer a more hoppy taste.

The ideal temperature for active yeast activity is 18 ° C, so cover the pot with a lid and leave the beer for a week. If foam appears on the surface after two days, then you did everything right, and if it doesn’t, put the pan in a more warm place, not forgetting to periodically remove the foam. After about five days, the beer will acquire the familiar beer taste, and then you just need to pour it into bottles without shaking, and leave it for two weeks in a cold place. There are various variations of malt beer: sugar, salt, raisins are often added to the wort, and hops are sometimes added to bottles after fermentation is completed, the order of laying products and fermentation methods can also change.

Homemade beer according to unusual recipes

There are many techniques for making beer without malt, and such recipes are most suitable for home use. In many recipes, honey is dissolved in water, mixed with hops and boiled for an hour, then fermented and kept warm. Beetroot beer turns out to be very original - in this case, finely chopped beets are boiled in water with salt, then hop cones and juniper berries are added to the pan, then everything is boiled again and fermented for two weeks. The molasses-based beer is distinguished by its rich taste, which is prepared using the same technology as classic beer, only molasses replaces malt in this recipe.

Beer without yeast has a dark brown color and spicy taste, as it is made from ground cereals of wheat, barley and rye, roasted in a pan. Next, the grain mixture is boiled in water with chicory, and then lemon zest, hops and sugar are added to it. After six hours of brewing, the beer is bottled and stored in a cool place. Sometimes the hops are ground with flour and sugar, mixed with water and boiled, and the yeast and molasses are added later.

You can make beer from pea pods, hops and sage, and for holiday table ginger beer or beer made from wine, orange juice and zest will do. Beer can be oatmeal, buckwheat, pumpkin, corn, carrot, smoked, chocolate, fruit and even milk. Brewing beer is a creative process in which any experiments are appropriate!

Brewing Secrets

Water for beer should be fresh, clean and soft, so the best option- filtered or boiled water, and if possible, from natural sources. On bad water, beer turns out to be tasteless. The same goes for yeast, so for brewing beer you should not buy food, but special brewer's yeast, fresh or dry.

For brewing, both malt obtained by sprouting grains of barley, rye or wheat, and malt extract, which is an evaporated or concentrated malt emulsion, are used. The choice of malt undoubtedly affects the flavor and aroma of the beer. In addition to traditional varieties - wheat, barley and rye - there are other varieties of malt. Caramel malt gives the beer sweet undertones, honey notes can be detected in stewed malt, smoked concentrate allows you to get a drink with a fire aroma, roasted malt has a coffee-chocolate taste, and melanoidin malt has a bright and characteristic taste only for it.

Beer wort is a favorable environment for the reproduction of microorganisms, therefore, all utensils used for brewing beer must be sterilized beforehand. During the preparation process, you should also observe strict rules hygiene.

Beer during brewing needs to be oxygenated, which is facilitated by intensive stirring and pouring the wort into a pan with high altitude. However, during and after fermentation, aeration will only hurt, so while the beer is fermenting, it should not be disturbed - carried, stirred and opened the lid unnecessarily. The only thing that can be done is to remove the foam, which can later be used as yeast.

In many recipes there are completely unimaginable amounts of ingredients for beer, for example, 30 liters of water and 3 kg of malt. You can reduce the proportions depending on how much beer you need to brew.

Properly brewed beer, bottled in plastic bottles, stored from 2 to 6 months, depending on its strength. AT glass bottles with corks, beer stays fresh for up to a year, and better ways storage of home-made beer - in the cellar and refrigerator. However, if you have learned how to brew homemade beer, you will not have to store it for a long time, because this tasty and aromatic drink always ends very quickly!

Recipes

Homemade beer without malt

Ingredients: 10 liters of water, 1/3 cup of hops, 1 cup of liquid brewer's yeast, 0.5 liters of molasses.

Cooking method:

1. Pour water into a saucepan, add molasses, mix well, bring to a boil and cook until the smell of molasses disappears.
2. Dip the hops wrapped in gauze into the liquid, boil for 10 minutes.
3. When the contents have cooled, add liquid yeast to the pan and mix very thoroughly.
4. Pour the beer into bottles and leave, without closing the lids, until foam appears on the surface.
5. Remove the foam, cork the bottles and leave them in a cold place for 4 days.

Khmelnoe beer

Ingredients: 900 g of sugar, 90 g of hops, 1 kg of malt extract (or 8 kg of malt), 9 liters of boiling water, 50 g of brewer's yeast.

Cooking method:

1. Pour boiling water over sugar, hops and malt and boil for an hour.
2. Add water to the original volume (9 l) and add yeast.
3. Leave the liquid for 3 days in a sealed container at a temperature of 18-20 degrees.
4. Strain, bottle, cork, secure with wire and store for a week in a cold place.

Beer is an extremely widespread drink all over the world, it was invented back in Ancient Egypt. Currently, we can observe it in bars and shops in huge numbers and the most different varieties. But one cannot but agree that homemade beer, prepared by oneself, is much better than the factory one. After all, we know for sure that only natural products without any preservatives.

Many mistakenly believe that home brewing technology requires serious equipment, but this is not entirely true. To brew beer at home, it is quite possible to use ordinary kitchen utensils, for example, a large pot. In addition, all the necessary ingredients for the recipe can now be purchased in stores, and it is not at all necessary to prepare hop cones in advance and brew wheat and barley malt.

There are different recipes for making homemade beer, which abound with a considerable number of interesting components, because beer is a very versatile drink. But if we talk about the traditional classic recipe, then it includes yeast, hops, malt and water. If you do everything right, maintain the necessary pauses and correctly adhere to the recipe, then in the end you will get a homemade drink with thick foam and rich taste. No pasteurization and filtration, like store-bought beer, only natural ingredients - this is the only way to get foamy homemade beer with a pure original taste.

Brewing beer at home: what is needed for this?

The art of home brewing is not easy, so not many people risk making beer with their own hands. Most of us find it easier to buy a bottle of beer in the store than to mess around in our own kitchen. Therefore, all home brewing recipes are designed for devoted fans of this foamy drink, who prefer a pure taste, without impurities and preservatives.

To brew traditional beer, besides water, three ingredients are needed: beer yeast, hops and malt. The only “but” is that it is not recommended to experiment with yeast, but immediately buy the best ones in a special store, because the successful outcome of brewing depends on their quality. The first two ingredients can theoretically be made at home, but this will take extra time, so it is also better to purchase them ready-made.

An important nuance: to obtain a light beer, the malt must be dried naturally, to obtain a dark beer, a special caramel variety is added to the main grist, no more than 10% of the total grist, it is cooked in the oven, lightly roasted.

Malt - these are, in fact, germinated dried barley grains in a hard husk, which serves as a natural filter in the production of beer.

This ingredient must be white color, sweetish, pleasant smell and do not sink in water. Before use, the malt must be ground in a special roller mill, so that an intact husk remains.

Hop all varieties are divided into two types: aromatic and bitter, and it is selected depending on what you want to achieve more in home beer, aroma or bitterness. The main thing is that the hops are of good quality, this plays an important role in the density of the homemade drink. Before using it, the bumps must be carefully examined, they should be reddish and yellowish in color.

Yeast it is highly desirable to take beer ones, but if you did not manage to get them, then regular ones will do. The main thing is that they are dry and alive. As for water, it must certainly be clean and soft, purified, filtered water or water from a spring is ideal. In extreme cases, you can use boiled water. If it's bad, your homemade beer won't taste good and you'll be wasting your time.

Ideally, it is better to buy water. It will come out, of course, a little expensive, but the taste of the intoxicating drink will turn out to be simply excellent. And one more important nuance: sugar. It must be taken at the rate of 8 grams per liter of beer (to saturate with carbon dioxide), some recipes use glucose or honey.

Equipment needed for home brewing

All the equipment you will need for self-manufacturing beer at home, you can find it in any kitchen, or you can easily get it, there is no need to purchase a special expensive apparatus or a mini brewery. So, you will need a large pot (enamelled is ideal) for 30 liters, it can be improved by installing a drain tap at the bottom. In the pot you will boil the wort, as well as another container for beer fermentation.

Be sure to stock up on a thermometer to control temperature regime, and a large piece of gauze 4-5 meters long. Next, you need to prepare glass and plastic bottles, where you pour homemade beer, and a narrow silicone hose (with its help, the drink is carefully removed from the sediment).

A chiller is needed to cool the wort. It can be made independently at home from a copper tube. You can do without a chiller, and use a bath or a very large tank of ice water at home to cool the beer wort. Some still stock up on a hydrometer - a device that determines the sugar content, the density of the future drink, but this is not at all necessary.

Traditional beer recipe at home with photo

To make grain beer in your own kitchen, according to the classic recipe, withstanding all temperature moments and pauses, you must first pay attention preparatory stage: thoroughly wash and dry all equipment (except the thermometer) and proceed with the process with clean hands.

Everything must be sterile, otherwise you run the risk of infecting the wort with wild yeast or other microbes and, instead of beer, getting sour mash and leveling all your efforts. Then prepare the ingredients: 32 liters of water, 5 kg of barley malt, 45 grams of hops, 25 grams of brewer's yeast and granulated sugar (based on the calculation that was given above).

Pour 25 liters of water into a saucepan, heat it to 80°C, and immerse the ground malt in it, poured into a gauze bag (it is made from a long piece of gauze). Close the pan with a lid and pause for an hour and a half at a temperature of 65-72 °, turning the heat on or off. It is at this temperature that you saccharify the malt, as a result, the wort becomes sweet, easily fermentable sugars appear in it.
After an hour and a half, increase the temperature of the fire to 80 ° and maintain this pause for another five minutes. Then remove the bag of malt from the pan and rinse in the remaining seven liters of water, which should then be poured into the wort. In this way, we wash out the remaining sugars from the malt.
Further, according to the recipe, the wort should be brought to a boil, remove the resulting foam and add the first 15 grams of hops. Half an hour the wort must be boiled intensively, after which another 15 grams of hops should be added. Then boil for another 50 minutes, add the last portion of 15 grams of hops, and boil for another 10-15 minutes. It will take an hour and a half in total.
Now, the wort must be cooled very quickly, keeping within 20-30 minutes. The sooner you do this, the lower the risk of future beer contamination with wild yeast and harmful bacteria. Transfer the pan to a bath filled with ice water, then pour through cheesecloth three times into another container.
The next step is to dilute the brewer's yeast and add to the wort, mixing thoroughly. It is very important to follow the instructions on the packaging of the yeast. Next, the container is transferred for fermentation to a dark place with a temperature of 18-22 °, a water seal is installed on it, and the must is left to ferment for a week or ten days.
Intensive fermentation will begin in 6-12 hours, and will last for two to three days. All this time, the water dispenser will actively blow bubbles, carbon dioxide will escape, and the beer at the end of fermentation will become much lighter. Readiness is determined by the absence of bubbles during the day - this means that the fermentation process has ended.
Now, according to the recipe, the carbonization of beer (filling the drink with carbon dioxide) is to be done - to improve the taste, in order to achieve the appearance of a dense thick foam. Don't be intimidated by this "terrible" name, the carbonization process is quite simple. You need to take the sterilized bottles that you have prepared for storing beer (it is highly desirable that they be made of dark plastic or glass) and pour sugar into them (8 grams of sugar per 1 liter of beer).
After that, the drink must be carefully drained using a narrow silicone hose and filled with bottles, trying not to touch the sediment (otherwise the beer will turn cloudy). Pour not to the very top, but leave a couple of centimeters so that the beer “breathes” and tightly cork with lids. Further, without any pause, the secondary fermentation process will begin, which will supply the young beer with the necessary amount of carbon dioxide.

For best quality you need to remove the bottles in a dark place with a temperature of 20-23 ° and leave alone for two to three weeks. After the first week has passed, the bottles must be shaken periodically, and at the end of the period, transfer them to the cellar or refrigerator.

Video recipe: homemade beer in a saucepan.

Already after cooling, you will get homemade tasty and aromatic beer with a thick foamy cap, ready to drink. But if you endure one more pause (hold the bottles in the cellar or in the refrigerator for about a month, or better, more), then the taste of beer will only improve from this.

As a result, you will become the owner of 22-24 liters of excellent homemade delicious beer with a strength of 4-5%, brewed according to the classic recipe. It is necessary to store the drink in a cool place, the shelf life is no more than eight months, and when opened - two to three days.

In the future, Knowing the properties and characteristics of all the ingredients, you can create your own various recipes homemade beer tailored to your tastes.

Here's a relatively simple and simple recipe for making beer at home. It does not require sophisticated equipment and skills.

So you are interested home brewing and decided to try brew beer at home on one's own. In fact, the process of preparing a complete grain beer easier than it might seem at first glance. This is where the important thing is to start. This activity can become a wonderful and exciting hobby for a real beer lover and will bring a lot of pleasure to you and your family and friends.

Per:

Cook just in your kitchen favorite beers and they will only be tastier and more aromatic than those that you have tried.
brew new types of beer that you have never tried before, which are not even on sale in your region and treat your friends to them, now it has become available.
Experiment - invent new varieties or add your own unique "zest" to existing ones. Nothing limits you!
home beer goes much cheaper than beer, which is sold in stores.

Against:

There are no abstracts

Let's get back to our recipe. You will need:

Equipment

Saucepan (preferably two, in extreme cases, you can wash the pellets from the kettle)
A piece of light fabric, such as chintz, is stronger than gauze. Size at least 1x1 meter
Malt Mill
Digital Thermometer
Electronic accurate scales
Old winter jacket or warm blanket
Bottle or barrel for fermentation (fermentation)
A water seal (a dropper is not bad, it is available in any pharmacy, but you can also buy a full-fledged one)
Long paddle spoon for stirring the mash
Colander (regular kitchen)

Raw material

Malt for beer
Brewer's yeast
Pure water, without chlorine and foreign matter(desirable)

This is the bare minimum you can start with.

First of all, put the water on the fire. You can turn on the fire so far only under the main (let's call it that) pan. We will have time to heat the washing (pot No. 2) while we maintain temperature pauses.

While the water is heating, we weigh malt. If you bought a ready-made batch, we skip this item.

Our sleep is ready.

We cover our pan with a piece of cloth.

Carefully pour our ground malt into the pan.

Mix well.

We get the following.

Keep it like that for 60 minutes. The temperature in the mash should be at 65 degrees. Mix well every 15 minutes.

You can already turn on the fire under pot number 2.

An hour has passed, we check our wort for the presence of unsweetened starch. To do this, we take a clean white plate, on it we drop a drop of iodine solution (usual from a pharmacy), next to a plate we drop a drop must. Mix drops. It is called iodine test.

In the event that iodine takes Blue colour, then there was starch - we heat congestion up to 72 degrees and keep it like that for another 15 minutes, again we do a test.

If iodine does not change color, then everything is in order, you can filter our congestion.

We filter the congestion. We take a colander and scoop out pellet from the main pot. Rinse with hot (not boiling water) water from pot No. 2 so that must dripped from the colander into the main pot. In this way, we wash out the sugar from the grains that have remained there. We must not lose anything.

The pellet (used out ground malt) still contains many useful and nutritious substances and is excellent for forage. poultry and livestock.

The grain remaining in our bag can simply be squeezed out by hand, wearing thick waterproof gloves.

Next we will boil wort with hops. At this stage, you can add spices, honey, Irish moss and other ingredients to the wort that affect the taste of your beer in the end. For now, we will limit ourselves to hops.

We turn on the fire to full under the main pan and wait until it boils. In the meantime, we weigh hop.

The must boiled.

Throwing hops. Based on the required bitterness, you need to throw different hops into different time. What and when to throw you can find out from us by phone, for example.

Boil this way for 60 minutes. We get hopped wort.

Next, the hopped wort needs to be cooled. This can be done using chiller. Alternative option - dial in the bathroom cold water and put a pan there, watch the temperature and that nothing gets into the pan while it cools.

The must is cooling down.

When the temperature of the wort reaches 25-30 degrees, pour it into fermenter(bottle or barrel) fermentation. This can be done simply through a funnel, if the volume of the pan is small, or with the help of a hose "sucking" from the pan. This must be done carefully so as not to "infect" the wort with extraneous bacteria.

Important!

Everything that will be in contact with must in the process of overflow must be disinfected. This can be done with an iodine solution. Pour about a third of water into our fermenter, pour iodine there, about a tablespoon, close the lid and shake well. After we drain the solution into the basin and rinse the overflow hose or watering can in it. If a strong iodine smell remains in the fermenter, rinse it with clean boiled water.

Actually, that's all. After overflow into the fermenter, set Brewer's yeast, for this, just slowly pour them into the bottle through the neck.

Install water seal and leave our beer ferment.

After 10 days, with the same hose (sterile) and the same method, we pour our young beer by bottles. Adding primer- 5 grams of cane sugar or honey per 0.5 bottle. You can calculate the primer for the entire volume at once and pour into the fermenter before bottling.

You should not take the usual beet white sugar, as it is "dirty" and contains a lot of impurities.

Leaving the beer carbonization- it's still 7-10 days.

Thereafter beer starts to mature. Theoretically, you can already drink it, but taste qualities they only get better with time (if the beer is not wheat).

It is a pity that beer does not always live to full maturity. If you have a basement that you rarely go to, put it in there and forget it. And in two or three months you will be able to enjoy the full taste of a mature drink. And it will be great.

Drink to your health!

Beer has been a very popular drink for centuries. It is made from malt, which in turn is made from grains of various cereals. That is why beer is sometimes called liquid bread. With a little use, beer is even very useful, due to the content of proteins, amino acids, carbon dioxide, salts and sugar in it.

Beer is light and dark. Dark beer, sometimes referred to as black, has a light taste of roasted barley. Black beer is prepared at a fairly low temperature (7-10 degrees), and due to this, it takes from 15 to 100 days to prepare it.

If you do not have pre-harvested malt or you do not have the opportunity to buy it, then you can prepare this required ingredient on one's own.

1. First you need to get the grain, spread it in one layer and cover it with water so that the grain sprouts.

2. After the grain has sprouted, it must be dried. This can be done in the oven or in a skillet.

3. Now it's time to grind the beans. To do this, the grains must be ground in a coffee grinder or meat grinder.

5. Pour 3 liters of water into a container with a mixture and bring to a boil.

6. Dilute sugar in liquid, pour another 7 liters of water, add hops and lemon zest.

7. Remove the container from the fire and let it cool for 3 hours.

8. Pour the wort into the fermentation tank, which should be doubled more space than the volume of the wort.

9. We put the wort for fermentation at a temperature of no more than 25 degrees. If after a couple of days the fermentation has not started, then diluted brewer's yeast should be added to the container.

10. After the beer has fermented, it must be filtered with gauze.

11. Filtered beer should be poured into sterilized bottles and closed tightly with lids.

12. We put the beer for 3 weeks in a dark, cool place to saturate with gases.

13. After this period, you can start tasting beer.

The shelf life of this beer in the refrigerator is half a year.

CHATEAU CARA GOLD (CARA 120) 120 EBC - 500 gr;
CHATEAU CHOCOLATE (CHOCOLATE) 900 EBC - 300 gr;
CHATEAU ROUSTED BARLEY 1050-1350 EBC - 110 gr;
Willamette hops - 35 g at the beginning of the boil;
Hops centennial - 35 g. 15 minutes before the end of the boil.

1. First, pour 3 liters of water into the brewing kettle and heat them up to 72 degrees.

2. At the same time, we heat 15 liters of water in another container to the same temperature. Shake the pan a little so that its walls are heated from hot water.

3. Pour malt into the heated water, and then pour the remaining 15 liters of water evenly.

4. We heat the wort to 67 degrees, and then leave it for 1.5 hours, after closing the brewing vat with a lid.

5. At the same time, the temperature must be constantly maintained, for this we sometimes add hot water to the wort.

6. Then we drain the wort using a tap on the brewing vat, and pour the first 2 wort ladles back into the vat, because there are particles of malt in it.

7. Pour 15 liters of hot water into the remaining malt, mix everything thoroughly and leave for 15 minutes.

8. Then we drain the resulting second wort according to the same scheme into a container with the first wort.

9. We clean the brewing vat from malt and pour the wort into it.

10. We put the wort on the fire, and when it boils, remove the lid from the vat and add willamette hops to the wort and let the wort boil for 1 hour.

11. With 15 minutes left in the boil, add centennial hops and Irish moss.

12. We also put the chiller in the liquid 15 minutes before the end of cooking.

13. Dilute dry yeast with a glass of warm water, stir and let stand for 15-20 minutes, while closing the glass with yeast with foil.

14. When the wort is cooled down, remove the chiller from it and drain the wort into another container, having previously lubricated the wort outlet with alcohol for disinfection.

15. Pour the dissolved yeast into the drained wort, stir and put it under a water seal for 9 days.

16. Drain the beer into another container and put it on secondary fermentation for 10 days.

17. Fermented beer is bottled and put on carbonization first for 2 weeks at room temperature, and then 2 weeks in a dark, cool place!

Germans are legally allowed to cook 200 liters per family per year without taxes. Therefore, a mini-brewery in the kitchen is an ordinary thing in Germany. And profitable in addition, because. Buying industrial beer is more expensive.

In Russia, the situation is different. Remember that the other day our State Duma adopted in the third and final reading a law stating that by 2013 beer should be completely withdrawn from sale in non-stationary outlets(stalls and tents)? And it will be possible to sell it only in shops and catering facilities.

Trade in beer will be prohibited at public transport stops, markets, railway stations, airports and gas stations. In addition, from January 2012, the authorities will ban the consumption of alcohol, including beer, in in public places- parks, entrances, squares and recreation areas within the city. The document limits the sale of any alcohol with a strength of more than 0.5 percent from 23 pm to 08 am.

Definitely good. Young people will not go around night and day with a bottle of beer glued to their lips, and there will be less poor-quality surrogate. And true lovers will be able to brew beer at home - no worse than the Germans.

Why not? Today, equipment, raw materials and the process itself are available to everyone. small factory and expendable materials are quite inexpensive, and the recipe is simple and straightforward.

It is possible to buy a ready-made extract with the standard formulation issued along with it and adjust it according to one's own preferences. Add a little more or a little less sugar, put a little bit of honey or malt extract - all these subtleties make such a process as making homemade beer extremely exciting. You can even print labels with own surname and feed your friends.

In European cities of the 13th - 14th centuries, classes of master brewers arose, specializing in the production of beer of different varieties. In Germany, a beer called bock (from Munich) and mumme - from Braunschweig are especially famous. The famous English porter appeared in 1770.

In Russia four times a year, usually on the Great Day (Easter), Dmitrievskaya Saturday, at Shrovetide and Christmas, as well as at christenings and weddings, peasants were allowed to brew beer, mash and honey for home drinking, so such festive feasts in those days were called special beer. However, the right to a special beer was given with analysis, usually only to the most hard-working and enterprising peasants, and only for 3 days (sometimes for a week).

In the diamond mines of Sierra Leone gems examined in beer. According to British geologists, the visual qualities of diamonds become apparent precisely in the mentioned liquid medium.

In the XVIII and early XIX century, most medicines in hospitals were taken only with beer. As a tonic and disinfectant drink, beer was given to convalescent patients in St. Petersburg hospitals until the middle of the 19th century.

In the Czech Republic, there is a special “test” for a beer hat: it is believed that the foam of the “correct” beer should hold a Czech coin placed on it.

Recipes and conditions

There are two ways to brew beer at home: from malt extract and, of course, from the grain itself.

Cooking from the extract is the easiest. You will need to buy a jar of malt extract (preferably English), then dilute it in 25 liters of water, add 1 kg of sugar or glucose, yeast from their kit and set to ferment for a week. Then you bottle the young beer, add more sugar and leave for a week to saturate with carbon dioxide. Beer can already be drunk, but it is better to let it ripen for another 3-4 weeks.

Another way to brew beer at home is with grain. Take brewing malt (4 kg), grind with a rolling pin, heat 12 liters of water to 70 degrees and lower the grain in 3-4 bags. Within an hour it is necessary to maintain a temperature of 65-70 degrees. Then heat the water to 72 degrees and wait another 15 minutes.

Take a drop of wort and mix it with iodine (the mixture should not turn blue). Squeeze the malt bags, measure the density with a hydrometer and bring it to 12 with water. Boil for 90 minutes. At the 60th minute, add 20-25g of hops. Cool to 25 degrees and add brewer's yeast. Leave to wander for a week.

Add 8 g of glucose per liter to the bottles and bottle the young live beer. After a week, remove for two weeks in the cold.

5 old recipes for making beer at home

juniper beer

Juniper berries 200 gr., water 2 liters, honey 50 gr., yeast 25 gr.

Boil fresh juniper berries in water for 30 minutes, strain and cool to room temperature, add honey and yeast, stir and leave for fermentation. When the yeast rises, stir again and bottle. Seal with corks and put in a cool place for 5 days. The strength of the drink is 3-5 degrees.

English beer

Take 3.5 kg of barley or oats and, stirring constantly, pour out the grain so that it does not fry.

Crush the grains, pour into the boiler and pour 15 liters of water (65 C), let stand for 3 hours and carefully drain the liquid. Again, pour the grains remaining in the boiler with 12 liters of water (72 C) and drain after 2 hours. And once again pour the grains with 12 liters of cold water and drain after 1.5 hours. Mix all three of these waters.

In 2.5 buckets warm water dilute 6 kg of molasses, pour into the prepared liquid, add 200 gr. hops and boil everything together. After 2 hours, when the liquid has cooled, pour 2 tbsp. l. yeast, mix and leave at room temperature.

When the fermentation process is over, pour the beer into a barrel and leave it open for 3 days. Then hammer it with a sleeve, and after 2 weeks you will get the finished beer.

Baturin beer

Take 2.5 kg of juniper, 8 kg of rye malt, 80 gr. dry apples or pears.

Pour the malt with water and boil, after 5 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in juniper berries and apples. Stir and pour into a barrel, fill with water up to half. Score and let stand for a day, then add water daily until the barrel is full. Then remove the cork, close the hole with gauze (at this time, the beer will make noise). When the beer stops making noise, it can be consumed.

Zaporozhye beer

100 gr. hops, well ground with flour and 3 cups of sugar, pour 10 liters of boiling water.

Let it brew for 2-3 hours, filter, pour it still warm into a barrel, add 2 cups of molasses and 50 gr. yeast diluted in warm infusion. When the beer is fermented, it is bottled, corked and stored until consumed in a cold place.

Crimean light beer

Put in cast iron 3 pounds chopped and dried white bread, 1.5 pounds of rye malt, 10 grains of crushed cloves, 1 pound of scalded hops, 10 gr. yeast diluted in water.

Cover with a towel and put in a warm place. The next day pour 10 bottles boiled water, stir, cover tightly with a lid and put overnight in a warm place. Then pour more water (up to the top) and put another night in a warm place, then strain the beer.

Cork bottles with scalded corks, tie with thin wire. Put bottles with finished beer for 10 days in a cool place.

Note: 1 pound is about 450 grams

5 most frequently asked questions

1. What is brewing malt?

Malt is a germinated grain, with a sprout of 3-5mm, and roots of at least 15mm. For brewing, the malt is dried and the roots and sprouts are removed. The traditional grain for brewing malt is barley. The type of malt depends on the temperature, time and method of drying, and, accordingly, the type of beer made from it. If the drying temperature does not exceed 70˚C, light malt is obtained, from which light beer is obtained. At temperatures above 130˚C, dark and burnt malts are obtained; when mixed with light malt, dark beers are obtained.

2. What is hops and what is it for?

Hop is a climbing plant. It is divided by gender. Fruit-cones ripen on female plants. These are the pins that are used. Hops have long been used in brewing not only to impart a specific aroma and taste. A decoction of hops tends to have a deadly effect on many microorganisms, except for yeast. And it also contains many micronutrients useful for yeast nutrition.

3. What are the main steps involved in making beer from malt and hops at home?

Grinding malt (0.1-1 hour). Mashing-cooking aqueous solution from ground malt, exposure at the necessary temperature pauses (1-2 hours). Filtration - separation of beer wort from malt grains (0.5 hours). Pellet washing hot water, the goal is to extract the remaining extractives (0.5 hours). Boiling the wort with the addition of hops, the purpose is disinfection and evaporation of excess water (1.5-3 hours). Wort cooling (0.5 hours). The transfer of the wort to the fermentation tank (0.25 hours) with the separation of hop particles and coagulated protein flakes is achieved either by careful removal from the sediment or by filtration through a sieve. Sowing with yeast. Main fermentation (5-10 days). Removal from the yeast sediment and overflow (0.5 hours) for secondary fermentation (7-15 days). Bottling with the addition of sugar (glucose) for saturation with carbon dioxide, capping. Exposure-maturing (from 21 days).

(The time given is approximate, for the preparation of 25 liters of beer)

4. What is the difference between homemade beer from ready extracts and from malt-hops?

The difference is that in the preparation of beer concentrate at the factory, half the work has already been done for you, that is, they have ground the malt, prepared the mash, filtered, boiled with hops, made a concentrate from the wort by removing the water. And at the same time chose the recipe. It remains only to add water, boil and ferment.

If you make beer truly on your own, that is, from malt, you have complete freedom in choosing the recipe and the quality of the initial ingredients. But you have to work harder, buy optional equipment. Example by analogy. You can take the dry powder and dilute it back into "milk". And you can feed the cow with grass, water it and milk it at the end. There is no reason to think that powdered milk and cow's milk will be of the same quality.

5. Is anything else added to beer besides malt, hops, yeast and water?

Yes, in some recipes. Most often, unmalted grains are present in recipes - wheat, rice, rye and others. In the world of beer, “non-malt” is used very widely, but not to reduce the cost of the product, but to form a bouquet. In particular, the British are very fond of barley, wheat and, of course, "Oatmeal Sir". The Belgians use up to 60% unmalted wheat in their witbiers. Speaking about unmalted raw materials, it should be said that its use is justified only if it is provided for in the recipe and the brewer knows why he uses this or that grain. Small amounts of spices, fruit juices, and more can also be used. Beer is very different. Experimenting is not allowed!

Useful information

From the "Instructions for the technochemical control of brewing production" VASKHNIL ()

Table of the relationship between the mass fraction of solids in the initial wort (MSw), the mass fraction of extract (Me) and alcohol (Ms) in beer and the degree of fermentation (n)