Homebrewing Abbreviation Slang
Quite a few technical (and wordy) homebrewing terms exist, so to make it easier to read homebrewing recipes and directions, terms have been abbreviated. Here’s a handy guide for homebrewing abbreviations [more…]
Basic Conversions for Homebrewing
In case you need the metric equivalents of basic measurements, keep this simple conversions guide close by when you’re brewing your own beer at home: [more…]
The Main Ingredients of Beer
What is beer exactly? By excruciatingly simple definition, beer is any fermented beverage made with a cereal grain. Specifically, beer is made from these four primary ingredients: [more…]
The Importance of Barley to Brewing Beer
When you hear the words cereal grains, you might think of Rice Krispies, Corn Flakes, Wheat Chex, or Quaker Oatmeal. But you may be surprised to know that cereal grains [more…]
The Importance of Hops for Brewing Beer
Hops are the pinecone-like flowers of a female climbing plant in the cannabis family of plants. They’re grown on enormous trellises as tall as 18 feet [more…]
Yeast’s Role in Beer Making
Yeast works hard but really enjoys itself. This little, single-cell organism, one of the simplest forms of plant life, is responsible for carrying out the fermentation process in beer making, thereby providing [more…]
Special Ingredients Added to Beer
Although the four ingredients — barley, hops, yeast, and water — are all you need to make beer, they’re by no means the only ingredients used. Additional grains, natural sugars, and flavorings are often [more…]
Beer Homebrewing Ingredients
Buying the ingredients for your first batch of beer is easy, almost a no-brainer. You go into a homebrew-supply shop or fill out an online order form and buy an extract kit [more…]
Sterilizing and Sanitizing when Homebrewing Beer
If you want your beer to taste fresh and be drinkable and enjoyable, you need to protect it from the millions of hungry microbes that are waiting to ambush your brew. Germs are everywhere; they live with [more…]
Choosing Cleansers for Beer Homebrewing Equipment
The chemicals used to clean homebrewing equipment include iodine-based products, ammonia, chlorine-based products, lye, and at least one environmentally safe cleanser that uses percarbonates. Following [more…]
Homebrewing: Letting Your Beer Ferment
Raw, sweet wort must undergo fermentation before it officially becomes beer, and bottling can’t take place until fermentation is complete. Fermentation of a 5-gallon batch usually takes a minimum of seven [more…]
Homebrewing: Bottling Your Beer
When you’re certain that the homebrewed beer you’ve lovingly crafted is fully fermented, retrieve the bottling equipment and get ready to start the bottling procedures. [more…]
Homebrewing Beer with Specialty Grains
If all the beer-making grain in the world was exactly the same, very few unique beer styles would exist. Because grain (mostly barley) is responsible for providing beer with much of its color, flavor, [more…]
Choosing the Right Barrels for Brewing Beer
The whole point of having beer in contact with wood is for the beer to pick up some of the aroma and flavor characteristics of the wood. Additionally, if the beer is aged in a barrel that previously held [more…]
Creating New Beer Flavors with Old Beer Barrels
Today’s beer brewers realize that much can be gained by aging their beers in barrels that once held other fermented beverages. They also realize that barrel aging isn’t an exact science; in fact, it’s [more…]
Getting Started with Extreme Beers
As part of the beer brewing process, malted barley undergoes a mashing process that leeches out the grain’s fermentable sugar, or maltose. Maltose is then converted to alcohol by the yeast during fermentation [more…]
Homebrewing Supplies and Equipment
New homebrewers are no different from other hobbyists; they’re chomping at the bit (foaming at the mouth?) to get started with their hobby. Although this enthusiasm is good, jumping headlong into the unknown [more…]
Homebrewing: How to Make Your Own Beer
Making and bottling a batch of beer, like building Rome, can’t be done in a day. On the other hand, it doesn’t take a heck of a lot longer than a day, either. You need to set aside two days, about a week [more…]
