Extract Brew Instructions PDF Print E-mail

1. Add the required amount of sanitizer to your carboy or plastic bucket with 5 gallons of water. Many sanitizers such as B-Brite, Star San, and 5-Star are available. you can also use common, unscented household bleach at 1oz. per gallon of water. Also, fill your bottling bucket or another bucket with a sanitizing solution for sanitizing additional equipment later in the process. If using liquid yeast, take it out of the refrigerator and allow it to warm to room temperature.

2. Add 2-3 gallons of water to a 5-gallon pot and turn on the heat. If using a 7.5 gallon, or larger, kettle fill with 6 gallons of water. Place kettle on stove and turn stove on.

(Steeping: Optional)

3. If you have any cracked flavoring grains (usually crystal, chocolate, roasted barley, or black patent malts, etc.) put them into a large nylon mesh bag and place into the heating water and allow to steep for 30 minutes. Let the water reach, but not exceed, a temperature of 170 degrees. If you reach 170 degrees in less than 30 minutes, turn the heat off and let the grains steep until a total of 30 minutes has passed.

4. Remove the grain bag and heat the water to a boil. Turn the heat off and stir in the liquid malt extract, dried malt extract (DME), dextrin powder, candy (rock) sugar and/or lactose as called for in the recipe. Continue to stir so the ingredients don't stick to or get burned on the bottom. Do not add any corn sugar that might have been included in your kit. That will be used for the bottling process. This solu­tion is now called sweet wort. (Pronounced wert)

5. Turn the heat back up and add your bittering hops. Add the hops, use in a fine mesh nylon bag if available, according to the recipe. If you do not have a bag add them directly to the boil.

6. Do not leave the boil unattended! If during the boil foam starts to rise turn down the heat until the foam drops, reapply heat and proceed to boil for 1 hour.

7. You must sanitize any equipment that will come into contact with the beer once it drops below 160 degrees including lids, airlock, funnel, thermometer, hydrometer sample taker, all stoppers, and anything else that will come in contact with the cooling beer. Put all this equipment into the sanitizing solution that you made earlier in step 1.

8. Add the Whirlfloc tablet or Irish MossWith with 20 minutes left in the boil. Whirlfloc and Irish Moss are natural fining agents that will help to clear your beer by attaching to protein mol­ecules, which then precipitate out of solution. If using a wort chiller (for larger kettles) place wort chiller into boiling wort at this time.

9. Add your hops according to the recipe, with 10, 5, or 1 minute(s) left in the boil. The last addition of aroma hops will steep while your wort cools. Use fine mesh nylon hop bags if avail­able.

10. Cooling hot wort if using a 5 gallon kettle, doing a Partial-Boil: Create a method for cooling your wort to around 130 degrees. For example, you can put the pot, with the lid on, in the sink and run cool tap water around it or you can put the pot in an ice water bath in your sink or bathtub. While the kettle is cooling, empty the sanitizing solution out of your fermenting vessel and fill it with 2 gallons, depending on how much you boiled, of cold water and/or ice. If using ice, you might want to use use store bought so you won’t transfer flavors acquired from your freezer. also note that when using water from your tap and/or ice your beer is subjected to whatever flavors or contamination is in the water to begin with. If you are using dry yeast you should re-hydrate the yeast in accordance with the di­rections on the packet. When the temperature reaches 130 degrees, transfer the wort into your fermen­ter and top up to 5 gallons with cold water and/or ice. Do not attempt to strain during this transfer. While transferring from kettle to fermenter there is no need to strain the wort. Use fine mesh hop bags to retain most of the vegetable matter from the hops.

11. Cooling hot wort if using a 7.5 gallon, or larger, kettle, doing a Full- Boil: Hook up wort chiller to tap water and turn on. As the pot is cooling, feel the out side of it with your hand. You will feel an inversion layer of cold wort on the bottom and hot wort on top. When the inversion layer reaches the top and the entire exterior of the kettle is a cool uniform temperature you can be assured the wort temperature if very close to the tap water temperature and you are ready to transfer wort into fermenter. Do not attempt to strain the wort during this transfer

12. Once the wort is into the fermenter cover the opening with lid (plastic bucket) or solid stopper (carboy). When the temperature drops to between 70-80 degrees, proceed to step 13, if not perform additional cooling.

13. At this time take a hydrometer reading and mark it down on the recipe sheet. If using buckets utilize the spigot to get a sample. If using a carboy utilize the sample-taker to get a sample. Do not return your sample to the rest of the wort. You take a hydrometer reading to determine how much sugar is in the sweet wort. Skip this step if you do not have a hydrometer. While not necessary to the beginner you will eventually want to get one of these.

14. Add the yeast and agitate your fermenter for a few minutes to give the yeast oxygen. Use a solid stopper with glass carboys. Attach the 3-piece airlock and stopper, filling the airlock approximately half full of water.

15. If brewing an ale keep your fermenter in a dark spot and at a room temperature between 65-70 degrees, ideally. Fermentation varies with individual conditions, but normally it starts in about 1-2 days and finishes in about 3- 7 days. I recommend that the beginning brewer start with ales because they are much easier to make. Lagers require a consistent temperature range of 48-60 degrees and a 3-week fermenta­tion time however, with some experience and additional reading they can be successfully brewed at home.

16. Allow seven days for fermentation and seven days for settling for a total of two weeks before you bottle or keg your beer.

Bottling:

17. You will need to sanitize about 50 non-twist-off bottles. Either wash your bottles with a sanitizing solution and drain them upside down (a bottle tree works great) or run previously cleaned bottles through your dishwasher on hot wash and dry with no soap. If you are using dirty bottles, you must scrub the inside with a bottle brush first.

18. If you need to move your fermenter to be able to siphon, try to do so a few hours, or even a day ahead of time.

19. Sanitize your bottling bucket, siphon hose, racking tube (w/carboys only), bottle filler, spoon, hydrometer, and bottle caps with a sanitizing solution.

20. In one small pot, put 4 oz, or 3/4 cup, corn sugar and one to two cups of water. Boil for 5 minutes.

21. Take a final gravity hydrometer reading and record it on the recipe/log sheet.

22. Siphon your beer from the fermenting vessel into the bottling bucket being careful not to splash. Allowing air into the beer at this point causes premature staling via oxidation. After there is about 2” of beer in the bottom, add the boiled corn sugar into the bottling bucket. The dissolved sugar will provide natural carbonation in the bottle.

23. To prevent airborne bacteria from falling in, cover the bottling bucket. Covering with aluminum foil or loose fitting saran wrap is perfect.

24. Take the 4’ of 3/8”siphoning hose and attach one end to the spigot on the bottling bucket and one end to the bottle filler. Fill the bottles as close to the top as possible (l” of head space usually) and place a cap on top of each one. When you have filled every bottle, go back and cap the bottles starting with the first ones you filled.

25. Leave the bottles at room temperature for at least 2 weeks to carbonate. Colder tem­peratures, 65 degrees or below, will require additional time for carbonation. You can drink the beer after 2 weeks, or when carbonation is present, however your beer will improve sig­nificantly with additional aging in either the refrigerator (ideal) or at room temperature. The refrigerator, or a cool spot, is really beneficial for long-term aging (months). Beers with higher alcohol contents and higher bittering rates will need to age longer.