The third most popular drink in the world, after water and tea, is beer. I’ve always wondered about home brewing, so when I was selected to blog about the business of home brewing for the Boston Local Food Festival in anticipation of the upcoming Hyper-Local Craft Brewfest, I was really excited. What a great opportunity to research something I’m already interested in that I haven’t been able to make time for!
There are four main ingredients necessary to create beer: barley, hops, yeast, and water. To actually create beer from those ingredients, however, you will need a bit of equipment. The average home brewing kit has all that you need: a lidded fermentor, a bottling assembly (bucket, spigot, filler, tubing, bottle brush, and capper), sanitizer, and a siphon and siphon tubing.
Home brewing kits are readily available from many places like Modern Homebrew Emporium, Beer and Wine Hobby, and many other sources. The first step, once you’ve obtained all of your materials, is to “mash in” by putting your barley in boiling water. The mash has to maintain a temperature of generally 144-152*F for an hour, but the exact details may vary depending on the beer you are brewing.
Once the mash is all set, the next step is to add more hot water, at around 170*F, to the mash. This will create the wort, once all of the sugars have been extracted from the grain. The wort is then boiled and bittering hops are added for flavor. Once the hops are added, the beer must boil for approximately one hour. After three quarters of that hour, flavoring hops can be added. The flavoring hops are added later than the bittering hops to help maintain their flavor. Finishing hops can be added right as the boil is coming to an end.
After the boil, it’s essential to cool the beer as quickly as possible, so an ice bath may be necessary. Once cooled, the beer has to be transferred to the fermentor. Everything the beer touches after the boil has to be sterilized first, to reduce the risk of introducing anything into the beer. At this point, the yeast can be added, and the beer must be left to ferment, which will take approximately two weeks.
Bottling the beer involves using sugar and water to create additional carbon dioxide to carbonate the beer, a process known as bottle conditioning. Then the beer can be added into the bottles and capped. Once capped, it’s important to age the beer briefly, for one to two weeks, for best flavor.
After doing all of this research, I’m very tempted to try my hand at homebrewing my own beer. I now know that it’s not really that complicated, and that with good tools and good supports, I think I could get it done!
Modern Homebrew Emporium is one of the many awesome sponsors of SBN’s 5th Hyper-Local Craft Brewfest. Get your tickets now and don’t forget to visit their table at the festival!
This post was brought to you by Janna Comeau of Bach to the Future’s Best Bites Blog, be sure to check her out!
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