About a year ago I put up a post explaining how to make homebrew beer, the kit way.  Making beer from kits is easy and fast, and you don’t need much equipment.  The beer, however, while easily equal to Tui, Heineken and the like, fails to measure up to the real beers like Duvel and Epic Pale Ale.

The solution, then, is to brew beer the proper way – from scratch.  Thus follows the Pacific Empire Guide to Full-Mash Homebrew Beer.

The first step is to grind the malted barley grains (malt).  The malt comes in huge sacks.

We use pilsener malt with a bit of crystal and chocolate malt.  The proportions and different varieties of grain give the beer its colour and basic flavour.  A dark chocolate malt gives a darker stout beer, while a paler pilsener malt gives a blond pilsener.

Craig and I have constructed a little grain mill which we run using an electric drill.  It takes about five minutes to run the malt through.

The crushed malt goes into the mash tun.  This is a big insulated bin which holds the grain while we soak it in hot water (71 degrees) to remove the sugars from the malt.

This takes about an hour. Meanwhile, we sterilise the fermenters and clean the other equipment.

If you really don’t like cleaning things, don’t take up homebrew!

When the grain is done soaking, we sparge it.

This essentially means pouring off the mash and pouring it back into the mash tun a few times, and then adding some fresh hot water.

When the grain is sufficiently rinsed of sugary goodness, we drain it into the kettle: it’s boiling time.

Craig has converted a 50 litre keg into a kettle for boiling.

We use a ginormous cast-iron gas burner which could boil the heck out of almost anything.

During the boil, we add hops at various intervals.

Mmm, the hops smell so good.  Which kinds of hops are added, and when they are added, determines how bitter the beer is and how it smells.  We like it hoppy. 

Phil (right) and Craig check the boil.

Homebrew is a great hobby because it combines three great things: beer, technology and fire.

I can only assure you that it smells as good as it looks!

Once the boil is done, we need to cool the hot mash down.  While you can just cover it and leave it for a few hours, it is better to cool the hot mash (whoops, it’s called wort now) down very quickly using this crazy thing called a wort chiller.

This is just a copper coil that we run cold tap water through.  It drops the temperature from almost 100 degrees down to 30 degrees in about 10-15 minutes.  This speed helps avoid a brewers mortal enemy: infections.

Now we drain the wort into the (sterilised and rinsed) fermenters and pitch in the yeast.

Here is the yeast: one packet for each fermenter.

Done! Now we leave the yeast do its work, bubbling away for about a week.  Then another week to let all the mucky stuff (trub) settle to the bottom.

A yield for our operation is about 35-38 litres of beer, at $1.30 – $1.60 per litre ($50 – $60 per batch of 38 litres). For a quick comparison, to buy that much Heineken beer at the supermarket would cost about $160 – $180!

Now it’s time for a bit more cleaning …

This whole thing, from getting set up to packing everything away, takes an easy five hours.  A bunch of that time is sitting around shooting the breeze, waiting for the grain to soak or the mash to boil.

Craig and Phil working hard.

Part Two will be Homebrew Beer: Bottling (and drinking).

Full thanks must go to our friend Craig, who got us mixed up in this crazy homebrew thing years ago.  His expertise and investment in equipment has led to a fruitful partnership where he provides equipment, leadership and direction, and we supply brewing premises and unskilled labour.

Some additional photos of the brewing process can be seen at my Flickr photostream.

Posted by Luke H on Sunday, September 21st, 2008 at 11:00 pm.