Brewing from a Kit
Equipment and Instructions
It starts with a box of ingredients. This is sometimes called a 'kit' and after you add water, boil, ferment, clarify, and bottle (or keg) it, you get about 5 gallons of (hopefully) good beer!
Here is a picture of a wide selection of kits from my favorite vendor (the Brew shop
You need a pot to brew in. This one is stainless steel (recommended) and it holds 29 quarts
It is sitting on the burner for a turkey fryer and that is connected to a 5 pound propane bottle
A picture of the start of the boil. Some kits include "steeping grain" that you put in and hold the temperature between 160 - 170 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 minutes. Then you remove the steeping grain and proceed to the boil.
When the wort (pronounced 'wert') starts to boil, it bubbles and foams up. This is why you have a large pot. By stirring and reducing the heat, you keep it from boiling over. This activity is called a 'protein break' and after a few minutes it typically subsides and the boil continues at a lower level. Different ingredients may cause several of these protein breaks, so you have to watch the boil until you are sure it has calmed down.
I use this 'chiller' to get the wort from 212 degrees to 75 degrees as fast as I can at the end of the boil. This is when the wort is most most open to getting contaminated, so it is important to cool it quickly and "pitch" the yeast on it.
If you put the chiller in the wort during the last 15 minutes of the boil, the heat will sanitize it
Then run water through the chiller until the wort is cool enough to add the yeast.
A little hardware. I use plastic carboys (1 - 6 gallon bottle, then later I use a 5 gallon bottle. Also in the picture is a floating thermometer, a hydrometer to check specific gravity and the vial that I pour about 5 oz of wort into for the specific gravity test.
It sits in the bathtub with a little airlock that lets the carbon dioxide out without letting anything else in. I usually wrap in a towel to keep light off of it. Fluorescent light and sunlight can change the flavor of fermenting and fermented beer. I believe that is why it is usually in brown bottles.
Here is a picture of the freezer I keep the kegs in after the fermentation and clarifying it is 2 ft wide, 3 ft tall and 2 1/2 ft front to back. I added an external thermostat to keep it above freezing
The reward for all your hard work. Yours may look different, but it is all good!
By the way. DON'T brew in your back yard when someone else is cutting the grass! That "new mowed lawn" smell gets in the brew and makes your beer sour! I discovered that... If you have that particular contamination, it is LIGHTER than the beer. If allowed to sit quietly for a few weeks, it will float to the top of the beer and the what is underneath is still good, so you can salvage some of it, but it is just better to keep it out of the beer from the start.
