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How to start your own home brewery!
Our Home brewing expert Tom weights in on how to create your own perfect brew.
Why should you home brew? Its fun to hand your buddies a beer and say “Here try this, I made it”. That and Princeton’s is closed on Sundays.
To get started, you need to know that there are three different methods for brewing beer, Extract, Partial Mash, and All Grain. With each method there is a different brewing skill level, equipment requirements, and finished product quality.
The four ingredients in beer are grain, hops, water, and yeast. With Extract Brewing the grain is malted and the hops are already added. So you would add the water and the yeast. I would compare this to making orange juice from frozen concentrate. This style will give you the least amount of control, and an ok finished product.
Partial Mash brewing allows you to malt some of the grain. Malting grain is a process in which you steep the grains in hot water to extract the grain sugar. You would then add hops and yeast. This is the style that the majority of home brewers would use. It will give you a fair amount of control over the finished product, and the skill required is quite varied.All Grain brewing requires the highest level of skill, the most equipment, and the largest amount of time. With all grain brewing you will steep a lot of grain to get your malt. No extract will be added. You would then add hops and yeast. This style of brewing will give you 100% control over the finished product.
For the time and the money that you will put in to this hobby, I would recommend Partial Mash brewing as a good starting point. Before you turn on the stove, you need some equipment. This is a basic list to get you started.
Large 3 gallon stock pot
6 gallon carboy
Plastic bottling bucket
Racking cane and tubing
Bottle filler
Funnel
Air lock and rubber stopper
Bottles and Caps
Capper
Sanitizer
This list will cost you approximately $100 dollars, and with the exception of caps and sanitizer, all are reusable infinite times.
Now that you have the equipment you need ingredients. I would suggest getting a recipe kit from one of the brew shops. The kit will have all the ingredients for that recipe pre measured, (malt, grain, hops, and yeast) with detailed instructions. Starting out this will be your best bet for success.
Some things you should know:
• It takes about 2 hours to brew a 5 gallon batch.
• A 5 gallon batch will produce 40 to 44 12oz. bottles.
• Bottling will take about 1.5 to 2.5 hours.
• EVERYTHING gets cleaned and sanitized.
• Form start to finish most batches takes 5 to 8 weeks to mature.
• An Ale will ferment at room temperature 65-75F.
• A Lager must ferment at a colder temp 40 -50F. This will require a refrigerator.
With anything, there is a learning curve. I would encourage any one interested in becoming a home brewer, to visit your local brew shop and ask a lot of questions. They are an excellent learning resource.
Link to the local brew shops:
• Midwest Homebrewing & Winemaking Supplies
St. Louis Park, MN
www.midwestsupplies.com
• Northern Brewer
St. Paul, MN
www.northernbrewer.com
We would like to extend a warm welcome to any variety of questions you may have. In time we will have a data base of Q&A’s for you to search. Please write us at info@princetonsliquors.com
