As we leave March and head into April fresh, seasonal food seems to be a bit thin on the ground. Aside from watercress and rhubarb there’s not much to be harvested. This time of year is certainly more about sowing than reaping.
However, historically this has been a period of great activity in one culinary area: brewing. A few hundred years ago beer was the staple drink. Many water sources were poluted, but people realized that because their beer had been boiled before fermentation it was safe to drink. Families brewed their own beer at home, and commercial breweries brewed for the rich and the royal.
Come forward a few hundred years and home brewing in this country has a pretty bad rap – perhaps rightly so – but it really doesn’t take much effort or expense to create a decent pint at home.
Beer is generally brewed at home in batches of around 20 litres. This should give you 40 bottles worth.
Equipment-wise, you’ll need a container for your beer to ferment in – ideally a bucket with a lid, the largest saucepan you can find (ideally one that can boil the entire batch of beer), some plastic hose for syphoning your beer and some bottles. Plastic soda bottles that have been thoroughly cleaned will do, but ideally collect up used brown beer bottles and give them a good clean.
As for ingredients, get yourself a “tin of “beer kit” – a tin of pre-hopped malt extract. You can normally find one for the style of beer you like – IPA, bitter, pilsener, etc and they cost about £7. The instructions will usually tell you to add about a kilo of plain sugar. Don’t. Instead, get yourself two 500g bags of light dried malt extract. This will improve your beer no end.
Many health food shops sell the equipment and ingredients you need, but you can also get them online – Brew It Yourself and Hop and Grape are both great resources.
Now for the brewing:
The most important part of brewing is hygiene. Everything that touches your beer after it has been boiled must be sanitised. This can be done using a weak bleach solution, but ideally pick up a sanitizer when you buy your supplies. Clean and sanitize your bucket, it’s lid, and a large metal spoon.
I’m going to assume that your saucepan can comfortably hold 5 litres. Fill up your saucepan with water, and bring it to the boil. When it’s boiling, pour the water into your fermenting bucket. Repeat this until you have 15 litres of boiled water. For the last 5 litres, you’ll want to add your malt extracts. Stand the tin of extract in a bowl of warm water to loosen it up, then pour it into your saucepan. Then add the two bags of dried malt extract. Finally top the pan up with cold water. Bring to a boil, stirring al the time to mix the malt and prevent scorching. Boil for 20 minutes, then add it to the water in your fermenting bucket. Put the lid on the bucket and leave it to cool down to room temperature.
When the ‘wort’ (pre-fermented beer) is at room temperature, you can add your yeast. Don’t be impatient and add it too soon – if the wort is too hot you’ll kill the yeast. Simply open the packet of dried yeast that came with your kit and tip it in. Place the lid loosely on the bucket and leave in a warm place (between 15°C-20°C) for fermentation.
During fermentation, you should see a big foamy head develop over the beer. As fermentation subsides, this will fall back into the beer and is a good indicator that fermentation has completed. Time-wise, you’ll want the beer in the fermenter for about two weeks.
Now it’s time to bottle. Clean and sanitize your bottles and your plastic syphon hose. To each bottle add about a third of a teaspoon of sugar. Then carefully syphon the beer from your fermenter into the bottles. Seal the bottles and leave them somewhere warm for a week to carbonate. After carbonation, the beer needs to be stored cool – a cold garage floor is ideal. If you can leave the bottles a week in the cold before opening, so much the better.
But if you can’t – don’t worry about it. Drink and enjoy.
Follow BigBarn via these methods: