Brewing

How to start brewing

By on Sunday, September 22, 2024

Based on what I’ve learned, here’s a rambling instructionset of how to get started with the most basic homebrew.

Preamble – what is home brewing?

In it’s barest steps, it’s using Yeast to turn Sugar into Alcohol.

To do so quickly and easily we:

  • Add our sugar to a volume of water – yeast loves sugar and it loves water
  • Make sure it’s not too hot or too cold for the yeast
  • Make sure it’s not too sunny – regular light is fine
  • Give it time.

Yeast is a wonderful little microorganism that consumes sugar and oxygen to multiply, and the byproduct is CO2 and Alcohol. The right amount of yeast in a bottle of juice will turn the juice into wine (alcoholic juice) and if the bottle is sealed, the CO2 will permeate the liquid, carbonating it and creating a fizzy wine.

Obviously we have to be careful – unchecked, yeast can produce too much CO2 and the buildup of pressure can make the bottle blow it’s lid and make a mess – commonly referred to as “bottle bombs”. If they’re glass bottles, they’re also pretty scary, but can be very easily avoided taking the proper precautions.

Getting Started

The easiest way to make home brew is actually Mead. It’s honey, so it’s naturally antibacterial, resilient, and easy – you just need honey, water, and yeast for a standard mead. Home brewing is like baking or brewing coffee – doing it simply is easy, doing it well requires a bit of patience, good quality ingredients, and experience.

To get started with the absolute basics, I would recommend (links are to my local brewshop, no sponsorship!):

optional:

You then just need the ingredients:

For a basic brew in your 5L Demijohn
-> for a dry mead, 0.92KG of honey (~0.65L), fill the demijohn with water (should be about 4.2L)
-> for a semi-sweet mead, 1.25KG of honey (~0.87L), fill the demijohn with water (should be about 4.0L)
-> for a sweet desert mead, 1.7KG of honey (~1.2L), fill the demijohn with water (should be about 3.7L)

A note on the honey – your mileage will vary. There is no right or wrong answer. Every hive and every honey is different. Experience will come into play, or you could go down the rabbit hole of calculating specific gravity and make a few mistakes and learn from those. I use a glass hydrometer and it’s great, costs about $12 – https://brewerschoice.net.au/product/tools-and-parts/measuring-device/3-scale-hydrometer/

And some yeast – the best starting recommendation is the Lalvin EC-1118, one packet will run about $5-8 depending on where you get it. https://www.thebrewshop.com.au/lalvin-ec-1118.html

Step 1:
Mix some water and all of honey together in a pot on the stove over a low heat for a few minutes until the mixure is sleek and smooth. This gets rid of any crystalisation in the honey, and helps the water mix in.
Step 2:
Pour some water in to your demijohn, then pour in your warm honey/water mixture. Top up with water. Aim for a temperature of ~18-20 degrees, but you do not need to be precise
Step 3:
In a small bowl, mix 1/2 cup of water with a table spoon of white sugar and a teaspoon of flour. Add your yeast to sit on top, do not stir. Give that yeast about 15 minutes at room temperature to get started, then do step 4.
Step 4:
Aerate! Put a cap on your demijohn and shake it! or use a fine stick like a chopstick and vigorously stir. Or both! The yeast need oxygen in the liquid to procreate.
Step 5:
Pour the yeast (mixture and all) into the top of your now aerated demijohn.
Step 6:
Put the bung on top instead of a cap, and put the airlock in the bunghole. Boil the kettle, and half-fill the airlock with boiled water.

Now Wait. (The Short Wait)

In the wise words of Charles Papazian, “Relax! Have a homebrew.” You’ve done the bulk of the hard work.

In about 24 hours the yeast will start to ferment and produce CO2 – you know it’s working because the airlock will start bubbling. Make sure the Demijohn is out of direct sunlike (yeast does not like too much sun) and somewhere where it won’t get jostled for the duration it’ll be there, as it’ll be there a while.

In 10-30 days (depending on many factors, YMMV) the airlock will stop bubbling, indicating that the mead is finished. If you bought a hydrometer, you should take a gravity reading now.

Give it another 48 hours (or longer) to make sure the yeast is really _really_ done. If you have a hydrometer, take a second reading – the two readings should be identical, indicating that the yeast has truly stopped working.

Racking Day

When you and the brew are both good and ready, using your siphon, transfer the mead from the demijohn to a vessel that you want to cellar the mead, or serve it from (I use a second demijohn). The yeast will have settled to the bottom (called the leas) and is not poisonous or anything – is actually pretty good for you, just not great tasting – but if you can get your mead out of the demijohn without disturbing the leas you’ll have a very crystal clear, slighly yellowish drink. The leas will just make it cloudy, and maybe introduce a bland under-tone to the flavor.

Try to avoid oxygenating the beverage too much, if it can be avoided. Oxygen at this stage can reduce the quality of your flavour while your mead develops.

If you’re paranoid about the pressure buildup in your cellar vessel, I recommend racking some of your brew into small plastic bottles, like a 375ml or 600ml coke bottle or similar, and screw the lid on tightly. The bottle should never inflate, and you can test it every day by just giving the bottle a squeeze – if the bottle is hard, it means the pressure has built up, and there’s CO2 being generated – you should go and do something about that! You can gently de-gass all of your bottles if they’re screwtops, and I would recommend doing it over or near a sink. If you’ve used a capper or more permanent seal, then you’ll have to host an impromptu drinking party!

Cellaring (The Longest Wait)

For best results, cellar for a few months to let the flavour develop – fresh homebrews have a “green” taste to the alcohol that mellows after only a few weeks. I would recommend using cheap hinge cap bottles and storing them upright, because if the yeast tricked you and isn’t done, the cheap hinge-cap bottles don’t burst as normal capped bottles do, as I learned the hard way. You can also use kegs, barrels, carboys, old wine or spirits bottles (Corks are great) or even buy a capper and cap your own recycled beer bottles, which is what I do.

Once you’re done cellaring – as long or as short as you would like, honestly, but 3-6 months is a great balance point of letting flavour develop, and putting off enjoying your homebrew – you can serve your mead straight, on ice, or with a fizzy tonic water or lemondade if you like it sweet. Best served cold.

Tips and Tricks

I would recommend tasting frequently during different points in the brew. Make notes. That’s why I started this blog, so I could keep track of the flavours and outcomes of different things.

With Meads, you can get really creative:

  • At step 1, instead of only mixing the honey and water at low heat, you can boil the mixture (called the “wort”). Boiling the wort changes the properties of the honey – breaking down enzymes into different chemical chains that the yeast interacts with differently. Generally, boiling your wort will give you a better “body” of flavor. 30 to 60 minutes of a low rolling boil is a good amount.
  • At step 1, you can also add in additives like other sugars like Lactose or Dextrose, whole fruits, teabags, vanilla essence or mollases, or raisins – basically anything you like the flavor of. Adding it later on in the boil will lend itself to more aromatic flavours, or add it earlier in the boil for bolder flavors.
  • If you boil in step 1, you need to wait for the wort to cool; when it cools to between 67 and 78 degrees celcius, it’s in the Pasteurisation temperature – if you want to add fine aromatics that would otherwise be destroyed by boiling, add them now to Pasteurise them – keep the wort between 67 and 78 degrees celcius, for 30 minutes. This is hot enough to kill bacteria that might ruin your brew, but isn’t hot enough to destroy most tasty things like protien and carbohydrate chains.
  • On racking day, you can add in other things to your brew! Make sure whatever you’re adding has already been sanitised or pasteurised. Things that are common to consider adding is Espresso shots for a Coffee flavour, chocolates, more honey if you want to back-sweeten, or even fresh fruit (that has been pasteurised). If you’re adding anything after your yeast is finished, you will also want to make sure you stabilise your brew with some potassium sorbate (can be bought from a home-brew shop) to stop the yeast from going at whatever new sugar you’re adding, and creating a problem in your second stage.
  • So many other ideas, honestly, and that’s what makes homebrewing so great.

There’s tonnes of books on home brewing, but by far the best one is Charles Papazian’s “The Joys of Homebrewing” which, if you could only ever get one book on homebrewing, is the only book you’d ever need. I learned a lot from that book.

Anyway this short description turned into a whole thing. Liked this? Want to know more? Email me or something. I love talking about homebrewing.

~ Frosty

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