This guide is written for would be Extract brewers to see what is involved in a basic extract brewing session. It is not meant to be a tutorial but just an overview of what is involved in brewing a good beer. In it's simplest form making an extract beer involves adding hopped extract to hot water, pouring into a fermenter, topping up with cold water and adding the yeast. Put an airlock on, wait 7-10 days. Bottle with a little sugar in each bottle, cap and wait 2 weeks. Your beer is then hopefully done and ready to drink. Will this give you good beer and the satisfaction of real brewing? Debatable. Lets look at a more satisfying involved method.
Lets assume that to make good extract beer you'll be be looking at one of the either steeping some speciality grains and using hops or doing a Partial Mash with hop additions.
Contents
Extract and Steeping
Equipment
The minimum equipment require for the following method is:
- Heat source (Stove/oven/propane burner)
- Stock pot (4 gallon minimum)
- 6.5 gallon fermenter (food grade bucket or glass carboy)
- Airlock
- Thermometer
- Mixing spoon
- Siphon tube
- Bottles
Additional beneficial equipment
- Hydrometer
- 2nd fermenter
- Spare airlock
- Bottling bucket with spigot
- Auto-siphon
- Bottle filler
- Blow-off tube
Ingredients
The fermentables (sugars to be turned to alcohol) for the brew will come from the malt extract which comes in two forms, dry (DME) and liquid (LME). Speciality grains are steeped mainly for colour and flavour properties and not to add fermentable sugars. Hops are added for bitterness, flavour and aroma.
Recipe
Most home brew extract kits involve adding the malt extract to boiling water, adding hops at specified intervals during the boil (typical boil length is 60 minutes), and pitching yeast. If you want to get a recipe for a better extract beer, there are multiple books and internet sources available with thousands of recipes. You can then purchase your ingredients in small amounts from most Home brew stores. Many home brew stores and internet suppliers offer their own ingredient kits as well.
Basics Steps
- Steep the grain for 15 minutes
- Remove grain
- Bring to boil
- Remove from heat and add malt extract
- Return to boil and add bittering hops
- Add flavour and aroma hops at specified intervals
- Cool wort
- Add to fermenter
- Top up water
- Pitch yeast
Full Boil
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This section is a stub.
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Equipment
Ingredients
Basic steps
Mini Mash
Equipment
Ingredients
Basic steps
Detailed How To Pages
Extract and Steep
Partial Mash
Further Reading
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