Preparing the Ingredients

Before you begin brewing, you will need to make sure that your ingredients are ready. Some ingredients must be prepared ahead of time, so read this section carefully. For more information on any particular ingredient, see the Beer Ingredients page.

Preparing the Ingredients for the Beginning Homebrewer

Most people brew their first batch of beer from a prepackaged beer ingredient kit. This means that the ingredients will be chosen for you, and most pre-treatment steps will already have been done for you; for example, any specialty grains included with your recipe will already have been milled.

However, there are two ingredients you still need to pay special attention to: water and yeast.

• If your tap water comes from a city supply or you have a water conditioner, you may want to take special steps to keep salt, chlorine or chloramine out of your beer. The simplest solution is, if you are unsure about your water, to buy six or seven gallons of bottled spring water (not distilled water) for brewing your first batch.
• If your kit came with a smack pack of Wyeast liquid yeast, you should activate it by breaking the inner package a few hours to a few days before you brew.
• If your kit came with dry yeast, you should consider proofing it sometime on your brewing day.

Choosing the Ingredients

Most home brewers begin brewing from ingredient kits put together by home brewing stores or companies. Once you understand a little about the ingredients used in brewing and how they interact, you can easily create your own delightful and unique home brew recipes. But most people just use one of the many hundreds of published recipes for great tasting beers that can easily be found on internet web sites, in brewing forums, and in books and magazines devoted to home brewing. One of the best resources online for beer recipes is the Homebrewtalk Recipe Database

Another tool utilized by many modern brewers is brewing software. Programs such as ProMash, Qbrew, Brewsmith and Beertools allow users to formulate recipes with instant IBU/SRM/OG/etc. feedback, perform all the necessary calculations, and keep track of their ingredient inventory. Advanced homebrewers interested in formulating their own recipes will find these programs invaluable.

Preparing the Yeast

{{ #if: | Main article: [[Yeast|]] | Main article: Yeast }}

Preparing the Water

{{ #if: | Main article: [[Water|]] | Main article: Water }}

Preparing the Grain

{{ #if: | Main article: [[Grain|]] | Main article: Grain }}

Milling the grain

In order to make the starches, which are contained in the grains, accessible for conversion and extraction in the mashing process the malt and adjuncts (if necessary) need to be milled. The goal is exposure of the starch while keeping the husks intact as much as possible. Keeping the husks intact is necessary since the husks are used to form a filter bed during lautering. Excessive shedding of the husks can also lead to increased husk tannin extraction during mashing and lautering.

Evaluating the crush

Advanced: Conditioning the malt

Preparing the Hops

{{ #if: | Main article: [[Hops|]] | Main article: Hops }} For most beer styles, your hops do not need much in the way of preparation. However, there are a few special cases where the hops may benefit from pre-treatment.

Aged Hops

Some Belgian beers are brewed with hops that have been aged to drive off some of the more aggressive fresh hop aromas that are desirable in many other beer styles. If you do not have access to aged hops, you may want to age your own hops, or pre-treat them in a way that simulates this aging. This can be done by heating them in an oven over low heat (150 degrees) for an hour or longer; some sources suggest up to 12 hours. Be aware that this may also create a significant odor as the volatile oils and acids are driven off of the hops into your kitchen.

Preparing Other Ingredients

What do I do next?

Once your ingredients are ready, move on to the next important preparation step in the beer brewing process: Cleaning and Sanitation.