How to Make Beer

By Michael Shaw June 2012

Finally getting to the good stuff, how to make beer. In this article I’ll tell you how to make a good red ale beer that won’t disappoint. Beer is made up of only 4 ingredients, yeast, water, malt and hops and nothing else, in my opinion. A pumpkin or lemon beer is not really beer. This article is for people who want to make a full bodied, good tasting beer without too much trouble. There are two kinds of beers, ales and lagers and they use different yeasts. In this article I explain how to make ale beer. Ales ferment at higher temperatures and lagers ferment at lower temperatures.

The Perfect Red Ale

In my process there are 5 steps to making beer, 1) boiling the brew, 2) chilling the brew, 3) pitching the yeast 4) fermenting, and finally 5) bottling. There can be various versions of these steps in advanced beer making, like 2^nd fermentation for instance, which I can get to in future articles, but these are the basic steps to making this beer.

What You Need

Before you can make beer you’ll need some materials. The first thing you’ll need is a large 3-5 gallon stainless steel brewpot. The larger the brewpot, the more brew you can make and the less water you need. Conversely, the larger the brewpot, the harder it is to cool off, because you want to chill the brew as fast as you can to avoid contamination.

You’ll need a brewing spoon with a long handle that’s needed to stir 3 gallons of liquid when it’s boiling.  

The next thing you’ll need is a fermenting vessel. This is an air tight vessel that is large enough to hold all of the beer you plan to make, usually a 7 gallon plastic bucket. I usually make beer in 5 gallon batches because it is a manageable quantity. This will make two - 2.5 gallon kegs or approximately 52 - 12 ounce bottles.

You’ll need an airlock for the fermenter. This is a device that lets the CO2 that is produced by the yeast during fermentation to escape, while preventing any air from getting in. It’s a simple device, and I’ve even heard of a balloon being used to perform this task.

Fermenter with airlock and valve

You’ll also need to attach a valve to the bottom of the fermenting bucket or use a hose or racking cane to transfer the beer into bottles when the fermenting is finished.

You’ll need 3 cheese cloth bags and about 3ft of string. I place the hops into the bags and tie them shut with the string during the hopping stage.

The last thing you’ll need is at least 52 bottles, bottle caps and a bottle capper.

The ingredients for this red ale are:       

                                    Crystal Malt Extract               3.3 LBS can

                                    Pale Malt Extract                    3.3 LBS can

                                    *Wyeast                                  #1028

                                    Bittering hops 60 mins            1oz Northern Brewer

                                    Flavoring hops 40 mins           1oz Tettnang

Finishing hops 20 mins           1oz Fuggles

Ice                                           5 Lbs

Note: this article assumes the beer maker is using easy to use pitchable yeast packages available from Wyeast Labs. These yeast packages speed up the beer making process, allowing the yeast to be started only hours before it’s needed. Without these packages a sufficient amount of yeast will have to be propagated days before the beer making process can begin. Read the directions on the package for more information.

Wyeast pitchable yeast ready for use

Keep it Clean

Avoiding contamination is the key to successfully making beer. When you make beer, you are making an environment of sweet stuff (sugars) that the yeast love to eat, and this is a good thing. But unfortunately other things like to eat that stuff too, so the trick is to make sure the other things aren’t around when it’s time to feed the yeast. This is accomplished by sterilizing all of your utensils before you start brewing beer. I do this by cleaning everything with a diluted bleach solution, 3-5 drops of bleach per gallon of cold water. Clean your fermenter and utensils with this solution and allow it to sit for at least 15 min then rinse them with clean water thoroughly.  

Let’s Brew It!

The malt in the cans is a thick syrup, so placing the cans in hot water beforehand will allow it to pour out easier. Place the brewpot on the stove and pour about a gallon of water into the brewpot. Turn the stove burner on medium and allow the water to heat up.

Hot water makes malt flow easier

When the water is hot, pour both cans of malt into the water and stir thoroughly.  Add some more water to fill the brewpot to about ¾ full and turn the stove burner up to high and bring the liquid to boil, but be careful. The liquid will have a tendency to foam up and boil over making a mess of the stove (and making your wife boil over!) Keep stirring the liquid and regulate the stove temperature to avoid this condition.

After the liquid has boiled for about 10 mins, place the Northern Brewer hops into one of the cheese cloth bags and tie the bag closed with the string. Place the bag of hops into the brewpot.

Hops placed in cheese cloth bag

Allow the liquid to boil for about 20 minutes, then place the Tettnang hops into a cheese cloth bag, tie the bag closed with the string and place the hops into the brewpot. After another 20 minutes do the same with the Fuggles hops. Allow the liquid to boil another 20 min, then turn the stove burner off. The liquid at this stage of beer making is commonly referred to as the wort.

Remove the hop bags from the wort. Place the brewpot into the sink and chill the wort by placing several pounds of ice around the outside of the brewpot. Keep replenishing the ice around the base of the brewpot until the outside of the pot is no longer hot.

Ice is used to chill the wort

Make sure the drain valve is closed then put about a gallon of water into the fermenter. Now carefully pour the contents of the brewpot into the fermenter, and fill the fermenter up to the 5 gallon mark with additional water. Stir the liquid with the brewing spoon to make sure it’s thoroughly mixed. 

Open the yeast package you started earlier and pour the contents into the fermenter. Stir the yeast in vigorously with the brewing spoon, making sure to slosh it around alot, this is known as “pitching the yeast”.

Now seal the fermenter lid onto the top of the fermenter and insert the airlock into the grommet on top of the lid. Place the fermenter in a cool (not cold) dark area, then pour vodka or gin (you can also use water) into the airlock to provide an airtight seal. Now wait for a day or two to allow fermentation to begin.

You can tell when fermentation has begun when you see the cup in the airlock lifting up and down with each release of a CO2 bubble. If you don’t see this happening after about a week, then something is wrong. It’s possible fermentation never got started, maybe contamination was introduced into the process. But if everything is good, the little cup in the airlock will be going up and down happily for several days. After about a week, fermentation will be finished and now it’s ready for bottling.

Bottling

In my opinion, bottling the beer takes all the fun out of beer making. It’s a chore to collect all 52 of those bottles, then have to clean and sterilize each one. When I did bottle beer, I used Amstel Light beer bottles because I liked the beer. More importantly, these were perfect brown glass bottles, didn’t have the twist-off caps and all the labels came right off with a little soap and warm water. I keg my beer now, but that’s a topic for the advanced beer making article.

Bottling beer is the cheapest way to package your beer, though. The only thing you need are bottles, bottle caps and a bottle capper. After the bottles have been cleaned and sterilized, fill them to about a half inch from the top with beer, then press a cap on it. That’s pretty much it. Store the bottled beer in a cool dry place for about a month, then it’s ready to drink.