3 Different Methods Of Brewing

There are lots of different ways you can brew beer from home. You
can take the easy and quick route or the longer route, I'll go
through the reasons for each in a minute. Large breweries obviously
do the whole shebang.

They malt their barley, they mash their grains and they can afford
to do this because they're a big company. But if you don't want to
go through the whole process, you don't have to and here's why...
These days, you can buy cans of malt extract and hopped malted
extract, so essentially all the hard work has been done for you.

This really cuts down on your brewing time and it makes everything
so much easier, not to mention that you really don't need much
equipment at all.

This is called kit brewing, because you start with a brew kit.
These days there are a whole heap of good quality brands available
and it's possible to make some really excellent beer with it. To do
a kit brew, you simply open up the tin, add some extra malt
extract, boil it up and away you go.

Some people make the mistake of thinking that this is an inferior
way to brew. In fact it's not. I've made some excellent beers this
way, although I quickly moved onto extract and all grain brewing
later, it wasn't because the beer was bad.

The pros of this method are that it's easy. You mix a few things
up, boil it up (not completely necessary, but advisable), then let
the yeast do it's work. It doesn't require much equipment either.
You can simply buy a basic kit from your home brew shop and be sure
that you have enough stuff to do the job. No struggling to build
yourself an all grain brewery here.

And finally, it's quick to do. Once all your equipment is cleaned,
you can have your brewing done in under an hour. This is either
good or bad depending on how busy you are and how hooked you are on
brewing. Once you get hooked you probably won't mind spending all
day in your garage tinkering away like a mad scientist.

On the downside, you're somewhat limited to what you can brew. Just
using the malt extracts from the tin is easy, but it doesn't allow
you to be as creative. This is great when you're beginning, but as
you gain more experience, some of the fun comes from thinking up
recipes and trying out different things. You can't really do this
well with kit brews.

The next level up is extract brewing. This is a great next step for
those people who are a little bored with brewing the same old kits.
It's basically the same as kit brewing, except for one extra step:
steeping specialty grains.

In the next step, I'll be briefly mentioning mashing grains. That's
not necessary here for one main reason, the grains you'll be using
don't need to be mashed. They do however, need to be crushed. You
can do this with a machine at home or you can just get the home
brew shop to do it for you.

Just make sure you don't crush the grains into powder, you want the
sugars from the grains to go into the beer, not the actual grain
husks themselves. This additional step is simple and can make for
great beer.

Not only does it add extra character to the beer, it allows you to
be more creative and also allows you to emulate your favorite
styles even closer...

Steeping is also quite easy. Simply heat up your pot of water (the
stuff you're going to use to do the boil in) then when it gets
close to boiling, turn off the heat and, with your specialty grains
in a grain bag, start dunking the bag in and out, ensuring that you
get all the sugars out that you can.

Be careful not to squeeze the grain bag too hard, you don't want
any part of the actual grain husk to go into the water, we only
want the sugars that will create a nice flavor in the beer later
on. Dunk for a while and then let the grains soak in the pot for
about 20-30 minutes.

At this point, you can put the rest of the ingredients in and
continue as you did with a kit beer.

The final step is called all grain brewing. This is as hardcore as
you can get. The downside is that it requires more skill, more
knowledge and more equipment. The upside is that it can be more
fun, it's more creative so you can make whatever beer you feel like
and you get to spend an entire day brewing beer!

With all grain brewing, forget using extracts or anything else that
will make brewing easier, doing it all grain is doing it like the
big breweries do it. You'll select your own grains, mash them, do
some other stuff and then continue as normal.

I imagine that anyone hooked on home brewing will eventually move
onto all grain brewing. It's just so much fun and allows you to
literally be a mad scientist. Anything goes! There is an entire
chapter on this process towards the end of this chapter, so don't
worry, all will be clear by the end of this book.

When to Graduate...

A lot of people have asked me when they should move on from kits to
extracts to all grains. And I usually tell them once they've been
brewing for exactly 12.3 weeks. No I don't, because there is no
hard and fast rule about this.

It all has to do with you. You're the boss here, you make all the
decisions. I do recommend you start with kit brews just so you get
the process down pat. It's simple and once you've done a couple you
might be bored, but just start with kits anyway.

So the key is to realize when you are bored and when you feel a bit
stifled by the restrictions of your current process. Once you get a
couple of kit brews under your belt, you might feel it's time to
start playing around with specialty grains.

And maybe once you've done a few extracts, you feel it's time to
move on to the final step of all grain brewing. It really doesn't
matter. And despite what some hardcore brewers say, there's nothing
wrong with just brewing kit beer.

If you kit beer makes you happy and you don't want to spend hours
brewing away, don't! Screw what other people think, you're brewing
this stuff for yourself, so don't worry about that. My philosophy
is to find something that works and just stick at it. If you get
bored, do something about it, but don't just do something because
someone thinks you should.

If you want to try home brewing and have your friends in awe, grab a copy of Better Your Brewing:
http://www.BetterYourBrewing.com