50 Wonderful Winter Beer Recipes for the Home Brewer If you're a professional drinker who's tasted every conceivable brew, then the next logical step is to make your own. Becoming a home brewer has its advantages — you don't have to search the town for the next great brand, you can fix your beers with your own personal touch, it's a hobby (a 7,000-year-old one) and you don't have to leave your home. So procure your supplies, consult the 50 wonderful winter beer recipes below, get to mashing (or not) and draft plans for a tasting party with your buds. You're guaranteed to be drunk with satisfaction. Spiced Brews The extra kick of a spiced beer complements the leftover cheer of the holiday season. Honey Ginger Lager: Ginger is a spice that's commonly added to winter brews, giving them a taste that's fit for the season. Strong Ales Darker and heavier brews are perfect for the cold winter months, when warmth his hard to come by. English Strong Spice Ale: A variety of ingredients ensures a formidable taste satisfactory to ale enthusiasts.
How to Make Beer - Making Beer at Home Making a mash is not always necessary--you can brew a perfectly good lager or ale with prepackaged malt extract. But for this recipe, we're going all out, with an all-grain beer-- we extract the sugars from the grain ourselves. The recipe we're following is for a beer in the Belgian white or "wit" sytle. Ingredients: 11 pounds of grain 11 quarts of water Our grains include 5 pounds Belgian pilsner malt, 4.5 pounds of German wheat malt, 1.0 pound of flaked oats, and 0.5 pounds of caramel pils malt. Take the mash (all the ingredients above in a pot) and bring it up to 150 degrees F, keeping it at that exact temperature for 1 hour. * Test the mash: The point of mashing is to turn starches in the grain into sugars and extract them into a sweet liquor.
How to Clean Bottles For Your Hombrew | mikesbrewreview.com How to Clean Bottles For Your Homebrew Posted on March 23, 2010 by mike Bottle cleaning for your homebrew can be a tedious process and really no matter how you cut it, it is going to be a time commitment. I know when I was a beginner, I was wondering how I could save all these bottles I was drinking of craft brew for my homebrew. I started with some Dawn and water and spent a lot of time scrapping labels off with a knife and then sanitizing the bottle before filling it. As I searched the internet for help and, tried a couple of things on my own, I found the following to be a great process for cleaning bottles for my homebrew without spending a bunch of money on fancy tools like a bottle tree or a bottle rinse head for my faucets, plus I saved a lot of time with labels and pretty much guaranteed no stuck on gunk in my bottles or chlorine flavors from bleach. The following is one avenue on how to clean bottles for your homebrew. How To Clean Bottles For Your Homebrew
Beer Recipe Design | Home Brewing Beer Blog by BeerSmith Over the years, I’ve come to realize that the basic principles of beer recipes design are often misunderstood and rarely well articulated. This week we’re going to look at how you can design a great beer recipes at home using a tried and true process. What follows is an what I consider an overview of the essence of beer recipe design. Starting a New Recipe When I build a new beer recipe, I almost always start by picking a target beer style. A good starting reference is the BJCP style guidelines. Choosing the Ingredients The next step in designing the beer is to pick appropriate ingredients. The BJCP style guide provides some information on typical ingredients used, but often does not have detailed breakouts of proportions. Another great resource is brewing books – one of my favorites is Ray Daniel’s book Designing Great Beers, which has detailed analysis of percentages of ingredients used in award winning and commercial beer examples. Brewing by the Numbers Brewing Techniques
Preparation Chapter 2 - Brewing Preparations 2.1 Preparation Figure 16: All the equipment and ingredients for the day's brew are set out on the counter and ready to go. The crushed specialty grain is tied in a muslin grainbag, and the hops have been weighed and put in three separate bowls. Preparing your brewing equipment is principally a matter of cleaning and sanitizing, but organization is a part of the process too. Consider what you are going to do: Check the Recipe - Make a shopping list of your ingredients and amounts. Equipment - Make a checklist of the equipment you will be using and note whether it needs to be sanitized or only cleaned. Table 2 - Cleaning and Sanitizing Checklist Preparing The Yeast - This step is paramount; without yeast, you can not make beer. The Boil - Weigh out your hop additions and place them in separate bowls for the different addition times during the boil. Sanitizing - Anything that touches the cooled wort must be sanitized.
Brewing Your First Beer - BrewWiki BrewWiki Brewing Your First Beer Brewing at home for the first time? This simple guide takes you through your first batch of beer including what's needed, how to brew and how to bottle. A short guide for the new homebrewer on how to brew your first extract beer! Equipment Needed You don't need a large set of fancy and expensive equipment to brew your first batch of beer. A Large Pot - at least 3 gallons in size, though a larger one will generally result in fewer spills Tubing & Clamp - to siphon the beer - most common is 3/8" ID food grade plastic tubing. You can purchase many of these items at your local brew stores or online. Ingredients Needed The list below assumes you want to brew 5 gallons of a simple ale. 6-7 lbs of Unhopped Pale Malt Extract - Usually this comes in cans that are 3-3.3 lbs each. The Extract Brewing Process Extract brewing consists of five stages: Extract Brewing Brew day is my favorite part of the process. Once you achieve a steady boil it is time to add the hops.
List of hop varieties Hops originate from China from which they have been spread westwards and eastwards. As there are male and female plants, the flowers (cones) of the female plant are fertilized by the pollen of the male flowers with the result that the female flowers form seeds. These seeds are eaten by birds and hence spread over vast distances. Hops, specifically their female plants, have been grown as a commercial crop for the brewing industry for many centuries in many countries. The first documented mention of a hop garden is in the will of Pepyn III, the father of Charlemagne[citation needed]. American[edit] Ahtanum brand YCR 1 cv[edit] Ahtanum brand YCR 1 cv is an aroma-type cultivar bred by Yakima Chief Ranches. Amarillo[edit] Popular American mid-range alpha acid variety with a unique and distinct aroma discovered growing "wild" (spontaneously) in one of their hop yards and developed by Virgil Gamache Farms in late 20th century. Apollo[edit] Bravo[edit] Calypso[edit] Cascade[edit] Centennial[edit]
Brewing Fruit Beers at Home Part 1 of 2 | Home Brewing Beer Blog by BeerSmith Brewing fruit beer is not for everyone, but a properly balanced fruit beer can be light and refreshing on a hot summer day. This is part one of our two part series on brewing fruit beer. Beers that include fruit vary widely in taste, style and strength. Whatever the style, a properly balanced fruit beer should not betray the underlying beer – fruit beer is beer with a touch of fruit flavor and not a wine cooler! History According to Randy Mosher’s Radical Brewing book, fruit beer is a relatively modern invention of the 20th century. Fruit beers, like many styles, have enjoyed a resurgence with the microbrewery explosion the last 20 years in the United States. Many of these beers contain no actual fruit. Fruit to Use in Beer Some fruits fair much better in beer than others. Here are a few popular fruits to consider for fruit beer: Cherries – Traditionally used in many Belgian beers. Hopefully you now have some idea of which fruits are better to use in your fruit beer. Enjoy this Article?