THE HOME BREWING PAGE
THE HOME BREWING PAGE
BY T. BUDD
Brewing beer and wine is now very easy with the advent of "kits". For beer, there are kits for virtually any type of beer imaginable along with an infinite ability to experiment with ingredients to personalize the brew. You can shop for the supplies you need on the internet and it only takes 4-5 weeks from brew to drink. It sure beats commercial brews. As much as I like beer, homemade wine is truly a treat and, despite what you might think, is just as easy to make as beer.
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FAVORITE BEER RECIPES
Full-bodied real ale: Use Coppers Real Ale kit and a carboy that holds 5 gallons with plenty of head space. Instead of using one can of hopped extract and extra malt, use 2 kits, i.e., 2 cans of the hopped malt. Use a can opener to punch holes in the can lid and place the cans in boiling water to decrease the viscosity of the extract. You don't need to boil the extract. Coopers has already boiled it enough to make the extract as concentrated as it is. You just want to heat it up so that you can more easily mix it with 2 gallons of hot tap water in your carboy. Rinse the cans out with hot water and then add cold water up to the 5 gallon mark on your carboy. Stir this mix well and check the temperature. It should be between 65 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit. If it is too cold or too hot, your yeast will be killed. If the temperature is not right, let stand at room temperature for a few hours with occasional stirring. Pitch the yeast in and stir it in well. Place your cover and gas trap onto the carboy and let the primary fermentation occur. This should be done at about 70-75 F and should take 3 - 4 days, but let it go a full week before bottling. Add your priming sugar (corn sugar, aka glucose or dextrose) and bottle. Store the bottled beer at 70 - 75 F for one week and then you can move it to a cooler storage area if necessary. After the beer clarifies, it is ready to drink (usually in about 2 more weeks). This recipe will give you a nice dark amber beer with very good body and head. There are a lot of calories here and you will find that it is quite filling. Where as it might take a whole six-pack of a commercial beer to satisfy your thirst, one or two of these "two can" Real Ales will fill you up. Alcohol is about 6%.
Real Ale Light: Here is a recipe for a light beer with the great taste of a home brew. Again, use one can of Coopers Real Ale plus 5 pounds of corn sugar (dextrose aka glucose, do not use table sugar which is sucrose) and dissolve in water as described above yielding 5 gallons. Brew and bottle in the same manner and you will end up with a beer that is light amber but with a good head. The alcohol content will be about 5%. If you wish to reduce the alcohol so as to reduce the calories, just add less corn sugar to the wort. You may also add more hops if you like a bit more hopped taste.
Sparkling dry white wine: First, you will need to procure Champagne bottles with corks or plastic stoppers. Clean them well and disinfect with 1/20 th dilute bleach. Rinse and dry well. For a 5 gallon batch of wine, use 6 12 ounce cans of Welches white grape juice concentrate, 5 pounds of corn sugar (dextrose, not table sugar), and bring up to 5 gallons with water to give a room temperature mixture. Next, pitch the yeast. The yeast should be a good wine or Champagne yeast, not beer yeast and not bakers yeast. I use a 17% fermenting strain that I have nurtured in culture for over 25 years from stock cultures kept in the refrigerator. If you have trouble finding a good wine yeast, let me know and I'll give you some of mine. Stir the yeast in and seal the fermentation vessel with a gas trap in place. Allow fermentation to go for 15 days at 70 - 75 Fahrenheit. Add 2/3rd cup of corn sugar to a second 5 gallon container, transfer the fermentate to it and mix thoroughly. [I like to use polyethylene water bags that you can get from camping supply stores.] Now you are ready to bottle the wine. Be sure to leave a good head space in the bottle and wire the cap on securely. Do NOT use regular wine bottles. They will explode with the CO2 pressure. The final fermentation in the bottle gives the carbonation. Let the bottles set at room temperature for one week then move them to a cool storage area for 4 weeks. To drink the wine, cool the bottle well and open the first one outside. If you goofed and have too much pressure, you don't want to decorate your kitchen with the wine. Enjoy.
Other wines: If you want to have red wine or other flavors, use the same procedure as above but use regular grape extract or any other flavor that you find at the market. If you prefer a still wine, modify the procedure by letting the first fermentation to go for 4 weeks and omit the priming sugar when you bottle the wine. Just let the wine age in the bottle for 5 - 6 weeks before you drink it.
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