These are some instructions I wrote for my friends' first attempt at brewing beer. I thought a lot of the instructions in books and online didn't make for easy reading, step-by-step instructions. It will make a very light, summery type ale.

This is about the easiest brewing you can do, but will result in a tasty, drinkable beer at the end.

In brief, the basic idea is this: 1) You'll make a starter of yeast two days before you brew, from a packet of yeast and some dried malt extract(DME). This isn't technically necessary, but is such an easy step, adds no complication, and makes good beer success much more likely, so I recommend it. Also, it's basically a miniature version of brewing a full batch. 2) You'll boil some water, into which you'll dump malt extract and hops. This is called a wort. 3) You'll cool the wort as fast as possible, to about 65F. 4) You'll dump your yeast starter into the chilled wort, cover it, and shake it for 2 minutes (this oxygenates the yeast and also distributes it). 5) Attach a blowoff valve, place in a *dark* closet or unused shower (light is not your friend), and let that yeast work for a week or so. Bottle.

Notes:
While the basic process is very simple, you notice that there are a lot of words below. These mostly have to do with sanitization. If you keep everything sanitary your beer will be fine. If you don't, your beer will probably be funk y. So, I've put some emphasis on sanitization. It's more complicated than it seems, but read through it a few times, and I think you'll see that it really isn't too bad.

SUPPLIES:
ALL:
STARSAN SANITIZER (AN ACID)
ALUMINUM FOIL
THERMOMETER (that you can sanitize by dunking it in StarSan)


YEAST STARTER:
1 VIAL OF WHITE LABS CALIFORNIA ALE YEAST (WL001)
--or Wyeast 1056, if they don't have WL001. It may come in a "smack pack," which is fine
0.5 CUP DRIED LIGHT MALT EXTRACT (just buy a pound or two of the stuff)
1.5 PINT H2O
1 GLASS JUG (EG, GROWLER)
1 SHEET OF ALUMINUM FOIL


BEER:
7 LBS OF PALE MALT EXTRACT (LIQUID)
--you can use DME if they don't have liquid, but you'll have to be more careful when adding it to the water.
2OZ HOPS: AMARILLO, HALLERTAU, OR CASCADE VARIETY. LOOSE-LEAF OR PELLET, DOESN'T MATTER.
--split the hops into 0.5 and 1.5oz batches.
1 GIANT SPOON, LONG ENOUGH TO REACH THE BOTTOM OF YOUR POT.
(??) ICE - a few bags?


BOTTLING:
3/4 (0.75) cup corn sugar OR 4/3(1.3) cup DME
1 pint H20


TO MAKE THE STARTER:
1) Take the liquid yeast of the fridge, and let it come up to room temp. Shake it every once in a while to break up clumps.


2) Sanitize the glass container by filling with a StarSan/water mixture. Let this sit until it's needed later. Remember, 1oz StarSan to 5gal water, so don't overdo it. Also, it'll bubble. Don't fear the StarSan bubbles.


3) Boil the 1.5 pint of H2O in a small stainless steel pot, then slowly add in the 0.5 cup DME while stirring (DME clumps up). Let it simmer for 10 minutes. At 2 minutes (remaining: we always count down in brewing) stick a thermometer in it, place a lid to sanitize the lid. CAUTION: Malt likes to bubble up and boil over, which causes a sticky mess/catches on fire if you have a gas stove. Adjust stove heat accordingly. Unlike the StarSan bubbles, you should beware the malt bubbles.

4) Chill the DME/water (now a wort!) in an ice bath in the sink. You can swirl the ice water around the outside, but don't take the lid off, because that's pure nutrient in there, and you want the your yeast to eat it rather than some nasty wild strain. Try to get it to around 65F, but 70F is OK.

5) Once the wort has cooled, dump the StarSan from your now sanitary glass jug (from step 2) into a bowl with the aluminum foil (to sanitize the foil). StarSan works in about 2 minutes or less, so the foil will be sanitary once you're done pouring. Cover the empty jug's opening with the foil immediatly (to keep the inside sanitary).

6) When ready, pour the chilled wort into the jug. If you want to use a funnel, let it sit in the bowl of StarSan for a minute or so, to sanitize it.

7) Immediately after 6), dump the vial of yeast into the wort. (known as "pitching the yeast")

8) Immediatly recover the opening with the sanitized foil. I usually fold the foil over itself so there are two layers, and compact it around the jug's neck.

9) Wrap the jug in a towel to prevent light from reaching it, and shake the be-jesus of out it. Continue shaking it, like, everytime you walk past it. Seriously, it loves that.

TO MAKE THE BEER:
0) Relax. Don't worry. Have a "brew beer" in hand to sip on. (You don't have any homebrew yet, so I can't hardly tell you to drink that :) )


0b) If you happened to put the yeast starter in the fridge at some poin, remove it and let it come up to room temp.


1) Sanitize stuff. Add a few gallons of water to the carboy, then 1oz StarSan, then top off the contain with water. Have your white bottling bucket handy as well, and put the big funnel, the orange carboy topper, the section of tubing that fits onto the orange topper, giant spoon, and a 22oz bottle into the bucket.

2) After 5 minutes or so, transfer the StarSan from the carboy to the bottling bucket. Have a piece of aluminum foil in the there so it sanitizes. When the carboy is empty, immediately cover the opening and neck in the sanitary foil.

3) Boil stuff. Bring 6 gallons of water to a boil in your pot if it can hold it, 3 otherwise. If you only use 3 gallons, then have 3 more sanitary gallons chilled and ready to add at the end.
a) Once at a boil, slowly add in the 7 lbs of pale malt extract, stirring constantly. Don't let it stick and burn onto the bottom of your pot.
--NOTE: it may be easier, and is certainly OK, to add 1/2 of the extract now and 1/2 with 10min to go (ie, 5 minutes before step 2d).
b) You added a lot of mass that needs to heat up, so let it do that. Once it is at a full boil again, let it go for about 5 minutes. WATCH FOR BOIL-OVER, and adjust temp accordingly. This mass of foaming is called the "hot break" where a bunch of crap comes out of solution. It's a good thing, but don't let it get out of hand. Stir the boil, avoiding a simple circle. Creating a whirlpool can make it gush out the top.
c) Add in the 0.5oz portion of the hops, and start a 60 minute countdown timer. Watch for boil-over at this point, and stir in the top layer. Very shortly the convection will easily rotate the hops on their own. These hops are the bittering hops. In this case, they're a small amount that won't add much bitterness, just enough to give the beer some life.
d) At 5 minutes (55 minutes have passed since step b) ) add in the other 1.5oz hops. These are aroma hops. They'll add a floral smell and tasty, upfront flavor.
e) At 0 minutes, turn off the flame.

4) Place the brewpot into a sink of cold water to start chilling, and let it sit for 10 minutes. Keep a sanitized thermometer at hand to check the temp. Don't stir it yet, let it just sit and settle.

(4a) NOTE: Once the beer reaches 140F (sometime during step 5, the next step) it is at its most vulnerable. Any bacteria, wild yeast, random fungus, whatever that gets in there can take hold, and beat out your yeast starter as the dominant microorganism. Then you get bad beer. Sanitize *everything* before letting it come into contact with the wort. You want your yeast to win, not the bugs on your arms. At the same time, relax, don't worry, have a beer.

5) Chill Stuff. You don't have a wortchiller, so we'll do this the old fashioned way. Place your big pot in the blue tub, pack ice around the outside, and then water to fill up the tub. Rig your sanitized thermometer up so you can see what temperature the wort is at. Take your big sanitized spoon and stir so that all the wort has a chance to touch the walls. Add ice to the outside as necessary. Continue until the wort's temp drops to 65F. If you get tired (you will) you can resanitize the pot's lid and cover the wort for a bit and take a break. If you couldn't fit all 6 gallons in your brewpot, stir in as much of the chilled, sanitary water as your pot can reasonably fit now, to bring the temp down fast.

(5a) I have done the chilling step without any stirring before. Just set my carboy in the snow and walked away for a few hours. It works, but it's not as good. Fast is better, not just for contamination, but because of the "cold break," which drops a bunch of protein in the wort out of solution. That is a good thing! Also, it builds character.

(5b) Take a hydrometer reading now, if you want. As always, sanitize everything. Write down the number: 1.040? 1.050?

6) Transfer to carboy: Remove the foil from your still-sanitary carboy, and place the sanitized funnel in it (with the sanitized screen attachement, which I think you have). Pour the beer from your big pot into the carboy. If you used loose-leaf hops, you can let them form a bed that will further filter the beer. You'll probably need to stir a sanitized spoon against the screen so the wort can pass through, either way. Leave the last inch or so of crap at the bottom of the brewpot. That's all the stuff that dropped out of solution. Add the rest of the other water if you're using it.

7) Pitch the yeast by dumping it into the carboy.

8) Re-cover the carboy with the sanitized orange topper (no tubing yet attached)

9) Shake the carboy vigorously for 2 minutes.

10) Make a one-way gas escape: Take the sanitized 22oz bottle, with about 5oz of StarSan still in it. Attach the sanitized tubing to the appropriate stem of the orange topper, and submerge the other end the 22oz bottle. CO2 will be able to exit through the tube and bubble up out of the bottle, but nothing can get in. Woot, sanitation and pressure relief!

TO FERMENT
1) Protect the carboy from the light (place in dark closet/cover in old towel). If you can keep it around 65-70F, that's awesome. If not, don't worry too much over it. A too-hot but stable temperature is better than fluctuating temperature (makes your beer skunky).

2) The yeast should take off within a day or so. It should bubble, foam, and sputter as it eats up the sugar and poops out alcohol and CO2.

3) After a few days, the yeast should start to calm down. At this point, if you want, you can swap out the orange topper/blowoff tube/bottle combination for a fermentation lock (white rubber stopper and clear plastic film-canister sized thing). Sanitize everything, fill canister to line with water, place the small inner cylinder (1-way gas valve) onto the middle section larger chamber, and then pop on the cap with holes. Plug the carboy to with the rubber stopper, then fit the fermentation lock into the hole.

4) Let the beer sit for about a week, total. It's ready to bottle when a CO2 bubble pushes through the fermentation lock/blowoff bottle once every 10 seconds or so.

TO BOTTLE
0) Pour yourself a bottling beer to drink while you bottle.

1) Collect ~50 bottles. *CLEAN THEM* (as opposed to sanitizing them) by scrubbing off labels if you're feeling awesome, or just making sure they have absolutely nothing inside of them, like mold, old beer residue, etc. That stuff will make skunky, funky beer.

2) Make a primer. The yeast already ate all the sugar in the beer, so, for the bottled beer to be carbonated, we need to add more yeast food. Boil the water. Add the priming sugar (corn or DME, don't matter). Let this boil for 10min to sanitize, cover it (sanitize lid), cool it by placing it in an ice water bath.

3) Sanitize the white bottling bucket. 1oz StarSan to 5gal water solution. Shove the lid in there to sanitize it. Shove the bottle capper in there to sanitize it, too, why not? After ~5 min, dump the Star San into a tub or clean, stoppered sink to reserve it, and cover the bucket with its lid.

4) Reserve some StarSan in a small bowl. Dump the caps in there to sanitize them.

5) Sanitize the bottles by placing them in the tub/sink of StarSan solution. They can sit in there in batches just prior to bottling. They don't all have to be in there at once: remember, starsan works pretty fast (~1min), so as long as they're clean, they will also shortly be sanitary.

6) Set the carboy of beer on the counter and *SIPHON* (DON'T POUR) the beer from the carboy into the bottling bucket. GENTLY POUR THE PRIMER FROM STEP 2) IN ABOUT 1/2 WAY THROUGH THE SIPHONING (god damn, i forget that step so often, then see it sitting there over on the counter grrrrr....). You want to minimize the amount to splashing/turbulence/anything that gets oxygen into the beer at this point. Leads to stale, skunky beer.

7) Fill the bottles from the bucket's spout. Cap them. Pour a glass and taste it. Take a hydrometer reading. Take notes? Rejoice!

8) Store the bottles out of all light, in a cool place, but not a fridge...that yeast needs to perk up, eat the small amount of priming sugar, and poop out C02, and it can't do that if its cold.

9) Try one after a week. It might be ready. Try again after two weeks. It's almost certainly ready. By 3 weeks you should be livin' large, drinking homebrew!

Last Updated: April, 2013