| Home Brew 101 |
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Most of us have a memory of tasting a friend's home brew. We remember because the flavour still haunts us! Normally the offer to taste a homebrew comes with a little too much enthusiasm, and the brew itself is invariably an insipidly coloured, thin-tasting, cidery ale with the acrid aroma of methylated spirits crossed with rotten eggs. And, if the pungent smell of the brew doesn't make you gag, then the stunning hangover next day surely will. Thank goodness then that home brewing in Australia has undergone a revolution this past decade, with the quality and consistency of home brew kits improving tremendously and the range of ingredients available to home brewers having sky-rocketed. Perhaps most importantly, the know-how - understanding what to do and why to do it - is now out there in force, be it in books, magazines, on TV, on-line or from homebrew shops and clubs all over the world. So whether you're brewing to save a few dollars or because it's a hobby you get a kick out of (not to mention a glass or two of beer at the end of the day), Beer & Brewer here offers a surefire guide to ensuring your homebrew is at least as good as, if not better than, most of the commercial stuff. WHAT SORT OF BREWER ARE YOU?These days there are as many different kinds of home brewers out there as there are home brews andf homebrew kits. The Kit and Kilo brewer uses a can of malt extract syrup and adds a kilo or so of fermentables and dried yeast. This is the simplest and least expensive method. Partial Mashers will mostly use dry or liquid malt extract and add some grain and hop varieties which are all boiled together, necessitating an extra pot (or a large esky), a thermos and an extra hour of preperation time. Lastly, are the Mash Brewers who make their beer from the raw ingredients - malted barley, hops water, and yeast - in a long process which requires special equipment (at the least a mash tun) not to mention an additional five hours brewing time. The right choice for you is the one that's suits your level of interest, the money you have to spend and the time you have to brew. 
WHAT TO BUY?These days you can buy a kit that comes with everything you need right up front. The better kits will include a book or DVD with more detailed information on brewing. These are available from all home brew specialty stores and many supermarket chain stores too, such as Big W and Target. They notmally cost anywhere from $60 to $140.
Here's the bare minimum equipment check list along with an approximate dollar value. A hydrometer - this device measures the gravity of the beer and is an essential tool for anyone serious about making good beer ($10). Bottles and caps - necessary for packaging the beer ($0-$30 and $5 respectively). A capper - the cheaper versions involve using a hammer, the pricey ones sit on a bench and make capping bottles very easy ($5-$60). Bottle brush cleaner ($5). Little bottler tap - a spring loaded plastic tube that makes filling bottles more convenient and much less messy. ($5). Detergent and/or sanitizer - essential for cleaning gear and killing nasty bugs ($10). Other stuff that might be good: Sugar measure - more accurate than a teaspoon for priming bottles ($2.50). A book or a homebrew friend who doesn't mind calls when you hit problems ($20-$30 for the book or free beer for the brew buddy) A big spoon - it's amazing how useful a big spoon is for mixing ingredients together ($7). Stuff you really don't need, but would be great to own: A keg system - if you want to avoid bottles or have your own beer on tap this is great but you also need a fridge and gas ($300+). A Braumeister brewery - imported from Germany, this is your own personal brewery, incredibly simple to operate and producing 50 litres of wort in about four hours. Big, slick and shiny ($5000). WHICH BREW KIT TO BUY?Not all kits are created equal. When you pay more for a home brew kit it's because the kit contains better quality ingredients and more of them. Does the pilsner kit use Saaz hops from the Czech republic? You can't make Pilsner Urquell from a homebrand lager kit and a kilo of white sugar! Does the stout kit have a generous quantity of roast barley? It ain't gonna taste much like stout if it doesn't! There are a bunch of different home brew kits on the market ranging in price from under $10 to anything up to $50. At the cheaper end of the scale you will also need to buy some sort of fermentable, sugar or malt, from anywhere between $1 and $15. The more expensive kits already include all the fermentables you need. The cheapest kits on the market ($10) do not have much for me to recommend them. If you want to get drunk and don't care about flavour, they're the ones for you. In the $10-$15 range there are some great kits and some not-so-great kits and I have two tips for buying and making in this range. First, when you find a beer you enjoy drinking, try making other styles produced by the same company because many homebrewers have success with a particular brand and will regularly brew only that brand. Second, pay close attention to the fermentables you add to the kit. They should suit the style of beer you are making and can make as much difference to the final product as the kit itself. For instance, a black beer made with a kilo of dark malt will produce a full-bodied ale that has a rich creamy mouth-feel with very satisfying flavours. The $15+ range represents the top end of the market. The kits in this range are almost always made from the best ingredients and typically include a premium quality yeast. Once again you should select fermentables that match the kit you are brewing with. Brands that I can recommend from personal experience include: 1. Coopers is an Australian legend but they sell their homebrew products across the globe and it's what jept the company afloat in the hard times. There are several lines but I prefer the cans with the image of Grandpa Thomas Cooper on the front of the tin. These include the Heritage and Brewmaster ranges, which are a cut above Coopers' other lines and only available from specialty home brew stores. www.coopers.com.au/homebrew 2. Morgan's is another home grown product, with a wide range of consistently high quality kits that I have enjoyed drinking for many years. www.morgansbrewing.com.au 3. Brewcraft's 1.5 kg range of lager and pilsner kits are excellent. If you like any of the many beer styles they currently sell in their limited 1.8 Kg can selection, they are certainly worth the effort of brewing and brewing well. www.brewcraft.com.au 4. Malt Shovel homebrew kits have very little to do with the James Squire range of beers but are great quality kits that make fine brews. Just make sure you follow their instructions properly... http://brewlion.lionshop.com.au/ 5. Muntons is a UK company producing some of the more expensive home brew kits available, but also some of the best. The beers they do best are the traditional UK style ales such as bitters, milds, porters and stouts. www.muntons.com There is another style of home brew kit currentlky enjoying a revival in popularity - a wort pack, usually retailing for about $40. The wort pack kit is a plastic container holding about 15 L of fresh wort packed straight from a brewery kettle. You simply add the fresh wort to your fermenter, top up with a few litres of water and you're ready to go. Not only is this an incredibly easy way to make beer, it makes for exceptionally high quality beer. Beers produced using wort packs tend to have a broader and sometimes more subtle range of flavours. This is especially true of the lighter styles of beers such as draughts and lagers. The wort packs that I have enjoyed the most, chiefly because of their drinkability factor, are produced by NNL Beer & Brewing. |
Jesus made water into wine. Keith Grice prefers beer, and so offers this easy-to-follow beginner's guide to brewing your own holy water from home.
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