Home Brew Beer

Home Brew Beer

The past Saturday, I decided to attempt brewing my own beer at home. I decided to do a proper attempt, by going the full grain route!! I decided to do it on a budget, thus I made my own kit, which basically only consists out of a fermenting bucket, the rest is basically normal stuff you find in and around the house.

I decided to try a stout, and bought the ingredients as per the list below. The photo above shows the grains. I bought the ingredients for 25 litter of beer, but then found that my biggest pot could only take approximately 15 litters, thus I halved all the ingredients to make 12 litters of beer.

Below is the hops in the packet.

Below you can see me with the grain in the grain bag, this works almost like brewing tea!! I decided to keep my grain in the pot at 67 degrees Celsius for 75 minutes. This basically breaks down the sugars from the grains, which produce your malt in the end.

Below you can see my grain in the pot, note the color of the water, which is starting to form my malt.

After the steeping of the grain is completed the entire brew must be boiled for about an hour, this is also the time you can add your hops. Below you can see my hops.

Below is the hops in the small bag, inside the mixture, boiling away happily.

After the boiling is completed, the wort must be cooled down fast, as it is winter here by us, I used the ice-cold swimming pool to do the cooling.

After cooling the wort is poured into the fermenting bucket and the yeast added for fermenting. Now one must wait for the fermenting to take place, before the bottling can be done.

I have decided to brew my beer in the middle of winter with very low temperatures here in Pretoria, I measured the temperature inside the house at 14 degrees Celsius, and it seems a bit to cold for my fermenting as it seems to be going very slowly. I wonder if somebody with some experience in brewing can tell me if this is to cold and if I should be more patient.

I hope this turns out good, I will let you know when I test it, which will be about a month after bottling.

I hope you liked the photos as much as I did taking them.

All photos were taken by my with my iPhone at my home in Pretoria, South-Africa.