Homebrewing For Dummies

Get hoppin’ with this guide to microbrewing your own beer

Thinking of brewing your own beer or want to know how it’s done? Homebrewing For Dummies is for you. If you’re ready to take a crack at making your own brew, you’ll need this guide to the supplies, ingredients, and process of crafting the perfect beer. Follow our recipes for lager, porter, stout, and other brew types—or invent your own. When you’ve tasted your perfect creation (and after the hangover wears off), we’ve got you covered with ideas for entering your beer into homebrewing competitions and selling your beer.

This new edition keeps pace with the exciting world of small-batch beer, introducing you to new flavors and varieties that are popular on the microbrew circuit. We’ve also got the details on the latest at-home brewing equipment, software and apps, and resources you can tap (get it?) to make a better beer. Not an IPA person? Not to worry! You can also make your own hard seltzers, flavored malt beverages, and juice drinks with this handy how-to.

• Get recipes and instructions for brewing lagers, porters, and other beers at home
• Enhance the quality of your small-batch brews and make your operations more eco friendly
• Enter homebrewing competitions with your beer, hard seltzer, and malt beverages
• Discover new gadgets, apps, and resources that can make home brewing even easier

Homebrewing For Dummies is for anyone looking for a fun and easy-to-use guide to the exciting, rewarding, and refreshing hobby of beer brewing.

Marty Nachel has been involved in the craft beer industry for over 30 years as a homebrewer, homebrew supply shop owner, book author, professional beer judge, brewery salesperson, corporate beer trainer, and beer educator. Few people have the same level of expertise and experience in the field.

Introduction 1

About This Book 2

Foolish Assumptions 3

Icons Used in This Book 4

Beyond the Book 4

Where to Go from Here 5

Part 1: First Things First 7

Chapter 1: Welcome to the Wonderful World of Wort 9

Homebrewers Abound! 10

All the Right Stuff 10

Gathering the equipment you need 11

Tracing the homebrewing timeline 11

Adding ingredients galore! 12

Preparing wisely 13

All done — now what? 14

Chapter 2: Setting Up Your Beeraphernalia 17

Sniffing Out Sources 18

Square One: Equipment for the Beginning Brewer 19

So much equipment, so little time 19

What do I do with all these gadgets? 21

Square Two: Equipment for the Intermediate Brewer 26

Now what do I need? 26

What do these gizmos even do? 28

Square Three: Equipment for the Advanced Brewer 29

I need even more stuff? 30

What else could I possibly need another doodad for? 31

Chapter 3: Creating Your Own Department of Sanitation 35

No Dirty Words: Sanitation Lingo 36

Battling Bacteria (and Fungi) 36

Soaps for Suds: Cleansers and Sanitizers 38

Cleaning Up Your Act: Equipment Cleaning Practices 39

Bottle Cleanliness Is a Virtue 40

Part 2: It’s in There: The Nuts and Bolts of Beer 43

Chapter 4: Malt: A Tale of Two Sources (Grain and Extract) 45

Going with Grain 46

Malting 46

Mashing 47

Mixing it up with other grains 47

Manipulating grain: Kilning and milling 49

Enjoying the Ease of Extracts 49

Graduating to other malty methods 50

Comparing liquid versus dry malt extract 52

Chapter 5: Hop Heaven 55

Seeing the Hop Flower Up Close 56

Hopping with Variety 59

Selecting the Best Hops 61

Freshness is fundamental 61

Bittering potential is important too 62

Taking Note of Top Hops 65

Chapter 6: Yeast and Fermentation 67

There’s a Fungus among Us 67

The Magic of Fermentation 69

It’s cyclical 69

Factoring in fermentation variables 70

Liquid yeast versus dry yeast: A foamenting debate 71

Propagating yeast 73

Yeast energizers and nutrients 75

Yeast Sources 76

Considering Alcohol Content 76

ABV versus ABW 77

N/A (nonalcoholic) beer is n/a (not achievable) 77

Chapter 7: On the Water Front 79

H2OH: Understanding How Water Chemistry Affects Your Homebrew 80

Something Is in the Water 81

pHundamentals of pH balance 81

Antibacterial agents 82

Hard facts, fluid concepts 83

Mineral ions 83

Trace metals 84

Buying Brew-Friendly Bottled Water 85

Distilled water 85

Reverse osmosis water 86

Chapter 8: Adjuncts and Flavorings 87

Adjuncts: Sugar, Sugar Aw, Honey, Honey 88

Flavoring Your Brew with Flavorings 91

Funky flavorings: The exotic and the esoteric 92

Herbs and spice and everything nice 95

Chapter 9: Making Your Brew Bionic: Additives, Preservatives, Finings, and Clarifiers 99

To Add and Preserve 100

A Little Clarification, Please 101

The Acid Test 103

Part 3: Ready, Set, Brew! 105

Chapter 10: Beginner Brewing Directions 107

Gathering the Tools You Need 108

Brewing Your First Batch 109

Taking Hydrometer Readings 112

Brewing day reading 112

Prebottling reading 113

Chapter 11: Intermediate Brewing Directions 115

Taking Control of Your Beer 115

Fooling Around with Ingredients 116

Grain and strain 117

Hop to it 118

Yeasty beasties 119

Conditioning for Better Beer 119

Secondary fermentation 120

Tertiary fermentation 125

Chapter 12: Advanced Brewing Directions 127

Yes, We Have No Potatoes: Mashing Procedures 128

Three important variables 129

Gimme some water: Simplified water treatment for mashing 129

And then there were three: Mashing types 130

The mash-out 132

It’s in the bag 134

Easing into Mashing with a Partial Mash 135

Going All Out with All-Grain Brewing 139

Increasing Your Batch Size 144

Harvest Time: Reusing Your Yeast 145

Chapter 13: High-Tech Brewing 147

Is it Bigger Than a Breadbox? 148

Out of the Kitchen and Into the Garage 149

Bigger Is Betterer? 150

A Primer on RIMS and HERMS 153

Part 4: Packaging Your Brew 155

Chapter 14: Bottling Your Brew 157

Picking Out Bottles 157

Ready, Set, Bottle! 159

Tanks a Lot! Bottling Kegged Beer 165

Carbon-aid: Sharing kegged beer in plastic bottles 165

Counterintelligence: Flowing from keg to bottle for competition 166

A Primer on Priming 167

Getting ready to prime 167

Deciding which and how much primer to use 168

Exploring alternative primers 169

Crowning Achievements 170

Chapter 15: Doing the Can-Can: Canning Your Beer 173

Kicking the Can Down the Road 174

A Canning We Will Go 176

It Seams Simple Enough 177

Canned Beer and Homebrew Competitions 179

Chapter 16: Kegging: Bottling’s Big Brother 181

Roll Out the Barrel: Buying Your Kegging Equipment 181

Getting Your Keg Up and Flowing 183

Clean ’em out and fill ’em up: Sanitizing and racking procedures 184

Making bubbles: Carbonating procedures 187

Enjoying Your Brew: Tapping and Lapping Procedures 189

Part 5: BJCP Beer Style Guidelines and Homebrew Recipes 191

Chapter 17: Beginner Suggestions and BJCP Beer Style Guidelines 193

American Amber Ale (19-a) 194

American Brown Ale (19-c) 195

American Porter (20-a) 195

Baltic Porter (9-c) 196

Best Bitter (11-b) 197

Belgian Blond Ale (25-a) 198

California Common (19-b) 199

English Barley Wine (17-d) 199

British Brown Ale (13-b) 201

British Strong Ale (17-a) 201

English Porter (13-c) 202

Irish Red Ale (15-a) 203

Irish Stout (15-b) 204

Oatmeal Stout (16-b) 205

Old Ale (17-b) 206

Weizenbier (10-a) 207

Weizenbock (10-c) 208

Chapter 18: Intermediate Recipes 209

American Barley Wine (22-c) 210

Boobs Barley Wine 211

Imperial Stout (20-c) 211

Fountainhead Black Magic 212

American IPA (21-a) 213

Exchequer India Pale Ale 214

American Pale Ale (18-b) 214

Give Me Liberty, or Else 215

American Wheat Beer (1-d) 215

How Wheat It Is! 216

Belgian Dubbel (26-b) 217

Dubbel Trubbel 218

Belgian IPA (21-b) 218

Belgian Abbey 219

Belgian Tripel (26-c) 219

Tripel Play 221

Black IPA (21-b) 221

Juxtaposed 222

Dark Mild (13-a) 223

Pointon’s Proper English Mild 224

Dunkelweizen (10-b) 224

Slam Dunkel 225

English IPA (12-c) 225

Exchequer India Pale Ale 226

Fruit Beer (29-a) 227

Cherry Ale 228

Saison (25-b) 228

Sunday Saison 230

Spiced, Herb, or Vegetable Beer (30-a) 230

Wassail While You Work 231

Smoked Beer (32-b) 232

Smokey the Beer (Smoked Porter) 233

Sweet Stout (16-a) 233

Macke’s Son Stout 234

Wee Heavy (17-c) 234

A Peek Under the Kilt Ale 235

Witbier (24-a) 236

Jealous Wit 237

Chapter 19: BJCP Beer Style Guidelines and Advanced Recipes 239

American Lager (1-B) 240

Butt-Scratcher 241

Altbier (7-B) 241

League City Alt Part 3 242

Belgian Dark Strong Ale (26-D) 242

Brune Dream 243

Berliner Weisse (23-A) 244

Champagne du Nord 244

Bock (6-C) 245

Basically Bock 246

Cream Ale (1-C) 247

Colby’s Cream Ale 247

Czech Dark Lager (3-D) 248

Chubby Czecher 249

Czech Pilsner (3-B) 249

Bitter Pill(s) 250

Doppelbock (9-A) 251

Scintillator 251

Double IPA (22-A) 252

Hannah’s Ambrosia Imperial I.P.A. 253

German Pils (5-D) 253

Hasselhoffing 254

Gose (23-G) 254

Salt Lipsia 255

Hazy IPA (21-C) 256

NEIPA for the Summer 257

Helles Bock (4-C) 257

Hella Good Maibock 258

Kölsch (5-B) 259

Innocent Betrayal 259

Märzen (6-A) 260

(Unnamed) 261

Munich Dunkel (8-A) 261

Stu Brew 262

Munich Helles (4-A) 262

Helles 263

Classic Style Smoked Beer (32-A) 264

David’s Smoke in the Water 265

Schwarzbier (8-B) 265

Spirit of Stammtisch 266

Vienna Lager (7-A) 267

Proper Nomenclature 268

Part 6: Alternative Brewing 269

Chapter 20: In-Cider Information 271

Exploring the Cider Option 271

Comparing apples to apples 272

Sorting cider styles 273

Making Cider 275

Cider Considerations: Recipes 276

English Cider (C1B) 276

Rotten to the Corps 277

New England Cider (C2A) 277

Pride and Jay 278

Specialty Cider (C2F) 278

Big Apple Punch 279

Chapter 21: A Meading of the Minds 281

Mulling Over the Mead Option 281

The honey bunch: Appreciating honey 282

The honey-brew list: Mead styles 283

Sweet Success: Making Magnificent Mead 286

Choosing your honey 286

Mead-iocre? Not! Fermenting your mead 287

I Mead a Drink: Mead Recipes 289

Traditional Mead (M1) 289

Lindisfarne Libation 289

Specialty Mead (M4) 289

Winter Holiday Sweet Mead 290

Pyment (grape melomel) (M2B) 290

Concord Grape Sweet Mead 291

Chapter 22: Hard Seltzers 293

Making Seltzer Hard is Easy? 293

Spotlight on Ingredients 295

Water 295

Sugar 295

Yeast 296

Flavorings 296

So, What About All Those Minerals and Nutrients? 297

The Bottom Line 298

Step-by-Step: How to Make Hard Seltzer 298

Chapter 23: Going Green: Being an Eco-Friendly Homebrewer 301

Brewing Green Beer: It’s Not Just for St Patrick’s Day Any More 302

Reduce 302

Reuse 304

Recycle 304

No-Chill Brewing 305

Organically Speaking 306

Why use organic ingredients? 307

Tracking the trend 307

Certifiably nuts: Determining what’s really organic 308

Chapter 24: Gluten-Free Brewing 313

Getting to Know Gluten 313

From Intolerant to Tolerable: Brewing Gluten-Free Beer at Home 315

Readying your equipment 316

Substituting safe ingredients 316

Brewing gluten-free beers from all grain 318

Last, but not yeast 319

Chapter 25: Barrel Aging and Souring Beer 321

Barrel-Aging Beginnings 322

Old World barrel usage and New World barrel usage 323

In wood vs on wood 323

Oak Is Oak-kay 325

Old Barrel Flavors Create New Beer Flavors 326

Over a Barrel 327

Oxidation and Bacteria 327

Good vs Evil? 328

Extraction in Action 328

Souring Beer 329

Acidic Does Not Always Equal Sour 330

Simple Sours vs Complex Sours 330

The “Bugs” in Sour Beer 331

Beer Souring Processes 332

Pre-fermentation 333

Fermentation 335

Post-fermentation 335

Part 7: Putting Your Brew to the Test 337

Chapter 26: Storing and Pouring 339

Storing Your Suds 339

How do I store it? 340

Where do I store it? 340

How long do I store it? 341

Pouring Procedures 341

Out of the bottle 341

 and into the glass 343

Dirty Deeds: Cleaning Beer Glassware 345

Storing Your Steins 347

Chapter 27: You Can’t Judge a Bock by Its Cover: Evaluating Beer 349

Tuning In to Your Beer 350

Evaluating One Sense at a Time 350

The nose knows 351

Seeing is beer-lieving 353

In good taste 354

From Observations to Reflections 357

Relaying the Results: Homebrew Lingo, Jargon, and Vernacular 358

Reinventing the Wheel 359

Chapter 28: Troubleshooting 361

Fermentation Lamentations 361

No fermentation 362

Stuck fermentation 363

Never-ending fermentation 364

In Bad Taste: Off Flavors and Aromas 364

Butter/butterscotch flavors 365

Sour/tart flavors 365

Medicinal/plastic/smoky flavors 366

Papery/cardboard/sherry-like flavors (oxidation) 366

Dry/puckering mouthfeel (astringency) 367

Harshness/hotness 367

Metallic flavor 368

Skunk aroma 368

Sulfury odors 368

Vegetal flavors and aromas 368

Flavor and Aroma Therapy Quick References 369

Conditioning and Appearance Problems 371

Flat out of gas 372

Thar she blows! Overcarbonated beers 372

In a haze: Cloudy beers 373

Poor head, bad body 373

Chapter 29: Homebrew Competitions 375

What’s Involved in Homebrewing Competitions? 376

How are the entries judged? 377

How do I enter a homebrew competition, and what are the rules? 379

How do I send my beer? 381

The Best of the Best 382

Master Championship of Amateur Brewing 382

Master Homebrewer Program 382

Becoming a Barrister of Beer 382

What it takes to become a beer judge 383

Advancing to supreme quart justice 384

Part 8: The Part of Tens 387

Chapter 30: Ten (or So) Ways to D.I.G.I.B.I.Y. (Do It, Grow It, Build It Yourself) 389

Banking Yeast 389

Preparing to open your own bank 390

Creating yeast 390

Handling Grain 391

Roast-a-rama 391

Smoke ’em if you got ’em 392

Di-vine Intervention: Growing Hops 393

Here we grow! 393

Pick a hop, any hop 394

Drying and storing your hops 394

Building Brewing Equipment 395

Chillin’ out: Immersion wort chillers 395

Tuns of fun: Lauter tun 396

Pot o’ plenty: Large-volume brewpot 398

Cold feat: Lagering cellar 398

Cold feat, Part II: Keezer 399

Chapter 31: Ten (or So) Gizmos That Can Make Your Brewing Better and Easier 401

Digital Thermometer and pH Meter 402

Wort Aeration System 402

Auto Siphon 402

Counterpressure Bottle Filler 402

Beer Filter 403

Germicidal Lamp 403

Wort Transfer Pump 403

Refractometer 403

Mashing Sparge Arm 404

Counter-flow Wort Chiller 404

Stir Plate 404

Hop Spider 404

Tilt Hydrometer 405

Chapter 32: Just the FAQs: Ten (or So) Frequently Asked Questions 407

How Much Is Taking Up Homebrewing Going to Cost? 407

How Much Does the Average Batch of Beer Cost? 408

Where Can I Buy Homebrewing Supplies? 408

How Long Does Making a Batch of Homebrew Take? 408

Is Homebrewed Beer Better Than Commercially Made Beer? 409

How Do You Carbonate Homebrew? 409

How Do I Add Alcohol to Homebrew? 409

Can I Distill Homebrew into Whiskey? 410

Can I Sell Homebrew? 410

Why Shouldn’t I Age Beer in the Plastic Primary Fermenter? 410

Do I Have to Worry About Things Blowing Up in My House? 410

Can I Turn My Homebrewing Hobby into a Business? 411

Index 413 

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