Adventures With Home Brew
(Page 4 of 4)
July/August 1970
By the Mother Earth News editors
Put about two gallons of water on the stove and heat almost to the point of boiling. Dissolve your malt into this hot water. Add the sugar and dissolve it.
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When the malt and sugar are dissolved, pour the mixture into a five gallon jug. Add about a gallon of cold water. Shake gently, add your yeast mixture and fill the jug almost to the top with more cold water. Leave about six inches of room for the froth and bubbles at the top of the jug as the mixture begins to work.
The best brew vat is one of those five gallon jugs on which there is a two dollar deposit. If you buy a crock it is yours and you never get your money back. If you don't break the jug and you someday find yourself dead broke, you can always return it temporarily and get the two dollars. I know.
Find a metal cap that will fit the jug and insert a small peice of tubing through a hole in the cap. Make sure the cap and tubing is air tight. I soldered mine. If you use modeling clay for a seal, make sure it is absolutely gas tight.
From this cap, run a rubber hose to the pan of water and you will have bug-free beer that tells you (three bubbles per minute) when to bottle. Pick a hose at least five or six feet long and you can use it later to siphon beer from the jug into the bottles for capping. Keep in mind that the siphon only works when the bottle you are filling is a couple of feet lower than the jug from which you are siphoning.
Put a quarter of a teaspoon of sugar into each bottle before you cap it. This will help assure a creamy head that will hold and properly carbonate your beer. Store the bottled brew in a cool dark place for around seven days and then start drinking. The five gallon jug will yield two cases of beer at a cost to you of about three cents a battle after you amortize the cost of the capper.
Since taste is an individual thing, try some experiments. During the summer I make a mixture of one half can of malt, three pounds of sugar and a packet of yeast to five gallons of water. In the winter, for a more robust brew, I double everything except the water. Keep a record of when you mix each batch and how much malt, sugar and yeast you put in. I now make a slip and drop it in the case as I bottle so I can duplicate the mix if I like.
I have used both throw away bottles and deposit bottles. The deposit bottles are a little more rugged but either one will blow up it you bottle too early, so be careful!
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