Horst Buch's Fast and Easy Beer

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You Can't be Too Clean

Cleanliness involves meticulous washing of bottles and containers before and after each use. I rinse emptied bottles with warm water, then with a little household ammonia, then again with water before storing them away. I always store my bottles either upside down or in a closed box to keep out bugs and dust, and before bottling, I rinse the bottles in warm water with a generous splash of chlorine bleach (Clorox). I also scrub the fermenting bucket with warm water and bleach, and clean all the equipment that comes into contact with my beer. That way I'm sure that the only things in my beer are things I deliberately put there.

Stirring and Clearing Your Brew

Once I am ready to brew, I combine a packet of Old English lager yeast with a cup of water and then set it aside to soften. I warm a can of Munton and Fison amber malt extract in a sink of hot water, then stir the malt into at least four quarts of water in a large pot. I get the last of the sticky malt out of the can with several rinsings of hot water, which also goes into the pot. The more water boiled with the malt, the better, but because I brew six gallons at a time, a pot large enough to hold it all would be crazy expensive.

Next, I add 1 1/2 ounces of pelleted Hallertau hops, bring the mixture to a boil, and boil it for 10 minutes, taking care not to let it boil over. I pour it into the cleaned fermenter, stir in the corn sugar, and add cool water to make up a total of six gallons. The quicker this mixture cools, the betterin warm weather, setting the fermenter in a tub of ice water speeds things up a bit. When the mixture cools to 75° F, I stir in the softened yeast. I seal the fermenter with a tight lid, fitted with an airlock that allows the gasses generated by fermentation to escape. After a day or so in the basement, where the temperature is 65° to 75° F, the beer's surface foams up and the airlock begins ticking irregularly, like a demented hall clock. Fermentation is under way. Within seven to 10 days, things will pretty much calm down, and dead yeast will litter the fermenter floor. Then I syphon the beer off the bottom sludge into a large bottle or carboy (a rectangular container of about five to 15 gallons capacity that is made of glass, plastic, or metal). I always take great care not to introduce air by letting it splash as it passes.

Hops, the dried female flowers of the hop vine, add bitterness which offsets the malt's sweetness.

In another seven to 10 days, the brew has cleared but don't expect a mouth-watering sparkle yet. To add carbonation by renewing fermentation, I put one level teaspoon of corn sugar into each cleaned bottle (two teaspoons for champagne bottles). To avoid getting air into the beer during bottling, I use a filler attachment on the syphon. The filler has a nipple that, when pressed against the bottom of a bottle, fills the bottle without splashing. After capping each bottle, I shake it to mix in the sugar.

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