Brew Your Own Beer

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Here are the main steps to brew the above-mentioned American brown ale.

1. Sanitize your primary fermenter with whatever sanitizer you choose.
2. In the brew kettle, boil 3 gallons of water. Pour it into a fermentation bucket (not the one in which you intend to do your primary fermentation). Heat 2.5 gallons of water in your brew kettle to 150 degrees Fahrenheit — this is now called the hot liquor.
3. Using a grain bag, steep the crystal, chocolate, biscuit and black malts in the hot liquor for 20 minutes, stirring regularly and maintaining the temperature of 150 degrees.
4. Remove the grain bag from the kettle and add one half-gallon of water and the dried malt extract (DME), stirring vigorously to dissolve.
5. Bring to a boil, being extremely careful to watch out for boil over. Once at a boil, add the ‘Cascade’ hops (in hop bag). Maintain rolling boil.
6. After 30 minutes, add ‘Centennial’ hops in another hop bag. Maintain rolling boil.
7. After another 30 minutes, cut heat and let the kettle sit for 10 minutes.
8. Remove hop bags — after pressing with spoon to remove any extra wort (it’s now officially called wort, by the way) — then pour wort into the primary fermentation vessel, preferably a plastic bucket with a spigot.
9. From the other bucket, pour in enough water to reach the 5-gallon mark on the primary fermenter. Attach lid and airlock filled with sanitizer liquid.
10. Let the bucket sit until it reaches almost room temperature. Remove the lid and add both packets of ale yeast. Re-attach lid and airlock and swirl the fermenter to dissolve the yeast and aerate the beer.
11. Set the fermenter in a shady spot with an ambient temperature between 60 and 70 degrees.
12. Wait. Within 16 hours you should see activity in the airlock, which will periodically bubble. Let the beer go in the primary fermenter for two weeks, or until active fermentation is completed (i.e., no bubbles within 90 seconds of watching).
13. You’re at an option point here. You can either: 1) bottle your beer right now, which means you can be drinking it within another two or three weeks, or 2) siphon your beer into a secondary fermenter, which will help it to clarify before you bottle it. If bottling, go to step 16.
14. Sanitize your secondary fermenter and a length of hose, then run some sanitizer over the spigot — you got one with a spigot, right? — of the primary fermenter. Attach hose to primary fermenter spigot and run the beer into the secondary fermenter. Once complete, attach lid and airlock to secondary fermenter and let sit another two weeks.
15. To bottle, sanitize your bottling bucket according to the directions on your sanitizing solution’s label. Sanitize all the bottles/jugs and caps/lids you’re going to use in the bottling bucket before pouring out the sanitizing solution, as well as your brewing spoon, one long length of plastic hose and the 12-inch length. You may also want to sanitize the spigot of the bucket you’re running the beer out of — use a very clean sponge or Q-tip soaked in sanitizer. Then, set the bottles and caps (or jugs and lids) aside and pour out the sanitizing solution.
16. In a small saucepan, bring 2 cups of water and 11⁄4 cups corn sugar to a boil. (You can also use 11⁄4 cups of extra light dried malt extract, or 1 cup of honey — I prefer honey.) Ensure the mixture is homogenized, then cut the heat.
17. Once you’re ready to go, pour the sugar-water mixture into the bottling bucket. Then, you can stir as the beer runs into the bottling bucket, but stir gently so as to not aerate the beer.
18. Once the beer’s in the bottling bucket, attach the 12-inch length of hose. This will make it easier to bottle the beer. Run the beer into your containers and attach the lids as you go. This is the most tedious part of the entire process, but remember, it’s worth it.
19. Once you’re done capping all your bottles, set them in a shady, not-too-warm spot and forget about them for a few weeks.
20. After two or three weeks, depending on how warm it is, check in on your brew. Shake a bottle to see if bubbles form rapidly. Uncap one to check it out. If it doesn’t hiss — and you know what a properly carbonated beer hisses like, I imagine — seal it up again and wait another week. Check it again after that — chances are it’ll be ready. You can leave most of the bottles at room temperature and chill only what you want to drink, but this type of beer is best consumed by two or three months after it’s bottled.
21. Do enjoy it, eh?

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