What you can see in the photo is (clockwise from top left): dry wheat malt extract (55% wheat, 45% barley), two cans of liquid wheat malt extract (60% wheat, 40% barley), German Caramunich malt (90 EBC), Cara-Pils malt (5 EBC) and Hallertauer Mittelfrueh hops (4,3% alpha acid). Mashing gives the best results but requires much more equipment and experience so maybe some day…īack to the ingredients. Why bother steeping anything at all? Apparently it adds to the complexity of the flavour, improves the body and enhances head retention. This way you don’t have to mash any grain. The drill is you steep some speciality grain, usually dark caramelised malt which already had its starches converted into sugars, and then you simply add malt extract. It’s an intermediate step between kit-brewing and all-grain and apparently many home brewers do it this way. I paid a tenner ($16) and I consider this money well spent.
MAILLARD MALTS BEERSMITH SOFTWARE
I created a recipe using an excellent piece of software called BeerSmith – I honestly can’t imagine doing all of the calculations by hand.
Cleaning and sanitising is absolutely crucial in brewing, you basically treat your wort and then young beer like, however inappropriate it sounds, a man with leukaemia.įor my first batch I decided to make a hefe-weizen, which is a German/Bavarian wheat beer (Paulaner, Erdinger…). For all the small parts I used sodium metabisulphite. I mainly used a chlorine-based brewing bleach for the larger bits, which isn’t perfect but couldn’t get hold of anything non-rinse. But some of you are into your beer so this could be slightly amusing… or horrifying!įirst and foremost I cleaned sanitised all the equipment. This isn’t intended to be a ‘How To Brew’ guide, I’m very much a beginner and, frankly, I wouldn’t take advice from myself.
As promised, here are some photos and thoughts on my first ever home-brew, click through if you dare.