Netted grist boiling in a large pot of distilled water

In How to Make Your Own Beer: Part I, I introduced the four main ingredients of beer, namely, water, hops, yeast, and malt. Now that you have been introduced to each of these four main beer ingredients, it is time to combine them into wort. Before you start, however, please note the following items will be needed in addition to your wort ingredients:

Large kettle/pot

Thermometer

Hydrometer (optional)

Brewing bucket with lid or glass carboy

Airlock (and rubber insert if needed)

Grist and netted bags/cheese cloth

Bleach/sanitizer

Beer or other bottle (for the yeast starter)

Most brewing shops will have these items (and a lot more). In the Madison area, the Wine & Hops Shop on Monroe Street has a very helpful and knowledgeable staff that will address all your beer brewing equipment questions.

Wort is the cooked "soup" that contains the malt, hops, and water (yeast are added much later) used to make beer. It is what beer is called before it comes in contact with yeast.  Also, most worts contain grist, which is milled barley grain. Grist is often added in addition to malt because it helps add complexity of flavor as well as head (the foam topping of the beer that imparts much of the aroma). 

But wait! Before one even starts cooking the wort, the yeast must be attended to. Whether purchased wet (in liquid form) or dry (as shown in my slide show below), yeast appreciate getting a head-start on growth before being added to wort. Therefore, it helps to take a half cup or so of malt extract (either wet or dry) and dissolve it in water, then cook the syrup until it is almost boiling. Once cooled, this syrup can be added to a bottle (like a beer bottle), the bottle fitted with an airlock (as shown in my picture to the left), and the yeast grown for a day or two prior to the wort being prepared. This ensures two things: 1) the wort will be innoculated with lots of healthy yeast, and 2) bacteria and rogue (wild) yeast will have little chance of taking over and spoiling the wort before the brewing yeast can start processing it. 

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   A yeast starter with fitted airlock

Because bacteria and rogue yeast of everywhere, all utensils used for beer-making must be sterilized. There are many choices of sterilizers, but a 2-5% bleach solution works well. Following bleaching, make sure to rinse your utensils adequately, as you don't want to kill your own yeast, of course. And never, never, use detergents and/or soaps of any kind when sterilizing, as this will also kill your yeast.

Now that you have everything ready, it is time to start cooking. Pour 2 1/2 - 3 gallons of distilled/spring water into a large pot and heat it to almost a boil. Use a thermometer to ensure that the water is at around 80-90 degrees C. If you have some grist, place it into netted bags or cheese cloth and tie the bags up. Drop the bags into the hot water and let them steep for about 20 minutes. Every now and then, use a ladle to move the bags around, so that they do not burn. The water should start changing color as the bags cook, and attain a sweet, bread-like smell. After 20 minutes, remove the bags from the water.  

Set a timer for 60 minutes. Open your containers of liquid malt extract and/or bags of dry malt extract. Slowly start adding the malt extract into the pot, stirring occasionally to prevent the malt from burning. Incidentally, dry malt extract is especially hygroscopic (water-attracting), and will tend to form undissolved clumps in the water. You will need to stir dry malt very well in order to have it go completely into solution.

Once the malt is in, add your bittering hops. The "bittering" definition of bittering hops refers to the time at which the hops are added. Bittering requires a full 60 minute boil to take effect. 

With 15 left for wort cooking, you may add flavoring hops, which impart only the hops flavor to the beer. Keep stirring the wort at least once every 10 minutes, making sure that it does not get much hotter than 100 degrees C. 

When the 60 minutes are up, take the pot off the stove and let it settle a bit. If you wish to impart a hops aroma to your future beer, add some dry hops to the wort now.

    Plastic brewing bucket, with the yeast starter in front

Obtain a brewing bucket with a completely sealable lid and/or glass carboy. The container needs to be sterilized as mentioned previously. The container also needs to be outfitted with an airlock, which will allow for venting of yeast carbon dioxide gas without letting outside air inside. This is important so that the beer not become oxidized or contaminated as it is fermenting. This is also where the principles outlined by Louis Pasteur come into play (I told you we would have a little bit of this guy thrown in).

Pour your hot wort into the bucket. This has the added benefit of further sterilizing your bucket, along with any possible ingredients you may have added to the bottom of the bucket (like the blueberries I have in my slide show). Unfortunately, you will have to let your wort cool off before adding it into a glass carboy- otherwise, the glass will crack (I know because I've had this happen).

After the wort has cooled to room temperature, mix it up with a large spoon. If you have a hydrometer (I display my own in my attached slide show below), you can now use it to take the first measurement of your liquid's density. Despite its intimidating name, a hydrometer is a very simple device that measures liquid density by floating a metal "bob" in a tube filled with the liquid in question. By taking the difference in liquid densities, one can plug the values into a simple formula and obtain actual alcohol percentage- a very useful measure of your brewing success.

With this in mind, take the hydrometer tube and dip it into the wort to take a sample of the liquid. Drop the hydrometer "bob" into the liquid to obtain a reading of the wort's original gravity. Record your value, which will vary from 1.030 to even 1.100. Keep in mind that water has a specific gravity of 1.000.

At long last, it is time to add, or "pitch" your yeast into the wort. Swirl your yeast starter and take off its airlock. Pour the starter into the wort, mixing the wort as you go. Seal the bucket or cap the carboy, insure that your airlock is half-filled with water, and place your brewing container into a cool, dark place.  Leave it alone for at least a week, while checking on it periodically to make sure that the airlock does not get plugged and blow off. The wort has entered the primary fermentation stage, and is now called beer.

In How to Make Your Own Beer: Part III, I will explain how to transfer your beer from primary to secondary fermentation, and also how to bottle it for future enjoyment.