Beer_ Beer Making_ An Introduction To Home Brewing

Thank you for purchasing this book. In it you will find everything you need to know to successfully brew your own beer at home. Brewing beer seems like a mysterious and almost magical process to those who are new to the practice. After you understand what's going on and see how simple it is, you'll see it isn't that difficult at all, but it is a little unusual. When you are actually brewing your first few batches of beer, there is a tendency to feel a bit like a mad scientist! Not many hobbies allow you to stir steaming pots of foul smelling liquid under the pretense of having a fun afternoon. If brewing beer at home is anything, it is fun. I can think of no better way to spend a weekend afternoon than to gather with a few friends and try out a new beer recipe. I'm sure you'll agree once you become familiar with the basics and feel confident enough to give it a try. Chances are once you taste your first batch of beer - even if it comes out terrible, you'll have been bitten by the homebrew bug, just like millions of others before you. You'll soon see that the brewing process may seem mysterious and complicated, but anyone who can follow directions and work a stove can, in theory, brew a fine tasting beer. Simply put, beer is made from first soaking malt in hot water. The malt contains sugar which is released by the heat and mixes with the water. Next hops are added to the mixture. It is then allowed to cool and moved into another container where yeast is added. The yeast begins to ferment, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide in the process. In a few weeks, the beer is bottled, capped and allowed to sit for up to two more weeks in order to ferment a little more and carbonate. After the bottled beer has been given a chance to carbonate, all that's left is to treat yourself to your very own homemade beer! Of course, in practice the process gets a bit more complicated and busy - but not overwhelmingly so. You'll be given all the information you need and by the end of this book you'll understand what needs to be done to brew great tasting beer and why you're doing it. We will take each step in the brewing process and break it down into manageable pieces and learn a little about the history of beer and the different types of beer styles that you can brew at home. There is no better time than now to get involved in the exciting and rewarding hobby of homebrewing! When I brewed my first batch of beer over twenty years ago my friends and I had to scour the city for a brewing supply store, which often involved long car rides to strange neighboring towns. Our equipment wasn't the best either. Our first attempts involved fermenting the beer in plastic trash cans (not a good choice!). There were no homebrew kits at the time and books about the subject were few and far between. We had to take several trips to the library and seek out the advice of other home brewers, who were not easy to locate. Our first few batches were clumsy affairs and we made all the common rookie errors, but in the end we ended up with some OK tasting beer and tons of great memories. Nowadays all of that running around can be replaced with a few hours of internet research. The amount of information available and increased ease of acquiring the needed equipment and items provided by the Internet makes getting started in homebrewing easier than its ever been. You'll save yourself a lot of time and trouble - time you can put to better use in the kitchen stirring your wort. You'll enjoy every step of the brewing process from selecting your grains and hops all the way up to sharing your newest masterpiece with your friends! Thanks Again for purchasing this book, I hope you enjoy it and find it useful. Happy Brewing! Jim