Australian home brewing is becoming popular with many folk for plenty of reasons. One of them is the fact that making your own brew at home can be relaxing and exciting. You can decide on the type of beer you want to make, buy the ingredients you want and then set about making a terrific brew!
Even though there are plenty of myths floating around home brewing, people still love to do it because they realize that plenty of the bad stuff they hear about it are not true! For example it is said that home-brewing makes the beer much stronger than the usual beer you get in the market. This is false because in actual fact you get to choose how strong or weak you want to make the beer and accordingly add the right amount of malt or sugar. The homebrew kits and instructions that are available make it fairly easy to brew your beer at home with the least amount of trouble or fuss.
Australian home brewing can be the easiest thing you tackle provided you follow the instructions and do everything the right way. The fact that people can be put off home brewing because of “exploding bottles” is because they choose to believe it. The fact is that the bottles will not explode if the beer is bottled at the right time – after it has fermented – and you have added the right/recommended quantity of sugar in order to “prime” the bottle.
Australian home brewing is therefore one of the best ways to get your beer. The fact that you are handling the ingredients yourself and are being scrupulously clean during the whole process will make you a hundred percent sure that there will be no infections and that the home made brew is tasty.
The common ingredients during Australian home brewing are barley, yeast, hops and water. These four ingredients combine to make a fantastic beer. Hops is added to give it the bitter taste, sugar is then extracted from barley, the yeast converts the sugar into alcohol. However many people who are home brewers take the liberty to add other ingredients and make changes to the beer.
Malted barley is one of the essential ingredients needed and is present in all brews. The starch in the malted barley is insoluble. The dark grain that germinates and produces the enzyme is called malt. This is smashed to remove/extract sugar and the malted barley is infused with water that is between 60-70 degrees for 2 hours so that the starch is converted into a fermentable sugar. The temperature during the mashing will determine whether the sugars are fermentable or unfermentable, thus dictating whether the finished product (beer) will be malty or watery. The wort is drained off after mashing and the left over barley is gently rinsed to extract the remaining sugars, in warm water. This liquid is then boiled and ingredients like hops etc are added over the period of 2 hours. After straining and cooling the liquid the yeast is added.
Australian home brewing is made easier if malt extract is bought from a manufacturer instead of doing the hard work of mashing at home to get the malt. A malt extract is a thick syrup that you can rehydrate at home. This can also be bought in powder form. Once you have the necessary brewing kit and ingredients you can easily make your favorite beer or cider at home.
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