Episode: 125
Title: HPR0125: Home Brew Part 1
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0125/hpr0125.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 11:49:37

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You
Hello, and welcome to Hacker Public Radio.
This is the Yelke Mantis, that is a soft J in case you were wondering from IRC.
Today's episode of Hacker Public Radio is on Homebrew.
Now, I'm going to prespose a few things first, going to prespose that you know how to cook.
If you don't know how to cook, this is going to be very difficult for you.
Second, I'm going to assume that you are a hacker mentality, which means that you know how to take measurements and keep records if you want to make a really good deal.
And finally, I'm going to assume that you have some kind of access to a homebrew shop.
And if you're listening to this podcast, you have access to the internet.
There is a great homebrew shop that I will include a link to in the show notes.
Having said all that, listen to the podcast one time through.
Head off to the homebrew shop by your beer making kit and all of the equipment that you might need.
General estimate, if you get all of the equipment listed in this episode as well as a homebrew kit,
it will probably run you around $90 to $100 depending on what kind of equipment you get and what kind of homebrew kit you get.
The homebrew kits are the sources of all your ingredients.
That's a little introduction.
One last note before we get into the whole process talking about beer, what is beer and so on is that this is by no stretch of the imagination designed to be the authoritative instructions on making beer.
There's a lot of specific examples and specific directions depending on the style of beer that you want to make.
This is kind of a general overview for making what's called a partial mash or a partial grain beer.
So today we're going to be talking about making your own beer.
A subject near and dear to the hearts of many of us I'm sure is beer.
Now if you are inclined I guess I would be the word to drink such things as icy light or perhaps blue ribbon or even are very very happy with Miller or Budweiser.
This is probably not the podcast for you because this beer is going to taste good and obviously you don't like beer that tastes good you like beer that has alcohol.
So anyway, what is beer? Beer is malt, hops, yeast and water.
That's it.
Yeah, add that into a little bit of time and you have beer.
So let's look at each of these things very very shortly.
Malt is a roasted grain. Usually in beer making it is barley although there are some exceptional wheat beers.
There's even a rice beer. I'm not a big fan of that but it exists.
The reason the grains are roasted is to simplify the sugars into the little bit.
The darker your beer the longer the grain was roasted and the closer it gets to burning.
Hops is actually kind of a fruit off of a kind of I don't know exactly how to describe it but it's kind of a fruit off of a very long vining style plant.
I've seen some gorgeous pictures where people have grown hops up the side of their house and you then use those hops of course for beer making.
Right now we are in a global hops crisis. Just in case you wonder when you go out to buy your beer making stuff why hops cost so much there's a global hops shortage right now.
So the cheap hops are kind of the most prolific. The more expensive kind of gourmet style hops are harder to get.
Yeast, a node on yeast, no you don't want to just use your regular run-of-the-mill average bread yeast although there are some things you can do with that that are not bread.
Beer making is not one of them and finally water. Typically the water that comes out of your tap is fine.
As long as it doesn't have an extreme high level of chlorine or if it's not hard water. Now having said that I always filter my water anyway.
Now on to types of home brewing. There's three general categories of home brewing. There's the all extract and extract comes in two forms that is the liquid form and it can and the dry powdered form kind of resembles powdered sugar.
This is the absolute easiest way to make beer. It requires a little less equipment than the other method, the next easiest method and it's by far the cheapest because you're using fewer resources at home and the stuff is highly processed and they do it in bulk so it's pretty cheap.
Now the next variety which is what we're going to be talking about today is the partial mesh or partial grain method. Now what this means is that instead of just using all malt extract which is your sugar base you're using that in addition to some whole grains that you prepare.
Finally is the all grain method. This is the absolute most difficult and most expensive. You need a lot of special equipment. A lot of people make their own special equipment for these purposes.
So sooner or later when I get the finances to be able to make my all grain equipment I will probably do an episode on that but well a series of episodes probably but for now we're just going to be talking about the partial mesh method.
Now before we get started into the actual process of home brewing we need to look at the home brew debate. There's a lot of debate around home brewing a lot of people say well why the heck would I want a home brew when I can just go to my local micro brewery and pick up some excellent excellent alcoholic beverages
or if you're fortunate enough to live in an area that has a micro brew store where they just have hundreds of different beers from dozens and dozens of different micro breweries. That is just a great resource.
Well the advantages are well one if you're buying micro brew beer it can get quite expensive. One of my absolute favorite kinds of micro brew comes from the rogue breweries. It is a nut brown ale. If you've not tried the nut brown from rogue I would highly recommend it.
Although it is a little bit pricey I mean I'm not going to kid you it. I've seen it going for as much as $12 for a bottle, $12 or 13.
So if you're again if you're a Budweiser drinker this is going to cost overall about the same maybe a little bit more.
And again if you're drinking if you're really liking things like Budweiser and icy light quality is not an issue for you.
So the cost is going to be the main deciding factor so there's that to consider. However if you're doing like micro breweries you're drinking rogue breweries not brown this is going to be significantly cheaper.
I think just for the ingredients the average bottle ends up being between 50 and 90 cents. So that's not that bad. Most of the equipment you can reuse there's a few parts of the equipment that you need to get a new one every now and again but most of the equipment is reusable.
Second reason you might want to do home brew is because it tastes good and you can invite your buddies over and say I made this it tastes good and they can all go wow cool man.
And finally it's fun. I mean as a hacker community part of what you want to do is get your hands there you want to be able to manipulate every part of process and with home brewing you really can do that.
And it's just amazing how you can you know you can say well you know I want to use this grain instead of that grain or I want to try this yeast instead of that yeast and I want to add three ounces extra hops to see how that you know tastes.
So that's I mean you have absolute control over the beer making process with home brewing. Now getting started.
The required equipment now this list might seem a little daunting at first do not fear if you're creative you can do some these things.
What you need doing the partial match method is an eight quart pot a fermenting vessel which can be either glass or plastic.
A bottling vessel typically it's plastic you do not want to use the same thing for your fermenting vessel and your bottling vessel because you're going to need to stir your beer before you bottle it because you're going to need to add in a little of extra sugar.
So you need a syphon hose and a bottling tool I just call our bottling tool it's a pretty neat thing that when you pick up the the syphoning tool it shut off the flow of liquid and then you go into the next bottle.
So you need a long handled spoon of food grade spoon with a non-porous surface you will need a funnel if you are using a glass fermenting vessel.
You will need a bottle capper bottles caps sterilizing solution hot bag of course you'll need your brewing kit you'll need a thermometer a hydrometer and an air lock.
An air lock is kind of a little piece of plastic that has a squiggly tube in it you put water in it does not allow air back into your beer to contaminate it.
Now a couple of notes here one you're sterilizing solution your sterilizing solution is very very important and you might be thinking hey I can just use a very high concentration of chlorine well you can but don't.
Chlorine is not very highly recommended for home brewing because you need very long soak times you know up to like 15 minutes of soaking your equipment in a chlorinated solution for it to work effectively and then on top of that it's very very difficult to get chlorine back out of your equipment once you've got it in there.
If you've ever gotten chlorine on your hands you know that it takes a good long while of rinsing your hands off to get that chlorine solution off of your hands so your hands don't feel slimy and chloriney anymore.
There are some great great things I use sea bright which you can pick up at any home brew store there's also be bright which is a little bit different has just a slightly different purpose but those two things are absolutely excellent since I've started using sea bright as my sterilizing solution I have had no batches of contaminated beer.
And I might have mentioned something that some of you are familiar with and some of you are not and as the hydrometer hydrometer measures the specific gravity of a solution pure water is supposed to have a specific gravity of one your beer will have a slightly higher specific gravity because it's got a lot of sugar in it and the yeast and the chemicals from the hops and all of that so it will have a slightly higher specific gravity.
Well when a lot of that converts to alcohol alcohol has a lower specific gravity than water so you get much much closer to having a specific gravity of one.
What a hydrometer hydrometer is good for is letting you know when your beer is finished when it is reached full attenuation when the yeast has done its magical process of turning sugar into a tasty beverage.
So let us get started with the actual brew process now that we know what we need. Step one sterilize everything. You want to have a clean well lit area and once you have everything sterilized start boiling your water.
This is going to be a full gallon of water. I just use my stove at home. I throw my big boiling pot on there and I start boiling it.
There are special stoves that you can buy propane stoves that will boil much faster but I don't want to spend the money on that because my process involves boiling taking time.
So the next step is what I call prep stage number two. While the water is heating I start filtering out the water for the primary fermenting vessel. I use a glass carboy, a 6 gallon carboy.
Now to start off you need three gallons of cold water. So throughout the next four or five steps we are going to be filtering water. I am not going to tell you that we are going to be filtering water. You can figure it out. I have just a little picture filter and I use a documentation system to make sure that I get exactly three gallons of water into my carboy.
While the water is trickling through my gravity filter I use one of the sterilized knives that I have to cut open my bags of grain if they are in the field bag and then I fill up the mesh grain bag.
Now this is one of the advantages of doing partial mesh versus an all grain brew is that you can use a grain bag. You are able to just dump all of the grains because you don't have more than a pound or so or two maybe.
Put them in a grain bag, tie it off and not have to worry too much about it with the all grain method you have a lot more to do.
So once the water is boiling you turn off your heat and you drop your grains in the bag.
You are going to set your timer and let this steep for 30 minutes. This is going to infuse all of the nice tasty sugars and burnt flavors of the grain into the water.
Now while this is steeping and against steeping without heat your water will remain quite hot for a good while.
You want to start simmering your malt extract can. Now make sure you take your label off and clean it well and everything but you want to bring it to a boil and then reduce the heat to a simmer.
If you do what I do I use a smaller pan and I flip the can several times.
The reason I do this is to ensure that the malt is completely liquid inside.
I have used a larger pan method but I found that it takes longer for the water to boil in a larger pan because you have more water obviously and it doesn't seem to liquefy all of the malt extract inside.
This is kind of like a molasse-like substance. I found with a smaller pan I don't get water on my oven glove which I just use the old fashioned cloth oven gloves if they get wet you burn yourself.
So I don't get water on that and I can just flip the can over a few times. Convection takes place inside the can and gets everything moving really nicely.
So I simmer this for about 20 minutes. After the steeping process is finished I remove the malt bag. Now what I do is I take two chopped sticks and I kind of grab the nut that I tied in the top of the malt bag, flip it over a few times so that the bag itself is wrapped around the chopped sticks.
Then I set that on the side of the brew pot and let it drip off because you've got some nice tasty sugar still in there. You don't want to squeeze it but you definitely want to get all the sugar out of there.
Next you bring what is rapidly becoming your wort or unfermented beer. You want to bring that back to a boil. Once it's boiling you turn it off.
Add your malt extract both your canned liquid one. You want to open that with a can opener. I recommend a manual can opener to an automated can opener because you have a fricking huge can and your dried extract.
Now I like to add my dried extract first because it needs to dissolve. Then add in your liquid extract. Use one of your sterilized spatulas to get all the gooey goodness from out the inside of the can.
Then on to the next step. You're going to put your hops into a bag. Put the bag into the pot and tie it off to the handle. Now a hops bag is supposedly optional. However, it saves you monumental headaches later on because you don't have to filter the hops back out.
The debate being of course that if you're using a hops bag you're not getting a total infusion of the hops into the beer because they're separated off by a micro fiber bag.
But in my experience the flavor difference is not that great and the headache difference is so just use a hops bag.
You can decide to do that yourself. You really like to stove and bring it to a boil. Now when you do this you've just added very very large amounts of sugar.
You've added these strange ingredients called hops which add your bitter and your longevity to your beer.
It's going to start foaming and this is a very very fine foam and you want to let it foam up a few times until it's boiling rather than foaming.
Now you're going to need to do a little bit of heat adjusting on this stage. If you're using one of those big massive outdoor propane burners you're going to need to be really really careful about boil over.
Because after it's done foaming you're going to boil it for another 25 minutes. Now your boiling is still going to boil up because of the amount of sugar that you've got in there.
It's going to want to boil up the sides of your pot. If you're not careful if you're boiling it too hard it will boil over the top.
This is not good because you're going to lose sugar. You have the opportunity to scald your wart and that's not going to taste good. You want to be very very careful with your heat adjustment.
Adjust it just so that it's boiling but it's not boiling up the sides of the pot. Now while we are boiling this let's talk a little bit about hops.
Because we just threw them in the pot you need to know a little bit about. Hops give you your nice tasty bitterness. If you've ever had an unhopped beer you'll notice that is kind of odd.
I really really doubt that you've had an unhopped beer in the United States unless you've made it yourself or a friend has made it.
I've made a couple unhopped beers just because I like to do medieval reenactment on occasion and an unhopped beer is period.
So while you're boiling your hops you are actually changing the chemical composition of your hops.
The hops that you add at the beginning of your boil process will give you more aroma and less bitterness. The hops that you add at the end of your process will give you more bitterness and less aroma.
So if you want a very very bitter beer you're going to want to throw in your hops toward the end of the boiling process here.
So last like five minutes of your boiling process. That's just a little note. If you don't like a bitter beer throw it all in at the beginning it'll give you a nice floral smell.
And not all that much bitterness. During the last ten minutes of the boil process there's going to be a lot of stuff going on.
So you should already have your three gallons of cold water in your carboy before this time because you're going to need to take two cups of cold water and one cup of your wart out of your boiling pot.
Well sorry don't add the yeast yet. Make sure that your temperature is below 110 degrees in your cup. If it's not add in a little bit more cold water.
Make sure that the water is sterile and whatever you're not going to want to use like water that's been sitting out for three days or unhesitating to use ice cubes in this part of the process just because you never know what's in that ice cube.
You know there might have been some bacteria in the freezer. So just make sure that your temperature is down below 110 degrees which is not that hard.
Usually when I do two cups of cold water and one cup of wart I have perfect temperature. So you add the yeast, let it sit, maybe stir it a couple of times.
If you're adding in extra hops for bitterness we're getting to that five minute mark.
So we've finished our boiling of the wart. We're going to pull out the hot bag from the wart. Let it drip for a few seconds and put it aside. You can reuse that nice hot bag.
Now you're going to carefully pour the hot wart into the cold H2O.
This is why it's important to have this three gallons of cold water in your fermenter. If you use a glass carboy like I do you're going to need that cold water to temper the heat of the hot wart.
If you just dump in boiling hot wart inside a room temperature carboy there's a chance that you can crack that carboy and have hot wart all over your floor.
Not what we want.
So you stir or mix if you're using a plastic fermenter just a bucket you can stir. If you're using a glass carboy just kind of grab the neck of the carboy and swirl it around for a little while.
Take your temperature of your wart make sure again that it's below 110 degrees. If it's not yet just add more H2O more water up to the five gallon mark.
Now how you want to determine what five gallons is entirely up to you. What I do is I measure off one and two gallons on the side of my carboy then I draw a line.
I measure the distance between one and two because there's no curve of the bottle there and then I just go off the side measuring that distance to five gallons.
Now when the temperature is below 110 preferably around 100 degrees you want to add yeast.
Put your air lock on make sure that there's a little bit of water in your air lock.
Over the next 24 hours that air lock should start bubbling. Very very happily you should see some foam developing on the surface of your beer.
It should just be a pleasant pleasant aroma. You'll probably have never smelled anything quite like this before.
If this process doesn't start up pretty vigorously in the first 24 hours you have a problem.
This problem could be that you added the yeast too early if you didn't take a temperature gauge and measure the wart before you threw in the yeast.
You might have killed off your yeast by throwing it into early. You might have contaminated your beer.
You can tell if you've contaminated your beer if in that same 24 hours you don't have a lot of bubbling but you have some not tan substance growing on the surface of your beer like a black or a brown substance kind of growing there and no fermentation taking place which is evidenced by those bubbles.
If you're not fermenting you can try adding some more yeast, get another packet of yeast and add it in and see if you can kick start your fermentation that way.
If that doesn't work you probably can contaminate it and you're out of luck.
Now for the conclusion you're going to want to keep your beer below 110 degrees.
There are some interesting things that happen if your beer gets too hot.
Now if you're making like a logger for example you're going to want to make sure that that beer stays around I think it's 60 to 70 degrees and I think 70 degrees is on the high end for your loggers.
But you're going to keep your beer cool.
If your beer gets too hot it will start adding in funky flavors and we don't like funky flavors because we want to give this beer to our friends and we want them to all say wow this is a great beer how do you do it.
So kind of keep an eye on your beer, keep it cool. If you have a nice cool basement like I do, I deal.
Put it down in the basement before you add the yeast, it sits down there, it's nice and cool, it ferments and it's happy.
Now kind of the final note, you're going to let this primary fermenter sit for about a week.
It will stop fermenting in the first couple of days. The next stage is called the settling process where a lot of the yeast coagulates and falls out of the beer.
And we'll talk about some more stuff next time when we go on to the bottling episode which will be combined with the fermenting fun episode.
Hope you found this useful and have a great day.
Thank you very much.
You
