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Thursday 25 August 2016

Choosing Home Brew Ingredients For A Superb Taste

By Virginia Cooper


The drive to brew your beer at home is anchored on the need to achieve a unique taste. Achieving such expectations will depend on the home brew ingredients you choose. It is frustrating when you have all the ingredients only to miss the mark on taste or texture. Here are other tips to consider so that your brew is excellent.

Insist on using fresh components. Beer is made from yeast, malt, crushed grains, etc. Their quality is determined by age and manner of handling. Fresh extracts provide a more refined taste compared to canned extracts. Storage of these components including dry malt, yeast, crushed grains and liquid malt matters. The idea is to use them before they are damaged by oxidation.

There are rules governing brewing though there is room for creativity. Brewing allows you to try out recipes in order to achieve a particular taste or texture. This does not provide a leeway to go overboard since you will defy the science of brewing. Conduct thorough homework on formulas that determine the quality of a good drink. There is the possibility of committing grave mistakes when the science of brewing is ignored.

Sterility plays a major role in determining the quality of your beer. The taste will largely depend on what it comes into contact with especially in the process of cooling. This process exposes your beer to the possibility of contamination by bacteria and other infections. Such contamination affects fermentation. The most common sterilizing agent is iodophor though ordinary bleach can also be used.

Your wort should be cooled quickly. The speed of cooling affects fallout of tannins and proteins which are bad for your beer. The idea is to avoid contamination with bacteria and infections. Invest in an immersion wort chiller which improves the quality and clarity of your beer. This process is especially significant for full batch boils.

The boiling of your wort should be timed. Boiling is more than bubbling. It facilitates vaporization of undesired elements beyond sterilizing the ingredients. It is through boiling that proteins and tannins are coagulated. Boiling also assists in getting rid of bitterness in hops. Depending on desired lightness, boiling should take 60-90 minutes. The components used may also affect the duration of boiling.

Choose your fermenters well. Brewing is a sensitive process whose sterility must be guarded and fermentation monitored. The use of ordinary plastic makes beer vulnerable to the point of affecting the fermentation process. To overcome the challenge of sterilization, glass and stainless steel fermenters are recommended. They are also excellent in offering an oxygen barrier as opposed to plastic which stretches under pressure. It may cause leakage. Glass and steel apparatus come in different sizes and are affordable.

Do not expect excellent results when brewing for the first time. It takes experience to achieve excellent results by mastering the best combinations and timing different operations. Do not be quick to give up and feel free to try out different methods. The quality of your ingredients is very important. The reputation of the store from which you buy your components is telling of their quality.




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