The beginnings of fun with home brewing are different. Stories overheard in a conversation about a friend or brother-in-law who makes his own beer at home. Buying craft beer in a store and discovering that the people who brewed it gained their experience in the privacy of their own kitchen, standing over a 40 liter pot full of boiling wort. Or maybe a gift that we received from friends who counted on us to start brewing beer for joint events and gave us what they call "home brewery". In many similar situations, the question often arises is it possible at all? Can you make real beer at home? Do I need advanced equipment? Will it have gas, alcohol, will it taste like beer or fermented compote?

 

Yes! You can make beer in your own kitchen, which not only tastes like beer, it will be much better than a wide range of so-called corporate beers, and even better than many craft beers.

So how is it possible that without investing in building a professional brewery, I can produce something that can be better than beer brewed in the brewhouse vats for hundreds of thousands of dolars?

To understand this, you should get to know the basics of brewing technology to have an idea of ​​the process of preparing a drink that has accompanied humanity for nearly 6000 years.
The primary process in the production of beer, and alcohol in general, is fermentation.

More specifically, alcoholic fermentation, which is the anaerobic breakdown of carbohydrates to produce ethyl alcohol and carbon dioxide, the same fermentation that occurs in many homes when making homemade wine. While home-made wine and its production are not surprising to us, the production of beer at home is still shrouded in some mystery. Following this lead, we can say that beer is different from wine in that we prepare one based on fruit and the other based on cereals. One of the beer styles is even called Barley Wine, which is barley wine. Now that we've got used to this exotic production of homemade beer, let's move on to the details.

 

What is fermentable for beer is a leaven obtained from grains, usually barley, but also wheat or rye, and is called beer wort. Before the grain can be used to make beer, it must germinate and be dried. The grain prepared in this way is called malt. The wort is obtained from malt in the mashing process, i.e. heating the crushed grain with water to specific temperatures. Hot water starts the process of converting the starch in the malt grain to simple sugars, which will ferment and give the beer its characteristic flavor. In the brewery, mashing takes place in a huge mash-brewing vat, at home we will use an ordinary pot with a capacity of about 40 liters. The mashing process produces a yellow, sweet liquid, resembling juice. You could say grain juice. We still need to season this juice so that the beer has a characteristic bitterness and aroma. The most popular spice used in beer is hops. In order to obtain its bitter and aromatic properties, we have to cook it together with the grain juice, i.e. the wort. Usually this process takes about an hour. At the end, we get a sweet, bitter, hopped wort, which we cool down and ferment. Huge fermentation tanks or, less frequently, open vats are used for fermentation in the brewery. At home, we only need a 30-liter, tightly closed bucket or a glass balloon. Specialist strains of brewer's yeast are usually used for fermentation. The exceptions are beers of spontaneous fermentation, which trap yeast from the air, or beers fermented with yeasts other than brewers. In the world of brewers, it is said that the brewer prepares the wort and the beer is made by yeast. There is a lot of truth to this, as yeast is responsible for the number of aromas in the beer, which are a distinguishing feature of many styles. A good example is wheat beer, which owes its characteristic banana-clove flavor to yeast. Depending on the yeast strain, beer ferments at room temperatures of about 20 ° C (top fermentation) or at a lower temperature of about 10-13 ° C (bottom fermentation). During fermentation, the wort loses its sweetness to the alcohol, and hop aromas and bitterness come to the fore. After the end of the process, the young beer is ready for bottling. There is another secret hidden in the bottling process of home-made beer, namely its carbonation. Carbon dioxide is produced during fermentation, but without airtight fermentation tanks, it is released from the beer, so when bottled it is usually gas free or has traces of it. In a professional brewery, it stays in the beer thanks to hermetic tanks in which the beer matures. At home, we will mature in hermetically sealed bottles, where there will be microfermentation, called refermentation. During bottling, dissolve a small amount in the young beer