Hello, I'm Schuyler, part of the web team here at Beverage Factory.
I haven't ever home brewed before, but in this video,
we'll remedy that by brewing a one gallon Craft a Brew kit from start to finish.
These kits are great because they include just about everything you need to brew a one gallon batch of beer right from your kitchen counter,
without having to worry about purchasing all the different home brewing components separately.
I recommend reading through the included instructions multiple times, until the process makes sense to you.
We've condensed the instructions for the sake of time and presentation.
Begin by filling the pot with one gallon of water and heating to 150 degrees Fahrenheit.
While the water is heating, you can prepare the grains by pouring them into the grain bag and tying off the top.
Once the water is at temperature, steep the grains for 15 minutes.
This should be a gentle process.
You don't want to leave behind pieces of grains
At the conclusion of 15 minutes, discard the grains, then remove the pot from the burner and begin to stir in your malt extract.
Make sure to stir thoroughly, so that all the powder is broken up evenly and there are no chunks.
Once mixed, place the pot back on the burner and bring the mixture to a rolling boil.
Once boiling, add your bittering hops, and start the one hour boil timer.
At 30 minutes, pour in half of your flavor/aroma hops.
We took this opportunity to sanitize our equipment with the provided solution.
Half the sanitizer can be used now and half later during the bottling phase.
When the boil is almost complete, create an ice bath for the post boil process.
With 2 minutes left in the boil, add the remaining aroma hops.
After the hour boil, we transfer the pot to the ice bath.
Once the temperature reaches 75 degrees, remove the pot from the ice bath, and transfer to the sanitized glass carboy using the funnel.
Try to avoid pouring in any spent hops or other matter from the bottom.
Add yeast to the mixture,
cap the carboy,
plug the hole with your clean thumb, and shake vigorously for one minute in order to aerate the wort.
The final step today is to create a blow-off assembly to ensure your beer doesn't overflow during the fermentation process.
We do this by plugging the sanitation tubing about a half an inch into the hole in the carboy cap
while placing the other end of the tubing in a full glass of water.
This allows for excess gas to escape through the tubing safely.
After a few days, when the fermentation process calms, fill the airlock halfway with a little sanitizer water and insert into the stopper.
Two weeks of fermentation in a dark place between 60 to 75 degrees is recommended.
Wait about 2 weeks.
When the yeast has completed the fermentation process, it is time to bottle your beer.
But first, you have to create a little bit more yeast food in order to naturally carbonate the bottles.
To do this, heat up some water and add two tablespoons of sugar.
Then, stir in the sugar and bring to a rolling boil for five minutes before turning off the heat.
Next, you need to sanitize the bottling equipment.
Mix your remaining sanitizer with water in the container.
Submerge the tubing,
racking cane,
bottles,
and caps in the solution.
Now it's time to siphon the wort from the carboy to the pot of sugar water.
Start by filling the tube with sanitizer to start the siphon, then insert the racking cane into the carboy.
Siphon the sanitizer into a separate container, and when the wort starts coming out of the tubing, transfer the tubing back to the pot.
Once the majority of the liquid is siphoned, taking care to avoid solid material at the bottom,
you can return the racking cane and tubing to the sanitation bucket, and stir the wort and sugar water solution.
Siphon the same way you did from the earlier step and fill up the bottles about two inches from the top.
Cap the bottles using a press, and place them in a cool dark place for two weeks.
Wait about 2 weeks.
At the end of two weeks refrigerate and enjoy your first homebrew.
The Craft a Brew kit was a perfect dive into brewing for me.
The actual process didn't take too long to perform, and the provided instructions did a great job of guiding you through the steps.
Now that I have all the equipment, I can try out all the different recipe kits that Craft a Brew offers.
I also have a good idea of how the brewing process works if I ever decide to step up to all grain brewing and bigger batches.
I would definitely recommend this product for anyone interested in getting into home brewing.
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