Homemade Beer: Getting Started

There is a lot of confusion in when it comes to homemade beer.  Some people try to eliminate this confusion by using starter kits that come with the minimal equipment and a recipe kit to make a batch of beer.

But what if you want to make beer from ingredients you select yourself, but are unsure of how to create your own homemade beer recipes?  This article is for you then.  In this article we go through the basics of working up basic recipe.

In the world of homemade beer there are three types of beer you can make: extract, partial mash and all-grain.  This article is going to land you somewhere between extract and partial mash. 

First things first - the base recipe.  This recipe is a blank canvas for you to customize by using specialty grains - such as caramel 10L or chocolate malt.  If a grain sounds interesting to you, add it pound by pound. 

For example, if you really like the sound of chocolate malt then add a pound or two to this recipe - just don't go over three pounds of grains.

The ingredients:
* 6.6 lbs pale dry malt extract
* 2 oz Cascade hops
* Nottingham dry yeast packet

The actual procedure to make this homemade beer is out of the scope of this article but when you get your specialty grains have your home brew store "mill" them for you.  Steep them in 150 degree water for about 20 minutes and discard.  Proceed as normal.

The hops are the second part we need to discuss.  You will be adding 1 oz of hops at the start of your boil and then the other ounce gets added at when there is five minutes remaining. 

This gives a good generic beer that will really highlight any specialty grains you may want to use. This homemade beer recipe gives you a great beer that really allows your imagination to run wild. 

With this beer you can experiment with dark beers, amber beers, brown beers and light beers depending on what specialty grains you add.

If you like this article then I encourage you to check out this homemade beer blog.