My Recipe Box
Prepare
Clean anything that will come in contact with the beer. Items should be physically cleaned, then sanitized. Sanitizing is done using household bleach. To make a sanitizing solution from household chlorine bleach, mix one fluid ounce with about 2 gallons of water. Once sanitized, items should be covered to prevent airborn bacteria from landing on your clean goods.
If you are using liquid yeast in your recipe you will need to "smack" the packet 1 - 2 days prior to brewing. This will allow the yeast to become active giving you better results when you pitch on brew day. Follow the directions on your yeast packet to ensure the yeast mixes with malt inside to begin activity.
Take inventory and lay out all your equipment and ingredients. You can't go hunting for things when you are working with a timed boil. Also, pop a few of last month's batch or craft brews in the fridge. There is a propensity to get parched while brewing!
Boil
The malt comes in both syrup and dry forms. These are derived from the malting of barley grains. Barley grain itself is used when mashing, an extraction skill reserved for a little later. However, many recipes use certain varieties of grain malt as steeping, or flavoring, grain without the mashing requirement.
If you are using canned malt extracts, remove the labels and soak the can in warm water for about 5 minutes to thin down the syrup.
If you are using flavoring grains such as Crystal Malt, Roasted Barley, or Chocolate Malt you will likely need to crush, actually crack, the grains to expose the inside. Typically, you should bring them up to the boiling point and then remove them, but the recipe should specify. A good way to crack the grain is to use a freezer bag and roll over it with a rolling pin. Don't pulverize, just crack the hulls. The grains can be placed in a muslin straining bag and added to the water.
Bring at least 1.5 gallons of water to a boil. If steeping grains are used, remove them at this time unless directed to do otherwise by the recipe. Stir in the malt extract (syrup and/or dry forms), which contain the fermentable sugars.
Once boiling, hops are added to this mixture, called wort (pronounced wert ). Hops are the flowers off a vine-like plant. These hops give the beer both its bittering attribute, to counter balance the sweetness of the malt, as well as its aroma. Different varieties of hops handle these tasks differently. These two qualities, bittering and aromatic, are controlled by the amount and variety of the hops and when the hops are added to the boil. Bittering hops are generally added for the entire boil, whereas aromatic hops are added near the end of the boil.
As wort reaches the boiling point again, it will want to boil over, so be careful. You can safely bring it back to a rolling boil after this initial "hot break." If you are adding gypsum, a water hardener, add it now.
Continue boiling for the prescribed length of time, typically 45 - 60 minutes. Stir the wort fairly constantly to prevent scorching. If you are using Irish Moss, a common clearing agent (called finings), you will add it during the last 10 - 15 minutes of the boil. During the last few minutes of the boil, add the finishing (aromatic) hops to the wort. The duration of the boil for these hops will determine how strong of a hop aroma, and therefore flavor, your brew will have.