The average all grain brew day generally takes between 4 and 6 hours from beginning to end. Some of the steps have a fixed duration. A 60 minute boil will never take any less time than an hour to complete. There’s no way around that fact. However, there are other areas with the potential to optimize …

Cleaning & sanitization Most of the time involved in beer making is a hands off process as the yeast does its work. A comparatively small portion of time is actively spent on preparing the yeast, wort and, later on, packaging the resulting beer. A good deal of any brewer’s hands on time is …

Newcomers to the homebrewing world will quickly encounter a vast landscape of unfamiliar acronyms and bizarre terminology. When you’re still trying to learn the basic brewing processes, finding your way through the slew of unusual jargon adds its own steep learning curve. Here are a few of the most …

1 – Hot Break Achieving a good rolling boil is an important step in the beer making process for several reasons. First, boiling sterilizes the beer, killing any unwanted bacteria that might be hanging around just waiting to spoil your hard work. Boil off reduces the overall volume, concentrating it. …

There is no question that award winning beers can be made using malt extract as the the basis of their recipe. However, when using extracts, much of the work in converting the grain’s starches into usable sugars has already been done for the brewer. This also means that much of the control over the …

There may be almost as many ways to make beer as there are different styles of beer. While the basic formula is to combine a hoppy sugary liquid with yeast to ultimately produce a fermented beverage, the steps to get there can vary greatly. These different approaches also tend to affect brewing …