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 process, equipment and the ingredients that are required.
Hopped Kits
At the simplest end of the spectrum are pre-hopped extract kits. These kits are sold with everything necessary to produce a batch of beer. Two popular brands are Coopers and Mr. Beer. These kits include a malt extract syrup which has already been hopped for the type of beer being made. This type of extract is commonly abbreviated as HME to indicate that it is a hopped malt extract. The non-hopped varieties are typically noted as DME or LME depending on whether they are in liquid or dry form. Also included in these kits sometimes labeled as a booster or enhancer is commonly an additional source of fermentables used to increase the alcohol content and overall body, mouthfeel and head retention of the beer. The packs usually contain some combination of dextrose, maltodextrine, dried malt extract, or corn syrup powder.
The steps required typically amount to boiling a small amount of water for mixing the dry ingredients and then diluting everything to the correct volume with the remaining water before adding the yeast. This is a very quick and easy way to produce beer and is where many people choose begin their brewing hobby. The work of extracting the sugars from the grain and essential oils from the hops in the correct proportions has already been done for you. One downside to these kits is the relatively limited number of styles of beer that can be produced with them.
Taking out the Hops
The next step up is to start with unhopped liquid or dry malt extracts and add your own hops. This opens the door to having more control over the hop bitterness, flavor and aroma in your beer. You can also choose to come up with your own combinations or rely and the wide range of pre-chosen kits available on the market. Most homebrew suppliers offer their own selection of kits including many clones of popular commercial beers.
Since you’ll be adding hops to the extract yourself, you’ll also need to boil a significant portion of the water and extract in order to get the bitterness from the hops into the liquid. A common approach is to do what is called a partial boil where only part of the water is boiled with the extract and hops. After boiling, cooling and transferring to a fermenting container, the liquid is topped off with additional cool water to reach the total required volume.
Hop Utilization
There are a few benefits to the partial boil procedure. A typical approach is to only boil 3 gallons in a 5 gallon batch, adding the the remaining 2 gallons directly to the fermenter. Having to handle this smaller volume means that a smaller pot is needed. Also, it’s easier to achieve a boil with this amount of water. Reaching a vigorous boil of a full five gallons of liquid on a typical electric kitchen range will be difficult if not impossible.
The down side to this is that slightly more hops may be required to achieve the desired amount of bitterness. When hops are boiled in water their alpha acids go through a process called isomerization which makes those acids more soluble in water. The concentration of sugar in the water affects how effective the acids are isomerized over time. The higher the concentration of sugars, the less effective it is and the more hops are required.
The affect of sugar concentration means that the amount of hops required for a partial boil may be ten to twenty percent or more than when boiling the full amount of water. One way to counteract this is through a technique known as late addition. In this approach, a portion of the malt extract is not added until near the end of the boil. This keeps the gravity lower and makes bittering hop additions more effective near the beginning of the boil. The trade off is that the late addition of extract will not benefit from any of the carmelization in the kettle as it would have if it were added at the beginning of the boil. This kettle carmelization can provide both flavor and color contributions to the beer.
Getting to Grain
While there are plenty of yeast and hop varieties that can be combined with malt extracts for a range of beers and styles, there are only a limited number of kinds of malt extract available on the market. One way that brewing with extracts can be enhanced is by introducing specialty grains into the brewing process. Prior to adding the malt extract to the water and beginning the process of boiling, a small amount of crushed specialty grains are first steeped in the water.
Typically up to a few pounds of crushed grain are placed into a muslin bag and soaked for 30 to 45 minutes in water that has been heated to the range of 150F-170F (depending on the recipe). The use of specialty grains can be used to affect the flavor and color of the beer. The introduction of specialty grains significantly widens the range of possibilities for what can be brewed and can be used to turn an otherwise dull beer into an amazing one.
Choosing a Method
Some people will choose to start with the simplest methods of brewing and gradually move on to more complex styles of extract brewing before ultimately transitioning to the all grain brewing process. Others may decide that they favor the easiest and least time consuming methods and never move beyond hopped extract kits. Ultimately as long as you are satisfied with your process and the resulting product then there is no need to consider another approach.