How to Brew Ch. 1 Part 1 Breakdown

Let's make this easy.....I'm not going to break down every sentence that this guy writes because this is called a blog, not a book. I'm basically going to go over some important information that I found to be helpful for a guy who has never brewed an ounce of beer on his own. The closest I've ever been to brewing my own beer is when it "brews" in my kidneys. First few pages of the book break down minimum essentials that you will need when brewing. Most of these come in a kit but I'm going to break them down here.

Brewing Essentials

1. Airlock - 2 types - single bubbler or 3 piece. Single is the better option for ease. 3 piece can allow water back into the fermenter.
2. Boiling Pot - 3 gal. minimum - aluminum is best
3. Can opener
4. plastic wrap
5. foil
6. stirring spoon
7. sanitizer - iodophor, starson, final step
8. fermenter - 6 gallon food grade plastic, I'm going to go with a 6 gallon glass carboy
9. glass measuring cup - quart
10. thermometer - 80 deg. F - 180 deg. F - floating dairy thermometer or LCD
11. Hydrometer - measures specific gravity between water and water with sugar. Gauges progress of fermentation by measuring attenuation.

• attenuation - degree of conversion of sugar to ethanol by the yeast

I'm going to skip over specific gravity of typical beer. Basically you need to know the original gravity of beer is between 1.035 - 1.060. Final gravity ends up around 1.015 - 1.005. Alpha acid unit is a unit of measurement that you will probably need to know.

AAU is the unit of measure for hops. You find it by multiplying alpha acid rating of the hop (% value) by weight in ounces.

Example: 2 oz. of 6% alpha acid hop = 12 AAU's


Sooooo I have 4 pages of notes on Ch. 1. I don't wanna overwhelm everyone too early so I'll go over brewing procedure as well as malts and sugars in the next post.