Monday, August 3, 2009

Homebrew Ingredients

Using the Right Homebrew Ingredients Simplifies the Brewing Process
By Peter Waterman


Making your own beer at home is one of the most favorite hobbies today in North America, Canada and big parts of Europe. There are millions of people who have discovered the many advantages of home brewing and the fun of the activity. In this article we look at the ingredients you need to start brewing yourself and you will learn how simple and cheap home brewing can be.

With the right ingredients for a homebrew the process is quite simple and because the complete methodology can be found, described step by step, at online websites and in offline books and manuals it has been made possible for everyone to start out with this great activity.

There are many rewards in making your own beer at home, both in terms of fun as well as finances. Brewing your own beer is cheaper then buying it and you could even sell your beer and earn some decent money, but first you can enjoy the learning process to make beers to perfection. And because there are many different types of beer with different ingredients you can do a lot of testing and tasting with your friends and family.

What Homebrew Ingredients Do You Need.

Before you start thinking about launching your own brewing business, you need to know and gather all needed items. And you can do that in more then one way but lets first look at what you need.

Malt barley is one of the the main things that goes into making beer, it is the same as the grapes you use when you make wine. You can't make beer without it.

Brewing sugar and Yeast are two other main ingredients that you can't do without to have it ferment. The yeast uses the brewing sugar and converts it into two chemicals, carbon dioxide and of course alcohol. There are different types of brewing yeast and the one you should use depends on your recipe.

Hops are the homebrew ingredient that makes the taste of the beer a slightly bitter as beer should be and why we all love it so much. Hops are a specific vine's flower and they are absolutely needed to brew a fine beer.

The last but certainly not least important item of the home brewing ingredients is water. Most people forget that water is in fact the main ingredient of beer and it has a great influence on the end result of the taste of your home brew. If you have bad tasting water it could completely destroy the taste of the batch.

There are two ways you can go with these main ingredients. You can buy them all separate from each other and find a recipe that you can use for the right amounts. Or you can buy a home beer kit or package. In these beer kits all of the above homebrew ingredients are included and you can buy them for different types of beer like for example lager, ale, stout or drought beer. For beginning brewers we would recommend that you buy beer kits, because they come with excellent manuals and you can be sure that your first batch will be a tasty one brewed with the least effort and cost.

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