Homemade Beer
This is my own, lazy, recipe to homemade beer.
I call it Frank 'N Steiner, because I vary the ingredients quite a lot. But this is one I made earlier.
Preparation
Put the hops in a very large pan (I use a jam making pan) or 2 large ones.
Add 5 ltr water. Bring to the boil and boil for around 15-20 minutes, until you have a strong smell and the colour of the water had changed.
In the meantime, sterilise a fermentation bin and other equipment, like spoon and sieve.
Put all the barley malt extract in the fermentation bin, use around 0.5 ltr hot water to rinse out the jars. Add the brewing sugar on top (at this stage I've experimented with half sugar and half malt extract, which gives a deeper flavour).
Sieve the hop water into the fermentation bin, press the water from the hops using the back of a spoon and discard the hops. Stir well until the sugar is dissolved.
Add 4 more litres of cold water.
Measure the gravity with a hydrometer. It should roughly be 1.030.
Measure the temperature, this should be lower than 23C.
Now add the yeast and stir lightly. Put the lid on the fermentation bin.
Put in a warm place and leave to ferment for 1 week letting the air out every other day.
The gravity should now be 1.000, if not leave for a few more days to ferment and check again.
Sterilise your bottles and put one level teaspoon sugar in each bottle.
Put the beer in the bottles using a syphon and leave to ferment further.
The beer will be ready to drink after around 10 days, but improves with flavour if you can leave it a bit longer!