How to brew all-grain beer
Brewing all-grain homebrew means we don’t use malt extract, but start from the grain itself. In this sense, home production is quite similar to that of professionals in their breweries. The main advantage of working directly with grain is that we can choose which malts we want and in what proportions, in order to obtain a truly unique result. This way we can follow recipes and tweak them.
The process begins with the selection of the malts. It depends on the recipe, but in general we will use a large portion of base malt with a smaller portion of specialty malts and even other grains such as wheat, rye, or oats. The specialty malts and other grains will be key to giving our beer its own character. They will influence the final flavor, aroma, and appearance; that’s why the ratio is crucial. Everything starts with preparing the water or liquor in the kettle (hot liquor tank) at the right temperature.
Once we have disinfected the equipment, we place the mash bag into the vessel that will serve as our mash tun. You can find this type of bag in any specialty store. Next, we pour the blend of malts that we have previously weighed and milled into the bag and stir to break up the grain. We must add the volume of water indicated in the recipe, at the specified temperature and for the specified time. Likewise, we have to follow the manufacturer’s instructions when using a kit. For example, the American mashing method consists of keeping the malt and water mixture at a constant 68ºC for one hour.
Once the necessary time has passed, we remove the steeping bag and transfer the liquid to the boil kettle. In this step we boil the wort and add the hops. Hop additions will vary in timing depending on whether we want them to contribute bitterness, flavor, or aroma. There are three hop addition phases: at the start of the boil (bitterness), 15 minutes before the end of the boil (flavor), and once the boil has finished (aroma). It is therefore crucial to know when to add each hop for the beer we want to obtain. At the end of the boil, we must cool the beer quickly. We can use a plate chiller or an immersion coil in a container with ice and water.
We then transfer the cooled wort to the fermenter. At this stage we add the yeast. After sealing the fermenter, we fit the airlock or blow-off valve. This component allows the CO2 gas generated during fermentation to escape while preventing air from entering. Fermentation time depends on the style, but there’s a simple way to know when it’s finished: if the airlock stops bubbling, fermentation is complete.
The next step is to sanitize the bottles that will hold the beer. After filling them with our batch, we add the necessary amount of sugar (priming) so that it ferments again and thus generates the characteristic carbonation of beer. The final step is to cap the bottles and wait for maturation to take place. We now have our all-grain beer! All that’s left is to let the bottles rest so we can enjoy them.
