By To start brewing beer at home, you don’t need much: knowledge of the theory, an understanding of the brew you are interested in, a minimal set of equipment and raw materials, a thirst for experimentation, and the willingness to admit that the first time you will make a complete mess of things. However, if your interest in beer and persistence outweigh the disappointment of initial failures, you may be considered to have everything you need to be a pretty good aspiring brewer.
Even if you are a true beer enthusiast and are able to tell the color of a beer from five steps away in the semi-darkness of the bar, it does not mean that you are ready to start brewing your own craft beer. Brewing is a technological process that requires an understanding of things that the end consumer usually doesn’t think about. Therefore, it is worthwhile to start your journey into brewing by educating yourself.
Beer can be easily brewed at home without any additional devices and special tools, and at the moment there is a range of equipment and ingredients to make the brewing process not only fast and interesting but also simple. Such equipment is mini-breweries, all kinds of sizes and configurations, and the ingredients are different types of malts, hops, hop, and unhopped malt extracts, yeast, etc. There are two main types of home brewing – extract brewing and grain brewing (All Grain).
What is extract brewing?
Let’s start by figuring out what extracts are for brewing. Extracts or malt extracts are already prepared beer wort of different varieties. Malt extract is made by mashing grains using conventional brewing techniques in breweries, producing wort, a hot, sweet, aromatic liquid. The wort is then concentrated and transformed from a liquid with an initial density of about 1,080 into a thick syrup with a density of 1,400 to 1,450. The wort is concentrated by evaporating water when heated. The wort can then be used as a ready-made raw material for brewing beer at home. Barrels Wood offers you more than 150 kinds of ready-made, high-grade, Canadian oak wood barrels.
What is a mini-brewery?
In most cases, a mini brewery is a device for easy and convenient home brewing, which is a container (fermenter) of various forms made of food plastic, or it can even be an oak barren in pricier models, with the volume of 8-23 liters and a system for removing excess pressure, a tap, and a lid. Various models can be equipped with a carbonation unit, pressure sensor, thermometer, a device for bottling, and other useful things that simplify the process of making home beer. Also, breweries can differ in the volume of the brewed product. In mini-breweries, beer is made through natural fermentation. The whole brewing cycle takes about two to three weeks, but it is quite easy to make beer because the yeast does most of the work and the brewer is left as an observer and apprentice, but it is no less fun.
