Creatively Modifying Recipes for Brewing Beer at Home

Brewing your own beer can either be simple or it can be complex. It all depends on you and what you want to do. If you just want to try the experience you might want to purchase a kit that gives you all of the ingredients along with the instructions. Kits are great but the real fun and excitement comes from brewing your beer from scratch.

There are some key ingredients that every beer has. All beer contains water, sugar, hops, and yeast. Beyond these there are other ingredients that can be manipulated to make your home brew unique.

You should understand each ingredient and what those ingredients actually do. Water is the number one ingredient in beer. You might think that water is water but you should think again. Tap water is treated with chemicals to kill bacteria. Often a large amount of chlorine is used that can actually change the taste. Using tap water in brewing beer can cause the beer to have a funny taste. If you are going to use tap water you should first boil it to remove the chemicals since these chemicals might interfere with the brewing process. The best beer is made with either spring water or distilled water. Spring water offers the freshest taste but distilled water is acceptable.

Sugar is used to produce fermentation. Malted barley is used most often to fill the sugar quota in the recipe. Other ingredients such as corn, wheat, grains, or rice can be used to change the flavor and produce a lighter beer that does not have a strong malted taste. Beginners should stick with malted barley until they fully understand the brewing process. Other forms of fermentation must be used in the correct way or the entire batch will be ruined.

Hops are used in all beer. They are the tiny cone-like flowers that can be found on the hop vine. Hops are used to balance the sweetness by adding a slightly bitter taste. Hops also act as a preservative to help keep the beer from spoiling.

Yeast comes in two varieties. They are ale and lager. Don’t think you can use the same type of yeast that you use to bake bread because it will not work. They type of yeast you choose will play an important part in the taste of the final product.

The type of sugar you use will greatly determine the outcome of the brew. Malted syrup will provide you with that great malt taste while corn syrup will give you a brew that is sweeter and heavier. You can purchase hop pellets in different flavors so you might want to experiment with different ones to see how they can change the flavor.

Various grains can be used to change the flavor as well. Roasted barley will provide a robust flavor with a slight hint of smoke.

Before you start modifying your recipes for home brew you should first do some research about the ingredients and what they do. If you do not use the right ingredients you could ruin the entire batch and lose interest. Home brewing can be fun and can provide you with some great tasting beer but you should always do your research before you modify a basic recipe.

Please check out Beer Maven and Homemade Beer. Cheers!