Jul 19 2010
A Few Important Considerations Relating To Make Beer At Home
Making lager at home is a great pursuit if you like lager and think highly of a good brew. Learning how to make beer at home allows you to control the flavors in your beer; you get to decide exactly what the end product is going to taste like. This is astounding if you like going to lager holidays and can discern the variations in flavour between assorted lagers. You’re likely learning to make lager at home because you’re a lager fan who would like to take your drinking experience a step further.
An important component of learning how to make beer at home is learning about your ingredients. Your ingredients provide the taste, color and body of the beer. Poor ingredients will give you poor lager. So don’t be tempted to skimp on your ingredients when making your home brew.
You will need malt when you start to make beer at home; it is one of the most important ingredients in the process. It supplies the lager with the color, body and flavour. The malt has fermentable sugars in it that will supply the sweetness that’s required ; you will balance out the sweetness with hops. Hops are used to provide bitterness and counter the sweetness of the malt. There are various sorts of hops for different tastes, from awfully sour to certain flavours and smells.
The differing types of grains you use when you make beer at home also significantly changes the color and flavor of your beer. It may surprise you that you can use things like oatmeal, rice and corn to flavor your beer. Oatmeal will give the beer a smoother texture while rice and corn will the body and color of your beer. For a dark and richer lager you may use malted barley that’s brought to elevated temperatures. Use masses of just about burnt malt barley and you can get a robust.
Yeast is also a very important part of lager, without it the brewing process would be impossible. Yeast produces the fizz and buzz of lager, without it you would get a flat liquid that tastes hideous. The kind of yeast you purchase also influence the lager you produce. A liquid yeast culture will give you interesting flavors but it does not store as long as dry yeast cultures. It also is more expensive than dry yeast cultures. There are many dry yeast cultures that will help you get the flavor you want, so look around and ask around to get the yeast for the lager you would like.
