How do you make simple homebrew?

Question

My grandpa was from Arkansas an talked about making homebrew..not beer..but something like it....it was easy to make up..

Answer 1

http://www.homebrew.com/how_to/how_to.sh...

You will use extract, hops, and yeast.

But if you want moonshine it is not homebrew. But maybe it is home-shine.lol

Answer 2

For beer, get The New Complete Joy of Home Brewing by Papazian. For wine, get any book by CJJ Berry. Wine is easier.

Answer 3

Pick up the new complete joy of home brewing at your local home brewing supply store. It all starts by supporting local.

Support your local brewer and enjoy better beer

Cheers

Answer 4

As other posters have noted, the two most approachable books for learning how to homebrew are:

Charlie Papazian "Joy of Homebrewing"

John Palmer "How to Brew"

The latter of these two authors has a great website that offers the fundamentals at:

http://www.howtobrew.com/

Brewing a simple beer is simple, follow these steps:

First, I recommend going to a good homebrew store and talking with the folks there about a favorite style.  They'll help you formulate a recipe.  Make sure you tell them that you want a very basic recipe.  They will then guide you towards the following ingredients:

Malt Extract: I recommend the powder extract, but syrups work fine if fresh

Hops: there are a number of varieties and most favor one style of beer over another

Yeast: dry yeasts are the easiest to work with for beginners, but liquid yeast help you control final results

Equipment: the most basic equipment you need will be: a good pot (5 gallons or more preferable), fermenter (1 minimally but 2 if you plan on brewing a beer that needs to age longer), tubing for syphoning, and a bottle capper.  This is your minimum equipment necessary.  There is a whole lot more you could buy to make your brewing process easier...

On your brew day:

1. Sanitize everything that the beer will contact after boiling - the simplest sanitizer is a bleach dilution

2. Bring your water to boil.  Shut off flame and add malt extract.

3. Bring back to a boil (watch for boil overs)

4. Add hops (most homebrew recipes follow the following hop addition schedule: 60 minutes = bitter hops, 15 minutes = flavor hops. 5 minutes aroma hops).  Your hop schedule, however, will be dependent on beer style,

5. Chill the boiled wort.

6. Transfer to a fermenter (normally you add more water at this point if you're trying to keep it simple).  

7.  Add yeast



8. Wait approximately 7-14 days for fermentation to end

9. Transfer to secondary container for clarification of beer

10. Sanitize your bottles

11. Add a little bit of sugar to the beer and then transfer to bottles

11. Wait 2 weeks and drink

Now, there are a whole lot of brewing techniques and variations to the format above.  But, this gives you a bare-bones outline of the brewing process.

Answer 5

Homebrew can be many drinks. Here are some recipes for you:

http://www.tastybrew.com/

http://www.skotrat.com/skotrat/recipes/