Recipe for first brew from all raw materials

Ok so, my name is Jeff and I've been a Peace Corps volunteer in Ukraine for the past year and a half. The beer here is terrible and my girlfriend and I have been wanting to brew some of our own which we did at home before we left.

After many struggles we've accumulated the raw materials, pictured. What we are looking for now is a basic recipe / instructions for malting the barley that we have. And then one for brewing with the raw hops flowers. (We're planning on doing BIAB,) Can anybody give us some tips on getting started?

Also we're pretty new to brewing, we did a few extract brews a year and a half ago and thats it. Plus our setup here is pretty rudimentary, it is going to be hard to regulate temperatures very accurately throughout the whole process. We really need some sort of step by step recipe / instructions that we can follow easily.

Also any simple DIY brew keg and fermenter ideas would be great.

Here are the materials we've got,

Nottinghams ale yeast http://www.danstaryeast.com/products/nottingham-ale-yeast ,

and Muntons Active Brewing yeast https://bellsbeer.com/store/products/Muntons-Active-Brewing-Yeast-%2d-6-grams.html

The grains look great. How much do you have?

Unfortunately, those hops aren't really usable. The real essense of the hop that is used in beer is the oils, and once your hop flowers start to brown like that, the oils are all but gone. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

It's OK for the hops to be dried, but they need to still be green. Can you come up with some fresher hops?

If you can't come up with better hops, there are some other herbs/roots you can use to bitter beer that may be available where you are, so don't lose hope!!! You're gonna make this beer!

Jeff, you don't mash hops, you mash the barley. That is assuming the barley has been malted (sprouted and dried). The hops look too old/dried/brown to use, but if the barley is malted and you want to take a chance you could always cook the barley in double the volume of water at around 150 degrees and strain out the malt (or brew in a bag of some sort) and boil with the hops and see what you come up with when you add the yeast at a cool temperature. Guesstimation on temperature probably won't kill you, but won't help make a great beer.

TopherM said:

The grains look great.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the encouragement, would you be able to guesstimate about what kind of barley we have? We can get as much of that stuff as we need.

And sorry pdxal, I meant malting the barley. Which I've been reading about through the wiki and stuff and trying to figure out how I'd do it. It's seeming a bit complicated and maybe a bit of a struggle with the materials we've got. But we're determined, for better or worse.

My girlfriend is pretty sure she has a connection on some fresh hops. Would it be best to wait to harvest those until close to the day that we brew?

If your only option is harvesting the hops then you will either have to harvest and store the hops (they can be frozen) or brew at a time when the hops are ready to harvest. As for malting, I've never done it. All I can say for sure is the grain is moistened and allowed to sprout and at a certain point heated to stop the sprouting. You will want to heat them dry to do this because you don't want to wash away the goodness you're trying so hard to make. I wonder if heating them in a closed offset grill or oven would work. Is there no mail order source for malted grain? It has many more uses than just brewing, so check agricultural sources as well.