Preparing the Ingredients

Before you begin brewing, you will need to make sure that your ingredients are ready. Some ingredients must be prepared ahead of time, so read this section carefully. For more information on any particular ingredient, see the Beer Ingredients page.

Preparing the Ingredients for the Beginning Homebrewer

Most people brew their first batch of beer from a prepackaged beer ingredient kit. This means that the ingredients will be chosen for you, and most pre-treatment steps will already have been done for you; for example, any specialty grains included with your recipe will already have been milled.

However, there are two ingredients you still need to pay special attention to: water and yeast.

• If your tap water comes from a city supply or you have a water conditioner, you may want to take special steps to keep salt, chlorine or chloramine out of your beer. The simplest solution is, if you are unsure about your water, to buy six or seven gallons of bottled spring water (not distilled water) for brewing your first batch.
• If your kit came with a smack pack of Wyeast liquid yeast, you should activate it by breaking the inner package a few hours to a few days before you brew.
• If your kit came with dry yeast, you should consider proofing it sometime on your brewing day.

Choosing the Ingredients

Most home brewers begin brewing from ingredient kits put together by home brewing stores or companies. Once you understand a little about the ingredients used in brewing and how they interact, you can easily create your own delightful and unique home brew recipes. Many people use one of the many hundreds of published recipes for great tasting beers that can easily be found on internet web sites, in brewing forums, and in books and magazines devoted to home brewing. One of the best resources online for beer recipes is the Homebrewtalk Recipe Database

Another tool utilized by many modern brewers is brewing software. Programs such as ProMash, Qbrew, Brewsmith and Beertools allow users to formulate recipes with instant IBU/SRM/OG/etc. feedback, perform all the necessary calculations, and keep track of their ingredient inventory. Advanced homebrewers interested in formulating their own recipes will find these programs invaluable.

Preparing the Yeast

There are two types of {{ #if: | Main article: [[Yeast|]] | Main article: Yeast }} used by home brewers: dry and liquid. Dry yeast is easier to work with so it is often recommended that new brewers use dry yeast for their first few brews. The downside to dry yeast is that there are fewer strains available and many beer styles require special yeast that are only available in liquid form. Many brewers use liquid yeast but keep a few packets of dry yeast on hand in case it is needed on brew day.

To prepare dry yeast: 1) sanitize a small glass vessel, 2) warm some water to 95-105 degrees F, 3) add warm water to the sanitized glass vessel, 4) add contents of the yeast packet to the water and cover with aluminum foil. After 15 minutes you should notice that the yeast have begun to swell and should smell like rising bread. Once the beer is in the fermenter, the contents of the vessel (yeast and water) can be pitched.

To prepare liquid yeast it is necessary to make a starter.

Preparing the Water

{{ #if: | Main article: [[Water|]] | Main article: Water }}

Preparing the Grain

{{ #if: | Main article: [[Grain|]] | Main article: Grain }}

Milling the grain

In order to make the starches, which are contained in the grains, accessible for conversion and extraction in the mashing process the malt and adjuncts (if necessary) need to be milled. The goal is exposure of the starch while keeping the husks intact as much as possible. Keeping the husks intact is necessary since the husks are used to form a filter bed during lautering. Excessive shedding of the husks can also lead to increased husk tannin extraction during mashing and lautering.

Evaluating the crush

Advanced: Conditioning the malt

Preparing the Hops

{{ #if: | Main article: [[Hops|]] | Main article: Hops }} For most beer styles, your hops do not need much in the way of preparation. However, there are a few special cases where the hops may benefit from pre-treatment.

Aged Hops

{{ #if: | Main article: [[Aged hops|]] | Main article: Aged hops }}

Some Belgian beers are brewed with hops that are aged to drive away any fresh hop aroma or flavor, leaving only the hops' preservative qualities. These hops are rarely available to homebrewers, but see Aged hops for information on simulating this effect with fresh hops by using an oven to drive off the essential oils.

Preparing Other Ingredients

What do I do next?

Once your ingredients are ready, move on to the next important preparation step in the beer brewing process: Cleaning and Sanitation.