Drew Beechum - The Everything Homebrewing Book: All you need to brew the best beer at home!

THE
EVERTHING
HOMEBREWING
BOOK

Dear Reader,

For most of the 5,000-plus-year saga of people and beer, the beer you drank was the beer you brewed. Everyone drank beer. Everyone was a homebrewer.

Over the last several hundred years weve handed off our beer to companies with their own thoughts on what wed like to drink. Driven by profit over taste and tradition, they reduced beer to a narrow commodity, differentiated more by mascots and ad slogans than taste.

In the 1970s intrepid men and women woke up to the idea that beer wasnt just the pale yellow sparkling soda foisted on them by a handful of brewers. Beer could, they found, have substance and taste. Scouring old brewing texts, traveling to beer culture capitals, cozying up to brewers, and experimenting endlessly, they unraveled the lost art of making real beer at home.

Today, if you can make a pot of soup, you can make beer. I started on my kitchen stove with my stockpot and within three weeks cracked open my very first bottle of beer. Ten years later, I still get the same thrill pouring my late st.

So how about it? Are you ready to take back your suds?

Welcome to the EVERTHING Series!

These handy, accessible books give you all you need to tackle a difficult project, gain a new hobby, comprehend a fascinating topic, prepare for an exam, or even brush up on something you learned back in school but have since forgotten.

You can choose to read an Everything book from cover to cover or just pick out the information you want from our four useful boxes: e-questions, e-facts, e-alerts, and e-ssentials.

We give you everything you need to know on the subject, but throw in a lot of fun stuff along the way, too.

We now have more than 400 Everything books in print, spanning such wide-ranging categories as weddings, pregnancy, cooking, music instruction, foreign language, crafts, pets, New Age, and so much more. When youre done reading them all, you can finally say you know Everything!

PUBLISHER Karen Cooper

DIRECTOR OF ACQUISITIONS AND INNOVATION Paula Munier

MANAGING EDITOR, EVERYTHING SERIES Lisa Laing

COPY CHIEF Casey Ebert

ACQUISITIONS EDITOR Katrina Schroeder

DEVELOPMENT EDITOR Brett Palana-Shanahan

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Hillary Thompson

Visit the entire Everything series at www.everything.com

THE
EVERTHING
HOMEBREWING
BOOK

All you need to brew the best beer at home!

Drew Beechum

Copyright 2009 by F+W Media, Inc. All rights reserved.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced
in any form without permission from the publisher; exceptions
are made for brief excerpts used in published reviews.

An Everything Series Book.
Everything and everything.com are registered trademarks of F+W Media, Inc.

Published by Adams Media, a division of F+W Media, Inc.
57 Littlefield Street, Avon, MA 02322 U.S.A.
www.adamsmedia.com

ISBN 10: 1-60550-122-0
ISBN 13: 978-1-60550-122-2
eISBN: 978-1-60550-730-9

Printed in the United States of America.

J I H G F E D C B A

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
is available from the publisher.

This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional advice. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought.

From a Declaration of Principles jointly adopted by a Committee of the
American Bar Association and a Committee of Publishers and Associations

Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book and Adams Media was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed with initial capital letters.

This book is available at quantity discounts for bulk purchases.
For information, please call 1-800-289-0963.

This book is dedicated:
To my lovely Amy, who endured the endless beer facts, simultaneous
move, and book. Now wheres that beer I promised to make you?
To my mom, my sister, and my grandmother, who fostered my bookish
ways and somehow knew Id end up writing one of my own.
To the fine folks of the American Homebrewers Association
for their encouragement and support.
To the members of the Maltose Falcons Homebrewing Club, for their mentoring,
advice, years of beer (both good and bad), and being silly enough to have
elected me president more than once.
To homebrewers and brewers everywhere for being generous and inquisitive.
There are no secrets in brewing; only truths we havent shared yet.
And finally, to you, the reader for taking a step to better brew days for you.
(To your significant others, I apologize for leading you down the primrose path.)

Contents

Acknowledgments

Thank you to the following folks for reviewing and making this book better: Derreck Bourdon, Rob Coffey, Matt Crill, Mike Dietz, Charlie Essers, Bill Herlicka, Sven Kinsey, Jonny Lieberman, Alex Macy, George Mahoney, John Palmer, MB Raines, Paul Schultz, and Jamil Zainasheff.

Extra pints to Derreck for helping review, tweak, and enter a number of recipes, and John for his tremendous help with water chemistry.

On the recipe front, thank you so much to my fellow brewers for lending their recipes. Without their help, the book would be far more one-sided. Great brewers share and help others learn from their successes and failures.

Thank you to Gina and Katrina for sheparding this book from a jumbled mess of stuff upstairs to a real book.

And lastly, a big thank you to John Daume, owner of the Home Beer Wine and Cheesemaking Shop in Woodland Hills, California, for starting my brewing career.

Top 10 Tips for Homebrewers:
Novice to Pro

1. There are no bad batches, just less successful ones. Even a less successful one can inspire great ideas.

2. Beer happens! Mankind brewed beer for thousands of years without understanding what they were doing!

3. Brew constantly. You learn with every batch! When you have enough beer stockpiled, throw a party with friends or take the breathing room to brew bigger, bolder beers.

4. Have patiencetime fixes many problems. You dont have to worry about selling your beer quickly, so squirrel it away and visit the beer at a later date.

5. Take risks: Its only five gallons and you may just surprise yourself.

6. Support your local homebrew shop. You may find cheaper prices online, but your local store can provide support and rescue you when things go terribly wrong.

7. Know your local brewer. The professionals have been there and done that. They are a valuable source of knowledge. If youre nice, you might even get yeast and grain from them!

8. Be proud of your brew, but be humble too.