How To Brew Your Own Beer Recipe

The first preparatory step towards brewing is to gather your necessary

plant together in proper working order, and thoroughly clean. Your plant

or utensils must consist of the following articles, viz.:--A

thirty-gallon copper, two cooling-tubs capable of holding each about

thirty gallons; a mash-tub of sufficient size to contain fifty-four

gallons, and another tub of smaller size, called an underback; a bucket

or pail, a wooden hand-bowl, a large wooden funnel, a mash-stirrer, four

scraped long stout sticks, a good-sized loose-wrought wicker basket for

straining the beer, and another small bowl-shaped wicker basket, called

a tapwaist, to fasten inside the mash-tub on to the inner end of the

spigot and faucet, to keep back the grains when the wort is being run

off out of the mash-tub. You will also require some beer barrels, a

couple of brass or metal cocks, some vent-pegs, and some bungs. I do not

pretend to assert that the whole of the foregoing articles are

positively indispensable for brewing your own beer. I merely enumerate

what is most proper to be used; leaving the manner and means of

replacing such of these articles as may be out of your reach very much

to your intelligence in contriving to use such as you possess, or can

borrow from a neighbour, instead. Spring water, from its hardness, is

unfit for brewing; fresh fallen rain water, caught in clean tubs, or

water fetched from a brook or river, are best adapted for brewing; as,

from the fact of their being free from all calcareous admixture, their

consequent softness gives them the greater power to extract all the

goodness and strength from the malt and hops.



In order to ensure having good wholesome beer, it is necessary to

calculate your brewing at the rate of two bushels of malt and two pounds

of hops to fifty-four gallons of water; these proportions, well

managed, will produce three kilderkins of good beer. I recommend that

you should use malt and hops of the best quality only; as their

plentiful yield of beneficial substance fully compensates for their

somewhat higher price. A thin shell, well filled up plump with the

interior flour, and easily bitten asunder, is a sure test of good

quality in malt; superior hops are known by their light greenish-yellow

tinge of colour, and also by their bright, dry, yet somewhat gummy feel

to the touch, without their having any tendency to clamminess. The day

before brewing, let all your tackle be well scrubbed and rinsed clean,

the copper wiped out, and all your tubs and barrels half filled with

cold water, to soak for a few hours, so as to guard against any chance

of leakage, and afterwards emptied, and set to dry in the open air,

weather permitting; or otherwise, before the fire. Fasten the tapwaist

inside the mash-tub to the inner end of the faucet and spigot, taking

care to place the mash-tub in an elevated position, resting upon two

benches or stools. Early in the dawn of morning, light the fire under

your copper, filled with water over-night, and, as soon as it boils,

with it fill the mash-tub rather more than three-parts full; and as soon

as the first heat of the water has subsided, and you find that you are

able to bear your fingers drawn slowly through it without experiencing

pain, you must then throw in the malt, stirring it about for ten minutes

or so; then lay some sticks across the mash-tub, and cover it with sacks

or blankets, and allow it to steep for three hours. At the end of the

three hours, let off the wort from the mash-tub into the underback-tub,

which has been previously placed under the spigot and faucet ready to

receive it; pouring the first that runs out back into the mash, until

the wort runs free from grains, etc.; now put the hops into the

underback-tub and let the wort run out upon them. Your copper having

been refilled, and boiled again while the mash is in progress, you must

now pour sufficient boiling water into the grains left in the mash-tub

to make up your quantity of fifty-four gallons; and when this second

mashing shall have also stood some two hours, let it be drawn off, and

afterwards mixed with the first batch of wort, and boil the whole at two

separate boilings, with the hops equally divided; each lot to be allowed



to boil for an hour and a-half after it has commenced boiling. The beer

is now to be strained through the loose wicker basket into your cooling

tubs and pans; the more you have of these the better the beer, from its

cooling quickly. And when the beer has cooled to the degree of water

which has stood in the house in summer-time for some hours, let it all

be poured into your two or three largest tubs, keeping back a couple or

three quarts in a pan, with which to mix a pint of good yeast and a

table-spoonful of common salt; stir this mixture well together, keep it

in rather a warm part of the house, and in the course of half an hour or

so, it will work up to the top of the basin or pan. This worked beer

must now be equally divided between the two or three tubs containing the

bulk of the beer, and is to be well mixed in by ladling it about with a

wooden hand-bowl for a couple of minutes. This done, cover over the beer

with sacks or blankets stretched upon sticks across the tubs, and leave

them in this state for forty-eight hours. The next thing to be seen to

is to get your barrels placed in proper order and position for being

filled; and to this end attend strictly to the following directions,

viz.:--First, skim off the scum, which is yeast, from the top or surface

of the tubs, and next, draw off the beer through the spigot, and with

the wooden funnel placed in the bung-hole, proceed to fill up the

barrels not quite full; and, remember, that if a few hops are put into

each before filling in the beer, it will keep all the better. Reserve

some of the beer with which to fill up the barrels as they throw up the

yeast while the beer is working; and when the yeast begins to fall, lay

the bungs upon the bung-holes, and at the end of ten days or a

fortnight, hammer the bungs in tight, and keep the vent-pegs tight also.

In about two months' time after the beer has been brewed, it will be in

a fit condition for drinking.

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