- Kit Beer Brewing
- Partial Mash Brewing
- All-Grain Brewing
This is the process of using a canned product that has typically been boiled and hopped and reduced down to a malty syrup that you simply rehydrate. I sometimes refer to this as “cordial beer” as it is basically just adding a can of extract, some sugar (dextrose actually) and lots of water.
This is a great start as it allows you to firstly obtain all the basic equipment, to get a feel for sanitation of your brewing kit as well as the process of fermentation and bottling. The most popular and widely available kit beer in South Africa is from Coopers in Australia.
You can check out some pictures and a quick write up of my first kit beers.
This is the next step up from kit beer brewing and requires one or two additions to your equipment inventory, but fortunately not too much as it is still possible to store this safely in your apartment without anyone tripping over it.
This process allows you much more freedom and prepares you for all grain brewing in that you get to ditch the can in favor of actually “mashing” some real malts and adding some malt extract to make up the difference in fermentable content. This allows you to produce 20-litre batches with minimal actual malt and using basic equipment on your stove-top. This is also a good introduction leading to all grain-brewing as it teaches you the process involved with mashing your milled grain and also introduces the process of “sparging”.
Here is my experience with partial mash brewing when I made an epic Oatmeal stout thanks to the guys over at beerlab.co.za.
The main difference between Partial Mash and All-grain brewing as that there is no addition of Malt Extract meaning that all the fermentables are from the milled grain that you mash. This is the real way of brewing some good beer and should be the eventual end-goal of any brewer – although to be honest sticking to partial grain is also acceptable.
With all grain one does require some more high-end equipment if you wish to do anything larger than five or ten liters at a time. If you are happy to stick within these constraints you can use exactly the same equipment as you would for partial mash with the exception of having to purchase a smaller fermenter if you wish. I am quite happily pumping out 4.5ltr batches every other weekend with the addition of only one more piece of kit which is my glass carboy from beerguevara.com.
Look out for the write ups on some of the all grains I have done.