Brew #001: Wheat Beer

This is my first attempt at home brewing beer in 20 years. We have a shopping mall just five minutes away from home and conveniently there is a home brew shop there!

I already had a plastic fermenting barrel, and a large stainless steel pot, so all I needed was a plastic fermetation lock, a liquid malt extract kit, some bottles, caps and a capper.

After reading up about it on the internet, I decided to buy a Muntons home brew kit. Muntons is imported from the UK and has a good reputation for producing good flavoured beer.

I decided to boil the 18L of water a few days before I needed it, so I could let it cool down to room temperature. Boiling it helps remove the chlorine and improve the flavour of the finished beer.

I boiled 2L of water, added the pre-warmed tin of LME (liquid malt extract) and then let this simmer for 10 minutes, before dissolving 1kg of brewers dextrose into the pot. I have also bought a long plastic spoon which is good for keeping this mixture moving in the pot, to avoid the sugar from burning on the cooktop element.

I poured this mixture into the 15L of water already in the fermenting barrel and gave it a good stir.

The last ingredient was the sachet of yeast which came with the kit. I decided to pre-activate this by adding it to 100ml of boiled water which was warmed in the microwave to about 40C. Adding 2 teaspoons of dextrose to the yeast helps it get a headstart. After 20 minutes you can see the activity of the yeast. It froths up and smells great. I poured this into the fermeter and closed the lid with the air lock filled with boiled water.

The next morning, I could see through the translucent barrel, that lots of froth had formed on the top of the wort. The airlock wasn't bubbling and later on I discovered that the gasket on the lid wasn't forming an airtight seal.

Six days later, I tested the wort with a hydrometer and it was ready to bottle. Fortunately I had 15 x 750ml glass 'quart' bottles, a dozen glass 330ml bottles and some 2.5 litre Coke bottles, so I bottled it, added 2 carbonation drops to each bottle and then capped them with a handheld capper.

After two weeks of storage, I chilled a few of the bottles and tasted them. I was pleasantly surprised! It was quite drinkable.

After two more weeks it certainly tasted okay. I enjoyed the work involved and the satisfaction of being able to drink my own beer. I'd definately be trying another brew.