Upgrading to a 5-gallon System

Greetings Alehounds! Alemonger here.

So, I promised you last time that I'd tell you about upgrading to a 5-gallon homebrewing system. Upgrading your equipment and your batch size can have a huge effect on the overall quality of your beer. After about nine or ten batches with the Mr. Beer kit for homebrewing beer, I realized that I was in this hobby to stay, and that it was time for bigger and better equipment. I did some research and some talking to my local homebrew guy (yeah, we became pretty good friends!), and I learned that five gallons is sort of the standard homebrew batch size.

I searched around and settled on a homebrew equipment kit very much like this one, which includes most of what you need to make some excellent beers from ingredient kits. This kit includes the Fermtech Auto Siphon, which makes transfers from the fermenter to the bottling bucket a simple task. It's also got a brewing book, 6.5 gallon primary fermenting bucket with lid, bottling bucket with a spigot, fermentation thermometer, bottle filler, 5ft of 5/16in flex vinyl tubing, hydrometer, bottle capper, bottle Brush, 3 piece airlock, and sanitizer.  You may want to pick up some Beer Bottle Caps as well.  The great thing about a kit like this is that you can further upgrade your equipment and improve your beer later on without replacing any of what you already have.

The first few beers I made with this kit were just as easy to make as the ones I did with Mr. Beer (See my Homebrew Beer Recipes page), but were of far better quality because of the larger batches.

Now, I tend to prefer hoppy beers over malty ones, so I picked up a Muntons Gold India Pale Ale Home Brew Beer Ingredient Kit from my local brew shop. Like the Mr. Beer kits, this is a pre-hopped malt extract kit in two cans and a packet of dry yeast. The process goes like this:

-"Wake up" the yeast by pouring it into a small sanitized container (a coffee mug will do) with some lukewarm water and a teaspoon of sugar. Set this aside for later;
-Sanitize your primary fermentation bucket (VERY IMPORTANT!);
-Pour the contents of the two cans into the bucket. I recommend soaking the cans in some hot water first to soften the malt syrup and make it pour a little easier;
-Pour boiling water--about two gallons or a little more--into the bucket on top of the extract;
-Top off the remaining volume of the bucket to the five gallon mark with cold water;
-Check the temperature of the wort to see if it is within the zone tolerated by the yeast (this can be found on the yeast packet or in the kit instructions). Set the bucket aside to cool if necessary;
-Measure the sugar content with the hydrometer (see the instructions included with it). This can take a little practice!
-Record the measurement someplace you won't lose it. You're measuring Specific Gravity, but in this case, this measurement is called Original Gravity, or O.G. It will help you later to determine your beer's alcohol content. Now would be a good time to get a notebook and start a Beer Log if you haven't already done so!
-If your wort is cool enough, pour the yeast mixture from step one into it, and cap the bucket tightly. Place the airlock with a little bit of water in it into the hole on the top of the bucket. Set the bucket aside, preferably someplace cool and dark and out of the way.

Almost as easy as making jello, huh?

After a day or two, you may notice the airlock bubbling rather vigorously--this is completely normal!  When the airlock stops bubbling or slows to one bubble every minute or so, take a measurement with your hydrometer. When this measurement reads the same on two consecutive days, your beer is ready to bottle.

You may want to bribe a friend with beer to get him or her to help you out on bottling day. Wash and sanitize some bottles. About 50 12-oz. bottles will probably do, but you may want to do a few extra, just in case!  You can either use plastic PET bottles as I mentioned in another post, or buy/reuse amber glass beer bottles. If you're using glass, make sure not to use twist-off bottles (Coors, Bud Light, Bud, etc.), but only use the kind where you have to pry off the caps (Sam Adams, Bass, etc.). Transfer your beer to the sanitized bottling bucket using the Auto Siphon (this is called racking), and mix in the proper amount of priming sugar indicated in the kit instructions. Attach the bottle filler to the spigot on the bottling bucket (this step is easier if you place the bucket on a table with the spigot hanging over the edge. Use the bottle filler as the kit instructions state to fill your bottles, and then cap them tightly with the bottle capper if using glass bottles, or plastic caps if using PET plastic bottles.

Put the capped bottles in a cool dark place and leave them alone for a week or two, then chill and enjoy!