one-day course brewing beer

venue: Hulme Community Garden Centre, Manchester

Beer has a history of at least 8000 years; people probably liked the alcohol but there were other reasons for making beer from grain. This is a course for those out there who would like to learn how to brew beer of the quality produced by professionals. The session will be largely practical but will include a brief overview of the theory necessary to brew good beer from a malt mash. A set of course notes will be provided.

All equipment and ingredients will be provided but students should bring a sterile demijohn or other container (for example, a 5 litre plastic bottle with a secure top) to allow them to take home a quantity of wort for the final fermentation. Brewing can be messy and some sort of protective clothing is advisable.

The course covers:

• what equipment to buy and where to get it
• the calculations necessary to produce a recipe of known alcohol (ABV) and bitterness levels
• malt characteristics and recipe formulation
• how to mash the malt to produce wort of defined character
• hop additions
• boiling and cooling
• cleaning up

The course is run by Chris Holliland of Brewlab.

This course and cider making are run on consecutive days, so that you can do them individually, or have a go at both in the same weekend.

more on homebrewing