One of the best things about traveling is the absolutely unexpected situations you find yourself in. The more you fight the circumstances to stay in your comfort zone, the more the problems you are bound to face.
My beer brewing guide has little to do with the philosophy I just preached. But to stop beating around the bush, I learnt the art of home-brewing with the help of three American colleagues at work: Liana, Ben and Chris.
1. After getting all the ingredients and tools in place, you start by softly crushing the barley grains in a crusher. Remove the husk and boil the grains in water at a specific temperature for a specific time as per the recipe of the type of beer you want to make.
2. After the boiling the mixture, remove the spent barley grains, and filter the dark water.
3. The pellets of hops are added at this stage to counterbalance the sweetness of the grains. The hops are the masalas of beer, and gives it the bitter taste.
4. With the aid of counter flow chiller, the hot wort is quickly cooled down and then poured into the container.
5. Transferring the room temperature wort to the container is the first step in the primary fermentation process. Yeast must be added now. The quality of the yeast determines whether it will be a bottom sedimentation or top sedimentation. After the yeast is sprinkled, the container is sealed air tight, and a one way opening is made on the cover of the container, so that the carbon dioxide can escape from the fermented liquid, even if the air outside can’t get in.
6. Why is carbon dioxide produced? The wort that we have already contains sugar. When you add yeast to that wort, you are putting yeast microorganisms in a place where it can thrive because there is plenty of nutrition available for it in form of sugar. The yeast eats the sugar, processes it and produces carbon dioxide gas which escapes from that container.
7. After leaving the container in a fermentation chamber for 15 days, we take it out. Now is the time for secondary fermentation. The liquid is filled with dead yeast and some yeast which has gone into a dormant state. We filter out the yeast, put some spices or herbs in it for flavour, and then add some yeast again for secondary fermentation. Then we bottle it and put it in fermentation chamber again for two weeks.
8. Beer is ready. Serve chilled!