Beer drinking is very prevalent all over the world. In Germany where the oldest and the largest beer festival is celebrated in late September and the first week October, hundreds of home brewing enthusiast would crowd into the city of Munich. Home brewing competitions are one of the highlights of this beer festival.
For many people in Germany and the United Kingdom, the annual home brewing competition is part of a family tradition where the art of home beer brewing is passed on from one generation to the next.
Why Brew Your Own Beer
Brewing of beer at home is more like a hobby and is often done on a very small scale. People who are engaged in this hobby just wanted to brew beer for their own personal consumption and not suited for commercial purposes. For many people the home brewing of beer and serving it to their friends during parties and small social gatherings is the climax of their beer brewing activities.
Then again, some people just love the idea of making their own beer and it doesn’t really matter if there are any special occasions where they can serve their creation. Whichever reason these home brewers have for making their own beer, the fact still stands, home brewing is something that both the old and the young have come to enjoy.
The Basic of Home Brewing
Making your own beer is very challenging and a bit complicated at first. Make no mistakes about it, making beer is not like making orange juice where you get to drink your juice a immediately after squeezing the oranges. Making beer takes a little time and some knowledge of chemistry. Why chemistry? Well, making beer relies on chemical reaction between substances so it is important that you know when and where one ingredient should be mixed with the other in order to get good results.
There are only a few ingredients you need to make your own beer. These are water, malt, yeast and hops. Note that beer home brewing is the art of converting sugar into ethyl alcohol and carbon dioxide by yeast through the process of fermentation. Note that yeast as a form of living organism and is present in the air and it is capable of converting sugars from malt into carbon dioxide and alcohol.
The actual home brewing process takes about 9-10 hours and the fermentation or the aging process that makes the beer taste like real beer will take another 20-35 days. If you can’t wait that long to have your beer, you better head for the grocery store and just buy yourself a nice bottle or can of a 21st century brew. You can save yourself from all the trouble but it isn‘t nearly as much fun.
