I want to share my experience of making beer with you. I am sure that you will enjoy the feeling of success when you make your own beer.

First of all, I want to talk about the principle of making beer. This is very simple. After yeast is added to sugar solution, a process called fermentation will start. During fermentation, alcohol and carbon dioxide gas are produced. The resulting solution is called beer. The materials use to make beer are barley, wheat, and hops. Every beer has its own special recipe. Before starting, I would like to tell you that every equipment used should be clean and sterile.

There are eight steps in making beer in total. They are mill grains, mix with hot water, extract sugar solution, boil with hops, add yeast and ferment, filter and store, add carbon dioxide gas, and pack.

First I mill the barley and wheat into smaller particles then mix them with 50 degrees C hot water. The ratio is one part of grains to three parts of water. The mash is mixed continuously and its temperature is kept at 50 degrees C for 30 minutes. Then I raise the temperature to 67 degreesC and it is kept there for another 30 minutes then again raise the temperature to 76 degrees C. During this step the enzymes, which originally inside the grains, digest the starch into fermentable sugar. After the digestion, I extract the sugar from the mash by spraying on it with 75 degrees C hot water. The ratio is one part of grains to five parts of water. I collect the fermentable sugar solution into a kettle and boil it with hops for one hour. Different hops will give different flavor and bitterness to the beer. After boiling with hops, I cool the boiled sugar solution and transfer it into a fermentor.

The next thing to do is to start the fermentation. I add yeast and set the temperature of the fermentor at 16 degrees C. I pass some oxygen gas into the sugar solution inside the fermentor, and this helps the yeast to grow. Fermentation will start gently and alcohol and carbon dioxide are produced. It takes about seven days for the fermentation to complete. I check the alcohol level everyday until it reaches the required level. I stop the process by cooling the fermentor at 1 degree C. After cooling for two days, I discard the yeast and filter the beer into a tank and store at 2 degrees C. Two days storage will stabilize the flavor of the beer, and then I pass carbon dioxide gas into the beer to carbonate it. At this point the beer is ready to fill into bottles or beer barrels. It takes about 18 days for the whole process.