Wort production is a 2-3 hour process which involves boiling all your ingredients together to form a fermentable mixture with the desired properties of a great beer.
3-5 Gallon Pot
Thermometer
Specialty Grains
Malt Extract
Hops
Fill your pot 3/4 full of water making sure that this is no less than 2 gallons or so, a larger pot makes it easier to make light colored beers but if it is a dark beer feel free to reduce the amount of water used.
Heat the water up to 170 degrees (as a rule of thumb this is just after it starts steaming) and turn off the heat.
In a pourous nylon bag that will alow water in and out but not the grains mix all of your specialty grains and tie off the top of the bag. Drop the bag in your water just as you would a tea bag and let it steep for 1 hour.
After an hour remove your specialty grains and while the heat is off pour in all of your liquid or dry malt extract in and stir it untill it is completely disolved.
Once desolved turn the heat back on high untill the wort begins to boil. At this point turn the heat down very low just to keep it simmering and add your bittering hops to the wort. When you do this the wort may foam so be prepared to turn the heat off completely or remove the pot from the heat source. Once it has stopped foaming slowly increase the heat, regulating it to keep the foam down untill it will no longer foam.
Insertion of your bittering hops marks the start of the 1 hour boil for your wort. Keep the heat applied so your wort is at a rolling boil without foaming for 1 hour.
With 15 minutes left in the boil if you choose to use Irish Moss, which will result in a clearer beer because it causes protiens to coagulate and drop out of solution, add one teaspoon to your wort.
With 2 minutes left in the boil add any finishing hops you are using.
At one full hour from start remove the wort from the heat and crash cool using whatever method you have avaiable. (Remember the pot in ice water method you previously read about if you are just starting!)
Once your wort is cool (hopefully no more than 30 minutes) you are ready to syphon it through your sanitized syphon, into your sanitized primary fermentation vessel. Do this and top off the wort with water to achieve 5 gallons. From here you are ready to pitch your yeast as described under Primary Fermentation.
Last Updated: July 12th, 2006