Stove Top Brewing Instructions

HOW TO STOVE TOP BREW

S.I.T
To brew successfully, you must always SIT.
SANITISE: all equipment and surfaces must be clean and sanitised. Us a good sanitiser and follow the instructions. A no-rinse sanitiser will make it a bit easier.
INFORMATION: Have all the info you need on hand, and record your brew day down for future reference. Make sure you have all equipment ready as well. The last thing you want is to be running around trying to find something or find out how something is done.
TEMPERATURE: Temps are essential in any brew. From mashing to fermenting. Ensure you can maintain suitable temperature control and monitoring through all stages of your brew.

Equipment
For Stove Top Brewing, you will need at least one large Cooking Pot to hold approximately 5-7 litres and a stove. You will be heating your liquid for a few hours, so depending on your stove, ensure you have enough fuel.
Other equipment needed:

• Strainer for grain
• Paddle for mixing
• Thermometer
• Wort chiller
• Hydrometer
• Steriliser
• Fermenting vessel with a bubbler airlock
• Bottles, Caps and Capper, Priming Suger

This is the very minimum you need, but make sure you have everything ready on brew day.

1 - Heat your strike water
Heat your required volume of water to a temperature that is slightly higher than required for the mash temperature. When the grain is added, it will drop the temperature a few degrees to achieve your desired mash temperature.

2 - Mash In
Add your grains to the strike water and stir to start mashing. This is converting the grain starches to fermentable sugars.

3 - Allow to Mash for 60 minutes
This is to activate the enzymes and convert grain into sugars. This is important to produce a good wort.

4 - Straining
Remove the grains (grist) from the wort. Use a strainer to get as much of the spent grain out as possible. Do not throw the grist out yet, as we need it for the next step.

5 - Sparge
Rinsing the grains with some water to rinse all the sugars left in the grain. Generally, 1.5 times the volume of water used for mashing is used for sparging. This can be done by putting your strainer over the wort and pouring your heated sparge water over the gris.

6 - Boil
Raise the temperature of the wort to a rolling boil. We can now start adding hops for bitterness, flavour and aroma.
Hops added at the start of the boil create bitterness.
Hops added about 15 minutes before the end of the boil add flavour
Hops added at the end of the boil add aroma

7 - Chill
At the end of the boil, it is essential to cool the wort quickly. You can make an ice bath or use a copper wort chiller.

8 - Ferment
Putting the cooled wort into the fermenter and pitching the yeast, monitor a constant temperature to achieve the best results. Keep the fermenter out of direct sunlight, preferably in a dark space. The yeast will convert sugars into alcohol and release carbon dioxide (CO2). Make sure you have an airlock system in place that will allow the CO2 to escape.
Allow the yeast to work by monitoring the activity in the airlock. If it’s bubbling, you have active fermentation. When it stops bubbling, it indicates it is nearing completion, and you tap off a sample to take a gravity reading. Fermentation times vary with different yeast strains and the temperature at which they are fermented, but 10 days would be an average time.

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9 - Additional Hops
You can also add hops after about 10 days, and checking your gravity reading is 1.015 or below. Place hops in a muslin bag (or hops tea bag) into a cup of boiling water and soaks them for a few minutes. Add the contents of the cup, including the tea bags, to your fermenter. These hop additions add a delicious aroma to your beer and are best added late in fermentation. Allow them to soak in the fermenter for 2-3 days. Check the gravity reading and if it remains constant for 3 days then proceed to bottling.

10 - Bottle
At the end of the fermentation process, it's time to bottle. Add some priming sugar to each bottle to achieve secondary fermentation which in turn carbonates the beer. This is called bottle conditioning and takes about a week at room temperature and two weeks somewhere cold. Keep the bottles preferably somewhere dark and away from sunlight while conditioning. ​