Footie, Hockey, Board Games & Beer

So to make beer there are four essential ingredients: water, fermentable sugars (traditionally malted barley), hops and yeast. These ingredients are processed and combined according to a recipe. Given the right conditions the yeast will convert the fermentable sugars to alcohol, CO2 (Carbon Dioxide), and the taste that we know as beer. The beer is then bottled and, depending on the type of beer being made, aged from a week to three months. There are three standard methods to making beer and they are ranked in order of complexity: Basic- Malt extract - a "canned" beer kit. Basically a can of pre-hopped malt extract where you add water and stir. Intermediate - Malt extract/Grain - Made with unhopped malt extract, hops, grains and yeast. The grains are steeped in warm water and this water, plus the malt extract is added to the wort which is then boiled for an hour. For most recipes both boiling and finishing hops are added. A little more work but results in a much better beer. A...

I'd asked for the beer brewing starter kit for Christmas in 2007 and after almost 3 years of it sitting and gathering dust I finally decided that it was time to brew my first batch of beer. What made me suddenly decide that the time was right? I think that it was the "are you ever going to make beer with that kit I got you for Christmas?" questions from my loving partner, and the need to get off my ass and finally do it! After all it was something that I'd asked for. So I looked at what I had...and it was an interesting array of beer making paraphernalia. The basic kit that I had came with the following items: closed primary fermenter (white plastic 30 litre food grade bucket with a 3 cm hole drilled in the lid) 23 litre glass carboy hydrometer - used to test the alcohol content of the beer test jar syphon rod hose and clamp airlock and bung sanitizing powder big spoon instructions Along with these things I also got a basic 23 litre canned beer kit...in this case it w...