Before beginning the brewing process, you must first understand the four key ingredients necessary to brew a batch of beer: water, fermentable sugar, hops, and yeast. Each ingredient is integral to the recipe and must be cooked in a certain way to yield a successful batch of brew. Understanding their basic qualities and how each ingredient is meant to react with the others is an important aspect of beer brewing.
Water makes up 90 percent of the brew, so using tasty water makes a big difference. If the tap water at your house tastes good to you, then it is fine to use for beer brewing. If you don't like the way your tap water tastes, then you can use bottled or distilled water instead. If you use tap water, boil it first to evaporate the chlorine and other chemicals that may interfere with the brewing process. Let the water cool before using.

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Malted barley is the ingredient commonly used to fill the sugar quota in a home brew recipe. Some brewers will substitute a percentage of corn, rice, wheat, or other grains to add a lighter flavor to the beer. Beginning brewers should purchase a ready-to-use form of malted barley called malt syrup or malt extract, rather than attempting to malt the grain from scratch, as it is a very complex and touchy process. Using a malt extract will guarantee the fermented sugar is prepared in just the right manner and will act as it needs to throughout the beer brewing process.

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Hops are cone-like flowers found on a hop vine. They lend the bitter flavor to beer that balances out sweetness. Hops also inhibit spoilage and help keep the head the frothy top when a beer is poured around longer.

First things first: Do not use bread yeast for beer brewing! Beer yeast is cultivated especially for use in brewing. Beer brewing boils down to mixing a mash of malted grain often with hops and then fermenting it with lager or ale yeasts. There are two broad categories of beer yeast: ale and lager.

You’ve chosen your fermentables, yeast, sugar and adjuncts. You’ve decided how you want to brew, and whether you’re going to bottle or keg. But maybe you need to make a small batch to test out a new ingredient. Maybe your family has an Oktoberfest party, and you need to make 20 gallons of your famous homebrew to appease the crowd.

Proportional scaling is just what it sounds like. You take the ratio of the new batch to the old, and apply it to the ingredients you’re using. So if you want to brew your 5-gallon batch recipe but only make 3 gallons, you’d multiply all your ingredients by FBAR.

Why settle for someone else’s brew when you can design your own? Whether you’re starting from scratch or taking inspiration from an existing beer, delicious homebrew recipes are within your reach.

Respect your ingredients, set clear goals for your brew, and keep expanding your knowledge of malts, yeasts, sugars, and extracts. You’ll soon be savoring exceptional beers you’ll be proud to call your own.