# Home Brewing Beer A kitchen\-counter walkthrough of brewing five gallons of extract beer: sanitise, steep, boil with hops, chill, pitch yeast, ferment and bottle By PETE\! Topic: Food & Drink [Open the interactive Jig](https://ask.jig.com/j/q6dIWjZJ3nze) ## Transcript ### 1. A brewery on the kitchen counter Beer needs only four things: malted grain, hops, water and yeast\. With a big pot, a food\-safe bucket and some bottles you can brew five gallons at home\. Drag the scene to look around\. This guide follows an extract brew: malt extract plus a small bag of steeped grain\. Scroll or pinch to move closer\. ### 2. Clean, then sanitise Wash the gear first, then sanitise everything that will touch the beer after it cools: the bucket, lid, airlock, tubing, test jar and hydrometer\. Wild microbes love cool sugary wort\. The boil sterilises the pot, so the hot side needs only cleaning\. Cleaning removes dirt; sanitising kills what is left\. A no\-rinse sanitiser is the usual choice\. ### 3. Steep the specialty grain Heat about two and a half gallons of water to 150 to 160 degrees Fahrenheit, about 65 to 71 Celsius\. Steep a bag of crushed specialty grain for about twenty minutes, like a giant tea bag, then lift it out\. It adds colour and flavour\. Never boil the grain: that pulls harsh, astringent tannins from the husks\. ### 4. Add extract and boil with hops Take the pot off the heat, stir in the malt extract so it cannot scorch, then bring it back to a rolling boil for about an hour\. Hops added early give bitterness; hops added in the last minutes give aroma\. Watch the pot as it starts to boil\. The foam can rise fast and boil over\. ### 5. Chill it fast Turn off the heat and lower in a copper immersion chiller\. Cold tap water flows through the coil and pulls the heat out\. Fast chilling keeps germs out and helps the beer turn out clear\. Aim for about 65 to 68 degrees Fahrenheit\. An ice bath in the sink works too\. It just takes longer\. ### 6. Transfer, measure, pitch the yeast Pour the cool wort into the sanitised bucket: the splashing adds the air the yeast needs\. Top it up with clean water to five gallons\. Float a hydrometer in a sample: it reads about 1\.050, the original gravity\. Then pitch the yeast and seal the lid\. Pitch only into cool wort\. Above about 100 degrees Fahrenheit, heat kills yeast\. ### 7. Let the yeast work Keep the bucket somewhere dark at a steady 65 to 68 degrees Fahrenheit\. Yeast turns sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide\. The gas pushes out through the airlock, which keeps air out\. Slide through two weeks and watch the hydrometer sink\. From 1\.050 down to 1\.010 is about 5\.3 percent alcohol\. Bubbling alone does not mean it is done: wait until the reading holds steady for a few days\. ### 8. Bottle, then wait two weeks Stir a little dissolved priming sugar into the beer, set the bucket up high and siphon it gently into bottles, then crimp on caps\. The yeast left in the beer eats that sugar inside the sealed bottle, and the gas makes the fizz\. After about two weeks, chill and pour\. About three quarters of a cup of corn sugar primes five gallons\. Pour gently and leave the thin layer of yeast in the bottle\.