The All-Extract Weizen

First official leg of the “Sandra Teaches Herself Homebrewing Using Online Tutorials” journey. New title is in working progress….

The most basic of basic methods to brew, the all-extract brewing method. So basic, I had never heard of this method before. One could say due to how prestigious pretentious homebrew communities have become, no one would own up to an all-extract recipe but I digress. I thought the box recipe method was simple and relatively easy to follow, sans bottling, but this method takes the cake. 

This basic of all methods had a simple recipe to boot. A hefeweizen, or German wheat beer, weizen for short. The recipe and brew method were short and sweet, so Weizen made sense. When I mean simple and short, I mean three ingredients simple and short. Liquid malt extract, hop pellets, yeast…and technically water, but that’s a given. 

I gave myself an entire day for this so I wouldn’t feel rushed. Jake and Leinie were off in Fort Collins with friends whom I would join that evening. I set out all the ingredients, yes all three four, water included. I sanitized the equipment and set up the recording devices (read: my laptop and phone). Spoiler: the video recording was the most difficult and time consuming of the whole ordeal.

Step one: crack a can of beer and take a sip, check.

Step two: boil one gallon of water (store bought, filtered - if beer is 90% water, the better the water, the better the beer. Right?), check.

Step three: add liquid malt extract (aka beer syrup), check.

Step four: add hop pellets (aka beer herbs), check.

Step five: boil for half an hour while enjoying your beer from step one, check.

Step six: cool wort in an ice bath, check.

Step seven: transfer to carvoy and pitch yeast, check-sorta. This sucked, and made a mental note to always have Jake around to “vigorously shake” the gallon of liquid in a heavy glass container.

Step eight, ferment….

Yep, it’s that short and simple. Full transparency, it is me so obviously it didn’t go perfectly smoothly. Having been enjoying my beer amidst waiting for the batch to boil I needed to pee and therefore missed the initial boil and it boiled over, oops. I also didn’t read the thermometer close enough and had thought I had over cooled the wort in the ice bath and emptied the sink only to find out it was actually still too warm. However, I had used all my ice in the initial ice bath, so cooling took a lot longer in just moderately chilled water. Despite the rookie mistakes, I ended the brew with some built up confidence and excited anticipation for a “real” batch of homebrewed beer. Also, Jake is not a fan of wheat beers, so I will get to enjoy most of these myself. :)

---

More Homebrewing

---