Extract Brewing Method

There are many recipes available both on the web and in brewing books, and for your first brew I would recommend you follow one of them rather than trying to work out quantities of grains and malt extract yourself. Once you develop your skills,  you can start looking at formulating your own recipes.

 1. Steeping the Speciality Grains (Optional)

Speciality grains should preferable be put into a muslin or nylon grain bag - it's much easier to remove them after the soak!

Raise the temperature of your water to about 65C and add the bag containing your grains. You should maintain the temperature close to 65C while the grains are steeping. After 30 minutes remove the bag (you can squeeze it gently to allow the water to drain out). Soaking speciality grains is a bit like making tea - if you leave it too long, it will start to get stewed as you extract tannin from the grains, so don't be tempted to go over the 30 minutes.

2. Adding the Malt Extract

Add your malt extract (either liquid or dried) and bring the wort to the boil. Make sure the extract is fully dissolved in the wort by stirring with a brewing paddle or a spoon.

 3. Boiling with the Hops

From this stage, you can refer to the all grain method pages - everything is the same from here on in. Up to this point, equipment does not need to be sterilised, but should obviously be clean.