Easy Homebrew for When the SHTF or During Hard Times

Don't get me wrong, there are FAR better tasting recipes out there.

This recipe is the one my dad taught me and his dad taught him. They used to make it back on the farm when my dad was a boy.

It's simple to make and is composed of easily-obtainable, easily-storeable ingredients. In a POST-SHTF situation, you and your neighbors would be glad to have it.

Like I said, this isn't the best tasting brew and it won't impress the connoisseurs out there. It tastes something like Old Milwaukee.

Materials:

5 gal bucket
Towel
String

Ingredients:

1 can of malt syrup
1 5 lb bag of sugar
3 packets of yeast
5 gallons of warm water

Combine all ingredients into the 5 gal bucket and stir well. Try to get as much of the sugar and malt to dissolve as possible.

Cover the bucket with the towel and wrap a string around it to hold it on. This keeps the bugs out.

Put the bucket in a warm place. Right in your house is fine. You want it to stay about room temperature.

Leave it alone for 2 weeks.

After 2 weeks, take the towel off and you will see that the brew is foamy and smells like beer/bread. Stir it well and try to get everything that didn't dissolve before to dissolve this time. Cover it back up with the towel.

Leave it alone for 2 weeks.

After these two weeks, the brew is technically ready to drink but you'll probably want to further refine it. Here's how:

Filter the brew through the finest cloth you have. It will still be cloudy. That's fine.

Put the brew in sealed airtight containers (Mason jars are best). Leave for another week or two. This carbonates the brew and clears it up to some extent. Don't bother the containers of beer during this time. You'll see that whatever yeast remains will settle to the bottom in a thin white layer and the rest will be golden and clear.

After you've let your containers carbonate and settle, then they're ready to enjoy.

When you get to the bottom of the jar, just be careful not to stir up the thin white layer. But even if you do, it's fine.

A little bit of tweaking in your future batches will eliminate the sediment.

***ETA***

To clear up a little confusion:

1. You obviously can't add exactly 5 gal of water to the bucket. Just add your other ingredients first and then add warm water up to about an inch or two from the top (to allow some room for foaming). Then cover with the towel and tie it off.

2. Homebrew is not hard liquor. It's beer (or technically "malt liquor" in this case). It has about 6% alcohol give or take. I am judging that by my countless hours of drinking everything from light beers (4.5%) to malt liquors (6%) to high-gravity lagers (8-8.5%). So I haven't tested it scientifically.

3. This recipe calls for plain old bread yeast (like Fleishman's or similar). You don't need brewer's yeast. You might have a better product with brewer's yeast though. I don't know.

4. For the asswipes claiming that homebrew has no use in a "hard times" situation, consider the following:

Beer is nutritious and has lots of calories.

It gives you something clean to drink.

It gives you morale after working your fingers to the bone all day.

It helps relieve pain.

It helps you bond with your neighbors.

It's a good item to trade or use as a gift.

It helps promote human reproduction.

IT'S NOT ABOUT GETTING "DRUNK". But it can be nice to have that option when it's time to celebrate.

Last Edited by simultaneous_final on 02/22/2013 12:54 PM