1. Heat 5.3L of water in the pot to 75°C. Tap water is perfectly acceptable and you can use a kettle to heat the water up first. The temperature is key though. You'll need to be within 1 or 2 degrees and being too hot is worse than being too cool.

2. Put the malted barley into the mash bag and place into the hot water, stirring so all the grains are wetted in (This is ‘mashing in’). Keep an eye out for any dry lumps of malt in the bags and break them all up. Chuck in any flour / dust that's leaked through when you put the malted barley in the mesh bag.

3. Leave for 1 hour - stirring around every 10 to 15 mins - the temperature of the mash should be 69°C but will drop slightly through the hour.

4. After the hour is up heat the mash up to 75°C being careful not to burn or scorch the mesh bag. Once at temperature, remove the mesh bag (containing spent grain) and go on taste it, sweet as isn't it?

5. Put the mash bag into a bowl and pour over it 1L of hot water - less than 75C - and stir and squeeze the bag to rinse off any sweet wort stuck to the spent grain. Pour this into the pot. You can discard the spent grain.

6. Put the heat on the pot and bring to the boil - careful as the wort heats up it may froth up and spill over. Once it’s done this once it won’t do it again - this is called the ‘hot break’.

7. Add the 10g of Challenger hop pellets and keep the heat on boiling for half an hour.

8. After half an hour add 15g of Challenger hops and keep on boiling.

9. Let it boil for another 30 minutes then turn off the heat.

10. Add 1L of cold water to the pot and then plunge the pot in a sink of cold (maybe even iced) water to cool the wort. You'll see 'clouds' of protein form in the clear wort as it cools.

11. Whirlpool the wort by stirring round and round to help increase the cooling and to ensure the hops and protein break settle into a  little pile of debris in the middle of the base. That way you can avoid transferring them over to the fermenter.

12. Clean and sterilise the fermenter and the tubing using the sterilant - this is very important. Infection of the beer is at its most likely now.

13. Once the wort has cooled to 20°C and this can take half an hour or more depending on how cold the water is, syphon it into the fermenter. Leave as much of the hop and protein in the bottom of the pot as you can. It's likely to be around a litre or more of this material. It's called trub and will also settle out in the fermenter, but it will give a bitter green tang to your beer if it makes its way into the finished bottle.

14. 'Pitch’ (add) the yeast sachet. 

15. Fill the bubbler with water and insert into the hole in lid of the fermenter. You may need some ptfe tape or similar to make a seal. Keep the fermenting beer somewhere at room temperature for about 3 days. You should see a yeast head form (Krausen) and then fall and the bubbling speed up and slow down.

16. After the Krausen has fallen leave for another 3 days or until it stops bubbling more than a bubble a minute. After this, if possible, put the fermenter somewhere cold for a day or two. In your fridge if it will fit. This isn’t essential, it just helps the yeast settle out quicker so you don’t transfer as much into the bottles. Any yeast transferred over will settle out to the bottom of the bottles.

17. Sterilise the syphon equipment and the bottles. Then add 2.5g of sugar per 500ml of beer to each bottle.

18. Transfer the beer into the bottles leaving as much of the yeast and hop debris (trub) as you can in the fermenter. If you use the tap to fill run off the yeast and trub to waste and fill the bottles with the clearer beer. 

19. Leave the bottles for about a week at room temperature - if you have added too much sugar they may burst - the sugar is just for the yeast to produce CO2 to carbonate the beer.

20. Move the beer to the fridge and chill before enjoying. Best to decant out of the bottles as there may be yeast sediment in the bottom.

21. Wash it all, get some more malt & hops (www.maltmiller.co.uk) and make some more.

22. Welcome to life as a brewer.

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Contingency plans:

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Contingency plan 1 - no massive pot

•Use the biggest pot you can find and heat as much water as you can keeping in mind you've got to add 1.5kg of malt that will take up around 2L of space in the pot. The difference between 5.1L and the amount of water you can fit in you can top up into the fermentation bucket later. have enough boiled and cooled water ready to do this.

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Contingency plan 2 - no thermometer

•The night before put 1.6L of water in the fridge.

•Boil 3.5L of water in your pot. turn off the heat and add the cold water from your fridge. This should be around 70C now and you're ready to go to Step 2.

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