Home Brew Guide Book

Every first Saturday of the month we conduct workshops for first-timers. The charge is ₹ 2,500/- for one person and ₹ 3,400/- for a couple. 

Additionally, we do conduct on-site and web-tutorials for professional wine-makers and those with specific requirements. Fermentation is not only about alcohol. We conduct classes for Kambucha, Kefir, Sauerkraut, Kimchi, pickles, and other healthy food transformations as well. I’d recommend you to browse our recipes and the homebrewing book till classes are back on track.

Home fermentation is your grandmother’s recipe and does not use any shortcuts, chemicals, preservatives, or anything unhealthy. So there is not a store in the world that can even think of beating it in taste and health benefits. It is a probiotic food that not only tastes good but is also nutritious and low on calories. Unlike the packaged food and beverage which is loaded with chemical food colors, preservatives, and stabilizers.

We will guide you on how to change the taste, color, aroma, mouthfeel, and even the ingredients to suit your tastes, health, and nutrition needs. We have a lot of easy to use customizable kits. Also, we put a lot of emphasis on packaging, which will help you make the best packaging in the industry. This will also help you throw an awesome party for your friends and family and boast of your latest hobby.

Fermented food and beverages are natural, healthy, and full of Vitamin B and other probiotic nutrients. They are good for those on a strict diet especially a ketogenic diet or digestive problems. Fermented food help restore the gut bacteria and natural fauna of the digestive system making us healthier, stronger, and with a stronger immune system.

Unlike packaged food, fermentation adds to the taste without any oil, sugar, food colors, preservatives, or chemical essence or any unhealthy additives. This makes homebrew healthier than its commercial equivalent.

During fermentation, the yeast eats away the sugar and adds to the taste. Hence reducing calorie intake and tackling hunger pangs. India is the Diabetic country of the world, and a lot of diabetics are switching over to homemade apple cider vinegar and kombucha as an alternative to soft drinks.

If you have a pre-existing condition or allergies, it is best to consult with your doctor. Fermentation often results in drastically altering the food properties. You can also read about how 8 different types of ayurvedic preparations can be made at home.

You are in a perfect place. We are here to help out hobby brewers to pick up new skills. Our advice would be to spend some time on the recipe section or read the home brewing guide. There are tons of youtube videos and online recipes available to start. Pick the simplest one and try to make a small (one liter) batch. Don’t rob yourself of the pleasure of researching to pick up a new skill and go for instant gratification. We also conduct classes on the first Saturday of every month (starting 6th June 2020). Do attend one or reach out to a friend who can guide you with a trial batch.

The Vedic name Arishtam means freedom from injury/ disease. Our Vedas and ancient literature describe fermentation at great lengths. They detail out ways to extract the essence from the herbs, ensuring that the nectar reaches every cell & rooh (the spirit) of the recipient without being denatured in the process. Western medicine typically boils the herbs to extract its essence and then use sugar syrup to mask its harsh tastes. Presently, homeopathy and many western medicines are altering their recipes to incorporate the tinctures. Like the ‘Vedic Arishtam’, they have discovered that alcohol is a good solvent capable of extracting the medicinal properties most efficiently from the herbs and has an uncanny ability to make the taste more palatable.

If you are following a good lucid recipe and using fresh ingredients then rarely will you end up with a stuck ferment. However, in the unlikely scenario that you do not see any microbial activity even after 24-30 hours, please follow this troubleshooting guide.

Typically it takes 7-10 days to ferment at 25 Degree Celsius after which you can start bottling your homebrew beer or wine.

Excessive carbonation aka bottle bombs usually happens due to a rookie mistake of bottling too early. Use a hydrometer before bottling to ensure all fermentable sugar has been converted to alcohol/ethanol by the yeast before you proceed for bottling. Also carefully weighing the priming sugar is what it takes to control the carbonation (about 8gm per liter).

India Pale Ale is a craft beer that is hoppy and crispy ale. As compared to lagers a.k.a. bottled beer, it is brewed at higher temperatures and is full of hop aromas and is bitter too. To understand craft beers better refer to the beer style guidelines. If you are still perplexed with the jargon used, refer to our glossary of commonly used terms.

Under professional additives, we have tons of fining agents like Bentonite, Isinglass, Irish Moss, and Gelatin that you can use to make your home brew clear. For instructions and dosage refer to this link

Methanol a.k.a. wood alcohol is generated from fermenting wood, pectin, skins of fruits, and distillation. There is a simple WHO-approved test to check for dangerous levels of methanol. The various strains of brewer’s yeast aka Saccharomyces cerevisiae that we stock will produce ethanol by fermenting glucose (grape sugar), maltose (grain sugar) and fructose (fruit sugar). Methanol is a toxic byproduct of fermentation, but its levels are so low that unless you distill your homebrew, you should be safe. If you still want to test for methanol levels, please refer to this document.

So many products around you are fermented: curd, cheese, black tea, coffee, olives, bread, and pickle. Not all fermentation is alcohol.

For centuries, fermentation was the method of choice for the preservation of food, purification of water, and enhancing the taste & nutritional value of the food ingredients. Making alcohol and getting drunk was never the central obsession of society. It had more benign purposes like food preservation in the absence of refrigerator and preservatives.

You can make several probiotic food recipes like pickles, cheese, curd, vinegar, kombucha, kefir, sauerkraut, idli/ dosa batter, or even bread at home which are fermented foods and do not contain any alcohol.

Refer to this link for further details on FSSAI compliance on 0.3% ethyl alcohol permissible limits in your probiotics that you are marketing.

Typically bottled home brew beer has a shelf life of 6 months. However, most home-brew beer is consumed within a week to a month of bottling or kegging. However, some people regularly store homebrew beer for up to 6 months successfully. Beyond this, the beer is still safe for consumption, just that it will not taste fresh. However, a couple of factors need to be taken into account to determine the shelf life.

1. Storage temperature: Beer is like wine, higher the temperature the faster is the degradation in flavors.
2. UV light: Even a couple of hours in direct sunlight can ruin a perfectly fresh beer
3. Packaging: Microbrewery Growlers don’t last 2 days because the beer was oxidized during filling. If you see packaging in proper crown sealed glass bottles or stainless steel kegs, 6-12 months life is easy
4. Oxidation: Once you open the bottle, drink within an hour.

Not more than a few days or max 10 days. Why?

Once the fermentation is over, the yeast dies and settles at the bottom. This yeast then starts breaking down and releasing umami flavors (soy sauce). To counter this, professional brewers brew in conical fermenters. In a conical fermenter, you can remove the dead yeast, and hence the umami flavors from yeast breakdown will not bother you.

Homebrewers, on the other hand, periodically rake their wine and beer from primary to secondary to tertiary fermenters to get rid of the off-flavors from sediments.

Fermentation is probably older than civilization and agriculture. It is a perfectly safe hobby that does not produce any poison or foul smell. When it comes to the safety aspect, follow the 4 golden rules:

1. If the smell is funky, then it is better to discard
2. If you see mold or a white-green-black floating film on top then discard
3. If you are not distilling or fermenting wood or other inedible substances then one need not worry about methanol
4. If the tastes are odd, then discard. Better safe than sorry.

People have been fermenting beer, wines, and ciders for 5 thousand years across the globe with various simple crude setup. A modern kitchen is much more hygienic and hi-tech than the early man’s setup. So if one could do a safe fermentation in a crude setup, then they can do the same in a modern kitchen. So be assured that if a recipe is followed, then a home brew will not make you sick or poison you.

Absolutely! Can you expect a commercial package to shower you with the same love, attention, and care as a handcrafted beverage? Homebrew is a handcrafted jewel in the form of a beer or wine bottle made with utmost standards.

Homebrewers do not use molasses or artificial colors or flavors that are widely used in the Indian IMFL industry. With natural fresh ingredients as input, the output is simply wonderful.

Till 1970, dry yeast was not used commercially for brewing. Most breweries would save a bit of the trub and use it for their next batch. Even bakers would mix a part of their old dough to leaven their new batch of bread. This practice has seen a comeback due to the resurgence of sourdough technique in baking.

Traditional Wine makers throughout Europe would cultivate the yeast biome. They would compost the lees and all the organic residue from the wine making process. This compost is used as a natural organic fertilizer for their fruits and grapes. In doing so the yeast strain that the particular unique natural strain of yeast (which is locally available and isolated) would dominate the biome. The fruits now just need to be juiced and they will start fermenting naturally.

Kveik yeast is also usually harvested and rarely cultured. Traditional households would make special oak rings or towers that they would insert in their brew. The yeast would attach themselves to the wood and this wood would be used to inoculate the next batch.

How to Harvest Liquid Yeast at Home

Today we are going to talk about how to harvest yeast from your old batch. Depending on which school of yeast harvesting you follow, you can either top-crop or bottom crop your yeast. If you are using a conical fermenter, then it comes with a free yeast harvesting attachment. Once you have harvested the yeast, you should wash it. Doing so will get it rid of all the hops and sediments which can lower

You can choose to use fresh liquid yeast by adding some yeast nutrient and making a starter culture. Post that you can:

1. Use the wet yeast as is. Keep feeding it every 3rd day with some fresh wort to keep it alive. Store it in the refrigerator dairy section (4 degrees) so that its metabolism is reduced. Best if you are planning to reuse the yeast within a month.
2. Make slants using glycerine. This will allow you to freeze them and store for ~2years
3. Dry the yeast. Especially Kveik. The home-dried yeast typically have a shelf life of 90-180 days.

How To Harvest and Wash Yeast for Homebrewing

Watch this video on YouTube

There are plenty of fruits that can be poisonous and dangerous to our health if eaten improperly. Certain fruit peels are difficult to consume and at times are also inedible and poisonous. For example, peels of avocados, honeydews, melons, lychee, pineapple and the likes are considered as inedible. Talking about being poisonous, mostly it’s not the peels rather other aspects like seeds of the fruit, ripe or raw fruit, etc. that one needs to worry about. For instance, seeds of apples, apricots, cherries contain amygdalin, which after coming in contact with acids in human digestive system becomes cyanide. Similarly, cashew fruit, almonds, etc. should never be eaten in their raw form.