How to brew
Introduction
This web page illustrates a brewing session that took place in the fall of 2000. I was asked to brew up two 5 gallon batches of beer for the company Christmas party. I thought since I was going to be brewing that much, I might as well brew up two 10 gallon batches, and keep the difference for myself.
This is not a beginners guide to brewing though someone new to the hobby might learn a thing or two. I'm not going to try and explain every possible detail about the brewing process - just the parts that are relevant to this brew session. But knowing me I will digress from time to time... If you are brewing from kits you'll see some new stuff, if you are already an extract brewer you might see what it's like to brew on a larger scale - and if you are advanced you might find this merely entertaining...
I won't necessarily describe both brew sessions, just the first and more 'difficult' Porter since it involved steeping grains. You'll notice from the pictures that I switch back and forth where I try and fill in the blanks.
Here is the story..
By the way, someone was once looking at pictures of mine and said something looked wrong, like the scale was off or something. It took us a while to figure out that the reason is that being a very large person I throw off the perspective. I don't live in a minature house - it just looks that way.... :)
Overview of the process
Other than sanitation and the fact that you are dealing with large volumes of boiling liquids, I consider (extract) brewing easier than baking a cake from scratch. Brewing can be a remarkably forgiving process. a mistake here or there and you may go outside a style range, but you're still brewing good beer.
Mostly, beer consists of only four ingredients: Malted grains, Hops, Water and Yeast. If one were truly brewing "from scratch" you would mash the grains, which is the process of converting the sugars from the grains and then extracting them. This process is way beyond where I was brewing last fall.
I am going to be describing what is known as Extract (liquid) brewing. This type of brewing is where someone else has done the job of extracting the sugars and have produced a convenient form of it in a syrup like consistency called liquid extract. Depending on the type of extract used, it is about the consistency of honey or molasses. If it were condensed down even further into a powder it is called dry malt extract.
Just to make it a little more interesting, this brew session called for the use of adjunct (or steeping) grains. These add body, color and flavor to the beer that is often lacking in the generic extracts.
In very general terms, brewing consists of boiling water, adding the extract syrup, adding hops, waiting, adding more hops, cooling and then adding yeast. Okay, it isn't quite that simple, but that's the gist of it.
Equipment
- Brew kettle: for this scale, my mentor Denny Conn was kind enough to let me borrow his converted Sanke keg which is around a 15 gallon capacity. Nice!
- Wort Chiller (immersion style): for reasons that will be described later, it is important to cool your boiling wort down to temperatures for adding (pitching) your yeast as quickly as possible. Again, thanks to Denny I had access to his chiller. Basically you connect hoses to this thing, insert into your brew kettle and turn on the water. The cold water runs through the coils of copper and absorb the heat from your wort. It winds its way through all the coils then finally exits out another hose. The water never touches your beer.
- Outdoor burner: When I started out I used a 3 gallon canning pot on my kitchen stove. At the time I had a roommate that for some sick and twisted reason didn't like the smell of hops in the house (insanity to be sure!) so I went out and got an outdoor burner. Not only can these things let you brew outside where you have more elbow room, but a lot of models (mine included) can really crank out the BTU's - 170k to 200k are common. What takes an hour or more on your kitchen stove (if it's possible at all) can usually be done in about 10-15 minutes with one of these bad boys. Mine is one of these turkey fryers so with my burner I got a larger pot about 6 gallons in size. I think I paid about $80US for it.
You will notice that in these pictures I am using equipment that you probably don't normally have laying around in your kitchen. That is because I am doing 10 gallon batches, rather than the normal 5 gallon batch. Well, the principle is the same - this session was just on a larger scale.
Ingredients
In a shameless attempt to plug my software product, below is the output from my program called Brew Simple. This is my first recipe formulation and I've since won two awards with it. To be honest I just used the style guidelines and recommendations from Charlie Papazian's The New Complete Joy of HomeBrewing, and adjusted it to my own tastes. (I like a dry Porter with a good bite).
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Recipe Name:Robust Porter Author: M Jarvis of The BrewDomain Page: 1 A generic Porter recipe Comments: My first recipe formulation. 04/03/2000 - this recipe took 2nd at the First Annual Easter Seals Competition, Eugene, Oregon. Yippee!!!! Type: Ale
Ingredients Qty
Details
1 lb Black Patent 2.5 oz Cascade (AA 6.3) Boiling 1 oz Goldings (AA 4.1) Aroma 1
Liquid Ale Yeast
Projected OG:1.050-.060 Projected FG:1.012 -.018 %ABV: 4.9- 5.5 Details: Add Black Patent to 2.5 gal water and bring
to boil. Let
(c) 1999, 2000 Brew Simple Software(tm), The BrewDomain, Eugene, Oregon
USA
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Please note that these quantities are for the standard 5 gallon batch - all were doubled for the brew session I describe since it was for 10 gallons
Tip: One cool thing about brewing is that adjusting a recipe to a different volume the quantities are pretty much linear; a half batch uses half as much of everything - double batch is twice as much etc.
Setup and Preparation
Water
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Although you are supposed to, I didn't pre-boil the water for this session.
I really didn't have any place to store that much water (25 gallons). Actually,
I don't usually bother pre-boiling unless I am brewing a style that is
really light.
Yeast Starter
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I am a big believer in yeast starters - I think you should be too. I
started with a tube (supposedly for 8 gallons) of WyEast 1056 American
Ale, a tube of WyEast London Ale and a tube of WyEast British Ale. Each
had been stepped up once and the British Ale had been split into two. So,
I had two 22oz starters of BA, one 22oz London Ale and one 64oz of American
Ale of total liquid and slurry.
The 1056 was a last minute decision because I wasn't real thrilled with the progress the LA or BA was having as a starter. I'd never used these yeasts before and as far as I could tell they just seemed sluggish and didn't smell quite right, so a couple days before the brew session I picked up the 1056 as a backup.
Tip: always have a packet or two of dry yeast in the fridge as a backup - you never know. When they get out of date you can toss them into the boil as an added yeast nutrient then pick up some more.
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| You'll notice the bottle of grain alcohol. I use it as a sanitizer around the airlocks, in the airlocks and also flame the rims of each container. |
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Sanitation
Just a couple of quick notes on sanitation; I use a wallpaper pan for sanitizing hoses, tubes and whatever else I want sanitized all the time. It works really well - try it!
I use bleach for most sanitizing chores, except for my final sanitation of my carboys where I use Idophor. This is because Idophor is a "no rinse" sanitizer and because I saw Denny do it and that's good enough for me.
Brewing
Let's get started!!! Fire it up!
Remember - this is for a 10 gallon batch.
Fill kettle with about 5 gallons water.
Steep grains
The first brew was my Porter which called for steeping grains. Notice that the recipe calls for actually boiling the grains for 10 minutes which isn't something that you would normally do. This recipe calls for it to extract a further 'bite' from the grains - I've done it both ways and prefer to boil them. I didn't get a picture of this, but just imagine a few pounds of grains in a nylon bag floating around.
It can take a while to heat up this much water, especially if you are like me and worry about scorching your grain bag. It's never happened but I'm still in the habit of gently applying heat during this phase.
As the water comes to a boil watch out for boilovers. Yes - it can happen even without your extract in the water - I've done it before.
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| After 10 minutes of boiling, remove the grain bag. [I'd love to be able to use these grains for making bread or something - anyone have a recipe?] If you aren't going to use them for anything else, they make great compost. |
Remove from heat
Turn off the burner before adding your extract. The stuff will quickly settle on the bottom of your kettle and with the heat on the risk of scorching is pretty high.
Add extract
With the heat OFF, pour the extract into the kettle.
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Bring to boil
After topping up with water to full volume (10 gallons + approx 15%)....
You will notice that a foam forms over the surface of the liquid in your kettle - this means you are getting close to boiling. I don't know all the specifics but basically this foam will trap heat which is why boilovers can happen so darned quickly. If you are watching your thermometer you will notice that your liquid doesn't actually boil at 212 degrees F - it's more like 222F or so. The foam usually starts forming around 170F. Use it as a sign not to wander off and do other chores - there'll be plenty of time for that later.
Add bittering hops
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| Ah yes - the first hop addition... |
An ode to hops
Hops! Sweet wonderful hops!
Glorious in their taste
The Sirens' call of their aroma
Take me away oh Lupulin!
Okay, so once in a while I get a bit carried away when I think of hops.....
In general, there are three hop additions one would make to a brew - bittering, flavor and aroma. A fourth would be dry hopping for an in-your-face hop aroma, but I won't demonstrate that here. In fact, for this recipe I only use the first two since hop aroma usually isn't a factor with the Porter style.
Hops come in 3 forms - whole, pellets and plugs. I've used all three but tend to prefer whole hops for no other reason than it is what I'm used to using. There is actually a fourth type called hop extract oil but I've never used it.
Some hops are used almost exclusively for bittering, others for their flavor and/or aroma. Some are called "noble" hops and are considered to be the "best" or "classic" flavor/aroma hops.
The idea behind hops is to balance the flavor of your brew - sweet vs bitter. The sugars you added of course make it sweet - the bittering you add with these hops brings the flavor back towards the middle. It is the balance of sweet vs bitter and the types of ingredients used that make each style unique.
With the bittering hops, we are extracting nothing more than the oils in the Lupulin gland of the hop flowers. It's like boiling a tea bag for a long time - you get a very very bitter tea. Little if any of the hops flavor is going to come from using them as bittering hops. Note that a full volume boil will extract more hop bitterness so take this into account when looking at a recipe to be used in your own setup.
Boil
There is a lot to be said about boiling, but I'll spare you all the details..... In general you want to boil your wort for at least an hour. There are several reasons for this but in general it helps with hop extraction, helps to generate break material and sanitizes the wort.
You want to maintain a very vigorous boil but not so violent that you risk a boilover. That is, unless you want to sit there and watch your kettle for an entire hour. I wouldn't recommend using a lid to cover, though I did for this session. I have a really large tin or aluminum snack tray that fits nicely over the top rim of the keg. I can get away with it because the design of the kettle allows steam to escape through the handles of the keg.
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| After getting the burner set just right I then start to sanitize the carboys that will be filled later. Here you can see that I am recycling my sanitizer (idophor) by pouring from one to the other. Since in the end I am making 20 gallons (four carboys) I didn't want to deal with that much liquid, so I filled one, let it soak a while, poured it into the next carboy, cover the last one with foil, repeat. |
After 45 minutes....
Okay, here's where it gets interesting. Pretty much all at once I want to add my Irish Moss, sanitize the immersion chiller and add my flavor hops. I usually add things to the kettle in that order. So after adding the irish moss I insert the chiller into the kettle. In this picture you can just see the end of a wire coat hanger which is across the opening of the kettle. I use that to suspend a thermometer in the wort so I can check on my cooling status. [Nowadays I have a digital that is pretty much instantaneous so the coat hanger trick is history]
Add flavoring hops... Just dump them in - stir well
Chill baby chill
At the end of the boil you want to get your wort down to yeast pitching temperatures as quickly as possible. I look at it as a race between my Good Yeast versus Evil Bacteria and Bad (Wild) Yeast. Wort is an environment that is perfectly suited to growing bacteria, so you know they're out there..... watching...... waiting...... those little scum!
The sooner you pitch your yeast the better, so you better cool it quick. Also crash cooling helps form what is called "cold break" which will fall out of suspension in your wort and help clear your beer later on.
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| Adding the immersion chiller prior to end of boil |
With the immersion chiller in place, I hooked up the hoses and let 'er rip. Caution - the water exiting this system is very hot! I stir about every 5 minutes or so to help disperse the cooled wort; this is a compromise to stirring constantly which would help cool it faster. The trouble with that is that then you have your wort uncovered that much more during the cooling process. I like my method but your mileage may vary.
Fill the carboys
[Tip: Please note that all my carboys have handles on them for safety]
This series of pictures shows the process of filling the carboys. One problem with doing 10 gallon batches is that you really can't safely move the kettle around, even after cooling - it is one heavy son-of-a-gun. The nice thing is that the design of the kettle saves you from doing so. What you can't see in these pictures is that on the inside of the kettle at the other end of the outlet valve is a nipple with a stainless steel mesh tubing attached to it to act as a screen. So instead of having to pour the wort through a strainer you just have to empty the kettle into your carboys since the screen and hops act as a very nice filter system.
Also I have included some pictures here of the second batch I brewed that day. During the second boil I had knocked the SS filter off the nipple so didn't really have any way to strain out the hops [I had carelessly left my strainer hanging on a hook unsanitized so I couldn't use it...] The outlet valve got pretty plugged up so here you will see that I resorted to getting as much flow as I could through the outlet, and also siphoned the wort out with my usual racking cane and hose combo.
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| Starting a siphon.... |
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As you can see here my Porter volume didn't work out quite
right. After adding the yeast I topped off with plain old tap water.
I made quite a mess with all the foam running out the top of the carboys, but one of the benefits of brewing outside is cleanup is just a hose length away! |
Install blowoff
After I have sanitized and rinsed my blow off tube(s) they are just inserted into the top of the carboy. This picture only shows two set up, but you should have seen it when all four were together! It looked like some sort of half assed fussion reactor or something.....
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| Before I went out and spent a whopping dollar on a spray bottle, I used to sanitize my stoppers by applying grain alcohol around the edges..... Now with the spray bottle I just give it a squirt after sealing and from time to time after that when I happen to think of it while walking by. |
Ferment
Here is where we let mother nature take the driver's seat. At this point there isn't much we can do for the beer other than maintaining a consistent temperature and keeping it out of direct sunlight. When someone is new to the hobby this is where they start all the worrying. My best advice is this: Don't! There is nothing you can do now but wait.
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| Waiting for the fermentation |
Criticize Charlie Papazian all you want, but there is one quote from his book that is rather profound (besides relax - don't worry, have a homebrew...). I've found the following to be true for a lot of things in my life, not just with brewing:
"Worrying is like paying interest on a debt you might not even owe" -- Charlie Papazian
Secondary
The idea behind a Secondary conditioning period is to accomplish several things: complete the fermentation, get your beer off the original yeast and trub, clarify your beer and age your beer. This is not to be confused with lagering though they seem similar.
This is a simple process - just rack your beer into a sanitized fermenter, install an airlock and give it anywhere from one week to a couple months, depending on the style (my Raspberry Stout did 4 months). I give my beers a minimum of two weeks secondary, but that's just me. I'd recommend at least a week to ensure complete fermentation.
This is one of those issues that also seems to get new brewers all worried - to secondary or not. I've never brewed a batch that I didn't move to secondary so to me it just isn't a problem - I always secondary condition my beers no matter what the style. Is it necessary? Probably not, but I'll keep doing it.
Keep in mind a couple of things about racking your beer: one is that yes, you are exposing your precious brew to contamination, but on the other hand, if your sanitation procedures are up to snuff you really don't have a lot to worry about. Also by this point in fermentation the alcohol in the beer helps to sanitize itself.
Dry hopping
If racking to secondary gets new brewers worried - dry hopping drives them into a frenzy! "You want me to what? Just throw a bunch of hops in the carboy? Are you nuts?????" Yep - just throw them in. Hops are naturally antiseptic anyway, plus you already have alcohol to further sanitize them. Of course, you want to inspect your hops for freshness before adding them, but I've never had a problem.
Okay - one time I had a "problem". I got some homegrown hops from a friend and I was a bit dubious about them, so in order to sanitize them I made a strong hop tea and added that instead of the plain hops.
Tip: let the tea cool before adding to the carboy. Everything turned out fine.
Bottling
I like everything about brewing - except for the tedious task of bottling... all that soaking, all that rinsing, all that moving around of breakable objects, stacking over and over, filling, capping, rinsing and storing..... Arghhh! It drives me nuts! My record is bottling three separate batches back-to-back - that sucked.
So, now I keg using 5 gallon cornelius kegs. I have an inventory of about 400 12oz bottles, about 100 22oz bottles, 6 2L plastic soda bottles, a dozen or so Grolsh style and another 20 or so bottles of misc sizes ("growlers"). My pride and joy is the 1 gallon "grolsh" style bottle a girlfriend gave me from the Rogue Brewery - came filled with Shakespeare Stout!! Shoulda married that girl.... [If you would like to read a really nice writeup on what kegging is all about, take a look at this: kegging
Anyway, bottling can be a chore - no doubt about that. Let me tell you how I do it.
Move the batch to be bottled into position first - that way it will be settled by the time you start to siphon.
Since I keep my bottles clean all the time, I just give them a short soak in a bleach solution and set them aside without rinsing. I spot check about every other one for dirt deposits just in case. I think of this as a 'mini soak' in that they remain wet with the bleach solution for quite a while before I rinse them.
I use a saucepan to heat about a pint of water to boiling, then add my priming sugar. Typically I use 1/2 to 3/4 cup corn sugar (dextrose). I'm not a big fan of too much fizz so I tone down my carbonation levels. I think most brewers go for 3/4 to 1 1/4 cup sugar. Careful though - too much sugar can give you what are called "bottle bombs" where the pressure gets so great that the bottles just explode. Even scarier is that they can set off a chain reaction - it's like having a grenade going off in your house. Make sure your beer is fully fermented before bottling and you should be okay.
[Side Note] Priming Sugars: until I started kegging, I usually used corn sugar though I also liked using dry malt extract (DME) or honey. I don't care what anybody says - I CAN tell the difference and I'll take the Pepsi challenge any time. I reserved using DME for my ESB recipe but there isn't any reason you couldn't do it with just about any style.
Want a little challenge? On your next bottled batch - bottle 1/2 with corn sugar and 1/2 with DME and see if you can tell the difference. Most likely the DME takes longer to carbonate and the end result is a 'creamier' texture because of the residual malt character of the DME. Corn sugar gives you a 'cleaner' finish. Both work well, I just happen to prefer drier tasting beers so I use corn sugar.
At the same time, I count out into another saucepan the number of caps I will need, adding about 6 just in case (you will inevitably drop one or two on the floor, and you'll be too busy to pick it up, plus it's now unsanitized). Then I cover with water and bring to a boil for about 10 minutes, then turn off the heat. Don't worry about them being too hot to use - by the time you need them they will have cooled down quite a bit.
I cool the priming solution and then pour it into my sanitized bottling bucket. Then just siphon your batch on top of it. As always, avoid splashing your beer. This is called Batch Priming and has the advantage of thoroughly mixing the priming solution evenly throughout the beer without having to resort to stirring - a contamination risk.
Take the phone off the hook.
As the beer is being siphoned I start rinsing the bottles that have had a wet bleach solution on them for a while now. I don't believe in filling them while in six pack or other containers since spillage would just make a mess of the cardboard. On the other hand I run the real risk of the domino effect if one tips over - it's your call.
After the racking is complete I cover the bucket and move it the higher position. Then I lay down some newspaper and start lining up my bottles. I try and fill any larger bottles first, working my way down to the 12oz size.
I get funny looks when I show up at a party with a two liter plastic bottle of my beer. People just aren't used to seeing beer in that sort of package. Then they taste it and become believers. Plus, one 2L bottle pretty much equals 6 12oz bottles, so they are that much less hassle when bottling. And yes - they can take the pressures of carbonation very easily.
I start a siphon using the "fill with water" technique that is much easier to do than to describe. For bottling, first I rinse my spring loaded bottle filler and set it aside. I take my racking cane from the sanitizing solution and rinse it. Then the same with the hose. Then I attach them together and rinse the inside by holding the hose between my index finger and thumb in a sort of "okay" signal, placing this under the faucet and pressing my fingers up against it to sort of force the water through at a higher pressure. I let the water run out the racking cane for a few seconds, release from the faucet and let it flow out the hose, repeat this again, then fill both racking cane and hose completely.
Now comes the hard part: getting the bottle filler on this thing without losing any of the water. The nice thing about siphoning is that you can practice all you want using just water....
Tip: Having Pink Floyd cranked up on the stereo helps a great deal with the bottling process. <smile>
So then I walk this three piece contraption over to my bottling bucket, put my thumb over the hose end and lower it to about my waist. I insert the racking cane and at the same time lower the filler down to the floor into a cup for something that I've placed there. I start the flow until I get a good two seconds or so of beer coming out, then insert into my first bottle. Repeat about 50 times if you are using 12oz bottles. Sometimes I have the caps nearby and place one on top after I fill a bottle, but that seems to be more trouble than it's worth since you have to balance them when you move them to the capper location - just too much bother and I have yet to have an infected bottle.
Be careful of your breathing, don't sneeze or cough and put the pets elsewhere in the house.
As it starts to get low I take one of those "snake" style flashlights that have the rubberized handle, bend it into a "U" shape and use it to tilt my bottle bucket back a bit so I can get the maximum amount of beer out. I like this thing since the rubber handle won't slip around on the table I stand my bucket or carboys on.
Chances are you won't get the exact 53 12 oz bottles that make up a 5 gallon batch and the last one will be a 'low fill'. Drink it.
Then the next fun step is carefully moving them to the kitchen counter where the caps and capper await. After they are all in place I just cap them, rinse them, dry them then store them. I have a closet in my hallway that is my beer cellar and works nicely for that initial 5 day period where you want to give your yeast a viable environment to start the carbonation process.
Depending on a lot of factors, it will take anywhere from two weeks to a couple months for your beer to be fully carbonated. I've had wheat beers ready in a week, and a porter (using DME) took two months to become 'ideal'. Relax, try one after a couple weeks and weekly thereafter - it's neat to see the beer flavor change over a short period of time....
Kegging
I'm not going to go into much detail here, other than to say kegging is so much easier than bottling that I just shake my head in wonderment at myself for not starting sooner. I strongly recommend you move to kegging as soon as you can.
Judging and Competition
Think your beer is any good? Want to learn how to correctly evaluate a style of beer? Then competition is where it's at my friend.
A couple of years ago I wanted to learn more about beer evaluation so asked if I could sit in on the judging at a brew competition. Well, one thing led to another and before I knew it I was judging at that same competition. Kinda scary in a "I am clueless" sort of way... I was glad to find out though that my judging scores closely matched the other judges, so I knew I was in the ballpark. I have been at times working towards BJCP certification, but I doubt it is something I will ever achieve - that's a BIG commitment....
One interesting thing I discovered about judging was the fact that my fears of being so critical of beers would lessen my enjoyment of beers. That just hasn't been the case, at least not with my beers or those of other homebrewers. I do tend to be critical of commercial beers though because I know what they are capable of.
Until recently I never hung out much with other brewers so I could only compare my brews with commercial products. I thought my beers were pretty darn good, my friends thought they were really good, but I finally decided to "put my beer where my mouth was" (or something like that) and enter a competition.
A year or so ago we had the 1st Annual Easter Seals competition and the judging was to be done by the professional brewers in our area. Instead of the usual format they just judged the 32 (?) or so beers as a group, all styles, at once. Sort of like a "Best of Show Only" contest. Well, I was completely taken by surprise to find out my own formulation of a Robust Porter took 2nd place. Not bad for a beer that I didn't really consider to be my best!
Well after that I hooked up with a fellow local homebrewer, Denny Conn, and he has been my mentor pretty much since then. We got to talking one time and he suggested that I enter a couple of beers into the Lane County Fair in order to beef up the number of entries and try and build excitement in the beer category. As it happened I had five different beers all bottled and ready to go, so into the contest they went. Here's the bragging part - all five took awards - one 1st place, two 2nd place and two 3rd place ribbons. Again, not bad for something done pretty much on a whim.
I hope I don't sound arrogant when I say this, but I really don't need am award to tell me my beers are good - I already know that. I can tell when a beer doesn't measure up. But I have to admit that getting some validation and ego points felt pretty good. I'll probably continue to enter the county fair but I don't see myself sending brews off to some far away competition. But then again, there is the State Fair.. hmmmm... :)
I guess my point is this: if I can do it - so can you. You will get really great feedback on your beers and if you score a ribbon or two then you have some ammo to justify your brewing obsession with your significant other... <smile>
Go for it!
Further Reading
An absolutely great website with an incredible amount of information is available thanks to a gentleman named Alan McKay at www.bodensatz.com... I strongly encourage anyone to check it out.
There is a free (though he asks for a well deserved $5 contribution) online book put out by John Palmer available at: www.howtobrew.com
Another great place to get information is by asking other homebrewers (and a few pros) in the usenet group called Rec.Crafts.Brewing. If nothing else you can lurk there for a while and learn a LOT and post a question when you feel ready. Trust me - you won't find a friendlier place on the net and newcomers are always welcome. Email me at: matt at brewdomain dot com