fermentarium » homebrew

What you need to know about adding oak to beer

DJ Spiess — Tue, 04 May 2010 04:32:13 +0000

Oak is commonly used in winemaking, but lately there is interest in putting the oak in beer. Oak can give your beer different flavors from vanilla to whiskey depending on the type of oak used.

Oak barrels are lots of work, but you can carbonate the beer at the same time.

Types of oak for your beer

There are many different types of oak. Oak usually comes in three varieties, American, Hungarian, and French. The American oak gives the strongest oak flavor, while French oak gives subtler notes with other sweeter flavors like vanilla. Hungarian oak is in the middle between these two extremes.

Each of these oak varieties can also be toasted to different levels (usually light, medium, or heavy), but I’ve also seen medium-heavy and other combinations of toasting classifications. The darker the oak is, the heavier the oak is toasted. Toasting brings out some of these flavors and changes other flavors. For example, heavy toasting will give more carbonized or caramelized flavors.

Other than the origin and toasting of the oak, the oak also varies on the shape and form of the oak. You do not necessarily need to use a barrel, since your beer will not care where it gets the oak flavor. Each form of oak does have it’s advantages and trade-offs.

Oak Chips

The most common oak additive sold is oak chips. These chips look like wood shavings. They have the most surface area, so they will deliver oak flavor to your beer very quickly. This can be an advantage, or a disadvantage depending on your goals. The other problem with oak chips is they are very messy. You best bet is to use a sterilized bag with these, otherwise you’ll need to find a way to separate the chips from your beer. And don’t make the mistake I did and assume the garbage disposal can chop them into a fine pulp. It can’t.

Oak Cubes

Cubes are also common. The wood cubes have less surface area than the wood chips, so the oak flavor is delivered slightly slower. The advantage of cubes is the cubes are much easier to separate from your beer.

These oak spirals give great flavor and are very easy to clean and reuse.

Oak Spirals

Sprials or staves are becomming more common, but not all homebrew stores have them. Oak spirals are a mix between chips and cubes. The spiral has a large surface area so they quickly provide flavor like wood chips, but they are even easier than cubes to use. There is only one stick you add and remove from your beer. The disadvatage is the spirals are much more expensive than the chips or cubes. You can reuse the sprirals, but they lose their flavor quicker than barrels.

Oak Barrels

Barrels are a mixed bag. The barrels provide the most surface area, but they can be difficult to work with. Barrels can leak, contain bacteria, and are difficult to maintain. Barrels are also expensive. You can however get the most reuse from barrels. Barrels also allow some oxidation, which is usually a bad thing, but in this case it is the flavor you’d looking for.

Used barrels can provide unique flavors. A used whiskey or sherry barrel can impart whiskey flavors to your beer. You do need to be careful with used barrels. A whiskey barrel usually isn’t a problem, but wine barrels must be sanitized before you use it. When you pick a used barrel, make sure it originally housed a flavor you want in your beer.

Ways to add the oak to your beer

You could add your oak to the primary, but I add my oak to the secondary because it’s easier to monitor the oak flavors after the beer has already fermented. You need to taste your beer at different intervals (usually every few weeks) to make sure the oak flavor is where you want it.

Boiling the oak will quickly extract oak flavor into a tea and sanitize the addition at the same time

There are a few ways to add the oak flavor to your beer. You can add the oak directly to the beer, make an “oak tea”, or infuse the oak in an alcohol. Adding oak directly to the beer is the simplest way, and I’ve had good results doing this.

Another way is to make an oak tea. Boil the oak chips covered in an inch of water. Add a bit of the water to your beer and taste it. Continue to add the oak tea until you reach the flavor you’re looking for.

If you are looking to add a bourbon or whiskey flavor, infuse your oak chips in the alcohol of choice for a week. Again add a bit of the alcohol to your beer until you reach the flavor you’re looking for.

The advantage of the second two techniques is you can taste your beer as you add the oak flavor. The first technique requires you to take samples as you go, but it is good for beers which require aging over time such as a barley wine. Allowing your beer to slowly soak in the oak flavor can give it more complex flavors. Beers with shorter aging times, like the IPA, would be better off with the second two techniques.

More Oak Tips

To prepare the oak, do not soak the oak in sanitizer solution. This will just transfer the sanitizer flavor to your beer. Your best bet is to steam the oak chips, cubes, or spirals. Oak barrels require something like Barrel-Kleen, sodium sulfite, or campden tablets.

If you decide you want to use a barrel, make sure it’s a whiskey or sherry barrel. The flavors in your barrel will be in your beer. You don’t want a wine flavor in your beer, so don’t use a wine barrel. (If you’re not sure, pour a bit of a strong red wine in your beer and see what you think).

Personally I recommend you go the cube or spiral route. These have worked the best for me. Barrels are difficult to maintain. Remember the beer doesn’t care where it gets the oak flavor, so it does not matter if you add your beer to the oak (barrel), or if you add your oak to the beer.

Building a recirculating wort chiller

DJ Spiess — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 04:33:01 +0000

I decided I needed to find a better way to chill my beer, so I altered my immersion chiller to recirculate the water.

The problem

This is my recirculating wort chiller in action

For wort chilling, I have always used a counter-flow wort chiller. It worked well and usually reduced the temperature from boiling to about 100 F (38 C). While this was a huge difference in temperature, the temperature was still too warm to pitch yeast.

I also didn’t like the counter-flow chiller because I could never be 100 percent sure the inside of the copper coil was clean. There is no easy way to clean the inside of the wort chiller. I wanted to switch to an immersion chiller since I can see the outside of the coil, but I really didn’t want to waste more water. Counter-flow chillers usually are more efficient with water. It seemed either way I was hosed.

Then one day I saw somewhere on the Internet the idea of just recirculating the water through the immersion chiller. It seemed so obvious, I decided I needed to try it.

The idea behind the recirculating wort chiller is to recirculate an ice bath through the coil until your wort is the correct temperature. The water exiting the coil is hot, but it is not boiling. Toss the used over ice, and it’s cold again to reuse. This method uses significantly less water than if you just ran a hose through the chiller.

Building the recirculating wort chiller

Here’s what your need to recirculate your cooling water:

a pump (I used a march pump)
a reservoir (I used sweater box from Target)
an immersion chiller
tubes to connect the pump, reservoir, and chiller
1/2" nylon barb and nylon connectors
clamps
sealant

I used nylon barbs because they were cheaper than the metal ones, and the nylon ones are all I really need here

To build the connections on the reservoir, I used a nylon barb connected to another nylon connector. You can find these parts at any home improvement store – I got mine at Home Depot. I placed o-rings between the reservoir wall and each nylon piece to help make the connection watertight. The actual parts are not that important as long as everything connects together. I used 1/2″ tubing and connections to increase the flow of water.

I added quick disconnects to ends of the tubing to make it easier to connect to and disconnect from the pump and chiller. The hose connections should be tightened with band clamps.

The flow of the water should go from the reservoir to the pump to the chiller and then back into the reservoir. I put the pump next in line to the reservoir to make it easier to prime the pump. You’ll want to put the input low on one side of the reservoir, and the output high on the other side of the reservoir.

If you use quick disconnects, make sure you get different ones for each side of the wort chiller. I bought two female garden hose connectors by accident, so I needed to get an adapter to attach all the quick disconnects.

I used clamps on all my connections. They are cheap and make the connection tight.

Make sure you test the recirculating wort chiller with water outside before you use it. I tested mine inside first, and quickly discovered I had built a very large sprinkler on my wood floor. After sealing all the leaks, the chiller was ready for gametime.

How the wort chiller worked

The recirculating wort chiller worked very well. While there was ice in the reservoir, the temperature dropped very quickly. I went from 200 F (93 C) to 160 F (71 C) in a few minutes. Getting the temperature to yeast pitching temperatures took longer, but it was because I quickly ran out of ice.

What I’d do different

The wort ran thought all my ice in my fridge and all these ice packs. I need to make more ice next time.

I should have placed the water input and output on different sides of the reservoir. The warm water tended to pool too much on one side. I was able to overcome this by simply stirring the water as the wort chiller did it’s work. If I had placed the input and output on different ends, I would not need to stir the water.

I also ran out of ice very quickly. In the future I think I will freeze blocks of ice to add to the reservoir as needed. I used several ice packs to keep the water cold, but ice worked much better. The ice packs are great to supplement the ice, but they had troubles keeping the water cold on their own. I think the plastic housing of the ice packs was insulating the ice inside.

If you’d like to see more details and pictures, check out the flickr photos!

How to make a Key Lime Wit beer

DJ Spiess — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 17:21:03 +0000

If you’re paying attention at all to the beer world you’ve probably heard the lawsuit InBev and Labatts has brought against Ontario-based Brick Brewing for copyright infringement. Here’s how Brick Brewing has allegedly infringed on InBev’s copyright.

The Budweiser label has the letters “BL” with a lime under it. Brick Brewing has “Red Barron Lime” spelled out with a lime under it.
Both beers use a green and silver color scheme. (Look out Philadelphia, the Eagles logo might be next)
Both beers use a web site featuring attractive people in swim suits to promote the beer. (Lust for Lime vs Bud Lime)

Somehow the fact Red Baron Lime costs 25% less wasn’t listed as a reason for the suit. Here’s a recipe to piss Budweiser off. This beer tastes far better, and you can make it at home! Just make sure you don’t have images of limes in your logo, no green and silver, and use ugly people for your website (you can use pictures of me for that )

The Key Lime Wit Recipe

The recipe is a modified version of my Belgian Wit recipe.

4 lbs Belgian 2-row Pilsner malt
3 lbs Belgian wheat malt
2 lbs Flaked wheat
8 oz Belgian aromatic malt
4 oz Flaked oats

1.0 oz Kent Goldings (bittering for 60 minutes)
0.5 oz Kent Goldings (flavoring for 15 minutes)
0.5 oz Saaz (aroma for 1 minute)

3/4 tsp cracked coriander (for 15 minutes)
2 oz fresh Key Lime zest (for 15 minutes)

White Labs WLP400 or Wyeast 3944
SG 1.048 - 1.050
FG 1.010

Mash the grain at 150°F (65°C) for 90 minutes. Ferment the beer at 65°F.

When looking for Belgian wheat malt, look for the white wheat malt. It’s usually around 3°L, and makes the beer really white. I’ve had great results with this malt, but you can use wheat malt if you can’t find the white wheat malt.

Key limes add a distinctive flavor to Belgian wit beers. Normal limes do not compare! (Image from C. Elle on flickr.com)

I use key limes instead of regular limes. The flavor is better than regular limes. I think the reason is the store bought lime zest tends to lack flavor, while the key limes have a better zest. This is purely anecdotal, and if you have access to fresh limes you might get better results.

When you carbonate the beer, carbonate to 2-2.5 volumes. If you are bottle conditioning, use 1 ¼ cups of extra light malt extract that was boiled for at least 10 minutes.

If you need an extract version of the recipe, replace the grains with 7.5 lbs liquid wheat malt extract (LME Wheat).

I’d keep this beer cold for about 2 weeks after fermentation and carbonation if you are kegging. The beer has a slight bite at first, but mellows quickly. You should beok if you are bottling. When I brought this beer out to my neighborhood, the keg was drained in one night. This is the ultimate crowdpleaser… well unless Budweiser lawyers are in the crowd.

How to connect multiple kegs to one CO2 tank

DJ Spiess — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 22:34:24 +0000

A reader from Chapel Hill Homebrew asked, “What additional equipment is required to run multiple kegs off of a single CO2 tank?”

Use a gas distributor

The easiest way to add more kegs to one CO2 tank is to add additional gas lines via a gas distributor. This allows you to supply gas to multiple lines. The distributor has one barb for gas input, and many barbs out for gas output. You simply connect the gas input to your CO2 tank, and then add gas lines for each gas out. The distributor also contains valves which allow you to turn off unused gas lines.

A double regulator like this allows you to keg at two different pressures

To add a gas distributor you will need the distributor, gas line from your tank to the distributor, gas line from each out barb to your keg, a gas disconnect for each line out, and clamps for each end of each gas line. You can find these parts at your local homebrew store or online at your favorite homebrew supply website. A two-way distributor can cost about $30 USD, while an 8-way distributor can cost about $120 USD.

Each keg you connect using the distributor will be at the same pressure to which your CO2 tank regulator is set. This set up is perfect for dispensing beer from multiple kegs, since the dispensing pressure should be the same for all kegs. If you are carbonating your beers at different gas pressures for each keg, then you will need a different approach.

Use a Double Body CO2 Regulator (or more)

To supply beer to multiple kegs at different pressures, you need more regulators. The regulator controls the pressure at which you supply gas. You will need a regulator for each pressure you want to supply gas. You can also find these online if you cannot find them at your local homebrew store.

A distributor allows you to split one gas line into multiple lines

To add a double body CO2 regulator you need the double regulator, gas line from each barb on your regulator, a gas disconnect for each line out, and clamps for each end of each gas line. This setup will allow you to carbonate one keg while dispensing from a second keg. A double body CO2 regulator runs about $130 USD.

Mix and match gas supply equipment

You can also mix and match. For example, my system uses a double body CO2 regulator which connects to several gas distributors. I use these to connect to a 20 pound CO2 tank so I can carbonate 8 kegs at once (at 2 different pressures). Piecing the parts together is very easy, and soon you can have many kegs running at the same time at your next party!

Why does my beer taste bad? (Part 3)

DJ Spiess — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 20:53:52 +0000

The alcohol burn (alcoholic)

Some alcohols taste warm and there are others which taste like jet fuel. The jet fuel beers taste overly alcoholic and burn as they travel down your throat. Other unwanted alcohol flavors include strong unwanted banana flavors, chemical flavors like acetone, or overly spicy flavors. These flavors are often called the jet fuel flavors.

The off flavors are caused by propanol, butanol, isobutanol, isoamyl (the strong banana flavor) as well as several other undesired alcohols. These alcohols are known as fusel alcohols. This family of alcohols has more than two carbon atoms in the molecule, and often gives beers the taste of really poor tequila. Fusel alcohols also have an oily feel to them. One way to spot fusel alcohols is an oily layer on top of the wort during or after fermentation.

Really high levels of these fusel alcohols, as in poor quality moonshine, can cause illness, nausea, or even a coma. In homebrew, fusel alcohols are not in high enough quantity to pose a concern other than bad taste. For some styles fusel alcohols are not only acceptable, they are expected. Stronger beers such as barley wines are a good example where some fusel alcohol is desired. These flavors however should never taste like solvent.

The jet fuel flavors are usually caused by fermenting your beer at a temperature too warm for your yeast (over 80 F). In fact, this is the most common cause for fusel alcohols. When your yeast produces alcohol in warmer temperatures, they produce more fusel alcohols. The easiest way to avoid this problem is to pitch your yeast at the proper temperatures.

Other factors which can contribute to higher amounts of fusel alcohols are elevated levels of amino acids in the wort, anaerobic conditions (low oxygenated wort), continuous agitation of the wort, excessive yeast growth, or wort with an already high ethanol concentration. Fusel alcohols can also form if your beer sits on the trub too long.

These causes of fusel alcohol have the same underlying problem – stressed yeast. To avoid the alcohol burn, you need to keep your yeast happy as possible in the best wort environment as possible.

Fusel alcohols are alcohols with more than 2 carbon atoms
Jet fuel beer is usually caused by too warm temperatures or stressed yeast from low oxygenated wort
Make sure you ferment the beer within the correct temperature range
Move your beer off of the trub as soon as fermentation completes

Creamed Corn/Cooked Vegetables (DMS)

If your beer has an unwanted cooked corn flavor or worse yet, it tastes like oysters, you might have a DMS problem. DMS (dimethyl sulfides) occur in beer either naturally or from a bacterial infection.
The naturally occurring DMS comes from S-methyl methionine (SMM), a product of malt germination. SMM levels in the malt are reduced when it is roasted and never forms as DMS later in your wort. This makes DMS less of an issue in beers that use roasted malts.

DMS is more of a concern in lighter beers, especially lagers, because the lighter grains do not have the SMM removed from roasting. The levels of SMM in your malt are directly related to the levels of DMS in your wort. DMS “breaks” off from SMM during the boil of your wort.

A cooked corn flavor is usually a sign of a DMS problem

As your wort boils, DMS is produced and boiled off. It evaporates and is removed from your beer. That’s good. If you boil your wort with the lid on, the DMS will condense and fall back into the kettle. That’s bad. If you want to avoid DMS, step one is to boil your wort with the lid OFF the brew kettle.

Step two is to boil your wort for at least an hour. The longer your boil is over 158 F, the more DMS is removed from your wort. Slow cooling of your wort will also allow DMS to form, so you want to cool your wort as quickly as possible.

DMS can also form from bacterial infections. An infection can convert Dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) into DMS by removing the oxygen. To avoid bacterial DSM, make sure you are practicing good sanitation techniques.

Bacterial infections will cause a cooked vegetable flavor
Boil your wort for at least an hour with the lid off
Lighter beers, such as Pilsners, are more susceptible to DMS problems

{sidebar id=2}

Harvest Ready Hops

DJ Spiess — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 23:34:53 +0000

Harvesting my Spalt hops

Homebrewers who recently started growing their own hops are all asking the same question right now. Are my hops ready to harvest? Here are the signs you need to look for.

Paper feel

When you feel the hop cone in your hand, it will feel either spongy or papery. When the hops are ready to pick, you want it to have a papery feel. The cone will start to open slightly and feel much drier than a few weeks ago. If you squeeze the cone, it will compress slightly before springing back into shape.

Slight browning at the tips of the hops

Hops ready for harvest will turn a lighter green compared to the leaves. The hop cones might also have a little brown at the tips. It will look like spotting, or as if the tips of the cones are lightly burnt like toast.

These hops have spots, and slight browning at the tips

Aromatic

Grab a cone in your palms, and roll the hop between your hands. The hops will be much more aromatic when they are ready to go. When you smell them, you will smell the unmistakable aroma of hops. It smells like the hop pellets you add to your homebrew.

Yellow lupin

You should also see yellow lupin near the lupin glands in the hop. This is easily seen at the top of the hops. The color is not subtle. The yellow will be bright, and is sometimes referred to as “traffic paint yellow”.

The yellow lupin is really bright

Why does my beer taste bad? (Part 2)

DJ Spiess — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 20:49:49 +0000

Buttered Popcorn or Butterscotch (diacetyl)

Diacetyl is a natural by-product of fermentation. Diacetyl in very low amounts (50 parts per billion) will impart smoothness to the beer. A bit more diacetyl in your beer will taste a bit like butter or butterscotch. Artificial butter is made with diacetyl, but ironically butterscotch itself usually has no diacetyl. Slightly more diacetyl and eventually your beer will be undrinkable.

If you’ve ever noticed a slippery butterscotch flavor in Chardonnay wines, it’s because they have a bit of diacetyl inside. Unfortunately recent trends have been to allow too much. These are the wines many refer to as “butter bombs”. Many ales have butterscotch notes which are quite nice.

Popcorn is great at the movies, but really tastes nasty in your beer

When the butterscotch becomes too much, the beer starts to taste like buttered popcorn. Diacetyl is produced during the fermentation process, but usually is reabsorbed by the yeast. If the yeast is interrupted, goes into dormancy too soon, or the fermentation stalls the yeast will not have a chance to reabsorb the diacetyl.

You can also get diacetyl from bacterial infections. If you have other “symptoms” such as sour flavors, strange looking bacteria in the wort, etc… then you need to revisit your sanitation procedures.

Your beer can get diacetyl flavors if you pitch too little yeast or old yeast. The reason is there might not be enough yeast at the end of the fermentation to reabsorb the diacetyl. If the yeast dies or flocculates before absorbing all the diacetyl, the remaining diacetyl will impart flavor to your beer. Sometimes this is a desired effect, other times not so much.

Diacetyl problems unrelated to bacteria can be corrected before bottling/kegging with a diacetyl rest. A diacetyl rest is warming up your lager at the end of the fermentation so the yeast can wake up and absorb the diacetyl. If you are making a lager, move the carboy to a warmer location and let the yeast finish their work for a few days. Since ales are usually at a warm temperature, leave the ale alone for a few days more until the flavor goes away.

Perform a diacetyl rest at the end of your fermentation – for lagers increase the temperature
Pitch proper amounts of yeast – old yeast or too little yeast can cause these off-flavors
Don’t rack too soon – if you rack before the fermentation is complete, the yeast cannot absorb the diacetyl

Band-aid flavor (phenols)

The band-aid flavor is usually caused by a reaction of phenols with chlorine. Chlorophenols are created when phenols react with chlorine from bleach or other chlorine-based cleaners. These molecules can affect the taste in single parts per billion – tiny amounts can ruin the flavor of your beer.

If your beer has the dreaded band-aid flavor, you are introducing chlorine into your beer at some point in your process. The chlorine can come from you city’s tap water or possibly your cleaning solution. If you are using a chlorine-based cleaner, make sure you rinse your equipment thoroughly with boiled water. A better solution is to never use chlorine to clean your equipment.

Some wild yeast can produce this flavor, but it is more likely the problem is coming from chlorine. If you are practicing good sanitation techniques, the first step to correct this problem is to eliminate every possible source of chlorine. Make sure your sanitizers are not using chlorine and use filtered water.

Chlorine-based sanitizers mixed with phenols produced by fermentation
Some yeast strains, such a Bavarian, will produce some clove-like phenol flavors which are desired
Too much chlorine in your city water can give this flavor
Don’t use chlorine, instead opt for a no-rinse sanitizer like StarSan

Review: Brew Pal for the iPhone

DJ Spiess — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 19:50:27 +0000

The Brew Pal iPhone app makes it very easy to create recipes, if your ingredients are in their database

I frequently look on the iPhone for interesting new applications to add to my iPhone. I always search the applications with the terms “beer” or “wine” in hopes of finding something better than a virtual glass of beer. Every now and then I find something cool.

I was quite surprised to find a homebrew recipe formulation program for the iPhone.

First Looks

When you first run Brew Pal, you can’t help but be impressed with the user interface. It’s easy to navigate and it looks professional. The interface is simplier than any brewing software for the personal computer, but there are far fewer features. For a iPhone application, this is perfect. You really only want the features you really need.

You can save all your recipes for future reference on the phone

Ease of use

The program does not come with instructions (most iPhone apps do not), but it’s very easy to figure out. The buttons at the bottom of the screen help you through the steps of creating a recipe. Each step must be filled in the order of the buttons at the bottom of the screen.

The screen is fairly intuitive. It uses standard icons from the iPhone, so you can make good guesses how to use the application. One feature I thought was nice was the edit button on each ingredient line. In other applications, you need select the edit icon to trigger an edit. In Brew Pal you can select the line (the ingredient name) to trigger an edit, although for some odd reason it is difficult to press the actual edit button. If it is a design choice, I prefer the way Brew Pal works.

You can save recipes for later use too. I find this feature useful, because I can enter my most often used recipes and use the iPhone as a quick reference while brewing. There are several other nice features like timers, carbonation calculators, a BJCP style reference, and a flavor wheel. The program can even “guess” what style you are making based on the ingredients you enter. I thought it was pretty cool. Brew Pal did guess an Oktoberfest/Märzen or a Scottish/Irish ale based on my recipe.

One annoying "feature" is only 2 decimal places for ingredients

Issues

The application is not without minor issues. You can skip ahead to other steps, but the program will not let you enter information until enough information is entered in a previous step. For example if you do not enter a grain or extract, you cannot calculate your water amounts or temperatures for your mash. The program will not let you set a mash temperature. I’m not sure why you can’t enter information in the order you want.

There are also a few ingredients missing. When testing out the application, I was making a Märzen. When I started adding ingredients, I immediately ran into issues. The first problem I encountered was I could not find CaraMunich malt. The list of malts is not complete.

I also ran into issues adding the malts I could find. I was trying to add 2 ounces of a specialty malt. The program only allowed pounds of grain, so I needed to convert ounces to pounds. This is 0.125 pounds. The problem is the edits only allow for 2 decimal places. It would be nice if the program allowed you to enter ounces. I’m currently switching to metric (which I’ll write about later), and the problem exists in metric as well. If you need to enter 55 grams of grain… well you can’t. You can only enter two decimals worth of kilograms.

There is an email feature which is very nice. You can email the current recipe to any email address. I emailed my Märzen to myself, but the program had troubles with the ä. The recipe looked great as it was formatted for HTML, but it failed to understand the umlaut, and used garbage characters in the name.

Results

Overall I think the application is great for playing around with recipes, or using it as a reference while brewing. For $0.99 you really cannot go wrong with the application. I’d recommend the program and hopefully the minor issues will eventually be fixed in time. Really the biggest issues for me were the missing grains and decimal places. Definately worth $0.99!

How I would reverse engineer Southern Tier’s Crème brûlée Imperial Milk Stout

DJ Spiess — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 00:32:43 +0000

Research the beer

I actually haven’t tried this beer, but several people asked me for a recipe on Twitter. There isn’t a recipe available in any clone books, but that’s never stopped me before. Last year I cloned Avery’s Samael for my sister with fairly good results. It’s not hard to clone recipes, it just takes some research.

When I cloned Samael, my first stop was to the web site to look at the description of the beer. Usually breweries give details about the beer which help to reverse engineer it. On Avery’s site they listed the ingredients used, the bitterness, and alcohol content. From there it wasn’t too hard to figure out the rest. I thought it was a fluke of good luck, but when I went to Southern Tier’s website I found the same information. Here’s what they said:

10.0% abv • 25º plato • 195º L • 22 oz / 1/6 keg
2-row pale malt / dark caramel malt / vanilla bean / lactose sugar /
kettle hops: columbus / aroma hops: horizon

This almost makes it too easy. If the site doesn’t give the exact details, you can still figure out much about the recipe from the description.

Another website to check out is BeerAdvocate. This site won’t have the recipe, but there will be many reviews from other beer lovers. The reviewers might pick out some flavors you might miss. BeerAdvocate also will give you insight into how dry or how sweet the beer is, what flavors other people notice, and other hard to find information about the beer.

Base Malts

The beer style is a sweet stout. This means the beer will use pale ale malt as the base malt. You can find this in the BJCP Style Guidelines if the website doesn’t give it away. You’re not going to find too many pilsner malt stouts.

The alcohol content will tell you how much malt to use. The beer is 10% ABV, so playing with the numbers in your favorite beer recipe program you can estimate the amount to use.

A little research can help you formulate recipes which are very close to your favorite beers

Specialty Grains

Since this beer has a malty caramel flavor, you’d naturally think crystal malts. If you didn’t, now you know (luckily their website helps us out). The dark colors could come from a variety of malts, but Southern Tier’s website claims they use “dark caramel malt” and no other specialty malt. I picked the darkest crystal malt in my software and added it until the SRM was within the style limits.

Adjuncts

This is the trickiest part to figure out, and probably will take some experimenting. The beer has a healthy amount of lactose and vanilla. I’d add a pound of lactose to start with. I’ve seen many reports about how sweet the beer is, so this number may need to rise higher. The high alcohol content with a pound of lactose will put this beer higher than the style guidelines, but it may need to go even higher.

The vanilla shouldn’t be added until after fermentation. You can use two vanilla beans soaked in a cup of vodka. This works well, but I would not add the beans directly to the fermented beer. I’ve added beans in the past, but the results are random and I hate explaining what are the little black dots in the beer. I make an awesome vanilla porter which uses 4 ounces of natural vanilla extract. The 4 ounces of natural vanilla extract produces the best results for me. I think this amount would provide a strong but not overpowering vanilla taste and aroma. Again you might want to experiment with this amount.

Hops

Their website claims Columbus bittering hops, and Horizon aroma hops. I probably would have guessed a different hop for this beer, and I certainly wouldn’t have added an aroma hop. The aroma hops really surprise me. I’d be curious to know why they are adding aroma hops to a “dessert beer”.

The website does not list the IBUs for this beer, so we’ll have to do some guesswork. We know the beer is sweet and malt forward from descriptions on Beer Advocate. Many of the reviewers note the beer is sweet, caramel-y, and like a dessert coffee. Some even said it was too sweet to have more than one beer.

The BJCP style guidelines list the milk stout style IBUs between 20-40 IBU. We’ll assume we need to be at the start of this range to make it sweeter. We should target somewhere between 20 and 30 IBU. Plugging this number in to our favorite beer recipe program yields between 0.75 and 1 ounce of Columbus hops (14% AA).

I would not add more than one ounce of the aroma hops for 5 minutes. Southern Tier lists Horizon hops as an aroma hop. I really think you can skip it, but to be safe to match the clone, you can add an ounce at the end of your boil.

Yeast

The yeast is a total guess. I went with White Labs WLP006 British Bedford or Wyeast 1099 Witbread Ale yeast, because both are a safe bet for sweet stouts. Both will finish with low esters, which will help bring out the sweet maltiness.

The Southern Tier’s Crème brûlée Imperial Milk Stout Clone Recipe

Here’s my guess at the recipe for the Southern Tier Crème brûlée Imperial Milk Stout.

14.75 lbs Pale Ale malt
3.25 lbs Crystal/Caramel malt 120L
1.0 lbs Lactose (milk sugar)
0.75 oz Columbus hops (14% AA - 60 minutes)
1.00 oz Horizon hops (12% AA - 5 minutes)
4.00 oz natural vanilla extract (at bottling or kegging)
White Labs WLP006 or Wyeast 1099

S.G. 1.104
F.G. 1.026
IBU 26.5
SRM 31
ABV 10.19%
Pre-boil 6 gallons / Batch size 5 gallons

Mash the grains at 160 F for 60 minutes. Carbonate the beer using your favorite method at 2 volumes. This is at the low end for the style, but I think this will help to give more of a creamy mouthfeel.

I probably won’t get a chance to try this recipe until August, but if you get a chance to try it before me let me know how close I got. Either way, this looks like a very tasty recipe I’ll make for my neighborhood’s Oktoberfest!

What do you need to start kegging beer?

DJ Spiess — Thu, 14 May 2009 03:42:30 +0000

You need a keg to keg beer

Obviously when you want to keg beer, you’ll need a keg. The best type of keg for homebrewers is the old Pepsi style 5 gallon kegs. They are also referred to as Cornelius kegs (after one of the manufacturers) or Corny keg. I’m not sure what the options in other countries are, but in the United States this is the best choice.

These Pepsi kegs are perfect for homebrewing

You can find these kegs brand new for $100-130 USD. It’s not a good deal though. You can find these kegs used for anywhere between $15-35 USD. You can get better deals if you shop around and buy a pack of 4 kegs. They are usually in poor condition on the outside, but the inside is spotless. It does not matter what the outside looks like as long as the inside looks good and the keg can hold pressure.

You may need to replace some of the rings on the keg. These are the rubber rings which attach to the posts, the lid, and the liquid and gas tubes on the inside. Some homebrew shops and online outlets sell a set of these rings for $4-5 USD, but you can buy a bag of a hundred from McMaster-Carr. Here’s the part numbers and links:

Dip Tube O-Rings
5/16″ ID x 1/2″OD x 3/32″ width
9452K172 BunaN #109
Pkg 100/$1.89

Post O-Rings
7/16″ ID x 5/8″ OD x 3/32″ width
9452K23 BunaN #111
Pkg 100/$2.15

Lid O-Rings
3 1/2″ ID x 4″ OD x 1/4″ width
9452K218 BunaN #417
Pkg 10/$12.50

(Reference: St. Paul Homebrewers Club)

You might need to replace the posts if your kegs are in really poor condition. So far I’ve been lucky and all my posts and poppets arrived in good condition. If you are unlucky, you can find new posts online at Northern Brewer or possibly at your local homebrew store.

You also need a CO2 cylinder and the fittings

Once you have a keg and you’ve filled it, you’ll need to carbonate your beer. This requires a regulator, a CO2 tank, tubing and fittings, and a tap to dispense your beer.

The fittings are the gas and liquid disconnects which attach to the keg. The gray disconnect attaches to the gas post, and the black disconnect attaches to the liquid post. To tell the difference between the posts, the gas post usually has notches and has a star like pattern to the edges. The liquid post looks more like a hexagon, and does not have notches in the edges.

Most homebrew shops will sell you all this equipment as a draft system. Some places will omit the CO2 gas tank from the list of items in the draft system. I think omitting the CO2 tank is a much better deal, because many homebrew shops will exchange CO2 tanks but they will not fill it for you. It’s similar to the propane tank exchange at your grocery store. The exchange works out cheaper too, because you just need to pay a deposit for the cylinder. You don’t need to buy one. I had a hard time finding a place in Denver to fill my CO2 tank, and I wish I had one to exchange (I do travel to Aurora now to fill it).

Your best bet is to find a place that does gas cylinder excahnges. It's easier than finding a place to refill the tank.

The regulator in most kits is a dual gauge regulator. This means it displays the dispensing pressure and the pressure remaining in the CO2 cylinder. I’m not sure how useful the “remaining pressure” gauge is, since it will stay at one pressure (based on temperature) and then drop to zero when it is empty.

Another gauge is a double gauge regulator has two dispensing pressure gauges. It’s great for if you want to carbonate or dispense at two different pressures. I use mine to carbonate two different styles at two different pressures.

…and a tap to serve the beer

When I’m serving my beer I usually use a picnic tap. It looks similar to the taps you might have seen in college, but it does not require you to pump your beer full of air. You can also hook your beer up to a bar system with beer taps, but it’s something you get when you get deeper into kegging. For now, all you really need is the picnic tap.

So that’s all the equipment you need to start kegging. Just a keg, a regulator, CO2 cylinder, and all the fittings. After you clean your keg, all you need to do is pour the beer in and carbonate. It is MUCH simpler than bottles, but it does require a bit more investment.

My Big Brew Day

DJ Spiess — Sun, 03 May 2009 16:32:23 +0000

Since 1988, the United States has recognized May 7th as National Homebrew Day. Big Brew Day is the day homebrewers get together to make beer and celebrate National Homebrew Day. It is an annual event held on the first Saturday of May. I decided to start making it an annual tradition in my neighborhood to officially mark the start of the brewing season. I make the beer for neighborhood, so this is my way of conning them into helping out.

If you asked someone who isn’t a brewer, I’m sure they wouldn’t know about it. Don’t feel bad if you didn’t know about it. There are an estimated 750,000 homebrewers in the United States, but I’ll bet you a beer most homebrewers don’t know about the day. According to the American Homebrew Association this is a world-wide event. You can read the official word on the event at the beertown.com site. (Humorously they even mention Americans have been homebrewing since the Pilgrims – um… not exactly)

Unfortunately this year the weather was crappy in Denver (six f-ing crappy weekends in a row). It didn’t stop me. Despite the poor weather, I and a friend “celebrated” Big Brew Day. Here’s a few pictures of us brewing in the rain. Hopefully in the future the weather will be warmer so more people show up. If you’re a homebrewer, you should plan a homebrewing event with your friends too!

I usually share my brews on Twitter, follow me if you want to follow along!

What do you really need to start brewing beer?

DJ Spiess — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 15:48:36 +0000

There are several ways to make beer, each with their own list of equipment requirements. You’ll need less equipment if you’re making an extract beer than you would if you were making an all-grain beer. But what is the minimum you will need?

The goal here isn’t to determine the cheapest way to home brew, however, buying only what you need will be inexpensive. In this economy, saving any amount helps. These lists represent the bare minimum equipment you need to make beer.

Bottle Brew

If you get the bottle brew kit, you’ll have everything you need. The kit is a two liter bottle of wort with a special cap. You drop the yeast into the bottle, attach the special cap, and you are done. Once the fermentation is complete, you refrigerate the beer and then enjoy. No equipment necessary.

No Boil Beer Kits

If you’re using a no boil kit like the Coopers beer kits, you’ll need very little equipment. You can mix the wort in your fermenter, so you do not need a “brewing” vessel. Normally I’d suggest getting a hydrometer, but in the no-boil case there is little chance you beer will not ferment out.

The Coopers kits are a great way to start brewing without bothering with the boiling of beer

The no-rinse sanitizer is a must. You need to make sure your fermenter is sanitized, and nothing is easier than a no-rinse sanitizer. You might be tempted to use bleach, but this is a bad idea. The chlorine can give your beer an off-flavor.

You do have the option of using a bottling bucket when it comes time to bottle, but you can fill buckets using your siphon hose. A bottling bucket is not 100% necessary, but it will make bottling easier. I strongly recommend the auto-siphon over using just a hose or racking cane, because it makes it easier to siphon the beer. No matter if you choose to siphon the beer with a hose, racking cane, or auto-siphon, you will need something to siphon the beer.

This is the minimum list of equipment you’ll need to make a no-boil beer kit:

No-rinse Sanitizer
Fermenter
Long Spoon
Bottles
Bottle capper
A hose to siphon beer, racking cane or an auto-siphon

Extract Brew

If you are making an extract kit, you need to boil your wort. This increases the amount of equipment you will need. You don’t necessarily need a huge pot for your boil, but you will need a pot able to boil about 3 gallons. Many large pasta pots are capable of holding 3 gallons. This is for a partial wort brew. You will boil about 2 1/2 gallons of wort. When you add it to your fermenter, you will top off the fermenter with 2 1/2 gallons of very cold water.

You need the thermometer to make sure the wort has cooled enough before pitching your yeast. You won’t necessarily need a wort chiller, although it will make it easier for you to chill the wort quickly. You can put your pot in an ice bath or add very cold water to the fermenter to chill the beer without a wort chiller. Either way you will need a thermometer to make sure the temperature is safe for your yeast.

This is the minimum list of equipment you’ll need to make a extract brew:

No-rinse Sanitizer
Fermenter
Long Spoon
Large Pot
Thermometer
Bottles
Bottle capper
A hose to siphon beer, racking cane or an auto-siphon

All-Grain Brew

The minimum equipment for all-grain is a bit tricky. You need some way to mash your grains. Before a few weeks ago, I would have suggested buying a cooler and converting it into a mash tun. This is the way I do my all-grain mashes, but the Australians have shown us the cooler mash is not quite “the minimum”.

They are doing all-grain mashes using a grain bag. After hearing about it on Basic Brewing and Brew Your Own Magazine, I’m convinced this is the minimum amount of equipment required. This adds a grain bag, large enough to hold all of the grain, to our equipment list.

All-grain brewing changes the equipment required to make beer, but with creativity you can still do it cheap

You cannot do a concentrated brew when you brew all-grain batches. This means you need a pot capable of boiling more than 5 gallons. The minimum sized pot required is 30-quarts. If you are making a 5 gallon brew, you can get away without a wort chiller. You will be soaking your pot in an ice bath for quite a while however. I recommend a wort chiller, but it is not absolutely necessary.

This is the minimum list of equipment you’ll need to make a all-grain brew:

No-rinse Sanitizer
Fermenter
Long Spoon
Large Pot (large enough for a full wort boil)
Large Grain Bag (large enough to hold all the grain)
Thermometer
Bottles
Bottle capper
A hose to siphon beer, racking cane or an auto-siphon

Did I miss anything?

There might be something I’m missing. I think these lists represent the minimum equipment you will need to make beer. What do you think? Is there anything I missed or is there anything I added which you do not need?

The unbearable lightness of hop chemistry

DJ Spiess — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 01:12:03 +0000

Usually homebrewers know hops are what makes your beer bitter, and provides the beer with antimicrobial properties. Some might know the difference between alpha-acids and beta-acids, but like most, their eye’s glaze over if you go into too much more detail. It’s important to know the details however, especially when some hops are difficult to find. This article will help you understand the different compounds which make up your hops.

Bittering, Flavoring, and Aroma Hops

Hops are used for three purposes in your beer: flavoring, bittering, and hop aroma. The antimicrobial aspects are great too, but most do not think about it. The length of time you boil your hops determines the effect you are trying to achieve:bittering, flavoring or aroma.

Bittering hops are added near the beginning of the boil. The longer you boil the hops (usually 60-90 minutes), the more alpha-acids are converted to their bitter form throughisomerization (the atoms in the molecule get rearranged). Most of the isomerization happens in the first 45 minutes, but more can convert between 45 and 90 minutes.

Hops vary by use: bittering, flavoring and aroma

Aroma and flavoring hops are usually added later in the boil. The boiling evaporates the hop flavor and aroma. Flavoring hops are a compromise betweenbittering and aroma hops and are usually added halfway through the boil. Aroma hops are added during the final minutes of the boil or after the boil.

The aroma in hops can diminish with processing or time. For example, aroma whole hops are better than similar pellets, because the oil content decreases dramatically in pellets during the processing. The oils oxidize at a rapid rate, even under ideal storage conditions.

Beers are dry hopped to add more aroma (and hop flavor since smell and taste are connected) by running the beer through a hop-back system or adding hops after the fermentation. Dry hopping adds more of a grassy flavor, while adding hops late in the boil gives more of a floral or fragrant flavor. The aroma is much stronger (not necessarily bad) when you dry hop.

If you want to dry hop your beer to add aroma, wait for at least 3 days of fermentation. Hops, especially whole hops, can carry bacteria, molds, or wild yeast. If you add the hops to your primary fermentation, you risk infecting your beer. After three days your yeast will be able tooutcompete most anything, and your beer should be much safer from contamination.

Hop Acids

Hops used in your wort contain three main alpha-acids:humulone, cohumulone, adhumulone, and three beta-acids: lupulone, colupulone, adlupulone. The easy way to distinguish between the two is the alpha-acids contain “humulone” in the name (from the genus name of hops, Humulus), and the beta-acids contain “lupulone” in the name (from the species name of hops, lupulus).

Hop alpha-acids

The yellow lupin contains the oils and acids to bitter and flavor your beer

Alpha-acids are the primary bittering acid for your beer. Usually hops with high alpha-acid content are used as bittering hops. Before boiling, hops are not bitter. The alpha-acids isomerize during the boil to make the bitter flavors. The isomerized versions of the acids (iso-alpha-acids) are what contributes the bitter flavor in your beer. Cohumulone is the most easily extracted acid during brewing, and is considered the most important of the alpha-acids.

There is significant effort to quantitatively determine the bitterness contribution from hops in beer. The current “gold standard” is International Bitterness Units (IBU). One IBU is equal to 1 milligram of iso-alpha-acid per liter (0.0001335 of an ounce per gallon).

Another measurement common for homebrewers is the Alpha Acid Unit (AAU). This unit was created by Dave Line (The Big Book of Brewing) and adopted by the American Homebrew Association (AHA). One AAU/HBU equals one ounce of a one percent alpha-acid hop. Two ounces of a 5 percent alpha-acid hop would give 10 HBUs. Each HBU contributes 85 IBUs per liter (22.472 IBUs per gallon).

AAU / HBU = % alpha acid content X oz. of hops

To guestimate the IBU value for your beer, you can add up the AAUs to determine the total contribution of IBUs, and then divide by the size of your batch. I say guestimate because this formula ignores length of boil and hop utilization. The hop utilization will be different for worts with different gravities. With AAU/HBU you are calculating the amount before you boil, not determining the amount after the brewing process is complete. For a more accurate calculation ofIBUs, see Ray Daniels’ Designing Great Beers.

Hop beta-acids

Beta-acids also contribute a bitter flavor to your beer, but the bitter flavor is significantly more harsh and sometimes undesirable. The beta-acids do notisomerize, they oxidize to produce bitter flavors. The bitterness from beta-acids can come over time, long after the iso -alpha-acids have broken down. This can give your beer a different bitter flavor after aging, which is sometimes desirable in aged beers. The bitterness contribution from beta-acids is much less in your beer because the beta-acids are much less soluble.

On a side note for hop growers, beta-acids, specifically colupulone, the main component of the beta-acid fraction of hop extracts, was shown to repel the two-spotted spider mite. In Repellent and oviposition-deterring effects of hop beta-acids on the two-spotted spider mite (1996), higher beta-acid amounts were effective in repelling the mites and reducing the number of eggs laid. This suggests hops grown with higher amounts of beta-acids would require less pesticides protecting against spider mites.

Alpha-beta ratio

The alpha-beta ratio of hops is simply the ratio of alpha-acid content over beta-acid content. Some brewers prefer a ratio close to one because most noble hops are close to a ratio of 1. Other brewers prefer higher ratios so thebittering stays consistent as the beer ages. As alpha-acids degrade, beta-acids oxidize keeping the bitterness consistent over time.

Chemical Analysis of hops

Oils

The oils in beer contribute more aroma and flavor. Hops are added late in the boil, or sometimes after the primary fermentation (dry-hopping) to give your beer more hop flavor. Add your hops late in the boil because boiling breaks down or drives off the oils which contribute aroma and flavor. Hops will usually list the total oil content, as well as each type of oil.

Humulene

Humulene is a hydrocarbon (contains only hydrogen and carbon atoms) which gives the beer an elegant taste and aroma. Most noble hops (and other aroma hops) have a high amount ofhumulene. Because humulene degrades quickly, it is very unlikely your beer will contain humulene unless the aroma hops are added very late in the boil or if you are dry hopping. The products from humulene degradation (i.e. – humulene epoxides) usually give the beer a spicy characteristic.

Myrcene

Another common hydrocarbon myrcene, is characterized with a pungent and sometimes offensive aroma. Noble hops have very low amounts of mrycene. Like the humulene, it is very unlikely to remain in your beer. It degrades quickly as well.

Myrcene does contribute to the final beer flavor however. There are several compounds like linalool and geraniol which give the beer floral flavors, and many believe this is from the myrcene since the resulting compounds are closely related.

Caryophyllene

Caryophyllene produces a similar spicy flavor to humulene when boiled or oxidized. It usually accounts for 5 to 15 percent of the total oil, but it is in higher amounts in the aroma and noble hops.

Farnesene

Farnesene is found in very small amounts in most hops. Some hops list only trace amounts. Again this compound is found in higher amounts in noble, sometimes as much as 20%. There is little known about the flavor contribution however, so here’s another possible research study for graduate students!

Remain %

Since all hops are an organic substance, they will degrade over time. The acids available when you pick the hop will break down over time. This is why it is important to use fresh hops. Not all hops degrade at the same rate. Some will last a long time in storage, while others will spoil quickly. The remain percentage of a hop is the amount of alpha and beta acids remaining after 6 months of storage at ambient temperature.

This doesn’t mean all hops go bad with aging, in fact research has shown some hops actually improve with age. Lambic recipes sometimes use Saaz hops which are aged over 2 years. Usually it is the aroma hops which improve with age.

Choosing alternative hops

Harvesting my Spalt hops

With the hop shortages in past years, many homebrewers are forced to choose alternate hops when crafting their beers. There are substitution charts for the most common hops, but not all hops are listed. If you are looking to replace a hop in your recipe not listed in a substitution chart, the best course of action is to look at the chemical properties of your hop and find another hop with similar properties. There might still be slight differences in flavor, but more often than not, the flavors will be similar.

Using hop extracts

There are not too many homebrewers using hop extracts in their beer, which is due more to romanticism rather than reason. Many large commercial brewers use hop extract instead of hops. Hop extracts have significantly less variability than fresh hops. This allows the brewer to predict the hop effect on the beer with much higher precision. This is very important to produce a consistent flavor in your product.

If you are a “green” brewer, you might also want to consider using hop extract. If you use whole hops, you will get about 1/3 of the potential aroma and bitterness while boiling. This means you are wasting about 2/3 of the hop potential. More fresh hops need to be planted, harvested, and transported to flavor your beer. Personally I’m not that green, so I use the real hops.

Review: Coopers homebrew kit

DJ Spiess — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 18:06:45 +0000

The Coopers home brew kit

Coopers is a home brew kit company in Australia, but you can find their kits pretty much anywhere. MakeBeer.Net has all the Coopers kits available online too.

This isn’t a extract brew kit in the traditional sense. This kit includes a hopped malt extract, extra sugar fermentables, carbonation drops and dry yeast. The carbonation drops are cough drop sized candies which you add to each bottle to bottle condition the beer. This makes sure every bottle gets the correct amount of sugar for carbonation. I’ve never used these, so I’m very interested to see how well they work.

Coopers European lager kit - it's a no-boil lager kit that tastes pretty good!

All you need is water, a fermenter, and beer bottles, bottle caps, and a bottle capper. There are a few other things you can use, but the fermenter and bottles are all you really need. The kit does not need to be boiled. It is more like a wine kit where you just rehydrate the extract and add yeast.

The Coopers home brew kits range from $18 to $29, and if you need everything (you’re starting from scratch) they do have a $99 kit which includes the beer kit, bottles, fermenter, instructional DVD and more. It looks like their Microbrewery kit contains everything you need. I have most of the equipment already, so I am just reviewing the Complete European Lager package.

How easy is the Coopers home brew kit?

The kit is pretty easy to put together. If you want to watch the whole process watch the video at the end of the article. You simply mix the ingredients, add it to your fermenter, toss in the yeast and wait 6 days for the fermentation to complete. As I mentioned there is no boiling since the wort is pre-hopped and the starches are already converted. I boiled some of the water to make it easier to mix the ingredients, but the instructions say you can use hot tap water. Their process allows you to focus on the fermentation side of home brewing, without getting bogged down in the boil and cooling. Once everything is mixed up, you add the yeast and move the fermenter to a cool location in your home.

The hydrometer says the gravity was spot on

I think the kit took about 30 minutes to make, but the filming of the process definitely slowed me down (not the kit’s fault). All in all I thought the kit was very easy to make. If you have a friend who wants to try out home brewing, but doesn’t want to get involved with all the equipment, this might be a good place for them to start. Extract brewing is easy, but these kits are even easier since it removes the boiling and hop additions from the home brewing steps.

In a few days I’ll continue with the kit and try out the carbonation drops. After that we’ll taste the kit and see how good it is. Stay tuned!

Inside Fermentarium – Episode 5 from DJ Spiess on Vimeo.

Don’t forget to subscribe to Fermentarium to make sure you never miss article or Inside Fermentarium episodes!

Follow @deege on twitter

How to calculate the alcohol in your beer, wine, or mead

DJ Spiess — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 01:39:51 +0000

A hydrometer will estimate the amount of sugar in your wort before and after fermentation. Using the difference you can calculate an estimation of how much alcohol is in your beer.

I’ve been working the last few days on a new web project for homebrewers and one task is calculating alcohol content. You’d be surprised how many different ways there are to estimate the same value.

How much sugar, sugar (ahh honey, honey)

Before you can make any calculations, you need to know how much sugar you have in your beer, wine, or mead. Plato (also called Brix or Balling) and specific gravity are two common measurements to determine sugar in a solution.

Brix, Plato, and Balling all determine the weight perentage of sucrose dissolved in water. So a solution which is 25 Plato is a solution which has 25% sucrose and 75% water. The differences between Brix, Plato, and Balling is refinements and the baseline temperature. The original Balling scale (named after Karl Balling) was determined at 17.5 C. Adolph Ferdinand Wenzeslaus Brix recalculated the scale at 15.5 C.

Specific gravity measures how much heavier the solution is than water. For example, a solution which has a specific gravity of 1.040 is 4% heavier than water.

These mesurements are accomplished using either a hydrometer or refractometer. The hydrometers usually measure specific gravity and Plato, while refractometers usually measure in just Plato.

Since Brix, Plato, and Balling are all slightly different, the conversion to specific gravity for each is slightly different. The brix scale can be approximated using the specific gravity and the following formula:

Brix = 261.3 * (1 - 1 / Specific Gravity)
Specific Gravity = 261.3 / (Brix / 261.3)

Plato uses the following formulas to calculate back and forth:

Degrees Plato = 259 - (259 / Specific Gravity)
Specific Gravity =  259 / (Degrees Plato / 259)

Sometimes you will see Plato use 260 instead of 259. Since both are approximations, feel free to use either value. The reason both use similar functions, but not the same value (259 vs 261.3) is the difference in temperature.

If you are looking for a much more accurate calcuation of degrees Plato, you can use a third degree polynomial curve fit for a table of values which gives the following equation:

Degrees Plato = 1286.4 * SG - 800.47 * SG2 + 190.74 * SG3

Using these measurements of sugar content, you can estimate the alcohol content in a variety of methods. The alcohol content calculated will be either alcohol by weight (ABW) or alcohol by volume (ABV). ABV is commonly used in the United States, but in the past ABW was used. ABW will yield smaller numbers (thus the Canadian beer vs American beer myth), but both numbers are valid measurements.

Calculating Alcohol Content Using Miller[88]

Dave Miller estimates the alcohol by volume using a very simple formula in his book “The Complete Handbook of Brewing (1988)”. Simply subtract the final gravity reading from the initial gravity reading, and then divide by 0.75.

Alcohol by Volume = (Initial Gravity - Final Gravity) / 0.75

Since we know the density of alcohol (0.789), you can easily convert ABV to ABW. Weight density is weight over volume. Simple algebra gives the following equation:

Alcohol by Weight = ABV / 0.789

Calculating Alcohol Content Using Fix[92]

George Fix suggested another formula on the homebrew digest back in 1992. His formula was based on work done by Karl Balling. This formula relies on Plato values and the “real extract”.

Alcohol by Weight = [Initial °P - Real Extract] / [2.0665 - (0.010665 × Initial °P)]

The real extract is a measure of the sugars which are fermented in the solution, but it also takes into account the density of alcohol. The real extract is calculated using this formula:

Real Extract = (0.1808 × Initial °P) + (0.8192 × Final °P)

Calculating Alcohol Content Using DeClerck[57]

The formula from “A Textbook of Brewing Vol2″ by Jean De Clerck uses the final gravity and the refractive index to determine alcohol content. The refractive index determines the speed at which light moves through a solution at 20°C. This varies with the compostion of liquid and the amount of dry matter in solution. Since the refractive index for water is constant for a given temperature, any variation is used to determine the amount of solids in solution.

When you start, your solution should be all water and sugar (and adjuncts). At the end of fermentation there is alcohol in solution, so your values are skewed. The reason is alcohol has a different refractive index than water, causing many to believe the refractometer is useless once fermentation starts. The truth is you can use the refractive index with the final gravity to determine the alcohol content (and even the starting gravity). According to DeClerck, this was the method “adopted in 1939 as the official method in Germany, with the proviso that in any cases of dispute, the determination must be carried out by distillation”.

The formula is very accurate for calculating ABW, but it uses an outdated “zeiss unit” for the refractive index. Most refractors use brix or refractive index readings, so Louis Bonham on the Homebrew digest converted the formula to use refractive index readings (brix can be used in other formulas).

ABW = 1017.5596 - (277.4 * finalGravity) + (refractiveIndex * ((937.8135 * refractiveIndex) - 1805.1228))

Take your pick

Each method has it’s tradeoffs and does compute slightly different values. For example if you had a starting gravity of 1.050 and a final gravity of 1.010 you get the following results:

Miller ABV = 4.1663%
Fix ABV = 4.1621%
DeClerck =  7.1741% (assuming refractive index of 1.3466)

Miller and Fix are close to each other, but since DeClerck requires a refractive index it’s value can vary quite a bit.

Saving homebrew money with your yeast

DJ Spiess — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 15:40:11 +0000

There are several choices for reducing costs with your yeast. You can reuse the yeast cake, harvest your yeast, create multiple starters from a single liquid yeast pack, or use dry yeast. Each of these choices can save you money, but there are also trade-offs. Here are a few things to consider with each method.

Pitch your wort on your yeast cake

The first option is to rack your second beer on top of your yeast cake. The idea is once your first beer has completely fermented; rack the beer leaving just the yeast behind. Then pour your second beer over the yeast. It’s like adding a very large starter to your wort.

The fermentation should go quicker the second time around. You do need to be careful with this method because you are over pitching. Autolysis (when the yeast cells die and degrade) usually happens when you leave your wort on the yeast too long (months), but it can happen much quicker when you over pitch.

You can crop yeast or pitch on top of your yeast cake to save money, but both methods come with risks.

Autolysis happens much quicker when you over pitch because your yeast is skipping over the aerobic phase of the yeast life cycle. Fewer new cells are created and your fermentation will not be optimal. You are creating a retirement community of yeast cells. The yeast will not be as healthy and will die sooner. Too much dead yeast creates a really nasty off flavor in your beer.

With that said I’ve added new wort onto yeast cakes and produced good beer. Of course I did this a while ago before learning more about how yeast works, but you can do it. In fact I didn’t come up with the idea myself; I heard it from another brewer (who probably heard it from someone else too). Many home brewers add new wort onto their yeast cakes. It saves you money, but it is risky.

If you pitch on your yeast cake you are overpitching, which can lead to autolysis
I’ve done it and it went fine

Become a yeast farmer and harvest your yeast

A better alternative is to properly harvest your yeast. You should always harvest from the fermenter with the fewest generations. If you are harvesting yeast for the first time this is not an issue, however, if you are continually harvesting you want the youngest yeast.

You also do not want to harvest yeast from beers with alcohol contents over 6.5% ABV. The higher alcohol brews will stress your yeast. These changes can have negative effects on future generations (darn you evolution), and produce off flavors in your beers. It’s a good practice to use the yeast on similar beers, or go from light beers to dark beers.

Harvest your yeast after you have racked your beer from your fermenter. Swirl the remaining liquid and yeast slurry. Collect some of the slurry in a sanitized jar about half way. If you are collecting your yeast from a conical fermenter, try to get the yeast in the middle. The yeast at the bottom is likely to be dead yeast and trub (stuff that isn’t beer, water or yeast). You’ll get better quality yeast from the middle.

Then fill the rest with cold boiled water. You want to boil the water you add and then cool it back to room temperature because you want to add sterilized water with no oxygen. Boiling water lowers the amount of oxygen in solution, that’s why it’s important to shake your carboy before pitching your yeast. In this case, the oxygen will cause the yeast to use up their glycogen reserves (energy reserve carbohydrate).

Let your jar of water and yeast sit for a few minutes. During this time the trub should settle to the bottom. Pour out the top part of the yeast solution into another sanitized jar leaving the trub. Repeat this process until your yeast has a very light golden color, and very little trub is left at the bottom of the jar.

Close the jar and save your yeast in your refrigerator. Do not keep the yeast for more than a few days (5 days max). The sooner you use your harvested yeast, the better. If it turns dark brown, discard the yeast. When it’s brown, the yeast died. If you open the jar, the yeast will smell awful.

Before you use your yeast, make sure it smells like yeast. Smelling the yeast before using it is your best defense against ruining your beer with infected yeast. If you pitch infected/bad yeast your beer will be ruined.

Wyeast recommends you pitch slightly more yeast, than you would from a first generation laboratory culture. They state “the [harvested] culture can be void of sterols, enzymes, and glycogen, as well having possible poor cell membrane health”.

If you are not brewing beer once a week, you probably do not want to use the above two methods. There is real risk of contamination, and you could ruin a few batches. You have been warned. Still there are other ways to save money on your yeast.

Yeast harvesting is good if you frequently make beer
If you pitch bad harvested yeast, your beer will be bad
Keep your yeast cold and use your harvested yeast within 5 days
Don’t harvest your beer from high alcohol brews

Create more starters from smaller batch

I usually brew at least 10 gallons of beer at a time, sometimes more. My reasoning is the brewing process is just as difficult making 5 gallons as it is making 20 gallons. The problem is you will need several vials or smack packs of liquid yeast. This gets expensive quick. At $8 a vial, I would be spending $32 on yeast alone.

Creating multiple starters and building them up might be another way you can save money

If you create multiple starters, you can make your one vial go a long way. I’ve created several starters a few days before my brew day. I just pour half of the yeast into each starter. I’ll grow the yeast up until I have the correct amount of yeast for the size of the wort I am planning to brew. This gives me the yeast I need for a healthy fermentation, but I only have to buy one vial of yeast. The best part is it safer than the first two options.

With a starter you will need fewer vials of yeast, but you can still pitch the proper amount
Safer than harvesting yeast

Dry yeast is not your granddaddy’s yeast

You’ve heard the saying you get what you pay for. This used to be true for dry yeast, but yeast manufacturers are getting much better at producing quality yeast. In the past your dry yeast choices were ale or lager, and the yeast was susceptible to infection. While dry yeasts still do not have the wide variety liquid yeasts have, the yeast quality is getting better. The best part is dry yeast is significantly cheaper than liquid yeast. You also might not need to create a starter, depending on the starting gravity of your beer.

There are also other benefits with dry yeast. A dry yeast sachet can last up to two years in your refrigerator. This makes buying in bulk another option for saving money, and you will always have yeast on hand. A liquid yeast pack will last only for a few months.

If you are creating a beer where you do not need a specific strain of yeast, dry yeast is a good option. The dry yeasts produce great results, especially if you want a neutral or absent yeast profile in your beer. If you are looking for a specific flavor from your yeast, you’re still better off with liquid yeast.

Do not reuse the yeast from a dry yeast package. According to Danstar, you can repitch the yeast slurry like any other yeast (up to 5 generations), but they suggest verifying the cleanliness of the yeast first with equipment which would not normally be available to the homebrewer. This comment might be directed at professional breweries. Fermentis does not recommend reusing the yeast since the risk of infection outweighs the cost of new yeast. Since dry yeast is so cheap, I wouldn’t bother reusing the yeast.

There are more dry yeast strains available, but not the number liquid yeast enjoys
It may not be worth reusing, since it is easy to just buy another pack
You can store dry yeast for up to two years

Brewing beer on Twitter

DJ Spiess — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 16:30:23 +0000

One of the nice things about having an iPhone is you can take pictures, and post them to the internet immediately. This allowed me to post pictures of my brew day as it was happening. It was a lot of fun and it sparked much interest in homebrewing.

The pictures went immediately to Twitter, Aleuminati, Democracy’s Drink, and More Beer. What made Twitter special was the conversation about my brew day was a two-way conversation. People could see what I was doing at each point, and they could ask questions I moved from brewing step to step.

Since it was so successful, I’ll post much more on my next brew day. For now, here are the pictures from the brewday.

You can follow me on future brew days here on Twitter.

My homebrew pictures from Twitter

How to get a creamy feel in your homebrew beer

DJ Spiess — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 01:57:24 +0000

Nitrogen in the beer (beer gas)

The main reason the above beers taste creamy is how they are carbonated. Instead of using regular CO2, these beers use nitrogen for “carbonation” (carbonation isn’t really the right word since you’re adding mostly nitrogen, not CO2). The beer gas used is not all nitrogen; it is a mixture of nitrogen and CO2. The presence of nitrogen gives the beer smaller bubbles, and will give a creamy mouthfeel.

The foam in a nitrogenated beer is much more stable than other beer heads. The reason is the atmosphere we breathe is mostly nitrogen, so there isn’t much driving force between the nitrogen in the beer and the nitrogen in the air. The faucet used to pour the beer perturbs the beer to produce the milky head.

A stout faucet has special parts to make the nitrogen/CO2 beer more frothy.

This isn’t the easiest method to change the mouthfeel of your beer. You will need a nitrogen system if you want to use beer gas. This includes a nitrogen (beer gas) tank and a nitrogen regulator. You cannot fill your CO2 tank with beer gas. Once you have the nitrogen setup, you “carbonate” your beer the same way you would carbonate with CO2.

You will also need a proper stout faucet. The faucet has a restrictor disk with small holes inserted in the path of the beer which causes the pressure to drop and release the beer gas. Then the faucet has a flow straightener. This helps direct the flow of the beer into a single direction after passing through the holes.

Most places which sell CO2 will also sell beer gas. If you are having troubles locating beer gas, you might check with your local homebrew store or homebrew club. They should be able to help you find the beer gas.

Higher Temp Mash

You can get a thicker mouthfeel with more unfermentable sugars in your beer. These unfermentable sugars increase the viscosity of the beer, making it feel thicker. So how do you get more unfermentable sugars in your wort?

If you mash your grains at a higher temperature, you will get more sugars the yeast can’t eat. The enzymes that break down the starches work at specific temperatures. Some only work at lower temperatures. The alpha-amylase enzyme works best at temperatures 150F-158F (60C -70C), but the beta-amylase enzyme is denatured at 150F. Mashing your grain at 158 F will produce a more dextrinous wort.

You can’t do this in an extract brew because you don’t control the temperature. You can add malto-dextrin however, which will give the beer a thicker feel.

Oats and Flaked Barley

Oats and flaked barley add beta glucans to your wort, which are mostly unfermentable by yeast. This will add viscosity to the final brew. The more unfermentables in your beer will make the beer thicker, but oats or flaked barley will give the beer more of a silky feeling in your mouth.

These cannot be used in an extract brew because both have starches which need to be converted. If you are an extract brewer who wants to use oats or flaked barley, you’ll need to look into partial mashing.

There's nothing like good head on a beer

Lactose

Lactose is a semi-sweet sugar which is often found in milk. Lactose is not fermentable by yeast, and it will give your beer a milky mouthfeel. Lactose is added to Milk Stouts to increase the body of the beer, and give it a creamy mouth feel.

In the UK, these beers are called Lacto Stout or Sweet Stout. The USA doesn’t have the same laws regarding labeling, so they are usually called Milk Stouts. A good example of a Milk Stout is Left Hand Brewery’s Milk Stout.

Be careful to let your friends know the beer contains lactose, since some people are lactose intolerant. According to the National Digestive Diseases Information Clearinghouse, some 30 million to 50 million Americans are lactose intolerant, including up to 75 percent of African Americans and American Indians and 90 percent of Asian Americans.

Lower carbonation

Lower carbonated beers also will feel “thicker” in your mouth. You’ll notice this in oak aged ales or other British ales. The beer won’t taste milky, but the lack of carbonation will give the beer more body.

How to make an ESB (Extra Special/Strong Bitter)

DJ Spiess — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 15:29:17 +0000

I remember travelling to England for the first time. I landed in Gatwick about 7 am local time. Completely jetlagged, I barely knew where I was, but to “adjust” to the European time zone I needed to stay awake for the rest of the day. How do I stay up? I headed for the nearest pub, of course!

OK, so maybe it wasn’t the best plan adding alcohol to an already exhausted body, but I had limited time in London. I was leaving the next day for Norway, so I needed to experience as much as I could in the short time allowed.

I remember it well, because at the time my most “exotic” beer was Samuel Adams – I was young. I really didn’t know what to order, so the girl behind the bar poured an ESB. I’m not sure why she picked this style. Maybe she was trying to scare the American with a beer which actually had flavor. Wow, the beer was really good! It was far bitterer than any beer I had ever had before, but it also had a nice caramel sweetness. I’m not sure, but it might even have been my first real ale.

Here's a selection of commercial examples of ESBs

All about the ESB

Bitters and pale ales really are the same beer, and ESBs are just a specific type of bitter. The BJCP style guidelines break the beers into different categories, however if you look at the style guidelines you will see very little difference between the different beers. There is some difference in the color between the different beers and pale ales end to have more hop aroma, but everything else is almost identical. ESB beers are slightly more bitter than other bitter styles and contain a bit more alcohol (about 1% more on average).

The pale ales also tend to be lighter in color than bitters, but it is not unusual to have a pale ale slightly darker than a bitter. The same can be shown for bitterness and starting gravity. Bitters have slightly less hop aroma than a pale ale, but again there is overlap in the acceptable ranges. IPAs tend to have higher alcohol, but this comes from the evolution of the style.

Best bitters are the “brewer’s best” bitter made from the best ingredients. Extra Strong Bitters are the higher gravity version of best bitters (not necessarily made with the “best” ingredients, but could be). A best bitter usually has an alcohol content of 3.8 – 4.6% ABV, while the extra special bitter usually varies between 4.5-6.2% ABV.

In England, an ESB is brand unique to Fuller’s ESB. This makes it very easy to determine which beer the barmaid served me. Fuller’s was founded in 1845 on the historic Griffin Brewery which was built in 1654.

ESB Recipe

The basic recipe is very simple; use English pale ale malt as your base and crystal/caramel malt as the specialty grain. The English pale malt is important and gives the beer the biscuit flavors typically found in bitters.

Since the ESB is stronger than the normal bitters, some recipes use sugar as an adjunct. Sugar will thin the beer, so do not use more than 10% of the fermentables as sugar.

For hops, use Goldings, Challenger, or Fuggles. Other hops can be used, but these are the most commonly used hops in ESB. While the beer should have a solid bitter hop flavor, the bitterness should be slightly outpaced by the malt. Many recipes add too much hops, which pushes the beer closer to an American Pale Ale or and IPA style beer. If you like more hoppiness, make an APA or IPA. The ESB hop aroma can be anywhere in the middle from moderately-low hop aroma to moderately-high hop aroma.

Here’s the recipe I use for ESBs:

11.0 pounds of Pale Ale malt
0.50 pounds 20 Crystal malt
0.50 pounds 40 Crystal malt
2 oz Fuggles (5.0% AA – 60 minutes)
1 oz Fuggles (5.0% AA – 0 minutes)
White Labs WLP002 English Ale or Wyeast 1968 London ESB
SG 1.068
IBU 41
5 gallon recipe

Mash the grain at 152 F. Collect 7 gallons or wort and boil for 60 minutes to 5 gallons. 2 ounces of Fuggles will go into the wort at the start of your boil, and 1 ounce will be used for aroma. Ferment the beer at 65 F. Carbonate the beer to 1.5 to 2.0 volumes.

Burton-on-Trent Water

Many homebrewers believe to Butonize your water; you just buy the pack of salts and toss it into your water. It works for many, but this most likely is a bad plan. The reason is water in one local might be completely different from another local. Your water might come from a reservoir, while water down the road may come from a well. Each will have a completely different mineral content.

If you’re not convinced consider this. Sulfates can increase the bitterness of your beer at 150 ppm – 350 ppm and get nasty at 400 ppm, but concentrations over 750 ppm can cause diarrhea. Your best bet is to get the water mineral content analysis for your local area, and then calculate the correct amounts of salt to add.

The water in Burton-on-Trent, UK is very hard. To match Burton-on-Trent, UK water exactly, your water should have the following profile.

Calcium	295.0 ppm
Magnesium	45.0 ppm
Sodium	55.0 ppm
Sulfate	725.0 ppm
Chlorine	25.0 ppm
Bicarbonate	300.0 ppm

Most water in the United States is very soft by comparison. Other places in the world vary to some degree between very soft (low minerals) to moderate hardness (medium minerals). Once you have your local water report, your best bet is to find a chart online or use software like BeerSmith to calculate the correct additions to Burtonize your water. Another option is to use purified water, and then add the correct minerals.

If you are making an extract brew, don’t worry about the water profile. The reason is the water profile can affect the starch conversion in your mash. With extract brews, the sugars are already converted. Burtonizing your water for an extract brew will have little effect, and if you add the wrong amounts it might actually taste bad.

Water profiles can be a whole article in itself. For more info on how to calculate your water mineral additions, check out How To Brew by John Palmer. The book and website will give you everything you want to know (and some) about modifying your water profile.

Finishing touches

If you’re looking for some beers to compare your ESB, try Fullers ESB or Redhook ESB. There are many more available, but these examples are the easiest to find. Keep in mind, the commercial versions of ESBs will have a slightly higher carbonation than the style suggests. Another discrepancy is most ESB beers will tend to be fruitier and hoppier. Fullers is different because it is maltier.

Does your Belgian beer really need recultured yeast?

DJ Spiess — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 15:40:31 +0000

Your beer wants happy healthy yeast

Your favorite bottle of Belgian brew has gone through quite a bit to get to your hands. The beer was produced, bottle conditioned, sent over seas, stuck in a warehouse, put onto a truck, a stuck on a store shelf (for who knows how long) until you purchased it. The yeast in the bottle are not going to be at their best. I understand you want “authentic” Belgian ale, but there is another alternative. The yeast you want is available commercially, fresh and viable.

Isn’t “fresh and healthy” better than “tortured, jetlagged, and left for dead”? You can buy the same yeast used to make your bottle of Chimay in a fresh, healthy and much happier state. Wyeast and White Labs have already done the work for you. The best part is these yeast are happy and healthy! Here’s the list of commercial yeast, and the Belgian or Trappist source.

Wyeast
1214 Belgian Ale	Chimay
1762 Abbey II	Rochefort
3522 Belgian Ardennes	Achouffe
1388 Belgian Strong Ale	Duvel
3538 Leuven Pale Ale Yeast	Corsendonk-Bocq
3724 Belgian Saison Yeast	Saison Dupont
3787 Trappist High Gravity	Westmalle

White Labs
WLP500 Trappist Ale	Chimay
WLP510 Bastogne Belgian Ale	Orval
WLP515 Antwerp Ale Yeast	De Koninck
WLP530 Abbey Ale Yeast	Westmalle
WLP540 Abbey IV Ale Yeast	Rochefort
WLP550 Belgian Ale Yeast	Achouffe
WLP565 Belgian Saison	Saison Dupont
WLP700 Belgian Golden Ale	Duvel

Beer Book Ideas for Christmas

DJ Spiess — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 20:40:04 +0000

The holiday season is upon us and you’re looking for beer gift ideas for your favorite beer lover? Maybe you’re the beer lover looking for great book ideas for your Christmas list. Here’s a selection of great beer books to consider. All of these books are in my beer library.

There's many great beer books out there.

Beer Recipe Books

These are the books I refer to when I need a recipe for a style I’m not familiar with, or when I’m trying to replicate a commercial beer.

Brewing Classic Styles

This is one of the best recipe books out there, because not only does the book provide recipes for every BJCP style, the book also goes into why ingredients were selected and some history behind the style. This gives the reader a deeper understanding about the style. Brewing Classic Styles is a great book to learn more about how each beer style should taste.

Audience: Homebrewers
Rating: 9 of 10

Clone Brews

A friend of mine came back from a vacation claiming he had just tasted the best beer in the world and he wanted me to make 10 gallons of it. The beer was Old Speckled Hen, and at the time I hadn’t tried it. I wasn’t sure how to make a beer I’d never tried. Luckily Clone Brews had me covered! Clone Brews gives you recipes for 150 commercial beers. Despite the fact it mentions the tongue map myth, the book is a good resource for beer recipes. The recipes are all extract brews, but they give the all-grain equivalents in the sidebar. Some of the better recipes are Chimay Red, Newcastle Brown Ale, and Duvel!

Audience: Homebrewers
Rating: 8 of 10

Beer Captured

Beer Captured is another good recipe book. Again all of the recipes are extract, but it does include instructions for all-grain. This book also has great reference material in the appendix for water modification, ingredient lists, and much more good homebrew information. The book even has great food recipes using beer, including Chocolate Stout Cake and Belgian Beer Soup. This book has recipes for Celis White and Chimay Blue.

Audience: Homebrewers
Rating: 7 of 10

Learn to brew beer books

If you are looking for a beer book for someone special who is interested in learning to brew, or even someone who is an advanced brewer, consider these books.

How To Brew

This is the best “how to brew” book available. How to Brew is great for the beginner and for the homebrew expert. No matter how much you know about making beer, you will find something you didn’t know in this gem. You can find version one of this book online, but the print version is updated with much more information. The book starts out with the basics of extract brewing, but by the end of the book you’re deep in the science of brewing!

Audience: Homebrewers, Advanced Homebrewers
Rating: 10 of 10

The Complete Joy of Homebrewing

It is rare when a homebrewer doesn’t have this book on his or her shelf. This is the standby included in almost every starting brew kit. The how-to brewing book contains great references on different ingredients, do-it-yourself brewing equipment like building a mash and lauter tun, and many great beer recipes. The reason so many beer kits include this book is because of the breadth of brewing information.

Audience: Beginning Homebrewers
Rating: 7 of 10

The Beer Business

Beer School

Ever wonder how you go from homebrewer in an apartment to major national beer brand? This is the story of the Brooklyn Brewery and the challenges the authors met. I laughed out loud when the author Steve Hindy discussed how he learned to homebrew in Cairo from a homebrew recipe book for Americans working in Saudi Arabia. Since alcohol is illegal in Saudi Arabia, they couldn’t name the recipe book “How to brew beer”. You’ll have to get the book to see what the name is. Beer School has plenty of humorous stories, and it gives you insight on how difficult it is to start a brewery. Making beer is the easy part, making payroll is a challenge. I highly recommend the book if you want to start your own brewery.

Audience: Aspiring Professional Brewers
Rating: 10 of 10

The geeky side of beer

These are advanced books for the advanced homebrewer. These books go beyond the “how to” and delve into the details of making beer.

Designing Great Beers

This is my favorite beer book. This is an advanced homebrewer book which focuses on the history of many different beer styles, how the beer style originated and eventually how the beer style evolved. Not only does the book provide great information about the different styles, it discusses how you can formulate your own recipes. The author Daniels helps you understand how different recipes should be formulated by taking a statistical look at the recipes from past award winning recipes. This is not a recipe book, however, and actually contains no recipes. The purpose of this book is to help you understand every facet of a beer style, so you can craft your own award winning recipes.

Audience: Advanced Homebrewers
Rating: 10 of 10
{mosimage}

Standards of Brewing

If you are ever considering “going pro”, you need to look at this book. Producing the same beer consistently is not necessarily a goal for homebrewers, but it is important for professional breweries. Standards of Brewing is an advanced book for brewers wanting to understand how beer goes through the quality assurance process. The focus of this book is the best practices for producing consistent beer in a brewery setting. As a homebrewer the scope of this book might seem overreaching, but you learn the tools you need to produce consistent results.

Audience: Professional Brewers
Rating: 9 of 10

New Brewing Lager Beer

This book is an updated version of a classic advanced brewing book. If you want to learn the nitty gritty details of brewing beer, this is a must have book for your shelf. This book goes into depth about every facet of the brewing process. The title is a bit deceiving because it really applies to all craft beers, not just lagers. The lager focus gives the reader a complete view of the brewing process. Again this is an advanced book for the serious homebrewer or small-scale craft brewer.

Audience: Advanced Homebrewers
Rating: 9 of 10

Brew Chem 101

Brew Chem 101 gives a brief overview of the chemistry involved in brewing. It attempts to give the reader some understanding of the science involved in brewing, but not to the level where it scares away the reader. The book glosses over many of the subjects, but is good for someone who wants to know how brewing works at a “cliff notes” level. The book does give a thorough examination of what goes wrong in beer, and what chemicals are producing off-flavors. The off-flavors section is one of the better descriptions of any book. On the downside, it also describes the tongue map.

Audience: Advanced Homebrewers
Rating: 6 of 10

The Brewer’s Companion

Charts, charts, charts! This book contains graphs for many different mash schedules, charts for the different hops, templates for carboy tags, and much more. This is more of a reference book than a read cover to cover book. It contains blank worksheets for recipe formulation and more. Most of the stuff in this book is to make your life easier. It is great for putting together a brew log for your own brewing records.

Audience: Homebrewers
Rating: 7 of10

The Homebrewer’s Answer Book

The Answer Book is written by Aston Lewis, a columnist for Brew Your Own magazine. He collected many different questions from brewers and the answers he provided. This book is a great reference for any homebrewer. Each chapter contains several questions and answers for common homebrewing problems. It’s fun to flip through the book and read each the different answers. This book makes a great stocking stuffer!

Audience: Homebrewers
Rating: 8 of 10

Other Good Homebrew Books

The Complete Meadmaker

If you have ever thought of making mead, this is the book to get. This is a very complete book on learning to make mead. The book includes many different recipes. There is a great section in the book on adding fruit to mead, including the different amounts of fruit to add to get the desired strength of flavor. Whenever someone says they want to learn to make mead, I point them to this book.

Audience: Homebrewers
Rating: 10 of 10

Brew Like A Monk

At some point, every homebrewer becomes fascinated with Belgium beers. Brew Like A Monk is the authoritative book on brewing Belgian beers. If you are looking for a recipe book for Belgian beers, this is not the book you are looking for. It does describe recipes for the different beers, and for some the author Stan Hieronymus does give grain ratios, but recipes are not what the book is about. This book gives an in depth look at the diverse Belgian beers and their history. He looks at the brewing process of many Trappist monks.

Audience: Homebrewers and Beer Lovers
Rating: 9 of 10

Radical Brewing

If you’ve ever homebrewed and wondered “what would it taste like if I added habañeros”, this is the book for you. This book contains over 90 off-the-beaten-path recipes for homebrewers who think style guidelines are for sissies. For those of you still concerned about the hop shortage, Randy Mosher includes tables with everything else you can use to bitter your beer. He even lists the adjuncts which might kill you if you use in your beer, just so you know not to use them. This book has recipes like Chocolate Mint Stout, rare meads like Islamic meads (which he calls “Call Me Al”), or a Chai Brown Ale. On top of the recipes, he includes fascinating beer history and his beer brewing experiences. This is a very fun book for homebrewers!

Audience: Homebrewers
Rating: 10 of 10

Beer & Philosophy

Every now and then when I’ve knocked back a few beers with friends, one of them tries to get philosophical on me. You know the type. They bring up topics like “How deep are black holes” or some silly discussion which makes sense only when you are drinking. This book has nothing to do with making beer, but it has everything to do with the conversations after a few beers. If you know someone (or are someone) who likes “getting deep” (or thinking you are) when you drink beer, then this is the book you are looking for. This book is a series of thought provoking essays, with beer as the central theme. One essay tries to determine (in true Socratic form) “is a beer good because people like it, or do people like the beer because it is good”.

Audience: Beer lovers
Rating: 8 of 10

The Secret Life of Beer

This is another great stocking stuffer. The small book contains lots of facts and trivia about beer through history. Some the history might be just lore, but the book is fun to read. It has beer quotes, random beer facts, and short paragraphs on different facets about beer.

Audience: Beer lovers
Rating: 7 of 10

Are you ready to fruit or spice your beer?

DJ Spiess — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 17:20:53 +0000

A good spiced or fruited beer is an amazing thing. When the beer is off however, the beer is really off.

Start with a good base beer

Make sure you have a good recipe to start with. Fruit or spice beers are like making a house. A poor foundation means the house won’t stand. The same is true for beer. If your beer has off-flavors, the fruit or spices will not improve the beer and could possibly make it worse. If you’re adding fruit to improve your beer flavor, you might want to think again.

Key Limes work great in Belgian Wits

Lose the hops

Hops usually do not mix well with fruit or spices, especially flavoring and aroma hops. The grassy flavor clashes with other flavorings. You’ll want to remove your flavoring and aroma hops from your recipe.

You will want to back off the bittering hops as well. You want to make the beer a bit sweeter than normal to stand up to the fruit. Usually you should remove about 10% of the bittering hops from the recipe. If the fruit you are using is really sour, you might want to reduce your bittering hops as much as 20%. You are using the sweeter maltiness of your beer to balance the sourness of your fruit. This works for spices too.

Hops are still required in fruit beers, but you want to add just enough to balance the beer. Too much will clash with the fruit flavor.

Make an extract for some spices

There are many good extract flavorings (not fruit extracts, see below) you can find at the store. I use vanilla extract at kegging to get a fuller vanilla flavor in my beers. Sometimes you won’t be able to find the extract you need and you’ll need to create your own.

For example if you want to flavor your beer with some vegetable, you might try soaking the vegetable in vodka for a week first in a sealed jar. Use vodka because the spirit is very neutral and has little flavor. This method works great with chili beers (yes, I know chilis are fruits-anything with seeds is a fruit). After a week or so, the vodka should be infused with the flavor you desire.

Not only is this a good plan for flavoring the beer in general, it is also great for controlling your late flavorings. If you didn’t get the flavor you wanted in the secondary, you can always add more flavoring. You can create an extract of the flavor and then add it to your beer in controlled amounts until you get the flavor you desire.

Don’t use too much

Do not go crazy with the spices, it is easy to do. You want the flavors from your adjuncts, but you do not want the spices to overpower your beer and taste like a spice rack. Your best plan is to add less spices than you think you need late in the boil. Then after the first fermentation, taste the beer. If you need more spice, add a bit and try it again in a few days.

Using the homegrown extract method in the previous section, you can fine tune the spice flavor. You can add a little flavor, taste, and repeat until you dial in on the perfect flavor.

Another thing to consider is the number of spices. It might sound like fun to add half a dozen spices to your beer, but it might be very difficult to pick out each spice when drinking the beer. Too many spices will remove the beer flavor. Remember, you are making beer with spice flavoring not spices with beer flavoring.

Add to the secondary

Add your fruit to your secondary. You will lose less fruit flavor, color, and aroma if you add it after your primary fermentation. Adding fruit at the secondary allows you the opportunity to sample the beer before you add the fruit to detect any off-flavors, lets you control the amount of time your beer sits on the fruit, and you can be less concerned about bacterial contamination from the added fruit.

Add spices at the end

Add spices at the end of your boil, usually between 15 minutes and knock out. You add the spices late in the boil for the same reasons you add fruit in the secondary – to preserve the aromas and flavors of the spices. If you boil the spices too long, much of the aromatics will boil off.

Using pectic enzyme

Pectin is a carbohydrate found in fruit. When you heat pectin, it tends to gel. This is how you make jams or preserves. This is great if you’re making something to put on your toast, but it can make a beer cloudy like orange juice. The pectin causes two problems in your homebrew.

The first is pectin makes your beer cloudy. This is entirely cosmetic, and if you are making a cherry stout or cranberry porter you won’t see it at all. The second problem is if you are filtering, the pectin gels and makes your filtration almost impossible. Not all fruit has the same amount of pectin. Strawberries, pears, and apricots have low amounts of pectin, cherries and raspberries have a medium amount of pectin, and apples or citrus fruits (oranges, etc) have high amounts of pecin.

Add pectic enzyme to get rid of the haze. The pectin enzyme will increase juice yield by breaking down the cellular walls of the fruit and will help with flavor extraction.

Don’t use fruit extracts

Cherry extract tastes like cough syrup, and not the good kind (if there is possibly a good cherry cough syrup). Orange extract can taste like Tang or baby asprin. When you’re choosing a fruit flavor for your beer, avoid using fruit extracts. The flavors rarely come out like you hope, and they almost always taste artificial. There are some extracts which are good, but more often than not it will taste horrible. Personally I don’t like to chance it.

The only reason I can think to use the fruit extracts is if you didn’t get enough fruit flavor from your fruit and you want to “kick it up a notch”. You might try adding a bit of acid blend first if you can taste the fruit flavor, but you’re just missing an extra “tartness”. You might actually have enough fruit flavor, but the acidity is not low enough to have the fruit tartness.

Watch out for the fruit volcano

The best time to add fruit is in the secondary. Crush your fruit to a pulp or use fruit puree. Put the fruit into your secondary and then rack your beer on top of it. Make sure you use a blow off tube or rack to another fermenting bucket. The yeast from the fermentation will chew though your fruit like a tornado through Kansas. If your airlock gets clogged, it can create a dangerous situation. In best case you will find half of the fruit on the ceiling (really bad if you used raspberries), and worst case your fermenter will shatter.

This Mandarin orange hefeweizen added a nice orange hue to my basement ceiling, racks, bottles, etc...

Some fruits are more equal than other fruits

Some fruits are much stronger than other fruits. Keep this in mind when you are deciding how much to add to your beer. 10 pounds of strawberries might give you a hint of strawberry, but 10 pounds of sour cherries might remove all beer character from your brew.

The BJCP Beer-pedia for your iPhone

DJ Spiess — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:37:46 +0000

If you review beer for your blog, make beer, or judge beer you will want to check out this new iPhone application (this new application does more than pour beer).

All of the BJCP beer styles can be found listed in the iPhone application

2008 Beer Judge Certification Program Styles iPhone application

The 2008 Beer Judge Certification Program Styles iPhone application is an easy to navigate reference for all the BJCP Style Guidelines. The application lists the aroma, appearance, flavor, mouthfeel, traditional ingredients, vital statistics and commercial examples of all 80+ beer styes including cider, perries, and meads. The application also includes color references to aid in guess-timating SRM beer colors.

If you’re reading this in a country other than the United States or Canada, the BJCP guidelines help judges determine if a beer entered in a competition matches commercial examples from where the beer originates. If you’re judging a Märzen, the guidelines will help you determine if the beer is similar to brews you might find in Bavaria.

Just how cool is it?

Now I’m sure you’re wondering, how is this any better than printing out the pdf of all the styles?

What makes this app better than a PDF is you can drilldown to the style you need instead of flipping through pages

What makes this application cool is how you can drill down to specific styles. Each category (i.e.- Bock, Porter, etc…) drills down to specific examples. For instance, if you select Bock, your next choices are Maibock, Traditional Bock, Doppelbock, or Eisbock. From there you can get a complete description of a particular style. A few simple clicks and you can reference any beer style you need!

With this application every beer style (approved by the BJCP of course) is at your fingertips. Even better, the next time you’re talking to someone from across the pond (read “Europeans”) about beer styles, you can match their blank stare with the complete American definition of every beer available in the world (Australian and Asian styles excluded).

Review: The Big and Easy Bottle Brew

DJ Spiess — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 22:50:40 +0000

A month ago I noticed something new at my local homebrew shop. It’s called the Big and Easy bottle brew. The Big and Easy is a two liter “no brew” beer brewing kit and I can honestly say there is no easier way to make beer. The kit comes in three flavors, Mexican cerveza, premium pilsner, and red lager. With these “fancy” beer styles, I must admit I had serious doubts about any possible quality the beer kit might have. I tried the Mexican cerveza at the suggestion of the store clerk.

The Big and Easy Bottle Brew comes with everything you need to make beer

Dropping Yeast

While making the beer my six year old quickly pointed out, “You are not making beer daddy. You are just dropping yeast into a bottle”. She couldn’t be more right. To make the beer, you twist off the bottle cap, drop in a capsule of dry yeast, and then screw on a new special cap. Store the bottle and wait for the fermentation to complete. The whole process takes 30 seconds to make, and about 2 weeks for the fermentation.

The yeast is a dry yeast, and comes in a small pill

The special cap is similar to the “balloon brewing” from days past. The special cap serves as the airlock for your fermenter. The cap is a normal soda bottle cap with a hole drilled through it. The hole is covered from the inside with a rubber bladder. The bladder has a tiny pin hole. CO2 produced from the fermentation escapes the bottle through the tiny pin hole.

Even though all three beers are lagers, you can ferment the beer at room temperature. I fermented mine at 65 F. Since the fermenter is a two liter bottle, you do not need much room. You can brew this beer anywhere. It is perfect for anyone short on space (like a dorm room – but you never heard that from me), or anyone who wants to get their feet wet with home brewing.

The Big and Easy Bottle Brew airlock is a twist cap with a hole drilled in it. Inside the cap is a rubber bladder with a small pinhole to allow gas to escape.

Looks

The beer produced was mostly clear. It had a very slight haze, but it was much clearer than I expected. The beer was clear as possible without being filtered. The bottle instructions recommend you store the beer in the fridge 10 hours before serving, but I kept mine chilled for about 2 weeks. This wasn’t planned; I wanted to wait until I had several people to help me drink it.

The color was a very good light gold color. The cerveza had a good head to it, but dissipated quickly. The head lasted as long as you would expect for the beer style. Other than the very slight haze, I could see nothing wrong with the looks of the beer.

Aroma

There was very little aroma from the beer. It had a very slight hint of hops. It might be unfair to comment too much on the aroma, since it was in line with any other Mexican cerveza I’ve had. The beer has the same aroma you might get from a Dos Equis.

Taste

The taste of the beer was far more than I would ever expected. Yes, I did drink the beer while watching a Denver Broncos win, but at the time I opened the bottle the game was tied at 6 apiece so the positive review isn’t due to “home team winning” euphoria. The beer has great flavor. It has much more body than Corona or Dos Equis, and the beer was slightly maltier. The Big and Easy bottle brew tastes great, and is very impressive for a two liter “no brew” beer kit. I was really surprised how the beer stayed carbonated. The cap holds just enough pressure to keep the beer carbonated.

Conclusion

I’m planning to try more of the Big and Easy brew kits. I really enjoyed this beer. I think the kit does take all the fun out of making it since you just drop in a pellet of yeast, but it does make a great introduction to homebrewing. In fact the kit is perfect for someone who might want to try homebrewing, and doesn’t want to invest in equipment. Everything you need comes with the kit.

I saved the cap so I can try experimenting with 2 liter brews. It would be fun to make small test brews during the winter, without bringing all the equipment into the snow. I’ll write about future projects with the bottle cap.

The kit cost me $7.99, but I’ve seen it for $5.99 on the internet (more proof my favorite homebrew store is a bit spendy, but that’s another story). Either way, I’d recommend the kit as something fun to try. The kit takes little effort, and it produces a good beer. I give it 10 2L Coke bottles out of 10.

Should you put olive oil in your homebrew?

DJ Spiess — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:49:30 +0000

Why use olive oil in your homebrew?

Your yeast need oxygen for a happy and healthy fermentation. Yeast use oxygen during the lag phase to synthesize sterols and unsaturated fatty acids for its cell walls. If there is not enough oxygen, the yeast can not grow and die off early. Low oxygen leads to stalled fermentations and off-flavors. This is the reason you need to shake the carboy before pitching your yeast.

The problem is with too much oxygen your wort can become oxidized. An oxidized beer will taste like cardboard ass (or sherry but not in a good way). Any time you add oxygen to your beer, you run the risk of some oxidation. The olive oil solution is an attempt to avoid oxidation.

So why would you add olive oil? The idea behind olive oil is instead of giving the yeast oxygen to manufacture the unsaturated fatty acids, give the yeast an unsaturated fatty acid. Your wort doesn’t get oxidized and your yeast get what they need for their growth.

Oxygen is used by yeast to synthesize sterols and unsaturated fatty acids for its cell walls
Ale yeasts need about 5 parts oxygen per million in wort, while lagers can need 10 to 12 parts oxygen per million.
Olive oil gives yeast the compounds synthesized for cell wall construction

You'll need barely a drop of olive oil in your starter

Where did this crazy idea come from?

Adding unsaturated fatty acids like linoleic acid to wort was attempted in several studies, but in 2005 Grady Hull, with the help of New Belgium Brewery, decided to try using olive oil. Olive oil was chosen because it is much more readily available and olive oil contains the same unsaturated fatty acid beer yeast produce. Linoleic acid is not naturally produced by yeast. It would seem olive oil was the perfect choice.

The olive oil experiment was in a 2005 thesis by Grady Hull
The experiment was conducted at New Belgium Brewery in Fort Collins, Colorado

How well did it work?

The experiment worked quite well for Grady Hull’s goals. The original goal was to compare the effects of adding olive oil to storage yeast vs. traditional wort aeration. They found they could achieve similar results in the final product using olive oil. The paper did note ester production was higher than the traditional aeration beer, but the additional esters were within production limits; in fact the flavor panel at New Belgium preferred the higher ester flavored beer. They also found the fermentation times were slower.

The New Belgian Brewery was also looking to increase shelf life for their beers. Less oxygen means they can keep their beers on the shelf longer. Hull reported increased flavor stability in the olive oil beer. Based on the goals set out by Hull, the experiment seemed to hit a home run for macro breweries, but the question everyone wanted to know still remains. How well would olive oil work on my homebrew? No one really knows yet.

The olive oil beer produced more esters and took longer to ferment – both were still within accepted norms

How much olive oil do I use in my homebrew?

In the study, Hull added olive oil based on the total number of cells. He didn’t list actual volumes in the paper because there can be variations in yeast slurry thickness. In the first trial they added 1 mg of olive oil per 67 billion cells pitched into 360 hl of wort, and the final trial they added 1 mg per 25 billion cells pitched into 2100 hl of wort.

So how much olive oil is this on a homebrew scale? Going by their numbers you would need about 0.036 ml in your starter for a 5 gallon batch. In short, less than a drop. Probably not even that much. Most brewers adding olive oil in their homebrew are sticking a pin tip into olive oil and rinsing it into their wort. Even this small amount is likely too much if the numbers are correct.

The study’s authors added their olive oil to the yeast slurry about 5 hours before use. To do this at home, you need to add the olive oil to your yeast starter.

Use the tip of a pin to get a small drop of olive oil
Add the olive oil to your starter

Questions left unanswered

The first question I had after reading the thesis is: would this work for lagers? The study reported higher esters in each of their trials, but since they were making Belgian ale the esters were desired. In the case of a lager, you do not want increased ester production. This technique would be good for big beers or ales where esters are expected, but I have to question how well it will work in lagers.

Many homebrewers in brewing forums using this method and claim wild fermentations, wonderful beers, etc… but unfortunately this is anecdotal evidence. The study at New Belgian Brewery claimed their olive oil fermentations actually took 20% longer than normal fermentations. If this is accurate, your fermentation at home should be slower not faster. It would be interesting to devise an experiment to try at home to see how well this scales to homebrew breweries. If you’ve tried this before, let me know how well it worked for you in the comments below.

Interesting idea, but it needs more experimentation for home use
Increased esters might be bad for a lager

8 clever uses for bad beer

DJ Spiess — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 22:37:17 +0000

I’ve been asked this question many times, but I’ve never really known how to answer. I haven’t made too many bad batches, just a few questionable ones. With the questionable ones, you can claim it’s “funky” or it “has character”. Bad beers are beers which rarely can make it past your lips.

I asked what you do with bad beer to several brewers on the AHA TechTalk Homebrewer’s Forum. The answers were varied and very interesting. Here is what other brewers do.

Cooking with beer

The most common answer I got was to use the beer for cooking. If the beer has a strong malt flavor it would go well with chili. Many suggested using bad beer in sauces or marinades.

“When I have a beer that’s not quite up to par, but still has a nice malt backbone, I like to cook with it. Try a dark to amber ale for beef, pork, or lamb roasts or ribs. I usually do something like pork ribs immersed half way in a roasting pan in the beer. Season the ribs to your liking, and cook the ribs slowly all day so they are almost falling off the bone. Then get creative with some of the beer in addition to garlic, onions, ketchup, mustard, Worcestershire, white or malt vinegar, etc. for the BBQ sauce. Finish them on the grill, slather with BBQ sauce and enjoy with a good beer! Yum!” – Andy G.

When I cook sausages I usually place the sausage in a baking pan, pour about an inch of beer around the sausages, cover the baking pan with foil, and cook for about a half hour. It gives the sausage a good flavor. You can also use the beer for boiling brats.

Beer Fertilizer

Several brewers suggested bad beer could be used as lawn fertilizer. This gives a new spin on “lawnmower beer”. While live yeast will not help your lawn, dead yeast or other nutrients in the beer might help. The alcohol probably won’t hurt your lawn unless it is a very high alcohol brew. You will want to take care and possibly try a test spot before dumping the swill on your grass.

Making Malt Vinegar

Many brewer responses say they make malt vinegar with their bad beer. In many ways vinegar is beer or wine which has gone bad. Control how it goes bad, and you have vinegar.

Once you have vinegar, there are many options for food. Greg G. suggested turning the beer into malt vinegar “then use the vinegar to make mustard, relish, chutney and marinade.”

Moonshine

While this option might not be the most “legal” choice, one suggestion was to distill the beer into whiskey. You could always claim you are producing ethanol to combat the fuel crisis. The distilled beer might make a good whiskey, but I know nothing about how well this will turn out. You will want to be very careful, or give it to someone who knows what they are doing. Bad beers often contain fusel alcohols, and distilling a bad beer will give you concentrated fusel alcohols. This is the moonshine which makes you blind.

Add more hops

I’ve had a few IPAs which tasted like liquid hops. In fact I didn’t taste anything but hops. For some, these hop-bombs are the new trend. This could be your way out of bad beer.

As Larry S. says, “Just hop the heck out of it and call it Imperial whatever”. Adding lots of late hop additions could cover up the bad flavors.

Your bad beer's purpose in life may just be to serve as a warning to others.

Snail Bait

I’ve never heard of this use for bad beer, but apparently I am the exception. We don’t get too many snails in Colorado because they like moisture and well, it never rains here really, but several brewers suggested use the beer as “bug bait”. Snails will drown in the beer. A dish beer left out over night will attract many bugs to their death. I have a serious wasp problem; I’ll have to see if this works with them.

Beer Possum

This was a weird suggestion until I figured out what The Earl (Steve S.) meant by “beer possum”. A “beer possum” is someone who really appreciates beer, especially free beer. Everyone knows at least one “beer possum”. You might even get favors back for the off beer. Now this is a great use for bad beer.

This one could be tricky. Serving the bad beer to others may reduce your reputation as a great brewer.

Just drink the beer

In most cases, your beer will be “off” but not bad”. Relax and have a homebrew as they say.

“If they are moderately drinkable, I keep drinking them as incentive to be more careful next time – and to do so soon.” – Bob K.

Thanks to everyone on the AHA TechTalk Homebrewer’s Forum for their answers!

The Basement Winery

Petra Spiess — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 15:13:54 +0000

Pour someone a glass of fine looking wine, then right before they are about to take a sip, tell them you made it—invariably there will a hesitation (the length of which depends on the default courtesy of the guest)—followed by questions. People are leery of homemade alcohol, usually for good reason—it’s frequently awful. But making alcohol at home has come a long way since the moonshine days; it’s now easy to make elegant wines in your own basement for a fraction of their retail cost. Home winemaking is a fun way to fill up a wine cellar, to make gifts for friends and family, and to put a personal stamp on entertaining.

“Most of my customers make their own wine as a hobby. It is fun, easy, and the end product is very good. It is fun for them to share with friends and family, and it also is much cheaper then buying wine. You can make a very good wine for about $3 a bottle”, comments Kevin DeLange, owner of The Brew Hut in Aurora, Colorado whose store and website is an excellent resource for the home enologist. Richard T. Berkey, co-owner of Stomp Them Grapes in Denver, a store which specializes in supplies and equipment for home winemaking, expands upon its appeal,
“Fermentation is fascinating, akin to preparing fine cuisine or baking. You create complex and flavorful concoctions from naturally-occurring, raw materials”.

There are two main ways of making wine at home, one considerably easier than the other, making wine from a kit, and making wine from fresh or frozen grapes.

Wine Kits

“The most popular kits are the most common types of wines. Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Merlot, Cabernet, and Shiraz. The Port and Ice Wines are also popular”, says Kevin. Wine kits consist of either pure grape juice, grape juice concentrate, or a combination of the two, as well as all the other additives needed such as: yeast, oak chips (simulates the flavor of aging in oak barrels), and clarifying materials—and the all important—instructions. Beginning equipment needed to make kit wines can be purchased together for about $50-70. The kits themselves range from $50 to $120. Kits allow wine makers access to uncommon grape varietals. Wine kits usually make about 6 gallons of wine, which fills 30 standard wine bottles. You can buy bottles new from suppliers, but a good source for free ones is a local bar. Used bottles can be cleaned, sanitized, and reused.

Wine kits can be really good as long as you follow the instructions carefully

Most wines should be fermented between 68-75 degrees F (this depends on the yeast so check instructions), making most basements ideal locations for a home winery. Kit wines need to age from 5-8 weeks, but many benefit from additional aging. Once finished, the wine is transferred into bottles and corked with either real or synthetic corks. You can also make your own wine labels using Microsoft Publisher, a paint program, or a label making program. While there are laws limiting what you can put on wine labels for commercially sold wine, they don’t apply to wine made at home—but keep this in mind if you are going to give a bottle to Grandma as a holiday gift.

Wine from Grapes

The other–significantly more involved option—for home winemaking involves using fresh or frozen grapes. Many brew stores will order different grapes from growers across the U.S., but they get their deliveries from August to October. “Fresh grapes are only available within a limited margin of time each year, in the fall during harvest”, says Richard, “fresh grapes are a delicate lot, and must be dealt with expediently and intently when taken off the vine”. Making wine from fresh grapes—or their must, the liquid resulting from pressing and crushing fresh grapes—takes more effort than kits. Richard explains, “The wine kit product, unlike frozen grape musts, is drastically simpler, since all the basic analysis and chemistry has been done for you prior to opening the package”. There is a long list of equipment involved in this process, and as they are pretty expensive, most people use them at the store where they buy their grapes, or rent them.

Nothing beats making wine from grape!

The first step in the process of making wine from grapes is crushing, desteming, and testing and adjustment of sugar, acid, and pH levels. Next is the initial fermentation, which takes about 2 to 3 days, then pressing to remove skins and seeds (for red wine, white wine is pressed to remove the skins before fermentation), then another round of fermentation, called malolactic fermentation. The wine is moved into a clean carboy—this step is called racking. Next, oak (oak chips which simulate the flavor of aging in oak barrels) is added. The wine is racked again and then clarification materials are added. Depending on how much sediment is present, the wine may need to be racked every 2 to 4 months. The wine is then aged 6-9 months (total) and then bottled.

Which way you go to your own impressive homemade wine is really up to you. “Kit winemaking is decidedly the more affordable and less daunting way to get involved, since a basic equipment kit can be purchased for around $70. Ingredient kits go for as little as $50, and contain everything needed to produce a quality wine”, says Richard. However, making wine from grape, although more involved, also have its benefits Richard explains. “Others enjoy the camaraderie and widely-felt spirit of celebration innate within a community-based crushing, and return again and again in pursuit of it”.

Regardless of the method, making your own wine is a fun and unique way to add to the celebration and bonding of drinking with friends and family. Its “a personally engaging activity that requires forethought, learning, discipline, patience, and attention to detail”, says Richard, that produces “the pride of sharing, over the home hearth with good friends, a wonderfully complex product that one has created oneself. It is the giving of a gift that comes from within”.

Why does my beer taste bad?

DJ Spiess — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 03:34:46 +0000

There are several ways your beer can go wrong. When you have a bad beer you can cry in it, or you can learn from it. In the next few articles, we’ll look at what bad flavors your beer can get and what causes the particular off-flavor.

Green apples are great for cider. Beer? Not so much.

My beer tastes like green apples (acetaldehyde)

Green apples are great, but pretty crappy in beers. If your beer has the flavor or aroma of green apples, this flavor is usually caused by acetaldehyde. Acetaldehyde, sometimes called ethanal, is formed by the yeast before the Glucose is converted to alcohol.

Glucose -> pyruvic acid -> acetaldehyde -> ethanol

Since acetaldehyde is an intermediate step, usually “green” beers have this off-flavor.

The green apple flavor means the fermentation process halted before completion. This could be caused by pitching into wort with too little oxygen, not pitching the correct amount of yeast, or just racking your beer too early. If you haven’t already racked and kegged/bottled the beer, the solution is to warm up the fermenter a bit so the yeast can “finish the job”.

Some literature and several books state adding too much cane or corn sugar will give beers a cidery flavor. It’s more likely the wort was nitrogen-deficient, oxygen deficient, or missing something else the yeast needed to complete the fermentaion. Many Belgian beers use sugar to lighten the body of the beer. I haven’t come across too many unintentionally cidery Belgian beers.

The reason many cite sugar as the culprit is table sugar is sucrose, a sugar which yeast cannot easily ferment. Sucrose (table sugar) however breaks into fructose and glucose, both easily fermented by yeast. Heat and acid (your wort) will easily break the bond of this disaccharide.

Green apple beers are usually “green beers”
Acetaldehyde is the compound usually associated with hangovers
Sugar isn’t usually the cause of cidery beer
Pitch proper amounts of yeast at a cooler fermentation temperature to avoid “green apples”
Time can fix this problem

Is your beer tea-bagged? (astringent)

If your beer makes your mouth pucker up faster than a very strong Earl Grey tea, your beer may be too astringent. This means there is too much tannin in the beer and anyone drinking it will get the instant “bitter beer face”.

One source of tannins comes from sparging your grains in wort where the pH is too alkaline (greater than 6) or your sparging water temperature is too high. When the wort pH is over 6, tannins and silicates are extracted from the malt husks. Tannins are also extracted if your sparge water temperature is too high (over 170 F).

You can get this off flavor in an extract brew as well if you steep your specialty grains too long or at a high temperature.
Another source of this bitterness can come from a bacterial infection. Acetobacter is a genus of bacteria who can convert ethanol (your beer’s alcohol) into acetic acid. This astringency will taste more like vinegar.

The tea bag flavor usually comes from too many tannins
Don’t mash your grains too hot
Some bacterial infections can some vinegary astringency flavors
Modify your brewing techniques to avoid this in the future

Shorten your brew day with overnight mashing

DJ Spiess — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 21:06:11 +0000

You’ll often hear all-grain brewing takes around four hours minimum, but I’ve seen bad brew days extend as much as 7 hours (it was cold, and many, many things went wrong). I’ve found breaking the brew day into two days helps improve brewing enjoyment and keeps me sane.

The Overnight Mash

It doesn’t matter how you all-grain brew, you can overnight mash if you batch sparge or continuous sparge. The idea is to mash your grains overnight in a cooler. That’s it. Start your mash and then go to bed. The next morning you can pick up brewing right where you left off.

You'll need a cooler like this one to hold your temperature overnight. Make sure you test it before committing grains to it.

I sometimes alter the process by starting the mash early in the morning, and then pick back up later in the afternoon. The “overnight mash” really should be called an extended mash. The only problem with this method is you need to start very early or brew late. This kinda defeats the whole point of making the brew day shorter, but it can give you time to run errands in between the mash and the boil.

The overnight/extended mash will have the same effect as a 90-minute mash. The mash efficiency might actually be a bit better, but you do no need to worry about dramatically increasing your attenuation. Your starting temperature determines the fermentability.

I usually start my mash in the evening after dinner. If you are brewing in a colder area, you’ll want to bring your cooler inside and put a blanket around it. This will help your mash maintain temperature overnight.

Mashing overnight splits the brew day into two smaller sessions
Once the starches are converted, the mash is just occupying space until you start your brew.

Watch your temperatures

Your cooler should hold temperature as close as possible to your target mashing temperature, especially for the first two hours of your mash. This is the time period when your starches are converted to sugars. During the first few hours the amylase (enzymes which break down starches to sugars) do their work. Once they are done, your mash is just hot sugar tea ready for boil.

Leaving the mash overnight will not affect the attenuation, even if you are targeting a lower fermentable mash. The reason is at 150 F the amylase will denature within the normal mash time. After a few hours, there will be no amylase left. Everything that is going to happen happens in the first two hours. Losing temperature after this point will not affect your wort’s attenuation, but it may cause other headaches for you.

Holding your temperature is important if you are continuous sparging. If the temperature gets too low, you won’t be able to dissolve the sugars in your grain bed and you’ll get a lower efficiency than planned. To avoid this situation, you should do a mash-out. The mashout is raising the temperature of your mash to 170 F prior to lautering. This will help dissolve the sugars and improve your efficiency. This problem is avoided in batch sparging the same way when you add your strike water.

Another concern is a bacterial infection. If your temperature drops below 130 F, your wort might be susceptible to a bacterial infection. The bacteria will be killed off in your boil; however it might produce off-flavors before the boil. I’ve never had this happen because I’ve never had my temperature drop below 145 F. Your mileage may vary, however even if your temperatures go below 130 F the risk is low.

Temperatures are important, but don’t stress so much that you are checking the temperature all night. Check the temperature the next morning when you start your sparge or boil. The morning temperature will tell you if you should add blankets to the cooler next time, or sleep easy through the night.

A mash-out may be required if you continuous sparge
Most bacteria will die off in temperatures over 140 F, but if you go below 130 F you might get off-flavors
Requires more planning and fore-thought

Proper Equipment

I use a Coleman Extreme 5-day cooler for my mashes. The cooler lid sits inside the cooler and the whole thing is heavily insulated. I’ve had great success maintaining temperatures overnight with this cooler. Even in the cooler months of the year the cooler holds the temperature well; however this cooler is best suited for batch sparging.

Keep a thermometer in the mash tun so you can make sure your mash tun stays on temperature

You could use any cooler, but you might need to “supplement” the insulation with blankets. If you are using buckets or another mash tun without insulation, you’ll need to use lots of heavy blankets to hold temperature. You may need to be creative with Styrofoam insulation. Just try to hold your mash temperature for the first few hours, after that stay above 140 F.

5-day coolers work best for overnight mashes. In my experience, I lose no more than 5 degrees overnight with a 5-day cooler.
The color of the cooler does not matter, but I prefer blue.

New homebrewers, just one tip

DJ Spiess — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 20:59:50 +0000

The Brew Dudes posed this question to homebrewers for July? What tip would you offer to new homebrewers?

When first homebrewing, a novice can quickly be overrun with information. You’re told to worry about dimethyl sulfide, make sure you pitch at the exact temperature, sterilize and sanitize till it hurts, don’t boil too long, make sure you boil long enough, and most of all “relax, don’t worry, and have a homebrew”. No wonder new homebrewers are neurotic basket cases screaming for help on internet brewer forums. What are they to do?

Find a Jedi

What is the one piece of advice I would offer a new brewer? Watch someone else brew first.

Watching someone else make beer will help you realize how forgiving beer making really is

You can read every book on beer in the universe (I’d recommend How to Brew by John Palmer), but watching someone do it once can really put you at ease.

If you can’t find a friend, locate your local homebrew club. Someone somewhere near you knows how to brew. You should watch him or her. See if you can witness the whole process from boil to bottle.

When you watch someone who has been brewing for a while, they will have plenty of good and bad habits. The important thing to take away from watching someone is it can be done.

If you’re lucky, you might see a few mistakes. You might even catch the brewer doing something brewing books and the internet warn against. Your “Jedi” might even commit some horrible homebrewing sin. It’s ok. That is what you are looking for, because despite all these mistakes the end result will be beer.

10 common questions about homebrewing

DJ Spiess — Tue, 13 May 2008 13:45:21 +0000

I get tons of searches on Fermentarium looking for answers to different brewing questions. I’ve collected some of the more common questions here with answers.

Homebrewing is easy as making soup.

How do you add alcohol to beer?

I usually tell people “it is a white powder I special order from Malaysia”. I guess there is a grain of truth to this. I add yeast to the wort, which in dry form looks like a coarse powder. To make a beverage alcoholic, you need to ferment it. The fermentation process occurs when yeast convert available sugars to alcohol and carbon dioxide. When the fermentation is complete, the liquid contains alcohol.

How do I read a hydrometer?

I find it interesting this is the number one search which brings people to Fermentarium. Reading a hydrometer is very simple. Place you hydrometer into your jar with the solution you wish to measure. Read the value at the bottom of the meniscus. You can find more information on reading the hydrometer with this article .

A hydrometer will estimate the amount of sugar in your wort before and after fermentation. Using the difference you can calculate an estimation of how much alcohol is in your beer.

How do I make hard cider?

I use this recipe when I make my hard cider. The recipe really is just apple juice, some sugar, and yeast. The important step I use when making cider is to add apple concentrate after the apple juice is fermented and stabilized. This gives the cider a sweeter apple flavor. The cider is very popular in the summer.

Does beer contain sulfites?

Small amounts of sulfite are produced in the fermentation of alcoholic beverages. Most breweries have limits on the amount of sulfite that can be present in the beer. The sulfite could be added as a preservative in some rare cases, or simply be a byproduct of the fermentation. The Food and Drug Administration in the United States requires any beverage which has more than 10 parts per million (ppm) to include a warning on the label. I have not seen many beers with a “Contains Sulfites” warning on the label, so most beers should be below 10 ppm. German beers will not have sulfites added, but the beers may still contain some sulfites from fermentation.

How do I brew spirits?

You can’t really “brew” spirits like vodka or gin. To make spirits, you first need to ferment a strong alcoholic beverage. Then the alcohol is distilled from the beverage. The alcohol is distilled by raising the temperature of the alcoholic beverage to the point where the alcohol boils, but water does not. The ethanol steam is collected, possibly distilled again, charcoal filtered, and then the result is your spirit. It is quite a bit of work and requires specialized equipment. It is illegal to produce spirits in many countries, including the United States, but the equipment is readily available. The distillation equipment is meant for ethanol production (gas), but it also works for spirits. Personally I think it is more work than it is worth.

Can you homebrew/make ice wine?

Yes, kinda. If you have access to the grapes, you can make any wine. To make a true ice wine , you need to harvest the grapes after they have over-ripened and frozen on the vine. There are only three places in the world where it gets cold enough for this to happen on a consistent basis: Ontario, Germany, and New Zealand. However, you can make a very good approximation using a wine kit.

These grapes are pressed frozen to get a more concentrated must

You could also freeze your grapes, and press the frozen grapes. To do this, you need a press which can provide a lot of pressure. Your goal is to get a must with a brix over 30. It’s a lot of work, and you will never get the same flavors you would get from ripe grapes frozen on the vine. I’d recommend the icewine-style wine kit.

How do you make lambic?

It’s a long article to describe how to make this delicious beer. Too much to describe here, but luckily I’ve already covered it. The basic process is to add a lambic blend to your beer. The lambic blend includes Brettanomyces, Saccharomyces, and the bacterial strains Lactobacillus and Pediococcus.

It looks scary fermenting, but lambics are worth the scare.

How do I clean my kegs?

Cleaning kegs is very easy. I use soap and water. Rinse the kegs very thoroughly. For the harder to remove deposits, I use PBW. Once the keg is clean, I sanitize the keg with a one-step solution.

Can homebrew beer be poisonous?

No. There are no known pathogens which can live in alcohol. This does not mean your beer cannot taste foul. You might have a nasty tasting beer that induces vomit, but it is not poisonous. One caveat: you can get alcohol poisoning if you drink too much, just like regular beer.

Why does my beer have no alcohol?

If your beer is as sweet as the day you pitched your yeast, your beer does not have alcohol because it did not ferment. There are many causes for this, but the most common reason is your yeast was dead. It might have been dead before you pitched, or you might have killed the yeast when you pitched. Here are some points to consider before you pitch your yeast.

Do you have a question?

If you have questions you would like answered in a future article, please use the contact us page . I’ll collect the questions and answer them in future posts!

How to make Mexican Lagers

DJ Spiess — Tue, 06 May 2008 04:43:38 +0000

Mexican lagers have always been an enigma to me. I’ve been all over Mexico, and I can say with certainty the place is hot. The last time I was in Mexico was for a football game between the Miami Dolphins and Denver Broncos in Mexico City. The game was at night, but seemed as hot as a summer day in Denver. At the game I learned a few things. One, the Mexicans love the Dallas Cowboys, Miami Dolphins and Oakland Raiders in that order. Two, the Denver Broncos are at the bottom of the list of favorites, right under root canals and spinal taps. Three, Mexican beers taste awesome when it is really hot out!

Mexican beers aren't just for Cinco de Mayo

Mexican Lager History

Some places like Puerto Peñasco are dry and hot, others places like Acapulco are humid and hot. All in all, Mexico is hot (did mention it’s hot in Mexico?). Making an ale would not surprise me too much, but lagers seem to be an odd choice for such a warm climate. I have troubles with lager temperatures in Colorado, so Mexico seems like a “lager impossibility”. Believe it or not, the first lager brewery in Mexico, the La Pila Seca, was opened by a Swiss immigrant in 1845. That’s impressive since commercial refrigeration really didn’t take off until 1856.

Still Mexican lagers are a great choice for a summer beer. If you want to make some for the Fourth of July, now is a good time to start. You’ll need to lager the beer for four weeks after fermentation. These are great summer party beers to drink through the hot summer days and nights. The lagers are yet another good session beer, but a bit stronger at 4.5% ABV to 5.5% ABV.

Vienna Lagers

The Mexican lager we’re going to look at is really a Vienna lager. The Vienna lager died out in Germany, but not before Santiago Graf and other Austrian immigrant brewers in the late 1800s brought the style to Mexico. In fact two popular beers, Negra Modelo and Dos Equis Ámbar are heavily influenced by the Vienna style. The Vienna style shouldn’t be an exact match of these Mexican beers, since the commercialization of these beers have altered the profile of the true Vienna lager. They now add corn syrup and other adjuncts to reduce costs. The lager should be maltier than your typical Pilsner, more so than Corona or other lagers based on the American-style Pilsner lagers.

There are many Mexican beers, but few are like the Vienna style beer

The Mexican lagers, like the Vienna style lagers, are a reddish amber to copper color with a good off-white head. The head should last a bit. This beer is similar in flavor to the Märzen/Oktoberfest beer , but not quite as malty.

Many Vienna lager recipes use some darker malts for color, but they should not impart any flavor or aroma. The beer should not have any caramel flavors. The flavor is more like toast. Since this is a North American beer, you can use any quality Pilsner malt as your base malt. The beer should have a crisp clean lager finish, almost dry. The body of the beer should be a bit creamy, and have mild carbonation. Most Mexican lagers unfortunately do not have the flavor of the original lagers. While the current commercial incarnations are heavily laced with adjuncts, the future for Mexican lagers looks brighter. The microbrew industry has taken America by storm also is taking hold in Mexico. We may yet again see accurate versions of the Vienna lager in Mexico.

Recipe

 3.75 lbs. of Continental Pilsner Malt
 5.0 lb. of Vienna Malt
 1.0 lb. of Munich Malt
 6.0 oz of Crystal Malt
 1.5 oz Hallertau (4.0% AA) for 60 minutes
 0.5 oz Hallertau (4.0% AA) for 10 minutes
 White Labs WLP838 Southern German Lager or Wyeast 2308 Munich Lager

 SG 1.051
 FG 1.013

Mash the grains for 90 minutes at 152 F (67 C). You’ll want to boil the beer for 90 minutes to eliminate any DMS (dimethyl sulphide).

Ferment at the wort at 50 F, the lower end of the recommended temperature for the yeast. Once the fermentation is complete, you’ll want to lager the beer for at least 4 weeks. If you can make the beer in February or March, the beer will be even smoother by summer.

Carbonate the beer 2 to 2.5 volumes.

Do I fruit the beer?

It’s really up to you if you want to “fruit the beer” with a lime. The origins of the lime were to prevent insects from getting into the beer, but many like the flavor so it has since become a tradition. Burt Renyolds and Miller Beer can’t really be trusted on this subject. They said “don’t fruit the beer”, and a few months later released Miller Chill. Go with how you feel, and forget what everyone else says.

Alabama Alcohol Beverage Control pays homebrewer a visit

DJ Spiess — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 21:46:57 +0000

In Alabama, the state government was considering a bill to raise the legal alcohol limit in beer from 6% ABV (alcohol by volume) to 13.9% ABV. You read that right, it is illegal to purchase or distribute beer higher than 6% ABV. This eliminates most craft beers. The bill to raise the ABV limit is in the Alabama state senate, but is currently stalled. Southern Baptists and Anheuser Busch in Alabama are lobbying to block the effort (now there are strange bedfellows). There are no bills for consideration to allow homebrewing. Homebrewing is illegal in Alabama, and comes with a $2000 USD fine and up to a year in jail.

It sounded crazy that the government would actually enforce homebrewing laws... until it happened.

Too much publicity for AL homebrewer

Scott Oberman, a homebrewer, was contacted by L.A. Times reporter Stephanie Simon about homebrewing in Alabama. He thought this article could give good exposure to the homebrewing cause, and help raise awareness. The article, complete with pictures and full names, detailed homebrewing in Alabama. The article spread across the internet and was seen around the world. Score one for the homebrewers? Not so fast.

The article also caught the attention of the Alabama Alcohol Beverage Control board (ABC). Guess who paid Scott Oberman a visit?

It seems that the ABC wants to give Oberman a warning. The ABC agent told Oberman that he was sent by the Montgomery, Alabama office to make sure Oberman was “clear on the homebrewing laws”. They had information they wanted to share with him, and he needed to sign for it.

Breakin’ the law

Make no mistake, Oberman was breaking the law. He admitted that he was homebrewing in Alabama and he was distributing the beer to friends. His beer was even stronger than 6% ABV. It was a dumb move on his part; he was almost begging Alabama to do something. You might call this civil disobedience, but we all know how Alabama deals with civil disobedience.

Now Scott Oberman fears for his life. He stands to lose joint custody of his daughter, and his security clearance job. “At this point, I am very close to the decision to completely give up the best hobby in the world until such time that it is no longer illegal here in AL. This is a decision that I have not taken lightly, but my family has to come first.” says Oberman in a Free the Hops forum . If Alabama wanted to, the state could quickly ruin his life to make an example of him – all because he makes his own beer. He doesn’t want to test the case in court. That was never his intention. He is now facing the reality that he must give up the hobby he loves. Can you believe this is happening in America?

Legal in other states

Making beer is legal in most other states. If he lived in Colorado, no one would even know his name. When I last wrote about the legalization of homebrewing laws , most scoffed that the law would never be enforced. Technically the law is not being enforced, since I doubt they will persecute Oberman. Still Alabama is making an example of Oberman, and a man’s hobby will be taken away.

How many BTUs does my burner need?

DJ Spiess — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 03:52:59 +0000

The other day I made beer with my new 25 gallon pot and I confirmed what I suspected: A 55,000 BTU burner cannot boil 15 gallons of wort in any reasonable amount of time. My brewing day was cold and windy, so I never got the wort above 200°F (93°C). The question I needed to answer is how many BTUs do I need to boil my wort?

What is a BTU?

A BTU (British Thermal Unit) describes the amount of energy to raise 1 lb of water 1 degree Fahrenheit in one hour.

lbs of water x temperature rise = BTUs required for one hour
(1 lb of water x 1 degree Fahrenheit) = 1 BTU for 1 hour

Water equals 8.3 lbs per gallon. To boil one gallon of water starting 70°F in 1 hour you will need 8.3 x (212-70) = 1,178.6 BTUs. On my brewing day, I needed 15 x 1,178.6 = 17,679 BTUs to boil my wort in an hour. With my 55,000 BTU burner, I should have no problem boiling my wort right? The total boil time should take about 20 minutes.

This burner does 210,000 BTUs and can burn a hole in the sun, but is it too much?

What’s wrong with the calculation?

This calculation assumes the heat transferred from your burner to your water is 100% efficient. This will never happen no matter how much you beg the beer gods. The BTUs listed on your burner are like mileage listed in a car. Your mileage will vary. On a nice hot day (unlike my brewing day), 50% is a good number to hope for. Under ideal weather conditions, my boil time should be around 40 minutes with a 55,000 BTU burner. Less than ideal brewing days can drastically increase your boil time.

Another factor to consider is evaporation. Evaporation removes energy from your wort. This means you need additional energy just to keep your wort at a boil due to heat loss and evaporation. Boiling your wort down one gallon will require another 8,000 BTUs.

You should also consider how efficient your burner is, not just how powerful

Since I started 17 gallons (boiling down to 15 gallons) of wort, I needed 17 x 1,178.6 = 20,036 BTUs. I was boiling down 2 gallons, so this adds another 16,000 BTUs for a total of 36,036 BTUs for one hour. Assuming 50% efficiency, I needed 72,072 BTUs to boil the wort in one hour. On my cold brewing day, I would have been lucky to get 25% efficiency. I needed a bigger burner, and if I had calculated it this in advance I would have known (instead of suspected) it.

My 55,000 BTU burner would have been ok for a 5 gallon brew, but scaling to a much larger brew I needed a bigger burner. The next day I purchased a 210,000 BTU burner (I tell people it has enough power to burn a hole in the sun). Taking the above equations into account, hopefully this will help you make an educated decision on which burner to use.

6 questions to ask yourself before pitching your yeast

DJ Spiess — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 03:44:00 +0000

Like a horse after a long ride, you may find yourself racing to the finish line at the end of your brew day. If you cross the finish line too soon, you may create more problems for yourself. Here are six questions you should answer before pitching your yeast into the beer.

Is your wort cool enough for happy yeast?

Yeast does not respond well to higher temperatures. The metabolism of yeast changes as the temperature changes. If your wort is too hot, the yeast will be shocked and most likely will take a long time to start fermenting. You can kill your yeast en masse if your temperature is not low enough. If your temperature is not boiling but still well above the recommended temperature range, you may not kill the yeast but you will unnecessarily stress your yeast. Stressed or shocked yeast can lead to bad flavors, and slowed or stalled fermentation. Make sure your beer is within the recommended temperature range for the yeast you are using.

Boiling wort looks hypnotic, but it's a death pool for yeast. Make sure it's below 80 F (27 C) before pitching.

Does your wort have enough oxygen?

Like most organisms, yeast needs oxygen. The oxygen is needed for cell-membrane components which are used in reproduction. Unfortunately, hot wort contains little oxygen. If you just cool your wort and pitch, your yeast may struggle. Poor aeration can also cause higher than normal ester production in your beer.

Ale yeasts need about 5 parts oxygen per million in wort, while lagers can need 10 to 12 parts oxygen per million. To make matters worse, the maximum dissolved oxygen you can achieve in your wort using air is around 8 parts oxygen per million. Splashing your wort by rocking the carboy will help, but it most likely will not come close to the theoretical maximum. White Labs states shaking will achieve about 10-30% of the needed oxygen levels.

You should aerate your wort for higher gravity brews. The reason is higher gravity brews decrease the solubility of oxygen. You would need to shake very hard to get enough oxygen into your high gravity wort

You can get an aeration stone from an aquarium shop or your local homebrew store. There is some debate among homebrewers if you really need to use oxygen, or if air will suffice. Personally I use air, and have had no problems.

Are you pitching the correct amount of yeast?

Long before pitching your yeast, you need to know how much yeast you need to pitch. Homebrewers notoriously under pitch their yeast. Commercial brewers pitch at least 10 million yeast cells per milliliter of wort.

According to Brewing Classic Styles by Jamil Zainasheff and John Palmer, you need to pitch 0.75 million yeast cells per milliliter of wort per degrees Plato. Wyeast and White Labs recommend 1 to 2 million yeast cells per milliliter of wort per degree Plato if you are reusing your yeast. This yields the following equation:

(0.75 million yeast cells) x (milliliters of wort) x (degrees Plato)

One degree Plato is about 1.004 of specific gravity, so to get degrees Plato divide the gravity of your wort by 4. If your wort is 1.060, your degrees Plato would be 15°P.

You really need a yeast starter for most 5 gallon recipes

1 US gallon equals about 3785 ml, so a typical 5.5 gallon batch is about 20,817 ml. If you enter these values into the above equation yields 234,196,875,000 yeast cells. Your typical smack pack is 100 billion cells. For a 1.060 beer, you need three smack packs to properly pitch. Your best bet is to create a starter.

You can over pitch too, but that usually is a problem only when you pitch 400 billion cells in a typical 5 gallon batch.

Do you have enough nutrients for your wort?

Yeast needs three things to be happy: a happy temperature, oxygen, and nitrogen. The nitrogen can be a bit nebulous for the homebrewer. The best advice is to look at your ratio of grain to adjuncts. Most of your nitrogen will come from your malt. If you are using more than 25% non-barley adjuncts, you need to consider adding yeast nutrient.

What temperature are you fermenting at?

As I mentioned before, higher fermentation temperatures can have a negative impact on the flavor of your beer. Higher temperatures can cause the yeast to produce a fruity flavor. If your temperatures are too low, the yeast will be sluggish and take longer to ferment. The longer the fermentation, the higher the possibility something else (like bacteria) can take hold in your beer. Make sure that you can ferment your beer within the recommended temperature range.

What’s your starting specific gravity?

You should measure your starting gravity before you pitch your yeast. You still have some chance to adjust your starting gravity before your yeast is pitched. Ideally you want to know your starting gravity before you boil, but checking at the end of your boil is important. The initial gravity will let you know how the boil affects your gravity (how much water is lost to evaporation). This metric is also important to determine the attenuation of your yeast, and help you estimate how much alcohol is in your beer.

All-grain brewing vs extract brewing: Is it really cheaper?

DJ Spiess — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 05:18:45 +0000

There are cost differences between the two methods, but what is the real difference. I’ve examined the “must have” equipment required and what the difference is in cost. All-grain takes more time to brew, so you will need to determine if the price difference is worth the cost difference to you. For price references, I’ve used Northern Brewer. There are other places to purchase equipment and ingredients, but I wanted to give you a feel for the differences. The purpose is not to declare one homebrew store better than any other. You might be able to vary the prices a bit with some bargain shopping.

You have more flexibility with all-grain, but is it cheaper?

To make a fair comparison between the brewing styles, I’ve picked a simple recipe from the book Beer Captured by Tess and Mark Szamatulski. I’m picking a recipe from the book because it gives a complete recipe for both all-grain and extract, and it is a very simple recipe.

You will need more beer equipment

I am assuming you already have a 10 gallon pot. I was using a 10 gallon pot long before I made the switch to all-grain. If you do not have a pot capable of a full-wort boil, you will need to add a pot to your list of costs to switch. A 10 gallon pot will cost anywhere between $100-$200 USD.

I use a cooler to batch sparge my all-grain beers

You will also need a mash tun. The simplest possible mash tun you can construct is a batch sparge mash tun from a cooler. You can buy a all-grain continuous sparging system made from two rubber maid coolers for $249.99 USD. A batch sparging system is much cheaper.

To construct a batch sparging mash tun you will need a 5-day cooler, a cooler conversion kit, and some sort of filter. You can buy the Bazooka screen or construct your own from a bathroom stainless steel braided hose. I’ve done both, but I prefer buying the bazooka screen. The price difference is about $5 USD.

5-day cooler 70-quart	$37.88 (WalMart)
Cooler Conversion Kit	$29.99
Bazooka Screen	$20.50

You can buy a smaller cooler (48-quart) for $28.88, but I would highly recommend getting the largest cooler you can. This allows you to increase capacity or to make some very high gravity brews.

If you do not have a wort chiller, this is also highly recommended. With extract brews you can brew half of the brew and chill it with cold sanitized water. When you do all-grain brews, you are brewing the full wort. It can take a long time to chill 5 gallons of boiling wort. I would add a wort chiller in the “almost necessary” column. The cheapest wort chiller will run $57.99 USD.

The last item in the “highly recommended” list is a propane burner. These cost around $50 USD to $60 USD. They will make your life much better, because you will be able to boil your wort within a reasonable amount of time. If your burner on your stove is electric, you need a propane burner.

This is all the “above and beyond” equipment. The fermenter and other equipment you used for extract brewing is the same for all-grain brewing. This means if you want to switch to all-grain brewing, you will need to spend at least $88.37 USD. If you need the wort chiller or brew pot, you should add those too. Your total out is anywhere between $88.37 USD to $296.36 USD.

Recipe differences

The recipe I selected for comparison is the Samuel Smith Nut Brown Ale recipe. Here’s the extract recipe:

5 oz British 55ºL Crystal Malt
3 oz British Chocolate Malt
6 lbs Extra Light Dry Malt Extract
1 ½ oz East Kent Goldings
½ oz Fuggles
Wyeast 1187 Ringwood Ale

Here is the all-grain recipe

9.25 lbs British 2-row Pale Malt
5 oz British 55ºL Crystal Malt
3 oz British Chocolate Malt
Wyeast 1187 Ringwood Ale
25% less hops

The yeast is the same in both recipes, so I will exclude it from the comparison. The all-grain method does use fewer hops, but I have never purchased hops in a smaller increment than 1 ounce. In either recipe we will be buying 2 oz of East Kent Goldings and 1 oz of Fuggles, so I will eliminate the hop comparison as well. Fewer hops will make a difference if your recipes grow larger than 5 gallon batches.

That leaves the grain bill. Since the specialty grains are also the same in both recipes, I am going to compare the prices of malt extract to grain.

The malt extract is $13.50 USD for 6 lbs. The price for grain crushed is $16.18 USD. For this example, the price for all-grain is $2.58 USD higher. Maybe I picked a poor example?

All-grain kits are $0.51 cheaper

The extract English Pale Ale kit from Northern Brewer costs $27.50. The price for the all-grain English Pale Ale kit is $26.99. At these price differences, you would need to make many all-grain kits to recoup the cost of your extra equipment.

So why do so many people believe all-grain is cheaper? If you purchase your grain in bulk, the prices drop dramatically. A 50 lb bag of 2-row will cost about $56.99. You most likely can get this even cheaper from your local homebrew store. The cost of your grain for this recipe is now $10.54 USD – a savings of $2.96 USD. Recipes which use more grain will be even cheaper. If you only make Samuel Smith Nut Brown Ale, you will need to make a minimum of 30 batches to recoup your costs. If you brew triples, the number of brews will most likely decrease (not by much though).

Why switch to all-grain at all then?

The point of all this is to help you make an informed decision. The real reason you want to switch to all-grain is for the control over your brews and ultimately to make better beer. According to a Univ. of Saskatchewan study (listed in Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels), here are a few reasons why brewing from grain can be better:

You can produce lighter colored beers from grain

93% of the extracts tested fermented slower than all-grain equivalents

Some extracts will not ferment to the desired final gravity due to higher amounts of dextrins in the extract

Some extracts tested contained high amounts of non-malt syrups (even some labeled 100% malt extract)

With all-grain brewing, you know exactly what is in your beer. If you want to make better beer, all-grain is the way to go. If you are happy with your extract beer and you’re not really looking for that extra edge, save yourself the money and stick with extract. I’ve made great beers for years with extract.

I ultimately switched to all-grain for the control. I want to make the best beer possible, and I want to know exactly what is in my beer. All-grain allows me to fine tune recipes, experiment a bit, and give to me experience to become a better brewer. A better way to look at all of this is, after equipment purchase, it is only a little bit more to go all-grain. You ultimately have to make the choice for yourself. Hopefully this will make your decision more informed.

[EDIT]

There was some feedback in the comments expressing concern about the prices and necessary equipment. Here is Bill Velek’s well thought out criticism

http://home.alltel.net/billvelek/ferm-1.html

and my response

Review: The Brew House Beer Kit Part Two

DJ Spiess — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 05:10:33 +0000

Back in January I made a beer from “beer kit” . The Brew House beer kit is very similar to a wine kit. The kit comes with concentrated wort which you rehydrate and then add yeast. What makes this beer kit special is the kit requires no boiling. It is like mixing kool-aid, but you get beer as a result (after fermentation). The result (in this case) is Oktoberfest ale.

The brew house beer kit is a no-boil beer kit

The only area we deviated from the instructions was to not bottle condition. I kegged the beer, and never added the bottling sugar.

Looks

The ale looks exactly like you would expect. It has a copper red color and a thick off-white head. The beer has a great solid foamy head, almost as thick as krausen. It was slightly cloudy, but I am not sure if that was from the beer or possibly some failure on my part during the production process. All in all, the Oktoberfest is a good looking beer.

Aroma

There is little aroma from the beer. I could detect some hops, and maltiness. The malt aroma was stronger than the hops. Overall the aroma was a bit weak.

Taste

The flavor was a bit bitterer than I was expecting from an Oktoberfest. Ironically when I was choosing this kit, I was warned against choosing the IPA for its lack of hop flavor. My original guess was that the hops could not “shine through”, similar to the weak aroma problem that many wine kits display. This kit has a bit too much hop flavor for an Oktoberfest. There is good malt flavor, but the hops seem too strong for the style. Strangely enough, the website lists the IBUs at 18, which is on the low end of the spectrum for the style. The hops seemed much stronger than 18 IBUs.

This beer had a great head!

The beer is a smooth beer in terms of alcohol and drink-ability. I served the beer to a large group of friends to see how they would like it. Overall I received positive feedback, and many people mentioned that they liked the beer.

Results

The Oktoberfest beer kit produced a good beer, and overall the beer was well received. I don’t think the beer “wowed” anyone, but it was a good beer. When I introduced the beer to friends, I called it “red ale” and left it at that. If you look at their website , they are calling it “red ale” too. The box says “Oktoberfest” but the Brew House website describes it “stylistically positioned between a German Alt Beer and the Oktoberfest”.

I most likely will try other versions of the Brew House beer kits over the summer. I’ll give the Oktoberfest beer kit 7 Masskrugs out of 10.

Brewery: Me (Brew House Beer Kit)
Country of Origin: Canada (RJ Spagnols)
Style: Oktoberfest
ABV: 5.2%

Homebrewing Is Illegal

DJ Spiess — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 21:50:48 +0000

After prohibition home winemaking was legalized by federal law. The lawmakers in 1933 forgot to add “and/or beer” when writing the new law. There are two reasons no one corrected this flaw. The first is because large breweries lobbied against it. The other reason was the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) wanted to keep the law in place so they could prosecute home distillers before they distilled their liquor. That “anti-loophole” remained in place for 44 years.

Finally everyone got tired of drinking crappy beer and pushed to get the law changed. This is the history every homebrewer knows. What you might not know is the changed law provided the right for states to ultimately decide if it should be legal. Hard to believe, but some states have different laws than other states. Sure it is weird that you can’t turn right at a red light in Texas, but are the “important laws” really different?

Even though Jimmy Carter made homebrewing legal, it's still not legal in all states

Not legal in Utah or Alabama

Then someone mentions Utah and their theocracy . Oh yeah, you think, but you can’t really count Utah. That state is just weird. In 2008, the Utah representatives passed a resolution to legalize homebrewing, but the bill is currently held up in the Utah senate. Some see this as a stalling tactic in hopes that the bill will die. Either way, homebrewing in Utah is currently illegal. Hopefully the law will change within the next few weeks. So you can’t make beer in Utah, but you can elsewhere right? No.

Alabama is fighting a similar battle. In Alabama, not only can you not brew beer at home, you can’t even buy a beer that is higher than 6% ABV unless you are on a military base. Military bases are subject to federal law, not state law. As in Utah, religion is fighting the battle against the homebrewers. What is the Alabama Southern Baptists argument against homebrewing? “Beer corrupts the mind, body and soul”. And of course, they pulled the “think of the children” card. It is scary that religion in America could influence on laws that restrict personal behavior in 2008.

The list does not stop at Utah and Alabama. Delaware, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Ohio, and Oklahoma all do not have laws that protect the right to brew beer at home. Kentucky and Oklahoma even have stiff penalties for producing alcohol. In most cases, the state just does not specify the legality either way. While the laws in these states were written to prevent distillation, the laws can be interpreted to prosecute homebrewing.

Homebrew laws are not clear in other states

Several other states the law is very unclear. In Louisiana, Maine, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, and New York no one is really sure if it is legal or not. These states have laws that could be interpreted either way and the laws have not been tested in court. Louisiana law comes close to being tested with State v. Jordan, 20 So.2d 543. In 1944 Dennis Jordan was arrested for making homebrew; however the State Supreme Court ruled making four bottles of homebrew did not equal manufacturing beer. If a police officer decides to arrest you for homebrew in the other states, the ruling can go either way. Do you feel lucky?

In South Carolina and West Virgina, the laws are even weirder. In South Carolina, you can make beer as long as it is not over 5% ABV. No tripels for South Carolina! West Virginia law it is unclear how the law applies to beer. You can possibly make “non-intoxicating beer”, but the law is fuzzy if homebrewers need a license. “Non-intoxicating beer” is beer that is 6% ABV or lower. Again you’re at the mercy of the court is someone decides to arrest you.

There are groups, like the American Homebrewers Association, that are trying to reverse or clarify the laws in many states. You can always check the current status of your state on their site.

How to make a Belgian Wit beer

DJ Spiess — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 00:23:47 +0000

History of the Belgian Wit

Monasteries were making this beer as early as the 14th century. Almost all of the best examples came from Hoegaarden. By the 1900s as many as two dozen breweries in the village of Hoegaarden produced this classic beer, but World Wars and competition from larger lager breweries forced every wit beer brewery out of business by 1957. The beer had essentially gone extinct.

Beer Resurrection

Almost ten years later, a milkman named Pierre Celis borrowed money from his family to open a brewery named De Kluis and revive the beer style. His beer was Hoegaarden, named after the city. The wit beer was a huge commercial success. The De Kluis brewery started making about 350 hectoliters at first, but increased to over 75 thousand hectoliters by 1985.

In 1985, a fire wiped out most of Pierre’s brewery and threatened the wit beer again with extinction. Other breweries were copying the recipe, but Hoegaarden was the wit beer everyone knew. To save the brewery and rebuild, Pierre Celis was forced to accept loans from a few brewery giants. By 1987, the larger breweries controlled his brewery and forced him to alter the recipe to appeal to a wider international palette. Disappointed with this outcome, Celis divested his interests and moved to the United States.

Pierre Celis settled in Austin, Texas and recreated his beer based on the recipe he wanted. He opened a new brewery in 1992 and released Celis White to the world using his original Hoegaarden recipe.

Guess who makes Blue Moon!

Another popular clone of this recipe is Blue Moon. This beer was originally created for sale at the Coors Field baseball stadium in Denver, Colorado. The recipe proved so popular, Coors released the beer commercially. There are now several variations on their original recipe including Full Moon and Harvest Moon. Blue Moon is so popular that many beer aficionados refuse to believe Coors makes the beer.

Blue Moon originated at the Sandlot Brewery at Coors Field

The Beer

The wit beer (meaning “white beer”) is a wheat based ale. The wheat malt gives the beer a slightly cloudy color, similar to a German Hefeweizen. This is usually 50% wheat and 50% malted barley. Saaz are usually the hops of choice, at least for the aroma.

Of course it would not be a Belgian beer unless spices were added to the beer, in this case coriander and orange peel. For the orange peel, use a zester to get the orange skin. You want the orange part, not the bitter white part of the orange rind. You can also buy bitter orange peel at your local homebrew store.

The coriander should be cracked into pieces before adding to the beer. I use a rolling pin to crack the seeds. Just make sure the seeds are cracked, not ground into dust.

The yeast used most often is either White Labs WLP400 Belgian Wit Ale yeast or Wyeast 3944 Belgian Witbier yeast.

Extract Version

The most popular extract recipe is as simple as you can get. The simple extract recipe is just

7.5 lbs liquid wheat malt extract (LME Wheat)
2.0 oz Saaz hops (1oz for bittering and 1 oz for aroma)
1.0 oz coriander added at 10 minutes
0.5 oz bitter orange peel at 10 minutes
White Labs WLP400 or Wyeast 3944

Boil the wort with one ounce of hops. After 50 minutes, add another ounce of Saaz hops, coriander, and the orange peel. Boil for another 10 minutes, then kill the flame.

This will make an “ok” witbier, but it will be missing the smoothness you get from the wheat and oats. If you can partial mash, reduce the malt extract by a pound and instead mini-mash one pound of flaked oats with one pound of pilsner malt.

All-Grain Belgian Wit

Here is the all-grain recipe I used all last summer.

3 lbs Belgian wheat malt
2 lbs Flaked wheat
8 oz Belgian aromatic malt
4 oz Flaked oats4 lbs Belgian 2-row Pilsner malt
1.0 oz Kent Goldings (bittering for 60 minutes)
0.5 oz Kent Goldings (flavoring for 10 minutes)
0.5 oz Saaz (aroma for 1 minute)
3/4 tsp cracked coriander for 50 minutes
½ tsp cracked coriander for the last 10 minutes
¼ oz bitter orange peel for 50 minutes
½ oz bitter orange peel for the last 10 minutes
White Labs WLP400 or Wyeast 3944

Make sure you mash the above grains with rice hulls. This will help prevent a stuck mash, since the flaked oats and wheat can turn to oatmeal cement if you are not careful. Mash the grain at 150 F (65 C) for 90 minutes.

This recipe will give you a better beer because the wheat and oats will give you a creamier mouth-feel. Ferment the beer at 65F.

When you carbonate the beer, carbonate to 2-2.5 volumes. If you are bottle conditioning, use 1 ¼ cups of extra light malt extract that was boiled for at least 10 minutes.

Conclusion

This beer is best served chilled with a lemon or orange slice. Be sure to make several batches if you plan to share with friends. Kegs of Belgian wit empty very quickly! Spring is here, and summer will be upon us soon. Make sure your beer supplies are ready and start brewing now!

10 summer homebrew beers you need to start now

DJ Spiess — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 22:31:44 +0000

If you have not started getting your home brewery in order, you better get to it. It takes beer 5 weeks on average to ferment and to be ready for consumption, it many take longer.

For spring and summer beers, you want something that is light, crisp, and generally lower in alcohol. The beers listed here are session beers, or beers that you can drink for most of the day and night without hating yourself the next morning.

Here are 10 excellent choices for summer beers.

Summer is a great time for beer. The only problem is choosing one.

Pilseners and Light Lagers

Lagers are a mainstay for hot summer days. In fact, you can find some variation of this beer made on every continent (save maybe Antarctica). These beers are the number one choice for hot summer days. If you want to make lagers for the summer, you need to start now. These beers typically take two months of lagering. Lagers are known for their low hops and crisp dry flavor are often 4% ABV to 5% ABV.
Commercial Examples: Pilsner Urquell, Heineken, Gordon Biersch Pilsner

British Bitter

Despite the word “bitter” these beers are quite smooth. Bitters are light yellow to light copper and have a very light to no floral hop character with a sweet malt taste. According to the style guidelines, the balance is slightly towards bitter, but it should not overpower the malt or hop flavor. The alcohol content is usually 3.2-3.8 % (ABV) which makes these great sessions beers. This is the beer you want to drink on your porch with friends during the cooler summer nights. This beer is best served at 55F (13C) on draft.
Commercial Examples: Bodington’s Pub Draught, Young’s Bitter

American Pale Ale

American pale ales are closely related to British bitters. American brewers distinguish the two styles because they are separated in competitions. There are other subtle differences. The American pale ales often have stronger hop aromas from late kettle additions or dry hopping, less caramel flavor, and less body. The American pale ale is less carbonated than the British bitter. This beer’s alcohol strength is between 4.5-6.2% ABV. If you are looking for a good summer beer, stick to recipes that have lower alcohol contents.
Commercial Examples: Sierra Nevada Pale Ale

Kölsch

Kölsch is a German beer that comes from the city of Köln. The beer is also called Kölschbier. It has very little malt aroma, and little to no Nobel hop aroma. This beer is very balanced. Kölsch beers have a cooling period similar to lagers, but the beer is brewed with ale yeast. This is an ideal beer for those looking for a lager, but do not have lagering equipment. In fact, many tasters might mistake this beer for a lager. The low alcohol and high carbonation of this light beer make it a great choice for hot summer days. This beer is 4.4-5.2% ABV on average.
Commercial Examples: Reissdorf, Gaffel, Alaska Summer Ale, Harpoon Summer Beer

Witbier

What beer list would be complete without a selection from the Belgians? Belgian Witbier (“white beer”) gets its name from its cloudy haze, although the beer is usually a light straw color. This refreshing beer has spicy notes from the coriander and orange peel added to the brew. You might even detect vanilla or honey flavors. Witbier also has citrus flavors from the saaz hops that go great with a slice of lemon or orange. This beer is typically 5% ABV, but drinks like it’s 2% ABV.
Commercial Examples: Hoegaarden Wit, St. Bernardus Blanche, Celis White, Blue Moon

Cream Ale

For homebrewers without the ability to lager beer, cream ales are another good choice for the summer months. This beer was created by brewers in the American Midwest to compete with the larger lager breweries. This beer is similar to the light American lagers. It has almost no hop aroma and little to no maltiness. Since hops are dramatically understated in this beer, you can use almost any bittering hop. This beer is much higher in carbonation than your typical ales, but is so smooth it is often referred to as the “lawnmower beer”. The ABV is between 4.2% ABV to 5.6% ABV.
Commercial Examples: Genesee Cream Ale, Little Kings Cream Ale

Hefeweizen

This German wheat beer is very easy to make. The grain bill is usually just pilsner malt and wheat malt. According to German law, 50% of the grist must be wheat malt. The wheat malt gives the beer its cloudy color, similar to the Belgian Witbier. This beer is filled with fruity esters, which give the beer a slight banana flavor. These beers are 4.3% ABV to 5.5% ABV.
Commercial Examples: Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier, Schneider Weisse Weizenhell, Paulaner Hefe-Weizen

Raspberry Wheat

Nothing says crowd pleaser like raspberry wheat. The refreshing flavor of the hefeweizen is enhanced with the crisp flavor of raspberries. This beer can be made by adding a bit of raspberry flavoring at kegging or bottling. These beers are also 4.3% ABV to 5.5%ABV.
Commercial Examples: UFO Raspberry Hefeweizen, Schlafly Raspberry Hefeweizen

Mexican Amber Lager

Mexican lagers are really just North American cousins of Vienna lagers. They are very light and refreshing. These beers are also slightly malt forward, but finish very dry. These are great beers to drink through the hot summer nights. This is yet another good session beer, but a bit stronger at 4.5% ABV to 5.5% ABV.
Commercial Examples: Dos Equis Amber

California Common

The California Common (or “Anchor Steam”) beer is an American original from San Francisco. Several beers used to be known as Anchor Steam beers, but 30 years ago Anchor Steam Brewery trademarked the name. Now other steam beers are called California Commons. The California Common has stronger hop flavors from the Northern Brewer hops added to the beer. The beer is also is fermented with a lager yeast that tolerates higher temperatures. This beer sometimes has a bit of fruitiness, some caramel biscuit flavor, and a dry finish. The alcohol content is usually 4.5-5.5% ABV making it a slightly stronger session beer.
Commercial Examples: Anchor Steam, Southampton Steem Beer, Flying Dog Old Scratch Amber Lager

Making beer in the summer is only second to drinking beer in the summer!

So those are my recommendations. There are other good summer beers, but I think these are some of the best representatives. It is mid-March now. If you want beer for the summer, you had better get brewing. Oh, and if you’re planning to make a Marzen for Oktoberfest, that time is now as well! Get brewing.

All-grain brewing: How to batch sparge

DJ Spiess — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 21:01:01 +0000

Sparging is sprinkling water over mash to rinse the fermentable sugars from the grain. The rinsing helps to extract about 70-80% of the fermentable sugars from the grain. These sugars eventually become your alcohol and beer. There are two common methods to sparge your grains: continuous sparge, and batch sparging.

Batch sparging is very simple. You just need a cooler and a way to filter the wort from the grain.

Continuous (or Fly) sparging

Continuous (or Fly) sparging is the most popular, and this method is similar to how the big breweries sparge. Many homebrewers use this method as well. A sprinkler is positioned over the mash, and water is trickled over the grains to drain the sugars. The rate of liquid drained is equal to the amount of water added to the grain. This trickling of water “rinses” the grains and uses the grain bed as a filter to keep back any solids. Fly sparging usually requires some specialized equipment, but you can build your own system. Continuous sparging usually results in 70-80% efficiency if done correctly.

The problem with continuous sparging is that you can over sparge. pH is important for your mash, but with continuous sparging the pH can rise over 6.0. The higher pH will extract tannins from the grain husks and give your beer off flavors. Continuous sparging also requires more attention. You must monitor the temperature and the rate of water in and out of your mash. Stuck sparges can result if you are not careful.

Batch sparging

Batch sparging is a method that was popularized by Denny Conn (he calls it the “Cheap ‘n’ Easy” batch sparge brewing ). This method is not really sparging, since batch sparging removes the sugars from the grain through diffusion. The grain is not “rinsed”.

When the mash is complete, the wort is drained completely. The grain is then sparged all at once with a second infusion of water. This is similar to how the English create “small beers”. The second runoff is a lower gravity wort since most of the sugars are collected in the first runoff. The small beer is the second runoff. In batch sparging, the second runoff is combined with the first runoff.

Batch sparging does not suffer the same problems as continuous sparging. The mash is “set and forget”. When the time has passed, you drain the wort and repeat the process. You do not need to monitor the pH because the wort does not get weaker (and higher in pH) over time. There can be a lower efficiency for batch sparging, but this is up for some debate. Many brewers have reported the same efficiencies as continuous sparging, but on average it might be slightly less. This reduced efficiency can be accounted for with a 5-10% higher grain bill or an extract addition to your wort. Adding extract at the end is probably the best method because you can hit your target gravity with more accuracy.

The cooler

To batch sparge, you need a cooler converted into a mash tun. The cooler is “converted” to include a drain and a filter. The cooler is nothing more than your average beverage cooler. I use a Coleman Extreme cooler because it holds the temperature much longer. This is great if you want to mash overnight and split your brew time into two days.

Just about any cooler will work for batch sparging, but try to look for one that keeps temperatures steady for 3 days.

Red vs. Blue

You might see comments on brewboards arguing between red and blue coolers. This is actually an inside joke, and the color of the cooler has no effect on the batch sparge method. Just find a good 40L cooler (for 5 gallon brews) that can hold a temperature for more than a few days.

The simplest method for creating a filter is to find a water supply line with a stainless steel braid at your local home supply store. The end of the water supply line is removed along with the inner plastic hose. The remaining stainless steel braid is used to construct your filter. (The actual steps and supply list for this conversion will be covered soon in another article.) There are also cooler conversion kits sold at your local homebrew supply store.

Here's how my braid looks inside the mash tun

Steps

Batch sparging has the following steps: calculate your water, mash, infuse with water, drain, sparge with a second infusion, and drain. You can repeat batch sparging, but usually 2 is the magic number. Here are the steps in more detail.

1) Calculate your water additions

You need to calculate the water for your mash and each sparge. Typically you will only calculate water for your mash, one batch infusion for your first runoff, and one batch infusion for your second runoff. You can have more than one runoff, but two is usually sufficient. The total volume of all runoffs should equal your total pre-boil wort volume.

Your first runoff volume should equal half of your total pre-boil wort volume. If you intend to start your boil with 7.5 gallons of wort, your first runoff should be 3.75 gallons.

Total volume = First runoff + second runoff + ….
First runoff = Total volume / 2

The first calculation is the amount of water to use in your mash. Your mash should be about 1.2 quarts per pound of grain. If you have 10 pounds of grain in your recipe, you will need 12 quarts (3 gallons) of water for your mash.

Mash volume = pounds of grain x 1.2 quarts of water

Grain will absorb some of this water. Typically grain will absorb 0.1 gallons for every pound of grain in the recipe. Again assuming that the recipe calls for 10 pounds of grain, you will lose 1 gallon of water due to absorption. We were using 3 gallons of water for the mash, and if we lose 1 gallon that will leave us with 2 gallons of water. (I’m so glad that I remember from college 3 – 1 = 2!)

Since we want the first runoff volume to be a total of 3.75 gallons, we will need to add 1.75 gallons of water at the end of the mash.

First runoff = (Total volume / 2) = Mash Volume + First Infusion - Absorption

The last batch sparge is easy to calculate if you are doing only one additional runoff. Our first runoff was 3.75 gallons, and the remainder of runoffs should also equal 3.75. Since we only have one additional infusion, our last calculation is 3.75 gallons.

2) Complete the mash with the first water addition

Heat the water calculated for your first runoff a bit higher than your target mash temperature. For example, if your target mash temperature is 150 F, heat the water to 165-170F. Add this water to your cooler, and then add the grain. Adding the water to a cooler filled with grain will create dry clumps and make it more difficult to mash all of your grain.

Once your mash is complete, add the first infusion of water. This additional water should be heated to 180-190F in order to get the grain bed temperature to 170F. The higher temperature is to help dissolve any remaining sugars.

Wait 10 minutes before progressing to the next step.

3) Drain the mash

Drain your wort from the cooler. The first few pints should be recirculated back into the cooler, until the runoff comes out clear. Recirculating the wort over the grain bed is also called vorlauf. Once the runoff is clear of grain particles, drain as much wort from the cooler as you can. While you are draining the first runoff, heat the second batch of water.

4) Add the second water addition

The second addition water should be almost boiling, so that you can get the temperature as close to 170F as possible. I usually try to get the water between 180-190F. Add this water to the emptied grain bed.

Wait 10 minutes before progressing to the next step.

5) Drain again

The instructions for this step are the same as step 3. Recirculate the first few pints until it is clear, and then drain as much as you can.

Why it works better

Batch sparging is superior to continuous sparging in the following ways:

1)   Entrance fee is cheap. The equipment involved is a cooler modified with a filter.
2)   No babysitting required. Since the water is added all at once, you do not need to worry about stuck sparges or pH imbalances. Just fill and drain.
3)   Avoids channeling. When you continuous sparge the rinsing water can enter into channels, which will leave areas of your grain un-rinsed.

Hopefully you will find batch sparging an excellent introduction to all-grain brewing. The only “trick” to this method is accurately calculating the required water at each step. Other than that, this method is very low maintenance. Let us know if you have any questions in the comments. Happy brewing!

How to make Märzen beer

DJ Spiess — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 05:07:38 +0000

History of Märzen

Märzen beer is also referred to as Oktoberfest beer or Märzenbier. This beer is brewed in March (März is the German word for March), and cellared during the warm summer months. It is usually consumed in the September and October months. For many years this beer was served at the Oktoberfest in Munich. In recent years the beer’s popularity at the festival has waned due to the tastes of a more international crowd.

Munich lays claim to creating Märzen, but the beer is likely an imitation of the more established Vienna beer. The Viennese have references to the style as early as Roman times, while the Bavarian cousin Märzen did not become established until the 1800s. It is very likely that a German brewer copied the Vienna, and brought the style to Bavaria.

The main difference between the Märzen and Vienna is slightly higher alcohol content (4.7% vs 5.0% ABV on average) and its maltier flavor. The BJCP style guidelines list the alcohol content almost the same, however the final gravity for the Märzen is higher than the Vienna. This will give the beer a slightly sweeter and maltier flavor, but not cloying. The flavor should be crisp, with a malt forward flavor.

The Vienna is usually bitterer than the Märzen. The Vienna beer can range between 18-30 IBUs, while the Märzen is a stricter 20-28 IBUs. The difference is because the hops contain less alpha acids in Bavaria. Another possible flavor difference may be due to the grains used. The grains in a Märzen are roasted at a higher temperature, enough to change the flavor. The grains used in Märzen usually are Munich, two-row, Pilsner, and Vienna.

One of the best commercial examples of Märzen is from Paulaner. Paulaner is a German brewer in Munich, and is served at Oktoberfest. The Gordon Biersch Märzen is also good, but slightly drier than the Paulaner Märzen.

Paulaner is a good example of a Märzen

The Märzen Recipe

Here’s the recipe I use to create my Märzen beer.

5.5 lbs of German 2-row Pilsner malt
6.0 lbs of German Munich malt
4.0 oz of Belgian Cara-Munich malt
2.0 oz of Belgian Biscuit malt
2.0 oz of Belgian Aromatic malt
1.0 oz of Tetnanger (4% AA)
1.0 oz of Hallertau Hersbrucker (3.7 AA)
Wyeast Bavarian Lager 2206
  or WPL820 Oktoberfest/Märzen Lager Yeast

OG: 1.060
FG: 1.016

If you are an extract brewer, you can use 6.5 lbs of Light DME. Create a grain tea using the specialty grains (in this case, everything Belgian) at 150F (65.5C) for 30 minutes. Add this to your wort at the start of your boil.

Mash the grains using a single-infusion mash at 152 F (66C) for 90 minutes. Since the recipe calls for a single-infusion mash, it is perfect for those of us who batch sparge. Add all of the hops at the start of your boil. We don’t add flavor or aroma hops, because the malt is accentuated in the Märzen beer.

Ferment the beer as close to 50F (10C) as possible. You can start the fermentation at a higher temperature, but you should reduce the temperature to 50F (10C) within a day or so. A better method would be to use a good lager starter.

After the fermentation ends, lager the beer for 2 months at a temperature between 34-40F (2C-4C). This is the tough part, waiting. The Germans make this beer in March, and usually serve the beer in September. If you want to make this beer for Oktoberfest this year, start now.

The beer should be carbonated at 2.57 to 2.73 volumes. The head should be solid.

This beer was quite a crowd pleaser for me. It has enough kick to let you feel it, but doesn’t knock you out.

How to make a Chimay White Clone

DJ Spiess — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 01:29:08 +0000

The History of Chimay

Since 1862 Chimay beers are brewed by the Cistercian Trappist monks of Chimay. The monks produce 120,000 hectoliters annually so that they can afford to be monks and help those less fortunate. The monks belong to the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance.

Most of the world knows Cistercian Trappist monks as Trappist monks. The Order of Cistercians originally came from the Abbey of La Grande Trappe, France, which is why they are often referred to as Trappist monks. The beer that you can buy at the store is brewed on site at the abbey and bottled down the road.

This Trappist beer is lighter than you would expect with a strong kick

There are eight Trappist abbeys, six in Belgium, one in the Netherlands, and one in Germany. Due to the worldwide popularity of Trappist beers, many breweries were abusing the Trappist name by claiming that they were a Trappist beer. The monks even had to resort to a lawsuit to stop one brewery from claiming that they were a Trappist beer. In 1997, the eight abbeys formed the International Trappist Association (ITA) to prevent non-Trappist commercial companies from purloining the name to promote their beers.

Chimay White (Blanche) is like “beer champagne”. The beer is light, very carbonated, and slightly bitter. The balance in the beer demonstrates the monks drive for perfection. It is one of those beers that you want to share with all your friends, but not at $9 a bottle. (maybe your really good close friends)

If I wanted to introduce this beer to friends, I needed to find a way to make it myself. I searched a long time for a good recipe; unfortunately the recipe wasn’t covered in any of the clone books. I did find this recipe a few years ago, and I’ve found it to be a very close clone of the Chimay White.

The Recipe

10 lbs of Belgian Pilsner malt
1 lb of Belgian Wheat malt
0.25 lbs of Rice Hulls
1.5 lbs of sugar
Lemon juice (tablespoon)

2 oz East Kent Goldings (5.8% AA)
1 oz Hallertrau Hersbrucker (1.3% AA)
White Labs WLP500 or Wyeast 1214

OG 1.071
FG  1.010

You can substitute very light dry malt extract (DME) if you are an extract brewer. I’d use 8 lbs of extra light DME. You might have troubles matching the color or Chimay with anything darker than DME. If you use extract, omit the grain and rice hulls from the recipe.

Prepare the sugar before starting the boil. The main difference between Belgian candi and table sugar is that Belgian candi is inverted. Belgian candi is also made from beets instead of cane, but I do not believe anyone can really taste much difference. Heat the sugar with a small amount of water (enough to make a syrup) and a teaspoon of lemon juice. The lemon juice will help invert the sugar into simpler sugars. After about 15 minutes the sugar will turn a very light yellow color.

Mash the grains for at least 90 minutes in a converted cooler at 150F (I batch sparge). Add 1.5oz of the East Kent Goldings and 0.5 oz of the Hallertrau at the start of your boil. Also at the start of your boil, add the sugar syrup that you created earlier. Boil the wort for 90 minutes. 5 minutes before the end of the boil, add the last of your hops, 0.5 oz of East Kent Goldings and 0.5 oz of Hallertrau Hersbrucker.

You can culture your own yeast from a bottle of Chimay, but I think it is easier to just use the White Labs WPL500 yeast. You could also use Wyeast 1214. These yeasts were cloned from the Chimay yeast, and you’ll get great consistent results using either of these yeasts.

Give the yeast a good chance to ferment the wort as much as possible. You want this beer to be very dry. That is why Chimay White can taste like dry champagne. Start it at the higher end of the temperature range (70F). Once it’s started, move it to a location where it ferments at the lower end of the temperature range (65-60F).

For carbonation, you could use 1 cup of corn sugar. If you are kegging, you’ll want 2.0 to 4.0 volumes of CO2. I would plan for an even 3.0 volumes. This beer will have a large head if you pour it too fast.

This beer is light, but will sneak up on you. It is higher in alcohol, but because of the sugar you won’t notice the alcohol too much. My neighbors have learned the hard way, and now everyone refers to the beer as “tripel trouble”. I hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

Fix a stuck sparge before it happens!

DJ Spiess — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 19:59:38 +0000

Another way to avoid stuck sparges is to batch sparge. If you continuous sparge, rice hulls are great insurance.

A stuck sparge can ruin your brew day. A stuck sparge means that you cannot vorlauf or sparge your mash because the grains are so compacted that the wort cannot flow out. This leaves your precious wort stuck with the grain. If you are using wheat or oatmeal for your beer, stuck sparges can be quite common. There are methods you can try to avoid a stuck sparge, but the simplest method is to avoid the stuck sparge to begin with.

Adding rice hulls are the best insurance policy. You usually add 2% to 5% rice hulls to your grain bill. This will dramatically decrease the likelihood of a stuck sparge. Usually rice hulls are about $1 USD per pound, but you’ll only use about a third of that. That’s a $0.33 USD insurance policy. Peace of mind rarely comes cheaper!

How to make wine labels

DJ Spiess — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 19:38:53 +0000

You can easily create labels using a paint program, label program, or desktop publishing program. In this article we used Microsoft Publisher, but you can use any labeling program. You can also find many free labeling programs online if you spend some time searching on Google. The best programs allow you to layer images and text. Layering allows you to move one “piece” of your design without disturbing the rest of the label. For example, you can move one text item around the label without moving other text or images.

Here are a few of my homemade wine labels

Finding ideas

The most difficult step can be coming up with an idea. If your label idea is simple, you might be able to use clip art from your label design program. If you need something more, you should look around on the internet. For our label, we wanted to display a pair of blue-footed boobies from the Galapagos Islands. A quick search on the internet provided many photos. If you are making the label for a commercial endeavor, you should contact the artist/photographer before using any images found on the internet. Since this is just for homebrew wine, it is perfect.

Set up the page

The first step to create your label is to set up your page. You need to divide a normal 8 1/2 x 11 page into six boxes. The boxes should fill up the page as much as possible. You can experiment with larger numbers, like 8 or 12, but 6 seem to make a good sized label. If you are using a labeling program, the template ‘Avery 74536 Clip Style Name Badges’ or any other 6 block template is a good choice.

The first step is to set up the borders on your label

In Microsoft Publisher, we created a block that fits about 1/6th of the page. You can create the block using the rectangle shape tool. Create all six blocks on the page to verify that they are the correct size. If you are using an Avery template or another template, your work is already done for you.

Add the image

Resize the image to fit inside your label box. For this label, we set the image slightly off center and slightly smaller than the size of the complete label. This gives us room to later add text.

Next add an image for your wine label

Decorate with text

Here we added text to the label. Most programs let you select from any font on your machine. We gave the label a name, added the varietals, and the vintage. Other things you can add are the alcohol content if you know it, the source of the grapes, the wine maker, the name of your winery, or anything else you would like to add.

Add text to decorate your image. Don't forget to add "your winery's" name like I did.

Replicate the image

In Publisher (or what ever tool you are using), use the ‘select’ tool to select everything. Then use the ‘group’ command. This collects all of your changes, and groups them into one object. If your tool does not have a ‘group’, you should be able to select everything and copy it. Copy your label to fill the page with 6 labels. If you are using a labeling program, this step might be done automatically.

Finally copy the image at least six times over your page

Print the image

Unless you have a very good printer, you’ll want to take your label somewhere else to be printed. Inkjet printers can produce nice labels, but the colors will run as soon as any moisture touches the label. Kinko’s standard color printing produces some very nice labels. These labels look nice and the colors will not run. You will want to save the image to a floppy disk, CD, or a thumb drive before taking it to Kinko’s. Have them print the labels on normal paper. We are not using actual sticky labels because they tend to be difficult to remove from bottles.

Cut the labels

Unless you have an extremely steady hand, do not use scissors to cut your labels. In the school section of your favorite supply store, you should be able to find a straight edge paper cutter. These work much better than scissors, and do not leave jagged edges. Cut out each individual label using the paper cutter.

Apply Labels

The best choice for applying the labels to the bottle is to use a glue stick. Most glue sticks are water soluble; this makes the labels very easy to remove. Lightly cover the back of the label with glue. Make sure to get glue on all the edges and the corners. This will provide a good seal for the label.

Finishing Touches

After your label has dried, you can add a shrink capsule. This provides a top to your wine. There are other things you can do too, like a wax top. Your local homebrew or winemaking store should sell these. Once you add these small touches to your creations, the questions you will get will be “do you own your own winery” and not “did you make this in your bathtub”.

Now apply the finished label to your wine bottles.

How to make lambic (one ugly beer!)

DJ Spiess — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 19:33:36 +0000

My wife likes one beer – Lindeman’s Framboise. Every other beer, she turns her nose up. As an avid homebrewer, this is difficult to take because I haven’t made a beer that she appreciates. Since she likes the lambics, I decided to take the plunge into the scary unknown and make it for her.

The wild yeast

The “scary” part of making lambic is the yeast. Search on the internet, and you will find many warnings about making lambic with lambic yeast. True lambic brews are not made with particular yeast. The wort is just exposed to the local critters and Mother Nature does the rest. If we tried that outside of Belgium, our results would be bad to horrible. The reason is the wild yeasts and bacteria local to parts of Belgium are used to make lambic. The rest of the world must use a commercial lambic blend.

It looks scary fermenting, but lambics are worth the scare.

The lambic blend includes Brettanomyces, Saccharomyces, and the bacterial strains Lactobacillus and Pediococcus. There are other yeasts and bacteria, but science has determined that these are the critters that produce the flavor we want.

There are many myths surrounding these yeast and bacteria. Since they are “wild”, it is assumed they have supernatural powers above and beyond the normal beer yeast. Brewers worry the critters will lurk in every crevice of your home or brewery and infect every beer you ever make again. If you are brewing in porous wood barrels, uncovered fermenters, and/or you don’t clean or sanitize anything you may have something to worry about. Using proper sanitation and properly cleaning your equipment will protect you from these “wild” yeasts and any truly wild yeast living in your home brewery. When you are finished, clean all of your equipment as you normally would. If you feel extra worried, you can soak your equipment in star san a bit longer. These micro-organisms are just as susceptible to the acid-based sanitizer as all other brewing critters.

Making the beer

The recipe I used is as followed:

0.5 lb Gambrinus Honey Malt
4.5 lb Belgian 2 Row
1.5 lb Belgian Wheat Malt
0.5 lb Flaked Wheat Malt
2 oz Saaz hops
American Ale yeast
1 can of Oregon Seedless Raspberries
Pectic Enzyme
Lambic Blend Yeast
4 oz natural concentrated Raspberry flavoring

Mash the grains at 150 F (65 C) for 90 minutes. For the boil, add the hops from the start and boil the wort for 60 minutes. The beer we are making is a very basic ale. You can use any neutral ale yeast.

Ferment the beer using the ale yeast as you normally would. Once the beer has fermented completely you are ready for the second stage.

Adding the raspberries and second yeast

In your secondary fermenter, add the raspberries, pectic enzyme (for 5 gallons), and the lambic yeast. Rack your fermented ale on top of the raspberries and lambic yeast. Seal the top of your fermenter, and store in a cool place.

The long wait

The lambic yeast will create a layer of bacteria on top of your beer. If you have a clear fermenter, be prepared to be grossed out. The beer will look infected—which it is, but in a good way. Do not show this to anyone who might drink the beer. The likelihood of them liking the beer will drop dramatically with every glimpse of the film on top of the beer. The Belgians smartly store lambics in opaque wooden barrels. The lambic should be stored for about 6 months.

Rack and carbonate

Once the time has passed, suppress your gag reflex and poke a hole through the bacteria layer and rack your beer. Add the raspberry flavoring at this time to taste. You can rack it into a bottling bucket, add sugar and naturally carbonate, or you can just keg it and add the CO2.

There is some debate over how carbonated the lambic should be. Authentic lambics are not very carbonated. Lindeman’s has a cork and is very carbonated. You will have to experiment to see what you like, and report back to us.

Top 10 ways to improve your homebrew beer

DJ Spiess — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 16:38:42 +0000

Looking to improve your beer? Here's some good tips for making better beer.

10. Add specialty grains to your beer to fine tune flavors

If you are brewing extract brews, adding a bit of specialty grains will improve your beer flavor and can give it a better head. The specialty grains also give the beer a bit more depth in flavor. Specialty grains are steeped in hot water, 158F (70C) for 20 to 60 minutes. This creates a “grain tea” that is added to your wort when you start your boil. The grains used for steeping are not part of the mash, because these grains do not require enzymatic conversion.

9. Use a one step sanitizer

If you are not using a one step sanitizer like star san, you should start now. A one step sanitizer sanitizes your fermenter, spoon, or anything else the might come in contact with your wort within minutes. The best part is that the one step sanitizers do not require you to rinse. A one step sanitizer is an odorless and tasteless weak acid, so it will not change the flavor of your beer. Proper sanitary procedures will dramatically reduce the chance for infection, and thus give you a better beer.

8. Full wort boil

A full wort boil is when you boil the full 5 gallons of your wort. If you are creating Belgian Wits or Hefeweizens that are too dark in color, a full wort boil will help you lighten it up. The darker color originates from boiling concentrated wort; the sugars tend to caramelize. The higher concentration also makes it harder for you to extract the bitterness from the hops, since there is less “room” for the hop flavors in the wort. Boiling the full amount will help you create lighter colored beers and extract more hop flavor (better hop utilization).

7. Use a wort chiller

Before you can pitch your yeast, you must cool the wort. Once the wort temperature goes below 140F (60C), your wort is susceptible to bacterial infection. The best protection from bacteria in your beer is your yeast. The yeast will change the pH of your beer and make the conditions harsh for invading bacteria. Unfortunately, you can not add yeast until your beer temperature is around 70F (21C), so the sooner you can get your wort to this temperature the better. A wort chiller can cool boiling hot wort to less than 90F (32C) within minutes. The other advantage of chilling your beer quickly is getting a “cold break”. If you chill your beer quickly enough, the proteins in your beer will form solids. These solids are believed by some brewers to cause off flavors in the beer. Removing these solids will produce a cleaner tasting beer.

6. Keg your beer

If you are still bottling your beer, you should consider kegging. Kegging is much easier than bottling, and it is not expensive in the long run. You can often find good deals on four packs of used kegs for less than $100 USD. The CO2 cylinder, regulator, and a single used keg can be found for around $100 USD. Why would kegging improve your beer? Kegging will produce a more consistent carbonation for your beers. Your beers will also be clearer, and you also do not need to worry about the “yeast sludge” at the bottom of each bottle. This is strictly presentation, but clarity does count for a good looking beer.

Kegging your beer allows you to produce a consistent product with each pour.

5. Use liquid yeast

While dry yeast is much cheaper than liquid yeast, there is far more selection for liquid yeasts. A wider variety can give the brewer more control over the flavor of the beer. Yeast contributes the most flavor to your beer of any ingredient. The drying process can also contaminate your yeast with bacteria. This can cause off-flavors. If you are spending $20-$30 USD on your beer, an extra $5 for liquid yeast is a very small price to pay. If you are cutting costs, the yeast is really not the place to do it.

4. Oxygenate your wort

Oxygen is very important for your yeast in the early stages of fermentation. If your yeast do not get enough oxygen, they will become stressed. Stressed yeast produce off flavors. You want happy yeast. It takes very little effort to stir, splash or vigorously mix your wort before pitching. A siphon sprayer costs $3. There are attachments that connect to your drill to stir your wort for you. Shaking the fermenter before pitching the yeast is free. You really do not have an excuse to not do this. Happy, healthy yeast will ferment faster and produce a cleaner tasting beer.

3. Switch to all-grain brewing

All-grain brewing is much more approachable and easier than you think. Batch sparging has become very popular in the past few years. You can build a complete batch sparging system for around $60-$80 USD. If you have a good 40 quart (10 gallon) cooler you don’t need, you can convert it for $20-$30 USD. All-grain brewing allows you to create more complex tasting beers. It also allows you to create much lighter colored beers, something that is very difficult with extract brewing. You can create excellent extract beers, but all-grain brewing can give you the fine tuning that lets you take your beers to the next level.

All-grain brewing is a fun way to fine tune your beer recipes

2. Use a starter

According to Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels, most homebrewers severely under pitch their beer. The popular smack packs claim to have 2.5 billion cells when the package has expanded. If you try to match the commercial pitching rates, you would need 200-400 billion cells for a 5 gallon batch, however the minimum pitching rate recommended for a 5 gallon brew is 20 billion cells. Creating a starter will help you get much closer to the recommended pitching rate and produce a much crisper tasting beer, with fewer off flavors.

1. Try different beers

The best way to determine how your beer should taste is to try different beers. This will give you an idea how the different styles should taste. More importantly, trying different beers will expose you to different styles you might not have tried before. You will find new beers that you like, and will eventually try to make at home. You might even improve on the recipe! Hopefully these tips will help you improve your beer. If you have any tips we missed, let us know in the comments!

Review: The Brew House Beer Kit Part One

DJ Spiess — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 04:57:43 +0000

When we first read about the beer kits we were skeptical, especially since they advertised “premium all-grain beer kit” on the side of the box. It seems similar to advertising “all grape wine” on the side of a box of grape juice. The first anecdotal review we heard was from the local brew store: “we tried the IPA, but it tasted like a pale ale”. Not exactly a resounding endorsement.

The brew house beer kit is a no-boil beer kit

It seems to us it might be very difficult to brew a beer with great hops when there are no hops in the beer kit. The IPA review from the brew store seemed to confirm this suspicion. The concentrated “wort” that you get has the hops already added. With this in mind, we selected the Oktoberfest Ale because it should be maltier and hops should be less pronounced.

What’s in the “The Brew House” Oktoberfest Ale?

When you open the box, you get your first surprise. The instructions indicate that you need a 10 gallon fermenter. If you are used to making wine kits or beer in a 6.5 gallon fermenter, this is an unwelcome surprise. Most brewers do not have a 10 gallon fermenter. Luckily we had a 20 gallon fermenter. We’re guessing that they are expecting a very vigorous fermentation, and want the extra space. The beer should be in the primary fermenter for only 3-4 days, so larger should be ok.

The kit comes with what you see here, plus the concentrated wort

The kit contains concentrated wort, similar to wine kits. You just add water and yeast, and you are done. There is no boiling. This is a great idea for those of us that don’t like brewing outside in freezing temperatures.

The kit also comes with three packets to add to the wort – bottling sugar, yeast, and an acid blend. The problem is that only the yeast is labeled. Experience dictated that the larger packet is the sugar, but someone new to brewing might appreciate labeling.

After that, it’s just add water and pour the wort in. Very simple. In a few days you need to rack to a secondary for 20 days. After 23 days, the beer should be bottled or kegged. So in 23 days we will tell you how it tastes in the second part of this review.

The wort is already boiled, just add water

How easy is the beer kit?

As for ease, the kit is VERY simple to mix together. If you have any experience making wine kits, the process will be very familiar. For newbies this kit would be a great introduction to “brewing”. It might also be a great choice for beer making in the winter. We will know for sure once we taste the beer.

The Brew House Beer Kit Review Part Two

The Brew House Beer Kit – Munich Dunkel

DJ Spiess — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 20:09:23 +0000

Last year I made a Brew House Oktoberfest beer kit. I said I’d probably try other beers, but I wasn’t “wowed” by the Oktoberfest. I wanted to go back to give some of the other styles a try. I’ve stayed away from the IPA and more “hoppy” ales because I’ve heard much of the hop aroma and flavor is lost in these kits. I am looking for a kit which stands a good chance of tasting great. This time around I tried the Munich Dunkel.

You'd really have to try to find a way to make beer easier than this beer kit

I tried to ferment the beer in a 6.5 gallon bucket fermenter despite the instructions asking for a 10 gallon fermenter. I used a large fermenter last time, but decided against it for this brew. I can honestly say when they mention you need a 10 gallon fermenter in the instructions, they mean it. I had quite the blow off.

Looks

The beer is very dark, much like a porter. Munich Dunkels are usually anywhere between medium amber to dark brown, so this beer was within style guidelines. The cream colored head was fair, but fell quickly.

Aroma

The beer has a very slight nutty aroma, with some note of toffee. There aren’t really any other aromas. The slight aromas are well within style guidelines.

The final result wasn't bad. The beer had a good dark coffee flavor, but it might have been a bit too much coffee

Taste

The flavor is coffee. I taste more coffee than Munich malts or anything else. The beer does have a sweet flavor to it, but it’s not malty. The flavor is very smooth, with no alcohol bites. The beer flavor is ok, but I’m underwhelmed.

The mouthfeel was a bit weak. My first thought when I tasted it was I added too much water, but I was really anal about measuring the water per instructions. The beer should have a medium to medium full mouthfeel, without being too heavy. I think the beer went too light. It just doesn’t have much body to the beer.

Results

Overall I think the beer kit produced another beer which was mostly within style guidelines, but did not wow me. It’s a good beer to serve at a large party, but I don’t think I want to drink 5 gallons by myself. I mentioned before, I thought the beer had more coffee flavor than anything else. The beer also felt “thin”.

If you can find a good deal on the kit, it might be worth it in today’s economy. It does make beer, and the beer isn’t bad. The beer just isn’t going to knock your socks off.

I’ll give the beer 6 Munich dark nights out of 10.

Brewery: The Brew House, RJ Spagnols Brew kit
Country of Origin: Canada
Style: Munich Dunkel
ABV: 5.5%

How to clean a homebrew keg

DJ Spiess — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 16:16:06 +0000

Kegging beer is very simple. Fill the keg, connect gas, then drink. Once the keg is empty, cleaning a keg seems a bit more daunting. Cleaning a keg is very simple once you know the steps.

It's much easier to clean one keg than 40 bottles.

Gather your equipment

First assemble the equipment that you will need:
•   PBW cleaning powder (or equivalent)
•   StarSan sanitizer (or equivalent)
•   7/8 inch wrench
•   O-rings if you plan on replacing them
•   1 dirty keg

A 7/8 inch wrench is used to remove the posts. You can use an adjustable wrench, but this one makes it much easier.

Rinse Keg

To start, rinse out the keg with water. This will remove any larger particles or left over beer.

Clean Keg With Cleansing Solution

A wrench like this is manditory for kegging

Prepare a gallon of PBW solution using one gallon of water and 2 oz of PBW powder. If you are using another cleanser, refer to the directions for the correct amount. Put this solution into the keg. You can mix the solution directly in the keg; just make sure you don’t add too much power. It can be difficult rinsing out the power crystals that don’t dissolve. Seal the keg back up, and shake the keg hard. If there were solid parts near the top, you can store the keg for 30 minutes upside down. This should dislodge any stuck particles near the top.

PBW cleans all given enough time

Next pour out the PBW solution. Save some of the solution in a bowl or jug. You will use this solution to clean the keg posts. Unfasten the keg posts and place them into the bowl. It is ok if the poppets come out, but be careful not to lose them. Rinse out the keg with water. Make sure there are no particles stuck to the inside walls of the keg. Rinse the keg until you no longer smell any chemicals.

Rinse Keg

Rinse off the keg parts. Make sure you rinse the parts inside and out. The dip tubes should be rinsed inside and out.

Clean and Lube Keg Parts

Remove the rings on the dip tubes. Place a small amount of keg grease on the rings. You can buy this grease at most homebrew stores local or online. Place the rings back on the tubes. If you are replacing the o-rings, toss out the old ones and replace with new ones. Most homebrew stores will sell the o-rings individually, or you can get a great deal on the o-rings if you buy 100 of them online from McMaster-Carr.

These are the different keg parts you'll need to clean

Make sure there is still some grease on the ring. You can be a bit liberal with the grease. The grease is odorless and tasteless, and it does not dissolve in beer or water. (You will discover just how well it doesn’t dissolve when you try to wash it off your fingers later) Remove the poppets from the keg posts and apply a bit of grease to the tops of these.

Resecure parts

The keg lid is really three parts if you count the release valve

Place the tubes back into the correct locations. The short tube is the gas tube, and should be placed in the “in” spot. The longer dip tube is for the beverage, and should be placed in the “out” spot. Replace the poppets into the posts and secure the posts back onto the keg. You’ll notice that one of the posts has (should have) notches in the sides of the post. That post is the gas post. The other is for the beverage.

Clean and lube keg lid

Remove the o-ring on the lid, and clean both thoroughly. Liberally apply grease to the o-ring. Make sure the grease covers the o-ring. The grease will help seal the lid to the keg, and make it less likely for leaks.

This is the stuff I use to lube the rings. It's water insoluble and makes a great seal

Sanitize and pressurize keg

Create 1 gallon of a sanitizing solution using StarSan, or some other no-rinse sanitizer. You can create this solution in the keg. Seal the keg, and again shake the keg. Wait for about a minute after shaking.

Push the sanitizing solution out of your keg using your CO2. This will make sure that the sanitizing solution touches everything. Once the keg is sanitized, it is ready for use. Keep the keg under pressure until you plan to use it. Keeping the keg under pressure will protect the keg from mold or bacteria until you are ready to use it. It will also help you spot any slow gas leaks that you might find.

Once you’ve filled the keg with beer and carbonated it, your next step is to empty the keg. Happy drinking!

fermentarium » homebrew

What you need to know about adding oak to beer

Types of oak for your beer

Oak Chips

Oak Cubes

Oak Spirals

Oak Barrels

Ways to add the oak to your beer

More Oak Tips

Related posts

Building a recirculating wort chiller

The problem

Building the recirculating wort chiller

How the wort chiller worked

What I’d do different

Related posts

How to make a Key Lime Wit beer

The Key Lime Wit Recipe

Related posts

How to connect multiple kegs to one CO2 tank

Use a gas distributor

Use a Double Body CO2 Regulator (or more)

Mix and match gas supply equipment

Related posts

Why does my beer taste bad? (Part 3)

The alcohol burn (alcoholic)

Creamed Corn/Cooked Vegetables (DMS)

Related Articles

Related posts

Harvest Ready Hops

Paper feel

Slight browning at the tips of the hops

Aromatic

Yellow lupin

Related posts

Why does my beer taste bad? (Part 2)

Buttered Popcorn or Butterscotch (diacetyl)

Band-aid flavor (phenols)

Related posts

Review: Brew Pal for the iPhone

First Looks

Ease of use

Issues

Results

Related posts

How I would reverse engineer Southern Tier’s Crème brûlée Imperial Milk Stout

Research the beer

Base Malts

Specialty Grains

Adjuncts

Hops

Yeast

The Southern Tier’s Crème brûlée Imperial Milk Stout Clone Recipe

Related posts

What do you need to start kegging beer?

You need a keg to keg beer

You also need a CO2 cylinder and the fittings

…and a tap to serve the beer

Related posts

My Big Brew Day

Related posts

What do you really need to start brewing beer?

Bottle Brew

No Boil Beer Kits

This is the minimum list of equipment you’ll need to make a no-boil beer kit:

Extract Brew

This is the minimum list of equipment you’ll need to make a extract brew:

All-Grain Brew

This is the minimum list of equipment you’ll need to make a all-grain brew:

Did I miss anything?

Related posts

The unbearable lightness of hop chemistry

Bittering, Flavoring, and Aroma Hops

Hop Acids

Hop alpha-acids

Hop beta-acids

Alpha-beta ratio

Chemical Analysis of hops

Oils

Humulene

There's nothing like good head on a beer

Lactose