Getting Started: Equipment

You have already decided to brew a batch of beer, now you need to know what to buy in order to do so.

I would recommend that you buy a kit from a site like Northern Brewer, Midwest, Williams Brewing, or even better your Local Homebrewing Store (LHS). All of these places should offer a basic brewing kit that will come with something to ferment the beer in, stir the beer with, measure the sugar in the beer, and bottle the beer. Most likely you will also need to pick up a large pot to boil the beer in.

If you would rather piece together the equipment yourself here is a list of what you will need...

1. 6.5 gallon fermentation vessel such as a carboy (glass or plastic) or a food grade bucket
2. 5 gallon bottling bucket with a valve on the bottom
3. 3.5 gallon or larger boiling pot (the bigger the better, especially if you ever want to brew more than 5 gallons or want to move onto all grain brewing)
4. Spoon for stirring the beer
5. Thermometer 
6. Hydrometer (measures gravity of the wort)
7. Air Lock (keeps bugs out of beer) 
8. Stopper to attach the Air Lock to the carboy (if using carboy)
9. Lid for bucket (if using bucket)
10. Siphon (used to move beer around)
11. 50 empty beer bottles (screw off tops are no good)
12. 50 bottle caps
13. Bottle caper
14. Sanitizer (Star San, Bleach, Iodophor)
15. Ingredients for brewing (Malt Extract, Hops, Yeast)

I would suggest brewing from a starter kit (which can be found at your LHS or on one of the listed websites). If you would rather you can pick up your own ingredients, I will be using creating a wheat beer for this example. If you are following my recipe then you should go pick up 3.5 pounds of pale liquid malt extract, 3.5 pounds of liquid wheat extract, 1 oz of Hallertau hops, and 1 packet of dry yeast (such as Safale US-05).

The Basics

Getting Started: Brew Day

By now you should have purchased everything that you need and are ready to brew some beer! Make sure before you start that you are going to have enough time (5 hours) and I would recommend that you read everything through once to make sure that you have all the equipment ready to go.

I was once told by a professional brewer on a tour of a brewery that  70% of a brewers time is spent cleaning. I have found that to be a little bit of an over exaggeration. That being said brewing is messy and having clean equipment is very very important. If even 1 bacteria cell gets into your beer and it then multiplies every 30 minutes you can imagine that a week latter you are going to have millions of bacteria in your beer. For that reason it is important to keep your equipment and work area clean.

I will be assuming you are following my wheat beer recipe, if you are not the basics will be the same but the ingredients will be different.

1. To start off measure 2.5 gallons of water into your 3.5 gallon pot
2. Bring the water to a boil and added 3.5 pounds of wheat and 3.5 pounds of pale liquid malt extract (add it slowly and stir as you do so. The last thing you want is for it all to fall to the bottom and burn to the bottom of your nice new pot)
3. Once the solution has returned to a boil add 1 oz of Hallertau (or similar) hops to the beer and set the timer for 60 minutes
4. Rehydrate the yeast according to the directions on the package
5. Watch the beer, do not leave the room. It may start to boil over and if you boil over all of your beer you will have a terrible mess. Keep the stove temperature hot enough to boil the beer but not so hot you are going to boil it over.
6. After an hour has passed you will have wort. At this point it has been sanitized by the boil and is free of any living organism. You just have to make sure it stays that way. Before you can add the yeast you need to cool the beer down. You can place a lid on it and put it in the fridge, place it in a sink full of cold water, or just wait for it to cool down. You need it to be at less than 80 F before you can add the yeast. 
7. While the beer is cooling you can sanitize for fermentation vessel with whatever sanitizer you choose. If you are using bleach make sure you rinse it 3 times so that you do not get bleach flavored beer.
8. Pour the cooled beer into the fermentation vessel and bring the volume to 5 gallons with water.
9. Take and record a hydrometer reading of the beer, if everything went well it should be around 1.050.
10. Add the yeast to he beer.
11. Yeast need oxygen to grow, so you will either need to pour the beer back and forth between the boil pot and the fermentation vessel or shake it in the fermentation vessel very well. (Boiling drives off all the oxygen, you need to add it back in after the boil).
12. Place the lid/stopper on the fermentation vessel and add the air lock filled with Vodka or sanitizer.
13. Set the beer in a warm room (~65 F) and let it ferment for the next 7 to 10 days.
14. Within 48 hours you should see the air lock moving to release carbon dioxide being produced by the yeast as they metabolize the sugar present in the wort.
15. After 7-10 days it should be time to bottle the beer, this means feeding the yeast one last time with sugar and adding the beer to a bottle. The sugar will provide a last meal for the yeast which they will once again turn into carbon dioxide and alcohol. This time the cap on the top of the beer bottle will seal in the carbon dioxide and carbonate your beer.
16. Take a hydrometer reading of the beer and record it. It should be around 1.015. If it is not stop and check out this link.
17. To bottle the beer first sanitize your siphon, 50 bottles, and your bottling bucket. Now add the beer to the bottling bucket using your siphon, the goal is to do this slowly without letting too much oxygen have access to the beer. 
18. Add priming sugar to the bottling bucket and gently stir it, this is for the yeasts last meal. To calculate how much priming sugar to use follow this link.
19. Now add the beer to the bottle, about a half inch from the top. Place a crown cap on the bottle and crimp it in place with the caper.
20. Place the closed bottles in a warm place, you need the yeast to stay active to eat their last meal, which might take some time. If you place a bottle in the fridge too soon the yeast will become dormant and will not carbonate your beer.
21. After a good 2-3 weeks place 1 beer in the fridge, let it cool, and sample it. If it is nice and carbonated you can cool the rest.
22. Celebrate the awesome accomplishment of brewing your own beer! I would recommend using a kit at least one more time before you start trying to experiment or move on to the next stage, which is using steeping grains.

Getting Ready to Bottle

Getting Started: Intro

Man has been brewing beer for centuries, isn't it time you tried your hand at it? Afterall, if a guy who lived in a cave could make beer, why can't you?

While brewing might seem like an intimidating process at first it is actually quite simple. Lets start at the beginning.

All beer is made of four ingredients, malted grains, hops, yeast, and water. These four simple ingredients are varied in type, style, and amount to make beer. As a potential brewer it is your job to combine malted grains, water, and hops to make wort. Yeast is then added and creates beer from wort by breaking down sugar into alcohol, carbon dioxide (CO2) and compounds such as esters that will create flavor and aroma in the beer.

In a traditional brewery the first step is to activate enzymes in malted grain to break starch into usable sugar, but this is not where we will be starting. Most home brewers start by using malt extract that has already been prepared for them. The extract is from barley or wheat and all the starch has been broken down into sugar and concentrated for ease of use.

When you are just starting out I would recommend you first decide on what type of beer you would like to brew, pick something that is easy like a wheat beer or an amber ale. These are two styles that have some room for off flavors and are quick and easy to make. For this run through I am going to assume you are making a wheat beer.

However, before you try brewing beer you are going to need to get all of the equipment, which I am going to go over in my next post.

IPA

I have brewed a couple of IPAs before. It is a beer that I like to have around for when I want something crisp and refreshing after a long day. I have played around with multiple recipes and hopping schedules and this is my latest attempt, which I must say turned out pretty good.

Brewed 1/21/12

5 gallons, brewed with Andrew

Grain:

13 pounds of Pale 2-Row Malt
1 pound of Caramel 40

Mashed at 152 F for 1 hour

Hops:

Chinook 1 oz 11.9% 60 minutes
Centennial 1 oz 10.5% 30 minutes
Simcoe 1 oz 14.1% 15 minutes
Cascade 1 oz 6.4% 10 minutes

Initial Gravity 1.072

Final Gravity 1.016

Beer moved to Keg once final gravity reached and dry hopped with

1 oz Cascade 6.4%
1/2 oz Hallertau 4.6%
1/2 oz Saaz 4.4%

Bottled using Beer Gun at 2.5 volumes of carbonation

2/11 Tasting

The beer is surprisingly red brown for the small amount of caramel malt that I added. The head retention is poor which is not surprising from how much hops I added and how long it was dry hopped, probably also the reason that it is hazy.

The aroma is very well balanced. You can tell right away that the beer is full of grassy hops with just a hint of citrus and some grapefruit. Also present is a hint of caramel that rounds out the aroma.

The beer starts off sweet with a hint of caramel and finishes easy with a hit of hops right at the finish that cleans the palate from all the sugar leaving you ready for another sip.

Overall I am pretty impressed with how this beer turned out. You would never guess that it is 8%+. I would like a little more bitterness in the taste and a little more citrus in the aroma. That being said I am pretty awed by how drinkable this is and worried that I will put all 5 gallons down before I can share it with anyone.

St. Patrick's Day Heather Ale

3/17

Decided that in the spirit of St. Patrick's day I would brew a Heather Ale. The basic idea is to use a simply Irish Red recipe and to add Heather stems towards the end of the boil and at knock out. I spent the brew day with my buddy Andrew. If you are wondering at all about the hop choice it was based on what was in the fridge and already open. Since the hops are only being added for bittering it should be fine that they are not a more traditional Irish Red hop style.

Grain:
8 pounds American 2-row
4 oz Roasted Barley
4 oz Crystal 120
4 oz Crystal 40-50

Hops:
60 minutes
0.5 oz Hallertau (Pellets) 4.6%
0.25 oz Chinook (Leaf) 11.9%

Heather

Spices:
10 minutes
0.66 oz Heather
Knock Out
0.66 oz Heather

Yeast:
Wyeast 1728 Scottish Ale

Final Volume: 3.3 gallons

Original Gravity: 1.054

Beer was placed in primary fermenter. The plan is to make a tea out the remaining 0.66 oz and add it to the secondary when the beer is transferred in about 1 week.

Rocky Mountain Microbrew Symposium

2/18

I had the wonderful opportunity to participate in the Rocky Mountain Microbrew Symposium yesterday. The annual event is held at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs and is an event for any local microbreweries. At the event brewers and staff can meet with their fellow brewers, hear talks on brewing, and sample a host of beers brought by the participants.

The speakers were a little dry this year but there were a couple of note and one in particular that caught my attention. It was on glassware, which might sound odd, but hear me out. First, the speaker handed out a normal pint glass to everyone in the room, a Trinity glass, a Samuel Adam's glass, and a New Belgium glass. The crowd then sampled beers out of the special glasses compared to the pint glass. The speaker went over how certain glasses produce a better drinking experience by putting the beer in the correct place on the drinkers tongue or concentrating aroma compounds allowing the drinker to have their nose in the glass as they are taking a sip. It certainly confirmed what most beer geeks already know, drink beer out of a glass and not the bottle, and use the correct glass!

I also had the opportunity to sample about 25+ beers. At the top of my list was Black Fox's Diablo that is brewed with chocolate and peppers. I was very impressed by the beer and the chocolate and peppers blended together magnificently. Next I was able to get my hands on a can of Oskar Blue's Deviant, their double IPA that was previously only available on tap. I spoke with one of the brewers about the beer and he stated that it was like a double Dale's Pale Ale that was dry hoped beyond belief. It was a very refreshing IPA that carried no bitter lingering aftertaste, it should be available in stores within a few weeks. Finally, I was able to try a sour from Three Barrel in Del Norte Colorado, it was hands down the best beer of the event and once I started drinking it I gave up on everything else in the room.

At lunch the movie Beer Culture was shown, you should certainly check it out if you have not seen it before.

Overall the event was a great way to spend a Friday learning about the science of beer and chatting with some of the best brewers in Colorado one on one as I tried their beers.

Mixed Fermentation Tasting

2/18

About a month ago I brewed a wheat beers using two yeast strains. The recipe was simple, 50% wheat and 50% barley and lightly hoped. I wanted to see what would happen if I added both an American Wheat strain and a Saison strain. The results was a little lack luster. I was hoping for some fruit and spice aromas from the Saison yeast but all it did was give the beer a dry finish. If I was to do this over again I would use a more expressive wheat yeast and stick with the Saison to give it the dry finish. That being said the beer did turn out rather well and is very refreshing and sessionable.

 

Tasting Notes:

Appearance: Nice straw color that pours with a nice cloudy haze. The nice fluffy head soon turned into a lacing around the top of the glass.

Aroma: Yeasty aroma with notes of pineapple.

Taste: A nice wheat taste with some spices at the finish, rather dry and leaves the palate nice and clean for the next sip.

Overall: A highly drinkable beer with a great taste. I would like to find away to give it some banana notes and would probably choose a different yeast combination for next time.