The How To Brew Digest
Sunday 22 February 2009 12:40
Brewing your own beer is a rewarding experience, but difficult to get right. I describe a method to brew a fine tasting extract beer using specialty grains.
I first tried to brew my own beer in the mid '90s. At the time I was living in a student flat with three others. Being the simple creatures we were, the production of a quality beverage wasn't our prime concern. Quality was certainly welcome, but it was viewed more as a side-benefit. What we were interested in was producing the maximum volume of alcohol relative to our initial financial outlay. So, the most booze for our buck, then.
If my memory serves me right, this attitude was best exemplified by our brewing methodology. Straight away we deviated from our original plan to brew beer, and instead opted for cider. While browsing the Home Brew shop's range of tinned cider extracts we hit upon the idea of adding a wine kit to the mix. We reasoned that if one can of cider extract was good, then adding a wine kit could only make things better.
Our knowledge of basic brewing procedure was so poor that to us it might as well have been a lost art. Our approach to sanitation was shoddy, and in hindsight likely contributed to some bottles of cider evacuating their contents immediately on opening. In these instances the loss of our valuable fermentables was only moderately offset by the spectacle of seeing 330mls of cider-wine form a quick and perfect column in the air before spilling over the floor.
These early batches clearly left me deeply scarred as I didn't attempt beer brewing again until around 2006. AK and LD had very kindly bought me complete home brewing kit, including a how-to book. I dutifully followed the instructions in the book, added the sugar, pitched the yeast, brewed the beer for 11 days, and then bottled the resulting liquid. I then conditioned the beer for three months before sampling it. While the tasting notes have long since been consigned to the bin, I can safely say I managed to produce a very off-flavoured and likely infected beer.
I know I'm not alone in this. I've overhead other brewers at Home Brew shops speak of the same miserable outcome. So how should you properly brew your own beer? First of all, I strongly recommend you read John J. Palmer's How to Brew. I was lucky enough to receive a copy of the latest edition from my brewing mentor PS. The first edition is available free online. This book provides a comprehensive background on the brewing process and steps the reader from extract brewing to all-grain brewing. Once you've digested that information you might find useful the following 'cheat-sheet' on brew day (this method assumes you are brewing an extract beer using speciality grains). You will have more than enough to do on the day without having to flick through a book or navigate a website to check for the next step in the brewing process.
How to brew beer
Preparation and tips
- Do some research to find a good beer recipe. There are plenty online. Recipes are usually listed as either extract or all-grain versions. Beginners should stick to extract brewing until you are familiar with the brewing process. Consider brewing some sort of ale or dark beer
- Don't attempt to brew a lager of you are: (a) new to the craft, or (b) if it is summer.
- Don't bother buying beer kits. They're just pre-hopped cans of malt extract. Buy your own malt extract and hops. This will allow you to hop your own beer and have more control over the taste of the end product
- Consider buying yourself an extra fermenter. The secondary fermenter can be used to brew a new batch while the other is fermenting, or you can use it to rack-off your beer before bottling to leave behind unwanted sediment
Method
- Clean all your equipment
- Sanitise all your equipment
- The day/night before you brew do the following:
- clean and sanitise two three litre plastic containers, then fill them with cooled, boiled water and place in the freezer.
- If you haven't purchased pre-cracked grains then save yourself some time by cracking them the night before and store in an airtight container
- Create your yeast starter
- Begin your brew by boiling 8.5 litres of water. Cool the water (using either a water bath or wort chiller) then transfer it to your cleaned and sanitised fermenter (lightly close the top of the fermenter to keep out bugs in the air). You could pour the boiled water straight into your plastic fermenter, but if you are concerned about Bisphenol A getting into your beer you might want to cool it first.
- Bring four litres of water up to 70 degrees Celsius plus or minus 10 degrees. Steep the speciality grains in the water for 30 minutes; agitate the grain bag as necessary
- Remove grain bag(s) and add then one 1.5 or 1.8 kg tin of malt extract. Add extra water to bring the total volume up to 8.5 litres
- Bring the wort to the boil and hold for 60 minutes. Add hops at the times given in your recipe, e.g.: 20, 40 and 60 minutes
- Add Irish Moss to help break material fall out of your wort
- Remove wort from the boil and add the second tin of malt extract, stir thoroughly and wait 10 minutes
- Cool your wort using either a water bath or wort chiller. Now add the ice to the wort to knock out as much heat as possible, as fast as possible. Remember, your target temperature is within the range listed on your packet of yeast
- Once the wort is sufficiently cool add it to the water already in the fermenter to bring up to the desired volume, roughly 20 litres
- Aerate the wort
- Pitch the yeast, close the fermenter lid, transfer to a cool dark place and add cooled boiled water to the air-lock