Homebrewing For The Absolute Beginner

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Homebrewing for the Absolute Beginner

Started by eGCI Team , Apr 03 2006 02:29 PM
Posted 03 April 2006 - 02:29 PM
eGCI Team
HOMEBREWING FOR THE ABSOLUTE BEGINNER
by Chris Holst, aka cdh
The Course
Welcome to the eGCI course on homebrewing. This course will be divided into five classes spaced two weeks apart to
allow you to gather equipment and ingredients, and to let the yeast alone to work their magic.
Class 1, which follows, is a basic introduction to the concepts and necessary equipment. It ends with a shopping list
for Class 2.
Class 2 will step you through the most simple kind of beermaking you can do, extract brewing. Youll make a strong
golden ale.
Class 3 will teach you what you need to know about bottling your Strong Golden Ale, and brewing another beer that
combines malt extract and specialty grains for added complexity and body.
In Class 4 youll make a Red Ale using what we discussed in Class 3.
Class 5 will walk you through the next step up in complexity and control in brewing, where youll derive some of your
sugar from malted grain, and some of your sugar from malt extract. This is called partial mash brewing, and
incorporates all of the steps involved in all grain brewing. Well brew a Belgian Abbey style ale. Well not do any all
grain brewing, since it is more equipment-intensive than this course envisions, but if you complete Class 5, youll
know the procedures if you get the urge to try it.
The Instructor
Chris Holst spent some time living in England in the early 1990s, where his attention was caught by the homebrew
kits that the Boots pharmacies stocked. The idea of making beer stuck in the back of his mind. After returning from
England, the space and time to brew were available, so the hunt began for a homebrew shop. Luckily one was nearby,
and staffed with helpful folks who got things off on the right foot. He's never looked back. Since then, he's brewed at
least 3 or 4 batches a year, experimenting mostly with Belgian ales and English bitters.
CLASS 1
Prelude
Brewing is an ancient human activity. Making drinks out of grains has been a part of human civilization for a long,
long time -- archaeologists have found evidence of Egyptian and Babylonian brewing. Over the ages weve refined the
process, but in essence brewing remains simple in its process but complex in its ingredients. The process involves
three steps:
1) Turn grain into fermentable sugars in the concentration you want, with the flavorings you want.
2) Let yeast loose on the fermentable sugars and leave them alone.
3) Carbonate it.
Getting at the fermentable sugars in raw grains is the art of malting. Although brewers used to malt their own grains,
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it is now a separate industry, which takes that element out of the job of the brewer and replaces it with a wide variety
of prepared products you can buy at a homebrew shop. The primary factors that differentiate fermentable grain
products are how far the natural starch-to-sugar conversion processes are allowed to proceed, and how much
caramelization of the resulting sugars occurred. Well address grain options and the techniques associated with them
in later lessons in this course.
Most beers today are flavored with hops, so well look at the information they carry with them to give you the
knowledge youll need to make an informed purchase and have an idea about what your hops will do.
Yeast gives beer a distinct character depending on what type of yeast you use. Well look at the commercial options
available to you, and the tricks to use to get the best performance out of your yeast. Leaving the yeast alone means
effectively removing competing organisms from the environment it will work in so it wont be bothered by the wild
yeasts and other beasts that might sneak in, and having the patience to let the yeast sit in your beer for a week or
more to eat through all of the sugars.
Carbonation is more yeast work, which requires sanitation, and sealable bottles to keep the carbon dioxide in there
once the yeast make it.
EQUIPMENT AND INGREDIENT BASICS

So, youre curious about brewing and want to give it a try? Brewing in small batches is quite easy and within the reach
of just about anybody interested in making a simple beer all on their own. This lesson will introduce you to a
minimalists essential brewing equipment. As a bit of advance warning: homebrewing is a gadgeteers paradise,
having been adopted wholeheartedly by folks with an inventive spirit and mechanical aptitude, so there is a vast array
of toys and goodies designed to streamline some aspect of the brewing process. Here well eschew all of them and
strip the hobby down to the absolute basics.
Equipment
The first thing well do is list the equipment youll need to get a batch of beer brewing. Since this is a tutorial, Im
going to scale down the recipes from the homebrewers standard 5-gallon batch size to a more manageable 2 gallons,
which will yield just short of a case of beer, and wont require you to purchase a whole new kit of equipment. To get
from here to beer youll need to get the following equipment together before the next lesson (you'll probably have
some of these already; others are specialty items you'll need to purchase):
A pot that holds at least 12 quarts, and a tight fitting lid. Youll use this to boil the malt extract and hops
together for an hour. You want this to be a non-reactive metal, so cast iron is out. Enameled canning pots are good, so
long as the enamel is intact and not chipped. Stainless steel is the gold standard.
A container that holds at least 12 quarts. This is where youll be fermenting the beer. Fermentation takes
between a week and two weeks. You could use the pot you boiled in, or you could use a food grade plastic container.
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The standard in the homebrewing world is a food grade plastic bucket with an airtight lid and an airlock device that
allows the gasses the fermentation produces to leave, but allows no new air in. It is great if you have one, but well
assume you dont yet at this early stage in your brewing adventures.
A scale. Recipes call for certain weights of ingredients. Eyeballing can get you into the right ballpark, but a scale is
really necessary if you want to be able to properly follow recipes or build your own reproducible recipes.
A thermometer. When youre dealing with grains rather than just extracts, youll need a thermometer. Grain husks
contain astringent compounds that are extracted at temperatures above about 170F, so you need a reliable method of
ensuring that the water your grain is sitting in is not above 170F. There are other critical temperatures that activate
and deactivate enzymes in grain that well address later.
A large metal spoon. Youll stir boiling liquid with this, so a long handle that doesnt conduct heat would be the
best.
A sanitizing agent. Homebrewing is as much about keeping unwanted additions out of the beer as putting the
right ingredients in. As we all learned from those swab and swipe experiments in our high school biology classes, the
world around us is crawling with microscopic life. Our job is to make sure that the microbeasts we like (namely our
chosen yeast) get to eat all of the sugary nutrients in our beer, and to keep wild yeasty and bacterial party crashers
from busting in, chowing down and leaving the beer a mess. That means we have to be vigilant about sanitizing
everything that comes into contact with our beer. A great sanitizer that is likely already in your cupboard is chlorine
bleach. If youre using bleach, then one tablespoon to a gallon of water will make a fine sanitizing solution. Ive been
using either an activated oxygen cleaner (a lot like Oxyclean, but no blue crystals in it) or a bleach solution for my
dozen years of brewing, and havent had an infected batch. Theres a lot of infection paranoia out there, but if youre
careful, you should not have problems.
A balloon whisk. Youll use this to stir and aerate your wort after you have boiled it and cooled it down to room
temperature.
Muslin hop bags. Hops should be isolated and easily removable from the pot. Homebrew shops sell little knit
muslin bags really cheap; youll need to buy ingredients from a homebrew shop anyway, so pick up a few of these too.
hop bag, center

A nylon grain bag. Grains are something well deal with in later lessons, but if youre going to use them, you need
something able to contain them. There are little nylon bags and there are big bags that can be fit inside big pots. Id
recommend the latter because theyre tougher, and more versatile. A little bit of grain in a great big bag is less of a
problem than a lot of grain in a little bag. Some people advocate using nylon stockings for this purpose; make sure
they dont have runners in that will let your grain out.
A clean white dishtowel and a rubber band. Since were operating on the assumption that you dont have an
airtight fermentation vessel, it is important to keep airborne stuff from settling on your beer while it is fermenting. A
clean dishtowel that has been soaked in sanitizing solution and wrung out can be stretched over the top of your
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fermentation vessel and kept in place with a rubber band. This will mean that youre conducting an open
fermentation, which is more traditional in some beer styles than others, but will work for everything.
A 4-foot length of flexible " (or so) tubing. Transferring beer from vessel to vessel should be done by siphon,
and you need a tube to get a siphon going.
A racking cane and a bottle filler. These are rigid plastic tubes that attach to the flexible tubing. The racking
cane has a device on the bottom end so that your siphon will not draw up sediment from the bottom of the vessel. The
bottle filler has a pressure activated valve at the end, so that you can fill bottles without overflowing. Buy these and
your tubing at the same time from the same place to insure that everything fits together.
Bottles. You need something that can handle the pressure of carbonation and can be sealed tight. If you are a beer
drinker, you can save thick returnable bottles and cap them with a device you can buy from a homebrew shop, but the
more common twist-off bottles are not recappable, nor are they sturdy enough to safely carbonate beer in the bottle.
Since most people dont have a case of empty recappable beer bottles sitting in the pantry, Ill suggest an easier and
cheaper alternative: PET seltzer bottles. You can get one- and two-liter bottles of club soda for less than the cost of
shipping a case of empty bottles to you. Youll need to take care about light exposure while your beer is aging, but that
is as simple as keeping them in a dark closet. Dont use soda bottles, as the flavorings in soda can persist in the
bottles, and youd probably not want to get stuck with two gallons of lemony-limey-brau.
Ingredients
Malt, hops, yeast and water -- Beer advertisements over time have extolled those four ingredients, which are the bare
minimum needed to make a beer. Marketers love the ancient German beer purity law called the Reinheitsgebot for its
mysterious name and simple message: pure beer is good beer. Under that law (since overridden by the EU) only malt,
hops, yeast and water could go into beer, and Germany still managed to produce a wide range of beer styles. Other
countries without such a legal restriction on what goes into a beer have created a wildly varied array of beers by
adding herbs, spices, non-yeast microbes and alternative sources of fermentables.
Since this is designed for new brewers, well keep it simple early on, and only talk about what we will use to brew the
first batch in our next lesson.
Malt
When a kernel of grain begins to sprout, a complex alchemy of chemical reactions begins, converting the starch we
grind into flour into sweet sugary compounds to feed the growing plant. Malting grain is the process of capturing the
kernels in the midst of their transformation from starch to sugar, and then heating and drying them to kill the
sprouting plant and take its energy stores for our use. These dried malted grains have a set of activated enzymes
within them that will transform most of the starches into sugars when exposed to the right environmental conditions.
When brewing directly from grain, part of the brewers art is setting the environmental conditions such that the
transformative enzymes turn the starches into the right mix of fermentable and unfermentable sugars that will give
the beer both its strength and its body. As a bit of trivia, the brewers word for the sugary solution is wort, though
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well try to keep the specialist vocabulary to a minimum early on in these lessons. (Brewing does have its own well
developed jargon that can confuse folks who dont speak the language.)
In this introductory course, we are going to use a common shortcut and employ malt extract. Malt extract is the
concentrated sugars derived from malt that has gone through its enzymatic transformation. There are two broad
types of malt extract, liquid and dried. For our purposes, well be using dried malt extract because it is easier to deal
with in small portions, and is frequently available in pound increments at homebrew shops, whereas liquid extracts
are often only sold in big cans that would leave you with sticky leftovers to deal with and sticky measuring cups and
kitchen counters and clothes. In your homebrew shop, youll find a variety of dried malt extracts -- most often youll
see light, amber, dark, and wheat extracts. Light extract is the best base extract to use, as further on in this course
well learn about using specialty grains to add color, flavor and body to our beers. Well learn about specialty grains in
the second brew we make in this course of lessons.
Homebrew shops may have dry malt extracts from various sources. Keep in mind that Dutch type extracts tend to
contain more unfermentable sugars, which give a beer a heavier body and thicker sweeter flavor and mouthfeel.
Extracts from other sources tend to be more fully fermentable, and produce drier beers. By mixing Dutch and
ordinary extracts you can affect the body and mouthfeel of your beer.
Hops
Hops are the flowers of a vine that sprouts from underground rhizomes. They contain an array of aromatic and
bittering compounds that both preserve beer and give it the characteristic flavor we associate with beers. Hops can
contribute many aromas and flavors, ranging from grassy to floral, from piney to citrusy, and all of them contribute a
bitter counterpoint to the sweetness of the malt. Using hops is an exercise in the art of balancing, and where brewers
demonstrate their skills. Since bitterness is such a personal matter of taste for people, a beer that appears well hopped
to one person can seem overwhelmingly bitter to another. Youll have to learn what you like and dont like, and
remember it the next time you brew.
The effects of adding hops to a brew changes depending on how long you allow them to boil. The longer the hops boil,
the more bittering effect. In homebrewing there are conventions to hop usage, commonly called bittering, flavoring,
aroma and dry. Bittering hops are supposed to be boiled in your wort for an hour. Flavoring hops are boiled for about
10 minutes, boiling off most of the volatile aroma compounds, adding a bit of bitterness and leaving the flavor
compounds from the hops in the beer. Aroma hops are added right at the end of the boil and liberate their aromatic
compounds, which dont boil off because the boiling stops. Dry hopping is a technique where the brewer adds hops to
the cold beer after it has already fermented, this adds even more hop aroma to the beer. Since brewers love
experimenting with the rules, there are beers out there that dont boil any hops for 60 minutes, but instead boil more
hops for less time to achieve the same level of bitterness, but with more hop flavor retained in the beer as well. Other
all-grain brewers have revived an old practice called first wort hopping, where hops are added to the vessel collecting
the wort as it runs off of the grain. This long steep before the boil changes the way the hops express themselves in the
brew, increasing the hop flavor. For our introductory purposes, well break our hop addition into thirds to acclimate
you to the different hop additions.
Hops are usually labeled with a name and a number. The name is the varietal of the plant that produced the flowers.
Hops are like tomatoes or wine grapes, insofar as they are all one species but exhibit a wide array of flavors. The
number is a measure of the percentage of Alpha acids present in the hops, and is most often abbreviated %AA. Alpha
acids are the bittering compounds that turn into the bitter flavor in beer once they have been boiled together with the
malt sugars for a period of time. High alpha acid hops require less hop volume to contribute bitterness than low alpha
acid hops. The longer the hops are boiled, the more of their aromatic compounds vaporize and waft away with the
steam from your brew pot, and at the same time more of the alpha acids are converted to bittering agents.
Hops are sold in three forms. For our purposes theyre equivalent since well be using hop bags to contain them. The
options you might be presented with are whole leaf hops, which are just the dried flowers of the hop vines, plugs,
which are those flowers crushed down into a compact little puck, and pellets, which are the flowers pulverized and
then extruded into little pellets. The pellets will leave much finer particles in your beer if you tossed them without any
hop bag or other hop separation technology. While doing so with pellets would be problematic, it is theoretically
possible to just throw whole and plug hops into the boil and strain them out later, but were not going to do it that way
because the spare change that each hop bag costs is worth it.
Yeast
Yeast are the microbes that eat sugar and turn it into alcohol and carbon dioxide. They produce other byproducts as
well, often depending on the temperatures at which they are working and the magic of the organic chemistry going on
in the fermentation process. There are many varieties of yeast, each with its own characteristics. Many types of beer,
particularly Belgian beers, are distinguished by the contributions of the yeast used in brewing it. The crisp dry aspect
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of lagers that we are accustomed to is a byproduct of the species of yeast used to brew it and its preference for
fermenting over long times at low temperatures. Since most homebrewers dont have a fridge dedicated to brewing,
lager beers are an advanced brewing project that requires significant investment. Ale yeasts, another species, are
happy to do their work at room temperature or thereabouts, but they do contribute a number of flavors if they
ferment too warm. Often flavors like banana, clove, bubblegum and butter are produced by yeasts fermenting outside
of their favored temperature range, but you can also get spicy and complex flavors out of yeasts as well. Most ale
yeasts prefer to ferment between 65 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit, which should not put too much inconvenience on the
average brewer who lives in a climate-controlled space.
Brewing yeast is sold both in liquid preparations and dried. Dried yeast keeps better and requires less effort than
liquid yeasts to use, but is more limited in the varieties available. Early in the evolution of homebrewing the
consensus was that dried yeasts were inferior to liquid yeasts. That is no longer the case, since dried yeast
manufacturers have increased the quality of dried yeast available to consumers. Liquid yeasts are more expensive
than dried yeasts, and when used in standard 5 gallon batches, they benefit from having their cell counts ramped up
by making a starter culture before throwing the yeast into the hopped wort. Surf over to some online homebrew shops
and look at the range of yeast available to get an idea of how distinctive and different yeasts effects can be. Thats why
it is a very bad idea to use yeasts bred for baking in beer. Dont be tempted to try it, because youll probably not like
the results.
Water
By volume, your beer is mostly water, so you want to make sure your water is as tasty as it can be. If you have treated
municipal water, you might want to boil it all by itself for a bit to boil off the chlorine so that it cant latch onto
compounds in your brewing ingredients. In more advanced homebrewing, some people advocate using distilled water
and water treatment products to replicate the local water of the origin of the style of beer youre brewing. That is well
beyond what were doing here, but it does point out that your water chemistry will make your beer unique to your
locality, so that if you went to visit friends in another state and brewed your beer at their house with their water it
might not come out exactly as you expect. This is also why some parts of the world gain fame as centers of brewing or
baking. Burton-on-Trent in England became famous for its beers because its water chemistry affected the grain and
hops in ways that most other British water did not. New York bagels and Philadelphia cheesesteaks and hoagies are
distinctive because of effects of the local water supply on the breadmaking process.
THE RECIPE
For a first small brew well aim for a strong pale ale type beer, with a medium hoppiness. This beer will be about as
strong as a Belgian trippel. Well use light dry malt extract to provide the fermentable sugars. For our hopping, well
use the archetypal citrus-y American hop, Cascade, which should be readily available in homebrew shops.
Were shooting for a beer with the following characteristics:
Original Gravity 1.068
IBUs 23
Light yellow color
Original gravity is a measure of the density of the solution you drop your yeast into. Water has a specific gravity of
1.000. Ethanols gravity is less than that. The sugars in the solution push the number up to 1.068, though it will drop
again once the yeast convert most of the sugars to ethanol. Your final gravity should be somewhere between 1.005 and
1.014. If you take density measurements at the beginning and end of your fermentation, you will be able to calculate
its alcohol content exactly. As a rule of thumb, the digits after the decimal point in the original gravity reading will let
you estimate how strong your beer will be by dropping the 1 entirely and moving the decimal 2 places to the right.
That tells us that our beer will be somewhere around 6.8% alcohol, or about 1.5 times as strong as average American
beers. The tool used to measure the density of a solution is called a hydrometer. For the moment, Im going to advise
strongly that beginners not get a hydrometer because it will provide the temptation to take lots of readings while the
yeast is working and is better not disturbed. As you progress in your brewing you might want to get a hydrometer, but
I managed to break mine a couple of years ago (theyre fragile glass things) and havent missed it and havent replaced
it.
IBUs (International Bitterness Units) are a measure of how much hop bitterness is in your beer, calculated from the
amount of alpha acids in your hops, and how long theyve been boiled. The 20s represent moderate hoppiness. Some
extreme beers have IBU measures above 100, and others have measures in the single digits.
The following recipe will yield something like what we want.
2 Gallons water
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3 lbs. Light Dry Malt Extract

1oz. Cascade hops, divided in three parts for different stages of the brewing process
.25 oz crushed coriander seed (optional addition with the aroma hops, for its bright citrus-y notes)
Danstar Nottingham dry yeast
Now you have a shopping list for ingredients and supplies. Find your nearest local homebrew shop and stock up.
If you can't find a shop nearby, there are homebrew shops on the web that do a fine mail order business. I've had good
experiences with morebeer.com (http://morebeer.com/) and Hops & Dreams (http://www.brewbyu.com/) , and have
read that many people are happy customers of Northern Brewer (http://www.northernbrewer.com/) and Homebrew
Adventures (http://www.homebrew.com/) .
(Three of these have very active discussion forums that attract vocal homebrewers who write about brewing and are
worth reading, although you should realize that there are plenty of contradictory opinions out there.)
Shopping list for the brewing supply store or website:
3 lbs light dry malt extract
1 oz Cascade hops
1 packet yeast
3 Muslin hop bags
Siphon hose
Racking cane
Bottle filler
A packet of priming sugar (we'll use this later as we bottle -- and carbonate -- the beer)
See you in a couple of weeks.
Please post your questions about the homebrewing course here (http://forums.egullet.org
/index.php?showtopic=85651&pid=1164815&st=0&#entry1164815) .
Posted 17 April 2006 - 06:47 AM
eGCI Team
The member-supported eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters is pleased to present the second class in the eGCI
course Homebrewing for the Absolute Beginner. To help make this course and others possible, please take a
moment, if you have not already, to upgrade to a Society Donor membership (http://forums.egullet.org
/index.php?act=module&module=subscription&CODE=index) . If you are not yet a member, please first join the
eGullet Society (http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?act=Reg&CODE=00) .
CLASS 2 -- BREW DAY
Now that you've stocked up on ingredients and supplies, you're ready to brew. The first order of business should be to
make sure that your pot is clean and in good condition. For those with enameled canning pots, make sure there are no
cracks in the enamel. If the beer touches the metal under the enamel, it can pick up metallic off flavors. You dont
want that to happen to your beer.
The second task is getting a little more than 2 gallons of water into your pot and heating it up to boiling. The excess is
to make up for evaporation while it boils and the little bit of water the hops are going to soak up as they rehydrate.
The evaporation from an hour should be in the 10 to 15 percent range, so adding 9 quarts to the pot should cover your
losses. Your kitchen stove should be able to boil that without straining its capacity. (If you try to boil bigger volumes
of water, say for a 5-gallon batch, on the kitchen stove, you may run into the problem that your stove isnt putting out
enough power to get the water to a good bubbling boil. Some homebrewers who do bigger batches use outdoor
propane burners from turkey frying kits to do their boiling. You dont need to do that.)
If you're stuck with chlorinated tap water, you want to get the water up to boiling and let it stay there for a bit to boil
off the chlorine. While youre waiting for the water to come to a boil, you can divide the hops into three equal portions
and put them into the muslin hop bags. If you're using the coriander, crack it a little by putting it into a sealable
plastic bag and working it over with a rolling pin, then put it in with the hops in one bag, and remember to use that
bag last. Tie the bags closed at the top, but leave plenty of space in the bags for the hops to expand into. Hops absorb
water and increase in size while theyre boiling.
Brewing is not a photogenic process, so I'm not going to show you any pictures as we go along. Get into your mind the
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picture of your pot, filled with liquid, bubbling away. That's all you're really going to see. Since there are proteins in
malt products, you may see some white flaky looking things swirling around in there. That's natural, and nothing to
worry about.
Sanitation
Also, now would be a good time to mix up a batch of sanitizing solution, because it will be necessary as soon as the
wort stops boiling. You need to sanitize everything that will come into contact with your beer shortly before you bring
in into contact with your beer. To do this, make up two quarts of water with a teaspoon and half of chlorine bleach in
it. It is easiest if you make this in a tall thin container like a pitcher, since you've got long rigid things that need to be
sanitized. Make sure to run your sanitizing solution over and through everything that might come into contact with
beer. After sanitizing a piece of equipment rinse the chlorine water off. Remember, we're boiling your tap water to
keep chlorine away from the beer, so don't reintroduce it by not rinsing thoroughly.
If youre going to use a fermentation vessel other than the pot you boiled the wort in, wipe it down with sanitizing
solution, and then rinse it out.
Brewing
Now that your water is boiling, take it off of the heat. Sprinkle your 3 pounds of light malt extract onto the water and
stir it with your spoon until it dissolves. The malt extract is a very fine powder that loves to clump up when it is
exposed to water, so this may take longer than you expect. Once the malt extract is dissolved, put the pot back on the
heat and bring it back to boiling. Watch for boilovers now, as the protein in the malt will come to the surface as foam.
If it looks like it wants to boil over, stir it some and break up the blanket of foam. Once the boil resumes, add one of
the hop bags and set a timer for 50 minutes. When the timer goes off, add another hop bag and set the timer for 10
minutes. When that timer goes off, remove the first two hop bags with your spoon and then take the pot off the heat
and add the last hop bag (the one with the coriander seeds in it, if youre using them). Cover the pot with its lid and
keep it covered.
When your wort leaves the boil is when sanitation becomes crucial. Your wort is prime feeding ground for microbes of
all varieties, and now that it is no longer boiling it wont kill everything that gets into it. Of utmost importance now is
getting the yeast you want in there to take over and dominate the wort ecosystem. That means we must isolate the
wort from contact with anything that hasnt been sanitized so that nothing else gets in there. Next in importance is
getting the wort down to a temperature that is comfortable for our chosen yeast. That means about 70 80 degrees F.
Cooling the wort
Now it is time for some fun with thermodynamics. You want to get a bunch of energy out of your pot full of hot wort
as quickly as possible. Since energy flows from things hot to things cold, and the denser things are the more heat they
can absorb, it follows that getting as much cold dense stuff into contact with your pot as possible is key. Setting it
down into a snowbank or into a frozen-over pond are fine methods of getting lots of cold water in contact with the hot
pot to carry away all of the excess energy. If those options are not available to you, then a kitchen sink or bathtub full
of cold water and ice cubes will do in a pinch. Give it about half an hour and then give it a stir with your sanitized
spoon (now would be a fine time to remove that final hop bag too), and then take a temperature reading with your
sanitized thermometer.
Let it keep cooling down until the temperature is in the 70s. Putting yeast into too warm an environment will kill it.
When the wort is in the 70s, then youre ready to sprinkle the packet of yeast over the wort. After you sprinkle the
yeast onto the wort whip some air into the wort with your sanitized balloon whisk. This will give the yeast a healthy
amount of oxygen to burn while it gets to work. Now you're ready to put it away to ferment for two weeks. It will
produce lots of carbon dioxide while the yeast are doing their thing, so you need a cover that lets the gasses out, but
doesn't let wild yeasts or other nasties in. Take a clean dish towel and stretch it over the top of your fermentation
vessel, and use your rubber band to keep it in place. If you are suspicious about how free from dust and wild yeast
your towel is, you could soak it in sanitizing solution and then wring it out well before rubber banding it in place.
Now comes the hardest part . . . wait two weeks. No peeking. Put it out of sight, in a corner where the temperature will
be stable, and it won't be in bright light, or drafts. Light reacts with the chemicals that come from hops and results in
a skunky smell. Make sure nothing gets into your fermentor, and hopefully nothing will escape from there while the
yeast are doing their business. What's going to happen is that the yeast will begin to reproduce, and their population
will grow into a huge number of cells. The yeast will begin turning sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide, and that will
ramp up as the number of cells increases. There will be a foam on top of the beer that's called the krausen. Depending
on the type of yeast, this foam can be a thin layer or it can get inches thick. Particularly enthusiastic yeast may rise all
the way up to the covering towel. Don't worry if this happens, though if your fermentation vessel is almost full to the
top before you put in the yeast (not recommended, but if a smaller vessel is all you've got, make do), you should put a
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pan under it to catch the inevitable overflow. If your fermentor is going to sit anywhere that cleaning up a bit of
overflow will be tough (e.g. on a rug, or an old wooden floor), it would be best to use an overflow pan.
Those of you whose overflow pans see any overflow will get to observe first hand what infections with wild yeasts and
microbes do, as your overflow won't be protected from them. It will probably get to be sour and funky smelling, but
maybe not. Beer brewing started with wild yeasts, and some parts of Belgium are famous for the beers that their local
airborne yeast populations naturally produce. Either way, if your overflow pan does accumulate any beer in it, empty
it out quickly after it gets there. You dont want to encourage wild yeasts to congregate around your beer. The chance
of them getting in there and doing harm to your beer increases with the number of them around.
And that's it for this class. See you in a couple weeks, when we're ready to bottle.
Posted 05 May 2006 - 09:12 AM
eGCI Team
CLASS 3
Part I: Bottling your first batch
Now that two weeks have gone by since you turned the yeast loose on the extract batch we brewed first, it's time to get
that batch bottled. Again, this is a time when sanitation is extremely important. Anything that will come into contact
with your beer should be sanitized and rinsed off. This means the siphon hose, the racking cane, the bottle filler, the
container youre going to siphon the beer into, the bottles, their caps, your spoon, and anything else that might come
anywhere near your beer needs to meet your bleach solution, and get rinsed off right before you introduce it to your
beer.
Get a container big enough to hold everything that is in your fermenting vessel sanitized and ready for action. Gently
move your fermentor from where you hid it onto a tabletop. Put your other vessel onto a chair beside the table. Attach
the racking cane to your siphon and put it into the fermentor. Siphon all of the contents of the fermentor that the
racking cane will let you get access to into the other vessel. At the bottom of your fermenting vessel youll notice a
layer of sludge. Those are yeast cells that have done their job and fallen out of suspension. That little packet of yeast
you threw in there sure multiplied, eh? If you have a new batch of beer ready and down at room temperature right
now, you could pour it onto the yeast cake at the bottom of the fermentor and it would start fermenting very happily.
Since you probably don't have another batch of wort ready to go now, just clean up your fermentor after you're done
bottling.
There will still be a few yeast cells suspended in the beer in the new vessel, and they'll be the ones that supply the
carbonation for the beer. On your shopping list was "priming sugar." Find it and measure out two ounces onto
something reasonably sure not to be harboring lots of wild yeast and other nasties. Two ounces should carbonate your
beer up to about the fizziness of an American lager beer. You probably dont want it fizzier than that, but some people
enjoy beers a little less carbonated. If youd like to try a little less than the full two ounces, go right ahead. Whatever
amount you choose, stir the priming sugar into the beer, making sure it gets evenly distributed.
Remove the racking cane from your siphon and attach the bottle filler. Put the other end of the siphon hose into the
beer, and use the bottle filler to fill your sanitized bottles. Cap them (with sanitized caps), and put them into a dark
closet for two weeks. Two weeks is how long it will take the yeast to eat the priming sugar and in turn carbonate your
beer. After two weeks, you can move the beer to your fridge.
That's it. Be patient for a little while longer, and you'll soon be drinking your first beer!
Part II: Getting ready for the second batch
Now that you've accomplished the brewing process once, you're ready to add a bit of complexity to the process and to
the final result. There really wasn't much to the pure extract brewing, was there? Boil some water, add some extract,
put in the hops on schedule, get everything clean, chill it down, and let your yeast go to work. The next step up in
technique that we'll add is working with some grain.
Malt revisited
When maltsters process barley into malt, they have a huge number of options about how exactly they do it. Some of
their choices result in a grain where much of the starch in each kernel was converted into sugar, and then heated so
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that some of that sugar darkens as it begins to caramelize. These malts contribute both flavor and mouthfeel to a beer,
as they contain sugar compounds that have been chemically changed by the hot processing theyve endured. These
caramel or crystal malts have readily soluble sugars in them that will contribute additional complexity to your beer if
they are just steeped in hot water without any concern for coddling enzymes into converting starch into sugar.
These malts are classified according to a standard scale called Lovibond ratings. The lower the number, the lighter the
grain roast. Pilsner malts have a number around 1L. The roasted barley in a stout has a number of about 500L, and
only makes up a tiny fraction of the grain that goes into the stout. In brew shops, you'll see bags of grain labeled with
three pieces of information: name, Lovibond rating and origin. Origin is sometimes a country, and sometimes a
specific maltster. For example, if you see something labeled "Fawcett Crystal 60" you should be able to tell that it is a
crystal malt (hence steepable!), it is fairly dark roasted, and came from someplace called Fawcett (an English
maltster). If there is a "Dingemans CaraMunich 54L" beside it, you should be able to tell from the "Cara-" that there is
some caramelization going on in there, so it is steepable, that it is a little lighter roasted than the Crystal 60, and is
from somebody called Dingemans (a Belgian Maltster).
Sometimes you'll see recipes calling for grains you just can't find locally, so you have to be able to figure out
substitutions that are close. The best sub would be from another maltster in the same country as is called for, and as
close an L number as you can get. Substituting the example Crystal 60 for the CaraMunich would produce a different
beer, but it would be in the same general ballpark as what you're looking for.
The amount of flavor contribution that caramelized grains offer does depend on the degree of caramelization it has
undergone. Light caramelized malts will offer a little color, a hint of sweetness, but mostly their effect will be on
mouthfeel and head retention. Darker caramelized malts will contribute more distinctive flavors, like toffee,
fruitiness, a little sharpness or even bitterness.
So, our goal is to bring some complexity to our next beer. We'll darken it up a bit, and give it a bit more body by
steeping some grain in our water as it is coming up to temperature. This is where the grain bag comes in handy. Our
grains are going to need to be cracked, which you can have your homebrew shop do for you, or you can do yourself
with the Ziploc bag and rolling pin trick we used on the coriander seeds last time.
[Editor's note: The eGCI Team initially included the wrong version of the following recipe. The recipe as printed
now is the correct one. Our apologies to Chris and to our readers.]
Recipe #2 a red ale
2 lbs Light dry malt extract
5 oz Weyermann Melanoidin malt (German) ~30L
5 oz Caravienne (Belgian) L21 for maltiness
5 oz any British Crystal Malt in the 30-60L range (shops carry different brands, so get what is available to you.)
1 oz Cascade hops (citrusy American hop)
1 oz Kent Goldings hops (floral British hop)
Priming sugar
3 hop bags
1 grain bag, preferably big, in the 24x24 size range
1 Packet Danstar Windsor yeast or Safale S-04 for British flavor, or US-56 for neutral flavor.
This beer will be less strong than the first brew, but will have more body and malt character. This is because rather
than being fully fermentable like malt extract, one third of this recipe will come from caramelized malts that contain
unfermentable sugars. These sugars add to the taste and mouthfeel of the beer, even though they do not get
transformed into alcohol by the yeast. This beer will showcase the tasty byproducts of applying heat to food:
caramelization (in the crystal malt), and the Maillard reaction (in the Melanoidin).
We'll be taking a little longer break at this point before picking up with the next lesson. In the meantime, as usual,
post any questions here (http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=85651&pid=1164815&
st=0&#entry1164815) .
Edited by eGCI Team, 06 May 2006 - 10:13 AM.
Posted 25 May 2006 - 07:19 AM
eGCI Team
CLASS 4 -- BREW DAY II
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First, our recipe with the detailed instructions:

Rich Red Ale
5 oz Weyermann Melanoidin malt (German) ~30L
5 oz Caravienne (Belgian) L21
5 oz British Crystal Malt
2 lbs Light dry malt extract
.5 oz Cascade hops (60 minutes)
.25 oz Kent Goldings hops + .25 oz Cascade (10 Minutes)
.5 oz Kent Goldings (aroma hops)
(optional) .25 oz Kent Goldings hops and/or .25 oz Cascade as dry hops
1 package Danstar Windsor dry yeast
Brewing
You've gone shopping for the ingredients called for in the last lesson, so now we'll do our prep work to get started.
Take out your crushed grain and measure out 5 ounces of each kind. Put it all together into the nylon grain bag.
Measure out the bittering hops, .5 oz of Cascade and put them in a hop bag and tie it shut. Now measure out the flavor
and aroma hops and do likewise. Keep track of which bag is which since theyll all weigh the same.
We've done this before for the first batch, so it should feel pretty familiar. The only real changes we're going to make
are that we'll steep some grain in the water for a while to extract its colors and flavors, then we'll carry on just like
before with the extract and the hop bag additions.
So, if you've got municipal water with lots of chlorine in it, get 2.25 gallons of it up to a boil for 10 minutes or so.
Now we'll depart from the way we did things last time to make room for the grain and its needs. If your water has
been pre-boiled, you'll need to cool it down to no more than 170F. Only once the water is below 170 should you throw
in your grain bag. Otherwise, astringent tannic compounds from the grain husks will get into your beer. You don't
want that to happen. Allow the grain bag to steep in the water for half an hour, then remove it. The water temperature
should be between 150 and 170 to maximize the efficiency of the steep.
If you didn't pre-boil your water, then simply add the 2.25 gallons of water to your pot, throw in the grain bag, and get
it heating up. Use your thermometer to tell you when it has reached 160. When the temperature gets there, keep it
there for 20 minutes, then remove the grain bag and continue heating the water up to the boil.
Once you reach the boiling point take your pot off the heat, add the 2 pounds of light malt extract, stir to incorporate,
and return it to the heat. Wait for it to start to boil, then add the bittering hops bag and set your timer for 50 minutes.
When it goes off, add the flavor hops and reset it for 10 minutes. At the end of the 10 minutes, remove the hop bags
that are in the boil, add the aroma hops and put the lid on the pot.
Cool the pot down to 70-80F. If you're going to ferment in another vessel, sanitize it and then pour the wort in. Beat
in some air into the wort with your sanitized whisk, and add your yeast, then cover it with a clean towel, rubber band
it in place, and stow the fermentation vessel for two weeks in a dark corner with a stable temperature. Don't forget
your overflow pan if your vessel is close to full.
After about a week, most of the active fermentation should have occurred, so if you want to try the dry hopping
option, this is the time to do it. Just toss the hops in, and theyll release lots of hop aroma into the beer. Put the
covering back in place and let it sit for a week. After it has sat for two weeks, bottle it as we did before.
That's it! You're on the way to your second batch.
eGCI Team
Posted 07 July 2006 - 07:09 AM
The member-supported eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters is pleased to present the last class in the eGCI
course Homebrewing for the Absolute Beginner. To help make this course and others possible, please take a
moment, if you have not already, to upgrade to a Society Donor membership (http://forums.egullet.org
/index.php?act=module&module=subscription&CODE=index) . If you are not yet a member, please first join the
09/04/2014 11:43
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eGullet Society (http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?act=Reg&CODE=00) .

CLASS 5 -- MASHING
Preparation and shopping
With two brews under your belt, you've learned the essential techniques of extract brewing and using steeped grains
to add layers of complexity to your beers. Now that your attention is directed at grains, youll see that there are a
number of them out there that dont have the tell-tale "cara" or "crystal" in their names, and some that aren't even
barley at all. In light grains (exceptions are dark things like Chocolate malt, Black Patent Malt, Roasted Barley, etc.),
that is a sign that tells you that the grain won't give up all the goods if you just steep it in warm water. We could have,
for example, gotten more flavor and fermentables out of the Melanoidin malt we used in the Red Ale. Now how do we
coax these grains into their most useful form?
The answer to that question is the art called mashing. In brewer-speak, "mash" means carefully controlling the
temperature and hydration of grain so that enzymes in it convert the starches stored in the grain into sugars, and then
washing those sugars away from the grains and into a wort solution. Enzymes are quite particular about the
temperatures that they will work at, so to do it right, you need to be able to maintain a degree of thermal stability for
the hour or so that the enzymes will need to do their job. The enzymes that convert starches into sugars really start
working at about 140F, and stop at about 165F. "Mashing low," which means keeping your grains towards the low end
of that temperature range, will result in the most fermentable wort, and a dry beer. "Mashing high" will promote the
formation of non-fermentable sugars called dextrins, which add body and mouthfeel, but result in a sweeter beer. You
can adjust your mash temperature to suit your personal preferences and your recipe.
Now what kind of beer are we going to brew that requires this extra work? Since summer is upon us, let's brew
something that will be fairly light, but with a complexity to it that the earlier beers just didn't have. We're going to
emphasize the spice flavors that you can generate in a beer. Stylistically, this beer will have a Belgian soul, but in
keeping with the Belgian penchant for breaking rules, it won't quite fit anywhere in the classic style definitions, and
will be located midway between the witbier style and the saison style. Im going to call it a Four Grain Saison, since
saison is the style that inspired the recipe, though a beer judge would probably tell you that it technically isn't one.
However, we're not competing with anything other than our taste buds, so what a judge would say really doesnt
matter.
The shopping list
For a beer with IBUs in the low 20s, and an original gravity around 1.060 at 2 gallons:
1.5 lbs Belgian Pale Malt, crushed
.5 lb flaked wheat
.5 lb flaked rye
.5 lb Belgian Munich malt, crushed
.25 lb flaked oats
1 lb light dry malt extract or wheat dry malt extract
.5 lb table sugar
1 oz Styrian Goldings hops
1 oz Hallertauer hops
hop socks
Zest from 1 orange or 1/2 tsp orange oil
Coriander seeds or star anise
Crystallized ginger
Wyeast #3944 liquid yeast or Wyeast #3724, 3725 or 3726 or White Labs yeast #550 or 565
Priming sugar
What youre buying, and considerations on the options presented to you
Pale malt is malted barley that is full of enzymes that convert starch into sugar. It has an overabundance of
those enzymes, so it can convert all of its own starch, plus some extra.
Flaked wheat is wheat that has been processed such that you can mash it in the presence of the sort of
enzymes that the pale malt contains. Wheat adds proteins that make for a thick head on the beer. It also brings
a characteristic sharp, almost tart flavor.
Flaked rye is rye processed like flaked wheat. It brings a characteristic spicy flavor to the beer.
Munich malt brings maltiness and bit of color to the beer; it has enzymes of its own, but less than pale malt.
Flaked oats, like instant oatmeal, have been processed to be mashed. Oats contribute a velvety texture to the
mouthfeel of your beer, but will make it less clear. A little cloudiness is fine in a saison style.
Malt extract. If you like wheat beers, choose to add wheat malt extract to this beer. The recipe would go well
09/04/2014 11:43
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wheaty, but would be sort of outside the saison tradition. But who cares (if it tastes good)? The extract (plus the
sugar) guarantees a certain amount of fermentables are going into the beer, so your efficiency at achieving
starch conversion and capture with the grains is not critical.
Table sugar adds fermentables in a traditional Belgian way. Using sugar in brewing is characteristic of the
Belgian style, and allows a beer to have higher alcohol content, but a relatively lighter body than if it were all
malt. There are old wives tales circulating amongst homebrewers that "adding white sugar will make your beer
taste cider-y.". These rumors have been pretty systematically debunked, but they still crop up now and again.
Hops. Styrian Goldings and Hallertauer are both moderately low Alpha acid hops that are traditional in
Belgian brewing. They come from continental Europe, and are quite restrained in comparison to American
style hops in terms of bittering potential, flavoring, and aroma.
Orange. Using orange peel has been traditional in some Belgian beers, saisons and wits being a couple of
them. Boyajians orange oil (often sold at cookware shops) is a fine substitute. If youre zesting oranges
yourself, make sure to avoid the white pith and just get the oily outer part of the rind. Im partial to Seville
orange rind, but theyre out of season now. Next late-winter to early-spring, look for Sevilles and zest 'em. They
make for great witbier brewing.
Coriander is another spice traditional in saisons and other Belgian beers. It produces citrus-y aroma and
flavor, but if overused can seem a little metallic. It should be crushed, (see lesson 2).
Star anise is a little out in left field, but not unheard of in Belgian brewing. Provides a hint of an exotic,
complex, licorice-y flavor. Only use one star, dont crush it.
Yeast provides the defining essence of a saison. All of the choices will produce a spicy phenolic beer, but how
the spice manifests itself will differ with each one. You should be able to find at least one of the listed varieties.
Some of these yeasts are somewhat slower at finishing their work than many of the common yeasts. You
probably want to cover your fermentor with a lid with an airlock if youre going to use any but the 3944 the
3944, in my experience, ferments really quickly, but really violently, so make sure to use an overflow pan. Keep
your yeast in the fridge when you get it home.
Do the Mash
First, on the morning of the day you intend to brew, get your yeast out of the fridge. If you're using Wyeast's products,
you've got a "smack pack." That is a plastic pouch with another smaller plastic pouch inside it. By holding the outer
pack in the palm of one hand and sharply hitting it in the right spot, you should be able to pop the smaller pouch
inside the bigger pouch. Doing so will release some yeast nutrients and cause the yeast to make some CO2 which will
swell the bigger pouch over time.
Remind yourself about sanitation, and mix up some sanitizing solution so that you can wipe down and rinse
everything that is going to touch the beer after it is done boiling.
Get a plastic picnic cooler with a spigot at the bottom designed to let you drain ice-melt out if it. That will certainly
maintain the degree of thermal stability youll need to achieve a successful mash. On your shopping list back in the
beginning was a big grain bag. Get that out too, and put it inside your cooler. Youve just created your "mash tun,"
which is medieval brewing speak for the container in which you'll convert grain's starches into sugars.
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Put all of the grain into the grain bag inside the cooler. Note that you have 3.25 pounds of grain in there. You want to
mash at a temperature of about 150F or a little less, which allows the enzymes that make fermentable sugars to
operate at optimal efficiency to make a fairly fermentable wort. We also want to get the water to grain ratio to be
about 1.25 quarts per pound. Rather than plowing through a bunch of math, just find an online mash calculator like
this one at tastybrew.com (http://www.tastybrew.com/calculators/infusion.html) , which will happily calculate how
hot your gallon of water has to be to get it to your desired temperature. In our case, it says that heating the water to
162F should be enough to bring the whole lot to 150F, if the grain starts out at 75F. So, do what the calculator tells
you, and heat up some water. Once your water reaches temperature, pour it into the grain bag in the cooler and then
give the grain in there a stir around. Take its temperature to make sure the calculator was right, and then close the
cooler and wait for 45 minutes while the starch converts to sugars. If it is too cool, throw in some boiling water until it
gets up to 150. If it too warm toss in a few ice cubes and stir them around.
While youre waiting, warm 6 quarts of water up to about 180F. Also, measure .33oz of the Styrian Goldings into a
hop sock, and make two hop socks with .25 oz of Hallertauer in them. In one of the Hallertauer socks, add about .25
oz of crushed coriander, a few cubes of crystallized ginger, and the zest of one orange, or whatever spicing
combination appeals to you.
Once 45 minutes have elapsed, put a heat-proof clear cup under the cooler's spigot, and fill it. Observe this runoff,
and if it has grainy bits in it gently pour it back into the cooler. Repeat that step until the runoff is mostly clear of
grain pieces. Then put your brew kettle under the spigot and empty everything into it. Let all the liquid run out into
your kettle. You may have to move the grain bag some to get all of the liquid out. Dont squeeze it too much.
09/04/2014 11:43
Close the spigot again, pour in your 6 quarts of 180F water, and give the grain a stir. This step is about rinsing the
sugars off the grains that didnt come along with the first runoff, so let it sit for 10 or 15 minutes so that as much as
possible dissolves. Repeat the clarifying step, and once it appears clear, drain everything into your brew kettle. Now
youve made wort from scratch. Taste it to see how sweet it is.
Now add the dry malt extract and sugar, and stir it to incorporate. Top your kettle up to 2.5 gallons (longer boil means
more evaporation). Then put your kettle on the stove and heat it up to boiling. Once you hit the boil, add the Styrian
Goldings and set your timer for 60 minutes. Then add the Hallertauer sock with just the hops in and set it for 15
minutes. When the timer goes off, turn off the heat, fish out the hop socks that are in there, and add the sock of
Hallertuer and spices. This longer boil is to help coagulate the proteins that came from the mashing so they will form
big clumps and fall out of suspension along with the yeast.
Cool your wort down to 75F, transfer it to your fermentation vessel, and add your yeast. By this point, you should
probably have invested the ten bucks in a sealable airlocked bucket to ferment in. Let it go for at least 2 weeks. Saison
yeasts like to ferment warm, so if youve got a garage or other spot that isnt climate controlled, you want to expose
this beer to the full onslaught of summer heat. Purchase a hydrometer from your homebrew shop and take readings
after you get to the two-week point, and when the readings are identical for three days in a row, then you're ready to
bottle (or eyeball it based on the airlock's activity and the passage of a reasonable amount of time). With this beer,
aim for about 1.75 oz of priming sugar for two gallons, and make sure to stir it in evenly.
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You could, if you wanted to, stretch this beer out past the two gallons it is planned for. If you were to add another
pound of extract, quarter pound of sugar, and .25 oz of bittering hops for every extra gallon of water you add to it, it
will maintain its character pretty well out to about 5 gallons.
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Posted 03 April 2006 - 02:29 PM