Brewtime!

Fermenting

When we left off, we were cooling the wort. Now it is time for the yeast to take over and finish the beer. Not only does yeast add alcohol and carbonation to the beer, it also adds extra flavor profiles to the overall taste.

Yeast is a living organism. Like all organisms, yeast need food and shelter. Well, we made them food (wort) and a place to live (fermentation bucket). To make it a total party, we even made the temperature sit around 70 deg F for ale yeast (50 deg F for lager yeast). So, don't the them wait, add the yeast!

You can get dry yeast or liquid yeast to ferment your beer. Dry yeast is slightly easier to add and takes a shorter amount of time. Just open the packet, poor in the yeast, and seal up the fermentation bucket. (fun side note, adding yeast is also know as 'pitching')

Liquid yeast is harder only because you need to keep it refrigerated until about 3 hours before pitching the yeast. Let the yeast warm to room temperature, then shake the vial. Once all the yeast has broken up, it is ready to pitch. Pour it in the fermentation bucket, then seal it up.

When the yeast get to eating, they will start producing CO2. After a few hours enough pressure will build up and the airlock will start to 'burp'. At full production, the burping will come at a regular interval. This primary fermentation will last a few days. Once the burping reduces to about once every 90 minutes, you are ready to transfer (rack) the beer to the secondary container. Make sure to sterilize your carboy, siphoning tube, stopper, and siphon.


Place the primary on a counter and remove the lid. The carboy will rest on the floor below (let gravity be your friend). Put the siphon halfway into the primary, attach the hose, and place the hose into the BOTTOM of the carboy. You don't want the siphon to touch the bottom of the primary bucket, because of all the sediment that has precipitated out of the first batch of fermentation. You want the hose to be in the bottom of the carboy to avoid splashing. Adding too much air to the brew will make the beer taste funky. Stop siphoning once you have about an inch of brew remaining in the primary. Go ahead and dump the sediment.



Place the airlock and stopper in the carboy. Put the carboy in a safe place, away from sunlight. This stage allows the beer to clarify and age. You will want to age the beer about 2 weeks for ales and about a month for lagers. The yeast will not be as active, but will produce enough CO2 for a few burps out of the airlock. After the allotted aging time, you will be ready to bottle.





to be continued ...

Update: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 4

Adding the Seasonings

Hops are the spice of beer. Hops add bitterness and extra levels of aroma to beer.

Now that you have your malt wort boiling, you can add the hops. Depending on the recipe, you can add one type of hop in stages or multiple hop types. Hops added early to the boil are the bittering/flavor component, while late-stage hops are for the aroma.

Get a timer out and set it for 60 minutes. With the wort at a rolling boil, add the first stage of hops (usually 1 oz for a 5 gallon batch) and hit start on the timer.







Stir occasionally. The recipe will prescribe at what point in the count-down you should add more hops.








While you are between hop additions, you will want to sterilize your fermentation bucket, stopper, airlock, and strainer. You could use bleach, but Iodophor is recommended. Iodophor is a food-safe sanitizer. As I mentioned in the last post, you want to keep things as sterile as possible. Weird flavors could be added by stray 'bugs' on the counter.

Now, put some towels on the floor, around the fermentation bucket. The strainer will sit on the top of the bucket. Once the 60 minutes is up on the wort, turn off the heat and temporarily cover the stock pot. Cut open the frozen gallon of water and add it to the bucket. Put the strainer on top of the bucket and pour the wort through the strainer. It is important to strain all hops out of the wort - you don't want debris in your fermentation bucket. Add enough extra water to get the bucket up to 5 gallons of fluid. Add the water through the strained hops to pick up extra flavor.



Once you have 5 gallons, throw out the hops, put the lid, stopper, and airlock on the bucket. Add a little bit of water to the airlock to keep air from getting into the fermentation bucket. Make sure everything is on tightly. DO NOT add the yeast yet. You need to wait until the temperature of the wort has dropped to at least 80 degrees Fahrenheit.









To be continued ...

Update: Part 1, Part 3, Part4

Let's Begin!

Making beer is a relatively easy process (after all we did it). All you really have to do is make food for the yeast, then the yeast does the rest (more or less). The most important practice you need to remember is keeping things sanitary. Figure out what kind of beers you like, and what kind of beers you would like to make. The folks at your local homebrew store can help you put together the equipment and ingredients.

So, you have your equipment and ingredients. The night before you brew, put one gallon of spring water in the freezer, bottle and all. Make sure it completely freezes. This will help later in the brewing process.


Mashing

During this step, you will take your malted grain and malt extract, add it to water, and apply heat. If you want to get really fancy, you could roast and grind your own malts. That is really for advance users (not us), so just get the milled malt (grist) from your homebrew supply store. The result of the process will be wort.

Put the milled grain into cheesecloth socks, tie them off, and put them in a stockpot with 3 gallons of water.








Heat the grains and water to 180 deg Fahrenheit. At this point the water should have turned grain-colored. Remove the socks and bring the wort to a boil.







Once the wort is boiling, carefully add the malt extract. Be sure to continually stir the wort so the extract does not burn on the bottom of the pot.







You also want to keep on eye on the wort - foam can start to build and spill over the top. If the wort does start to foam too high, just remove the pot from the heat source until the foam settles. Once the foam process has subsided (its okay if you don't get towering foam), bring the wort to a rolling boil. At this point you will add the hops to the wort.

To be continued...

Update: Part 2, Part 3, Part4

Happy Caturday!

Our adventure in beermaking

As we mentioned back in March, we have entered the world of home brewing. In honor of the recent "National Homebrew Day", we've decided to (finally) post our beer making process. Instead of cramming all the information into one giant post, we decided to break up the process over a series of entries.

First of all, you need to locate a homebrew supply store. We were fortunate enough to find one that not only has good supplies, but also has a very informative website. There are some initial hardware costs, but the equipment should last you a good while. The ingredients aren't that expensive, so you can get your beer down to under a dollar a bottle. Basic equipment include a stock pot, food-grade bucket with lid, and beer bottles. As for ingredients, its simple:

Malted grain + water + heat + hops + yeast = BEER!

Stay tuned this week for a breakdown of the steps.

Update: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part4