Yeast

There are three different types of homebrewing yeast that come in countless different varieties. The two main yeast manufacturers are Wyeast and Whitelabs. Both of these are liquid yeasts, but they are a little different from each other. The last type is dry yeast. There are also numerous manufactorers of dry yeast.

Wyeast comes in two different packages. The first is the activator and the second is the propagator. The only difference between the two is size. The activator has 100 billion yeast cells where the propagator only has 25 billion. The way these work is there is a little package inside the foil cover and also some liquid. You break the inside package without opening the outer package. This releases the yeast into the liquid and after 4-6 hours the outer package will begin to swell. After it swells as large as possible you can pitch the yeast into your beer.
Whitelabs yeast comes in a vile. The only thing that you need to do is take it out of the refridgerator before you start your brew and when you are done just open up the vile and pitch the yeast into your fermenter. The vile contains 75-150 billion yeast cells.There are numerous manufacturers of dry yeast. These include Muntons, Coopers, BrewFerm, Safbrew, Safale, Lallemand, and many others. Dry yeast has been around for a long time where as liquid yeast is relatively new. Just open the package and pitch the yeast into the fermenter or rehydrate it in warm water prior to use. Both ways work just fine.

Each of these yeasts have their pros and cons. While the liquid yeasts are more expensive they also come in many different strains. If you go to Whitelabs yeast library there is over 50 different strains tailored to specific styles of beer. With dried yeast you are limited to maybe 10 different strains of yeast. I choose to use the liquid yeast. I have used both Wyeast and Whitelabs before and couldn't tell you what one is better. They both make great beer. The cost of liquid yeast can be offset. The yeast can be reused after the beer is transfered off the yeast. You can either clean the yeast and save it in a jar or just put your freshly brewed beer onto of the yeast leftover from your prior batch. Many people do this to get the yeast cell count up to brew higher gravity beer. They will start with a low alcohol content beer and work their way up to a barely wine which can be as high as 13%.

Sanitation

Sanitation is one of the most important steps in making good quality beer. It is necassary to give yeast a clean working environment, since the fermentation is powered by a living organism (yeast). I will talk more about the yeast next week. If you fail to sanitize your equipment you can end up with infected beer.
That is an infection, although a planned one. It was posted in a homebrew forum thread on lambics. Which is a beer fermented with bacteria and wild yeast. If you get something that looks like this without wanting it you might not want to try it. It isn't going to kill you, but it may taste a little funky. The only reason that you will ever get this is if you didn't sanitize your equipment properly. Everything that will touch the beer after the point when it was boiled needs to be cleaned and sanitized to ensure nothing is introduced into the beer. This includes fermentors, bottles, and any tubing or transferring device that will be used. Lets go over some of the types of sanitizers:
Product Description:

PBW by Five Star: PBW stands for Powdered Brewery Wash. This product is widely used in commercial breweries across the country. Use 1 – 2 ounces per gallon for cleaning boil kettles, ¾ of an ounce per gallon for fermenters, kegs and other brewing equipment. Soaking overnight will easily remove stubborn, caked on organic deposits without scrubbing. PBW is environmentally friendly, biodegradeable, and will not harm septic systems.

Product Description:

Star San: This is an acid based no rinse sanitizer. Use only one ounce per 5 gallons of water. Star San is odorless, flavorless, and requires only one to two minutes of contact time. This product does tend to foam, which has advantages and disadvantages. Foaming action helps to sanitize cracks and crevices, but you need to allow extra time for draining. You can minimize the foaming effect by adding Star San to the vessel after the water has been added, and by siphoning as opposed to pouring the solution between vessels. Since Star San is acid based, contact with soft metals, plastic and rubber should be kept to a minimum. Kept in a sealed container, a Star San solution will stay effective for as long as three to four weeks.


These are the two most common choices among hombrewers; although I don't use either of them. Many brewers have found that oxiclean works just as well. I use oxiclean versatile and I have yet to run into a problem. I just add a scoop per 5 gallons of water and let my equipment soak for a while and then rinse well. It also works well for taking the labels of commercial crack off bottles that are being saved.

My Dream Brewery

Although the beauty of a brew stand doesn't make quality beer, it sure will look cool sitting in your garage or basement. In my previous post you have seen my brew stand which is all fed by gravity (which never will fail). It isn't the most beautiful thing in the world, but it makes good beer and that is good enough for a student with no income. When I graduate I plan on building my dream brew stand. It was originally built by Lonnie Mac of www.alenuts.com. I contacted him and he was nice enough to send me a PDF file of the exact instructions for the build of this system.This is a picture of his system. As you can see it is a single tier system that is fed by two pumps. This system is not only beautiful but is functional. It is controlled by two controllers that keep a constant temperature of the hot liquor tank and the mash tun to +/- 2 degrees. This means that the process of brewing a specific recipe can be duplicated with far greater accuracy. This is a picture of the control panel of Lonnie's "Brutus Ten." As you can see the digital readout gives the brewer up to the second temperature readings and control over these temperatures. The "Brutus Ten" is still powered by propane, but the tank is connected to the back 2"x2" beam which doubles as a gas beam. Every burner is attached to a control valve and then to the beam. When the system sees that the temperature has dropped 2 degrees it kicks open the valve and sends gas to the burner raising the temperature 2 degrees and then shutting the value again. During this process the wort is constantly being recirculated by one of the pumps. It draws the wort off the bottom and returns it to the top. The temperature is taken as the wort is being drawn out. This ensures that the mash is evenly heated and the sugars don't scorch on the bottom of the kettle. When it is time to sparge all that is done is the lid from the boil tank is put on the mash tun, and the lid from the mash tun is put on the boil kettle. Then the pumps are turned on and you are mashing.

Here is a video of Lonnie brewing on the "Brutus Ten." He gives a good explanation of how the system works and how to brew with a semi automated system.

American Light Beer

I had an interesting question a few weeks ago about making miller light. It got me thinking about why people homebrew and some of the beer that people drink. Most people like light beer because it is cheap and it isn't filling (which means it is easy to drink a lot of)! Although it is possible to brew a light American lager, it isn't the point of home brewing. Most people that homebrew like an actual beer. A beer with flavor and character. The point of brewing your own beer is to have a high quality craft beer that you have made yourself, not to make a beer that you can drink massive quantities of. Lets get back to the question of brewing an American light lager. I stated that it is possible, but it isn't feasible. This is because since there isn't a lot of anything going on such as flavor, malt, hops, and aroma, it is hard to hide mistakes that may be made. Most peoples home breweries aren't as sophisticated as commercial breweries where the process can be duplicated many times over without a hitch. With a home brewery it is very hard to get everything the exact same every time. Another factor people don't brew American light lagers is because it is a lot cheaper and easier to go out and buy it. If you have the time (month) to basically waste waiting for a miller light go for it, but I say brew something that is worth the month wait. I urge you to go out and experience some actual beer and if you like real beer homebrewing is a hobby you should try. If not $18 24-packs of barely pop are for you.

Batch Sparging Vs. Fly Sparging

So you have moved on to all grain brewing. The only thing missing is what way you are going to sparge. In my previous post I have showed you that I am a fly sparger. Which is adding hot water to the top of the grain bed (from the hot liquor tank) evenly at the same rate that you pull wort of the bottom (into the boil kettle).

Lets talk about what exactly batch sparging is. When you batch sparge you drain all of the wort from the mash tun into the boil kettle, then you add more water from the hot liquor tank into the mash tun. The amount of water added should be as much as you need for you boil minus what you already collected from the mash tun. To put this in simpler terms you are basically mashing twice to get your final volume of wort in the boil kettle. When you add the water the second time for the batch sparge you will want to stir up the grains again and let sit for another 30 minutes. Then you will volvuf and drain into the boil kettle the same as you did the first time.
Most batch spargers use coolers which are usually cheaper than using a stainless steel pot or keg. The copper manifold pictured has little slits cut into it to let the wort flow into it and then out of the cooler. The manifold is also cheaper than a false bottom.

But we still haven't solved the great debate of which one is better. In my eyes fly sparging is better (mainly because this is the method I use, but I have batch sparged before). Lets break it down.

Fly Sparging
Pros

1. Better efficiency (i.e. more sugar rinsed from the grain)

Cons

1. More equipment
2. Expensive equipment
3. More time

Batch Sparging
Pros

1. Less time
2. Less equipment
3. Cheaper equipment

Cons

1. Lower efficiency

As you can see if you are concerned with money, time, and efficiency you will want to batch sparge. If you have a few extra dollars and a half hour more time you will be able to get a better efficiency by fly sparging. I should also note, both of these methods will produce great beer. The real difference is the efficiency, which can be adjusted by using more grain if you are batch sparging.

Bottling Your Beer

So it is time to bottle your beer, what is the first step to take, one might ask. Well this is a very simple process. A small amount of sugar is added to the beer which sparks a mini fermentation. The only difference here is that the fermentation will be in the bottle. The CO2 being produced has nowhere to go so it is absorbed into the beer as carbonation. So lets start from the beginning, the beer is in the fermenter and it is ready to be bottled. The first step is to determine how many volumes of CO2 are desired for the particular style of beer that you brewed. I find the carbonation calculator very helpful. You find the style of beer you brewed in their database enter the desired amount of carbonation per style and the temperature at which the beer was fermented at. The temperature is important because cold beer absorbs more CO2. After all the information is entered it will give you how many ounces of sugar you have to add to reach the desired carbonation. This sugar should be boiled for 15 minutes to dissolve the sugar and to sterilize the water and sugar being added.
After the sugar solution has been boiled add it to the bottom of your bottling bucket. Your bottling bucket should look like the one that is pictured above. It has a valve on the bottom to fill your bottles from. After the sugar solution has been added it is time to siphon your fermented beer on top of the sugar. After your beer is in the bottling bucket give it a light stir and you are ready to bottle. Fill your bottles leaving about and inch and a half headspace. You can judge this amount of headspace by how much bottles are filled up when you buy them. Now that your bottles are filled it is time to cap them. The type of bottles that you need to use are the crack off kind. The twist off bottles aren't resealable. What I do is save all of the bottles that I drink and wash them out. Before I use them I sterilize them, at this point you have to make sure that everything that will come in contact with the beer is sterilized. The cap above is called a blank. It can be attached to a bottle using a capper. The one that I have is pictured below. Just place a cap on the bottle and pull down with equal pressure on the two levers, presto you have a bottled beer. Now that you have bottled all of your beer keep the bottles at room temperature for 2 weeks to allow enough time for carbonation. After two weeks you can move them to your basement or a closet to age. They are drinkable after two weeks, but I can't stress enough that it will be better with age. It so happens that the last bottle of a batch seems to always be the best!

All Grain Brewing

As I stated in previous posts I didn't start brewing all grain until I had a good handle on brewing extract batches, but this is the way I brew now and will continue to brew. The the name implies brewing all grain means that you are brewing with just the grains, no malt extract. This process is a little bit more involved and it requires more equipment, but once the process is understood it isn't that much harder.
These are the grains that I used to brew my most recent beer a peanut butter oatmeal stout. As you notice there is one big back and many other smaller bags. The one large bag is basically taking the place of the malt extract, and is called brewers malt or base malt. Every all grain beer will have a base malt. There are many different base malts what are suited for different styles and different situations, thus giving you more control over the finished beer. The smaller bags are specialty grains. These are the same specialty grains that are used in extract brewing. They will provide the color and flavor of the finished beer. As you can see most of these are dark because this beer is going to be a stout.
This is a picture of my brew stand. As you can see it is a 3 tiered system that uses gravity to transfer the liquid from kettle to kettle. There is usually a 3rd kettle on the top tier, but it was leaking the day of the brew, so I had to use only 2 kettles. I will explain the process as if there were 3 kettles. In the top kettle or the hot liquor tank water is heated to a hot enough temperature so it compensates for temperature loss when it is transferred into the 2nd kettle. I found this temperature to be roughly 180 degrees. While the water is being heated the grains are added into the 2nd kettle, better known as the mash tun. I don't have a picture of this but there is a round perforated plate of stainless steel under all of those grains. This is called a false bottom. Its purpose is to keep the grains high enough so that the liquid can be drawn off the bottom without bringing the grains with it.Since this was a peanut butter oatmeal stout I had to add peanut butter. This is a picture of one pound of natural peanut butter that had been deoiled. I needed to use natural peanut butter because it contains to preservatives and the only ingredients are peanuts and peanut oil. The oil is where the problem comes in. As many of you know any kind of oil will take the head down on a beer. If there is any oil in this beer there will be no head. It really isn't that big of a deal except if I were ever to get this beer judged I would be docked points for head retention. After the water is heated up to 180 degrees and the grains are added into the mash tun it is time to open the valve and let the water run from the hot liquor tank into the mash tun. When the 180 degree water combines with the cold grains and cold kettle the temperature will drop to roughly 150 degrees. This is the temperature I use for most beers, but not all of them. A lower temperature, say 146, will give you a more fermentable beer with less body. A temperature of, say 154, will give you a less fermentable beer with more body. It is all up to the brewer. I just use 150 because it is the best of both worlds. The amount of water to add is also a thing of discussion. Most people use a formula of 1-1.5/qt per pound of grain. I don't take the time to measure this out and go with a soupy oatmeal consistency which seems to work as well as measuring, for me. As you can see in the picture I use a wooden paddle to stir the liquid, at this point it is called "wort." You want to pay special attention to make sure to stir in all the dry spots.As you can see this is my soupy oatmeal consistency. It has been sitting in the mash tun for an hour now. During this hour I have heated more water (170 degrees) in the hot liquor tank for the sparge. We will get to this later. A hour is enough time for the conversion to take place. By conversion, I mean, the starches in the grain are being converted into sugar by enzymes in the grain. These enzymes are contained in the base malt and are activated by they water. If you brewed without any base malt the starches in the specialty grains wouldn't be fully converted into sugar. Without sugar there would be nothing to ferment into beer. After one hour it is time to raise the temperature to 160 degrees (to make the sugar more soluble) and volvuf. Vovuf is just a fancy term that means to drain out the first runnings of the wort and return them to the top of the kettle. This is done to clear out the bottom of the false bottom since there are probably some grains that have gotten through. After a few times of doing this the wort will run clear and you will be ready to sparge.Here is a picture of the sparge arm ready to go. You are probably wonder what a sparge is. It is the process of rinsing the sugars from the grain. There are two types of sparging, fly sparging and batch sparging. I will cover the difference in the two next week, but for this week I am going to talk about fly sparging since this is the technique I use to rinse the grains of the sugar. After I have cleared the bottom of the false bottom I will simultaneously drain water from the mash tun into the boil kettle as I add water from the hot liquor tank on top of the grains in the mash tun. So I am adding water at the same rate I am draining water. The grain bed will compact in size and act as a natural filter so no grains will get into the boil kettle. If you get grains in the boil kettle it will add off flavors to your final beer.
Here is the sparge in action. If all three kettles were being utilized the bucket would be my third kettle.
This is the sparge arm in action. The water flowing in causes the rod to spin adding water consistently over the grain bed. The rate at which you add water should match the rate at which you run the wort into the boil kettle. You should try to keep about an inch of water on top of the grain bed.
Here is a picture of the wort being drained. You will want to collect enough wort so that you take into consideration the amount that will get boiled off and hop absorption. I usually collect 6.5-7 gallons for a 5.5 gallon batch.Ummm, I can almost taste it now. Dark and roasty!Here I have collected my 6.5-7 gallons of wort and I am bring it to a boil. From here on out the process is about the same as brewing with extract. Once it is at a boil you will follow the hop schedule.
And were boiling! It is time to start adding the hops as called for in the recipe.
When referring to hops the minutes expressed are how long they are boiled. These are the 90 minute hops also called bittering hops. This means that they are going to give the beer its bitterness. The hops that are added first are always the bittering hops since they will be boiled the longest.
These are the 45 minute hops. These hops will impart bitterness and also a little aroma. I will get into aroma hops in the next addition of hops.
These are the 15 minute hops. These hops will impart very little bitterness because of their short boil time. What they will impart, though, is aroma. It will give the beer a very distinct smell. Different hops will give you different smells. You won't get this smell with many commercial produced beers because most of these beers use very little hops and the hops they do use are in an extract form. At this time I also add my chiller into the boil kettle to sanitize it. All my chiller is is a 50' coil of copper tubing in which i run cold water in the top and through heat transfer hot water comes out the bottom. It is important that you cool your wort down as fast as you can once the boil is over. You want to get your beer down to at least 75 degrees. 70 is even better. You don't want to put your yeast into boiling wort or your yeast will die and you don't want to put your yeast in too cold or you will have a longer lag period until fermentation begins. If you get your wort down to temperature fast you can get your yeast pitched faster which limits the amount of time other bad organisms can start producing.This is a picture of the chiller in action.
Here the wort is down to temperature and I have started draining it into a fermenter. Remember to volvuf to clear the wort of an hop debris before you start draining.
This is my wort ready for the yeast.
Here is my yeast starter on my homemade stir plate. I will get into yeast starters and homemade stir plates in later posts.
Here are my fermenters. The beer I just brewed is on the right and there are two different beers in the middle and on the left. Notice the beer on the left. It is in glass because it is during the secondary fermentation phase where the beer clears before bottling.

I probably forgot to add some of the minor details, but that is all there is to brewing all grain beer. This is a long post, but the process can't be explained thoroughly without a long post. The whole process will take up the better part of an afternoon, so take your time have fun, and most importantly have a homebrew!

Extract Brewing

There are two different styles of brewing beer. These styles are malt extract brewing and all grain brewing. They both make good beer, but using malt extract is easier and less involved. When I started brewing I brewed with malt extract because it was easier and it takes much less equipment. The only piece of equipment that is needed beyond the kit that I talked about in my previous post is a pot large enough to hold 4-5 gallons. Let talk about what malt extract actually is. Malt extract is basically what the names says it is condensed malt that comes in either liquid or dried form. It also comes in many different styles such as light, amber, dark, and wheat. I suggest using the light style of malt extract regardless of what style of beer you are brewing. You can get your color and flavor from the specialty grains that you will be using. More on specialty grains in a little bit. The first step in brewing with malt extract is to get your pot full of water and bring it up to roughly 155 degrees. If you don't have a thermometer it is alright, just don't bring the water to a boil. Once the water is at 155 degrees you are going to add your specialty grains. These are the grains that will give your beer color and flavor. It is best to put these into a mesh bag or cheese cloth, so when you are done steeping them they can be easily removed. You will want to steep the grains at 155 degrees for 45 minutes. After 45 minutes take out the bag of grains and discard them. By this time your kitchen should smell great. Now the liquid in your kettle is called "wort," which is unfermented beer. The next step is to bring the wort to a boil. Once the wort is boiling you will add your first hops. With your recipe there will be a hop schedule which tells you when you add the hops, an example would be 60 minutes, 30 minutes, 15 minutes, and 1 minute. The first hops you add are your bittering hops. These hops will be boiled the longest thus extracting more of the resins giving your beer the bitter taste that we all associate with beer. After the first hops have been added all you need to do is keep track of how long you have had the hops in the wort and add the next hops when the time comes. The hops that are added at 15 minutes and 1 minute are the aroma hops. These hops will give your beer a pleasant smell when you open a bottle. With 15 minutes left in the hop schedule add the malt extract. Some people say to add it before you start boiling the wort but I like to add it at the end. This decreases the chance of it scorching and burning on the bottle of the kettle. When the extract has been dissolved and you have finished your hop schedule you are basically done brewing. It is time to take your beer of the stove and cool it down. You will want to cool down to room temperature before adding the yeast. This can be done with an ice bath of sticking your kettle in a snow bank (weather permitting). There are also chillers you can make or buy which are 25-50' coils of copper tubing that you run cold water through at the same time you are stirring the wort to cool it down really fast. After your wort has cooled to room temperature dump it into your primary fermenter, add the yeast, cover, and let ferment for 2 weeks. You have just made your first batch of beer, wasn't that easy.

Welcome

Do you like micro-brewed beer? Are you sick of paying the premium price for a premium beer? Have you ever thought about brewing your own beer? I made the decision to start brewing my own beer three years ago. I loved drinking good quality beer, but being a college student it was expensive to pay for these high quality beers. I started researching brewing your own beer and decided this was what I was going to do. The process is so simple anyone can do it. Essentially it is malt (sugar), water, and yeast. The yeast will eat the sugar and produce alcohol and CO2, giving you beer. When I started, I went on ebay and bought a starter kit, which came with everything that I need to get started brewing my own beer.
This is what I got with my kit. It contains a plastic bucket for primary fermentation. This is where the fermentation process will start after you have "brewed" your beer. It will ferment in this vessel for roughly two weeks or until fermentation is done. The next piece of equipment is the glass carboy. After the beer and finished fermenting it will still be hazy, this is where the glass carboy comes into play. Transferring the beer from the primary fermenting bucket into the glass carboy for two weeks will help your beer clear and age. You can keep your beer in the glass carboy for up to a year or longer to age really strong beers. So one might ask, when can I drink it? This is where the middle bottling bucket comes into play. After your beer has cleared in the glass carboy it is time to move it into the bottling bucket. At this time you have to add a little more sugar to your beer so it will carbonate. The amount varies depending on style but usually it is 1/2 - 3/4 of a cup. This will add more fermentable sugar for the yeast to turn into alcohol and CO2, only this time they will be in a sealed bottle and the CO2 will be dissolved into beer creating a naturally carbonated beer. The process of carbonating your beer will take roughly 2 weeks. Then you are able to drink your hand crafted beer, but don't drink them all they are like fine wine and get better with age.