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Homebrewing for EnthusiastsBy drewm320 Hopefully by now you’ve made a few beers that were decent. Like any good beer artist, you want to improve your technique and crank out a few masterpieces. This article covers a few improvements you can make to your brewing process that will help you to brew good beer. What kind of beer do you want to brew? Obviously there are thousands of different flavors, colors and styles of beers but there are really only two different classes: lagers and ales. Most macro brews are lagers. They generally have a crisp taste, are clear and highly carbonated. Ales on the other hand have more pronounced fruit and spice flavors and tend to have stronger aromas. Getting down to it, the differences are that ales require warmer temperatures (62°-70°F, 17°-21°C) and typically take no more than a week to complete the primary fermentation stage. Lagers work their magic in the 48°-55°F range (9°-13°C) while fermenting and usually take longer to ferment (the cold slows down the process). What this means to the homebrewer is that unless you have a cool basement, ales are generally easier to make since they do better at room temperature. Get the right yeast There are literally thousands of variations of yeasts. If you are looking to imitate the flavor of a specific beer, there is going to be a specific type of yeast you should use. For the most part though, you really only need to make sure you get either a lager yeast or an ale yeast depending on the type of beer you are making. In addition to liking different temperatures, lager yeasts like to reproduce and ferment at the bottom of the tank. Ale yeast prefers to float on top of the mix. With either kind of yeast, you are most likely to be using a packet of dry or dehydrated yeast. If you want the best results, you need to bring your yeast back to life before throwing it in the mix. While you are waiting for your mixture to cool, empty the packet of dry yeast into a small bowl of warm water. You did remember to sanitize the bowl, right? A clean, bacteria free environment is still the key to great tasting beer. Let the yeast rehydrate for about ten minutes, then stir up the water and wait another five minutes. At this point the yeast is ready to go to work and can be pitched into the beer. Beer Chemistry Lesson #1 Good yeast does two things; #1, it turns sugar into alcohol and #2, it makes baby yeasts. The first thing the yeast does when it is added to the beer is reproduce. In order to do this it needs oxygen. If your brew has no oxygen, your yeast won’t reproduce and you only have a small militia of alcohol producers. On the other hand, if you have well oxygenated beer, your yeast will reproduce like crazy and you will have an entire army helping you in your quest to get drunk. There are several good ways to get oxygen into your beer mix but you don’t want to try anything until your beer has cooled to less than 80°F (27°C). If oxygen is added to the beer while it is still hot, it can bond with molecules in the mix and be unusable by the yeast. There are plenty of ways to aerate your beer. If you want to work up a good sweat, you can shake the hell out of your fermenting bucket (with the lid on of course). You can do a really, really sloppy pour from your cook pot. Or you can buy a cheap pump, hose, and air stone (for fish tanks) from your local pet store and let the pump do all the work. Let it run for about 30 minutes and you should be set. You did remember to sanitize the hose and air stone, right? You’ll know your mix is oxygenated enough when you have foam just about to the top of the bucket. Beer Chemistry Lesson #2 All organic material contains proteins in some form or another. A little bit of protein in your beer is good, it’s what gives the beer a head and gives it a little body. Too much protein is bad. It makes the beer murky and can give it odd flavors. The first point in your homebrew procedure where you can remove some protein from the malt and hops is the boil. This is called the hot break. If you’ve ever made gravy from one of the packets of powder, you notice that when you first mix the packet in water you just have brown water. Once you heat up the gravy and it’s just started to boil then all of a sudden, the brown water changes into thick creamy gravy. That’s the concept of the hot break. With beer, instead of getting creamy, the hot break is when the beer goes from almost foaming over the top of the pot to maintaining a nice clear boil. What has actually happened is that the larger proteins have separated themselves out of the malt and have become little particles floating around that will settle and can be filtered out before bottling. The cold break happens when the beer is cooled. This is actually a technique perfected by the big-time beer brewers and is pretty difficult to achieve at home. Ideally, the brew is chilled from a near boiling temperature to around 80°F (27°C) in a matter of seconds. This intense chill causes the smaller proteins to coagulate into large particles that can again be easily filtered out. The problem is that the average homebrewer doesn’t have the kind of equipment needed to do this. That said, you should still try to chill your beer as quickly as possible after boiling. You can get a modest cold break and also it limits the chance of giving bacteria time to get into your beer and spoil it. Letting your bucket sit in a sink or bathtub of ice water helps. Another trick is to put two liter bottles of water in the freezer the night before. Then the day you brew the beer, you cut open the bottles and put the two giant ice cubes in the beer. Try to avoid store bought ice or any ice that is exposed to the air while it freezes. That’s a good way to introduce bacteria into your beer. What can I do to increase the alcohol content in my beer? If you’ve read my article, Homebrewing for Newbies, then you know how to use a hydrometer and calculate the alcohol percentage. The only way to increase the alcohol content in your beer is to have a higher Original Gravity. That means using more malt or adding less water. It’s as simple as that. Since we’re on the subject of hydrometers, most are calibrated to measure liquid at 59°F (15°C). As the temperature of a liquid changes, so does it’s density which affects our readings. If your beer is a different temperature (which it should be if it’s an ale), use the following chart to adjust your hydrometer reading: 50°F (15°C) = subtract .0006 55°F (15°C) = subtract .0003 59°F (15°C) = 0 65°F (15°C) = add .0006 70°F (15°C) = add .0012 75°F (15°C) = add. 0018 80°F (15°C) = add .0026 85°F (15°C) = add .0033 Finally (no math involved) If you’re wondering why your beer doesn’t taste as good as the beer those monks over in Belgium make. It’s probably because you haven’t had as much practice. It’s also probably because you are making your beer from the ingredients in a kit. Making a really good beer involves using flavorful ingredients that don’t come in a basic kit. Some of the common spices/flavorings you can use to add taste to your beer are: Orange peel: Good in Belgian style ales, wheat beers, pale ales. Coriander seed: Has a sweet, citrus flavor. Good for Belgian style ales. Chocolate: Complements the flavor of darker beers such as stouts and porters. Juniper berries: Also goes well in stouts, porters and bocks. Licorice: Adds a sweet flavor. Good in dark beers. Also can improve the thickness of head. When it comes to flavor, don’t be afraid to experiment. This is an extremely short list of things to try. After all your main audience is you. Spice up your beer with a flavor you will enjoy. |
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