Brew Day: If you are interested

Any time I take homebrew to a social event, there is discussion around the process. Partially because people care, but mostly I just enjoy talking about it :). So here is a bit of an explanation of the process.

This first picture is of a yeast starter. A few days prior to brewing, we like to ramp up the yeast to ensure proper fermentation. This is done by making a few cups of 'beer' on the stove using dry malt extract. This is essentially just creating sugar water with similar properties to the wort so the yeast can begin to multiply. The yeast vial is pitched to the cooled mixture and left at room temp for a few days. During this period, there is visible CO2 being produced via the airlock at the top. This is one indicator that the starter is working correctly and will be ready for prime time. These aren't necessary in all cases, but we have been getting slow starts to our fermentation.



One thing that is often repeated in brewing is to 'Relax, have a homebrew' in order to keep things in perspective during the hectic pace of brew-day. Not one to argue with this logic, this is one of our recently bottled Pale Ales. It is much maltier than the standard pale. The recipe was very simple, but a small amount of Belgian special B went a long way towards contributing color and sweetness in the flavor profile. It was dry-hopped with Cascade hops. So far so good!





The first thing we do is prepare the mash. An easy way to think of mashing is to compare it to making coffee or tea. What we're doing is soaking the recently milled (crushed but not pulverized) grains in hot water. The goal is to get the sugars from the grains. Depending on the type of grains in the recipe, these sugars will contribute different flavors, coloring and aroma of the final product. Some grains contain less fermentable sugars than others. While it looks like simple oatmeal, this step is critical to get right. Temperatures need to be exact because a few degrees either way will impact how the sugars are broken down. For this beer, we were shooting for a 60 minute rest at 149 degrees. Having reached that, we were good to go with capping it and setting up the picture below while we wait.


We essentially use gravity to do some work for us instead of pumps. From top to bottom, here is what is going on. The top vessel (lauter tun) contains water heated to about 175 degrees. That will be used to 'sparge'. The second vessel (mash tun) contains the mash pictured above. The sparge water will eventually be flowing through the grain bed to make sure we're getting all the goodness out of the grains in preparation for the boil. All of the run-off is collected in the steel pot at the bottom that sits atop the burner. We're looking to collect about 5.25 gallons of wort realizing that some will burn off and leave us with 5 gallons to ferment.



First picture shows the sparge arm that evenly spreads the water over the grain bed. It's important to keep the bed almost 'floating' so that its weight doesn't settle on itself and cause the entire process to get stuck. The second picture is the output directly into the boiling pot.



We were making a Berliner Weisse so the process is a bit different than we're used to. These beers are extremely light and are soured using lactobacillus. There is almost no hop character to them. So for this beer, we added .5 oz of Hallertauer hops to the mash. That's definitely a new one for us. Normally hops are added to the boil. Adding hops early in the process contributes bitterness. Adding them later in the process provides aroma. For ours, we were only doing a 15 minute boil versus the standard 60. Very unusual for us. We added another .25 oz of hops at the beginning of the short boil and added the wort chiller almost right away. This was brought to a vigorous boil (there is a propane powered burner under the pot) for 15 minutes.

The wort chiller is a long copper tube that is coiled to serve as a heat exchanger. Once our boil is complete, it's critical to get this temperature down quickly to a point where we can add the yeast. Too hot and the yeast will be killed. Hot wort exposed to the air is a magnet for all sorts of things that we don't want. So the faster we can drop degrees, the better. There are two hoses affixed to the chiller. Cold water in becomes hot water out cooling our wort in the process. We use the hot water for cleaning. As the water gets cooler, we use that to water the garden.

While that's happening, might as well put on a brisket covered in a spice rub. This will be dinner later served with some sauces we made yesterday. The first is an IPA mustard sauce and the second is a Smoked Porter BBQ sauce. The latter turned out incredible. I'll post that recipe later. Got it from a local chef that host beer dinners.

At this point we're almost done with brew-day and all that is left to do is pitch the yeast once our wort is down to about 70 degrees. We got to 75 in about 20 minutes so we're good to go there.

At this point we're taking the gravity measurement. This will tell us our starting point (essentially how dense our water is) and let us know when fermentation is complete based on future measurements. A standard beer will have an original gravity of about 1.065. Our target was 1.035 and we were almost spot on. Again, this is an unusual one for us. This beer called for lactobacillus to be used as a souring agent. Normally we would be pitching yeast at this point, but in this case we're giving these bugs a head start because we want a more sour profile. Our yeast starter will sit on the sidelines for a day before it gets to chow down on all the sugar. In the end, we get about 7 days of active fermentation in the vessel below. Throughout, CO2 is being released and the airlock at the top will be very active. It's like having a few billion pets for a week. Joeline says I'm obsessed with it. She's correct since this is a critical part of the process. The happier the yeast is, the happier we'll be in a month.