The Zen Of Beer

The weather didn't cooperate

2011-08-24T16:26:00.001-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I did my first beer in the new place. It's the old kolsch standby, and everything seemed to go fairly well, and the weather was even looking like it would cooperate and let me ferment in the garage. That lasted a couple of days, and then we got a heat wave. We've had several days with the temps getting up in to the 80's. I don't know what this is going to do to my beer, but I'm waiting on getting my grains for a schwarzbier before moving this one off in to the secondary. I guess we'll see how it works.

The reality of things as I see it

2011-03-05T15:00:00.000-08:00

Based on the reading that I've done, there are alot of home brewers who will strongly disagree with my perspective, but due to certain realities, this is the way that I do things.
Those realities are, in a nutshell, that I brew as a hobby. I brew because I like beer. I have other requirements for my time and money.
So, where do I start? In the kitchen, I guess, with clean equipment. To read books and articles, one might get the impression that beer cannot successfully be brewed without an operating room level of sanitation. My reality is that is simply not true. Does one have to be clean, certainly. Does one have to make sure equipment is sanitized, certainly, but don't let fears of bad beer keep you from brewing. Clean your equipment before and after brewing, then sanitize, but there's no magic to that part. I've used bleach, iodophor, and some acid based no-rinse sanitizer that they sell in the brew supply store (by far the easiest to use). My basic process for sanitation is this: put all your shit in the primary fermenter, add about a shot worth of your sanitizer per 5 gallons of water, add your water, and let sit for 10 minutes. Transfer this liquid to any other vessel in need of sanitation, and repeat the 10 minutes soaking. If the chemical needs to be rinsed (bleach, iodophor), rinse, and go. That's it. I am not an award winning brewer, I'm sure, but to date I've had one bad batch of beer, and that was bad because I made a gross miscalculation in coffee addition while attempting to make a coffee porter...I have yet to try that again.
The next scary discussions tend to focus around brewing temperatures. My goal is generally to ferment for around two weeks at roughly 70 degrees, but I don't put too much effort in to holding my temps. The reason is that I do primary fermentation in a bucket, in my basement, and my basement will be the temperature that it chooses to be. I don't have thermal blankets or chillers, so my wort is going to be within a few degrees of the basement's ambient temps. So be it. It works, and so far, rather well. Lagers are a little more of a challenge because of the lower fermentation temperatures and lagering, but I've left those for the cooler months, fermented slightly warmer than they should, and still they've turned out damn good.
Yeast is another hot button topic. How much to use, to create a starter, how to and how long to grow the starter, and on and on. Here's the rule I go by. I like to use White Labs vials, and each vial says to use one per 5 gallon batch. That's what I do. Simple as that.
Finally, what variety to brew? My own opinion is to keep it simple until I know what I'm doing. I'm in to my second year of trying to mostly brew across Germany where they have the reinheitsgebot. It requires that beer is water, grain, hops, and yeast. With those four ingredients one can produce an amazingly varied range of beers. I'll probably add belgians to my brew schedule at some point this year, but that's as complex as I want to get for a while. It works for me, and I'm still producing better, more flavorful beers than I can find in any local stores.
I guess the point I'm getting at is if you want to get in to brewing, don't be intimidated by all of the information you will come across while researching how to get in to home brewing. At its most basic, it can be done very inexpensively...My mash tun cost me a grand total of about $7.00, my basic fermenting kit closer to around $25, and in a few weeks I'm going to have two cases of tasty hefewizen for a total of $28. Sure, these guys who set their water pH perfectly, get exact gravity readings, and are able to manage fermenting temps are probably producing amazing brews, but don't think any of that is necessary to produce an exceptional brew of your own. Jump in, get your feet wet, and don't bother trying to be an expert until you've been doing this a few years. I promise you're going to have a hell of a good time along the way.

Brewing across germany

2011-02-24T09:36:00.001-08:00

So, if you could see my rough schedule for the year, you'd see that my basic plan is to brew my way across germany. It's not that I'm some kind of purest, it's just that I think there's a kind of elegance in the fact that true german beers are made only of water, grain, hops, and yeast. Using only those for ingredients it is possible to make a wide variety of beers that are unique in flavor, appearance, and alcohol content.
In addition to that, I tried to get fancy with my first all grain batch a year or so ago, and it was somewhat less than successful. At that point I decided that I wanted to get good with, if not fully understand, brewing with the basic ingredients.
What's this all really about? Nothing, really, I'm just rambling while leading up to the point that I've just started fermenting a doppelbock, and next up is a hefewizen, and I'm not certain if I really want to do a hefewizen for my spring batch. The reason is that hefewizen is a little more citrusey and sour than most of what you can buy in the standard grocery store. Not bad, but not my favorite. I've got a good recipe that someone from the beer nut put together for me, my brew met with good reviews from those who tasted it, I just don't know if that's where I want to go next. Any thoughts or comments are welcome, as well a suggestions for alternative options for a good spring brew.

Pancakes

2011-02-12T18:23:00.000-08:00

Obviously, that's not beer. It fits, though, because the essential process is the same. That process is as follows:
1) Get a substance that can act as food for the little beasties.
2) Let the little beasties eat, and produce something that wasn't there before.
This guy in the picture is my sour sponge. I've pulled him out of the fridge, and I'll let him sit on the counter and ferment for a few hours. Sometimes I'll let him go over night, but I'm running a little behind today. Winter in Utah isn't great for this project because it's cold and dry, and this guy prefers warmer and humid. With luck that will be changing for us this year, but that's a subject for another day.
After he's fermented for a few hours I'll do a couple of things.
First, I'll remove a chunk about the size of a small orange, and set that aside for a sour starter that will ferment further over night. I'll make the starter by adding 2 cups of warm water to the chunk of sponge, and mix that until it's all blended together. I'll cover that, and let it bubble away...and bubble it will.
Second, I'll put the rest of the sponge in my mixer, add a cup of flour, and some water, and mix that for about 4 minutes until it becomes the consistency of stiff dough, and I'll put that back in the fridge to wait until the next time I need to do a little baking.
Tomorrow morning, using a modified version of the recipe found here: http://whatscookingamerica.net/Bread/SourdoughPancakes.htm
I'll make what my 5 year old considers to be the best pancakes in the world.
No, it's not brewing, but essentially it's the same thing. It's the process of taking a product derived from grain, creating the ideal, or as ideal as possible, of an environment for yeasts to thrive, and allowing nature to take its course. In the end, all we do is try to create the ideal environment, but ultimately, this process will do as it sees fit, and all we can do is sit back and hope for the best.

Mash Tun Made Easy

2011-02-04T21:26:00.000-08:00

When preparing for my entry in to all-grain brewing I had to gather some new equipment. Among the required items, of course, was a mash tun. If you’ve done research you know that you can spend quite a bit on commercially produced hardware, or you can use one of several methods to build one of your own. I took the latter route, and I did it for about $7.00. I’m going to use my first post on this blog to talk about how I did it, and a bit about how I use it.
First, what’s required.

A spigot. I purchased mine from the local brewery supply store, http://www.beernut.com.
Two food grade buckets. I would have been better off getting larger buckets, but I know the owner of a local Chinese restaurant, J. Wong's Asian Bistro...If you’re ever in the Salt Lake area, stop by. The food is excellent. Anyway, I bugged them for a couple of 5 gallon buckets that were used to supply food products.
A splatter screen. The kind that’s used for putting over your frying bacon. Get a Cheap one. You’ll be tearing it apart.
A lid. I use the lid from my primary fermentor.

Now, for what I did.

I bleached the hell out of the buckets. One was used to store onions, the other for soy sauce. Those are probably not flavors you want soaking in to your wort, so bleach them until they’re clean and white, and bleach them one more time.
I got out my drill and a ⅛ inch bit, a couple of beers, and put on Sons of Anarchy while drilling holes in the bottom of one of the buckets. I drilled the holes about ⅛ inch apart, basically making the bucket in to a big sieve. This bucket is the inside bucket that acts as the false bottom.
On the bucket without the holes, the outer bucket, I marked a location for the spigot at the bottom. I placed it so that it was about ¼ to ½ inch higher than the bottom of the bucket, and below the bottom of the inside bucket when the inside bucket is placed inside of the outside bucket. Then I drilled out a hole big enough for the spigot to slide in. I didn’t do this very well, and ended up having to use some silicone to fill in some areas around the spigot, but it’s holding for now.
I took the screen out of the metal ring handle of the splatter screen, and I use that as a filter on the inside of the false bottom. It ensures that no grains can fall through the false bottom.

That’s it. I’ve used this set up for over a year, and I’ve had no major issues. When mashing I put the lid to my primary fermentor on top, and wrap the mash tun with a U-Haul blanket. This is able to hold temperature within 5 degrees for an hour and a half.
There is one problem that I’ve run in to. I cannot brew a batch that requires more than 10 pounds of grain, and even that is pushing it. It’s not a big deal for me because I brew 5 gallon batches, and my recipes usually manage to stay under 10 pounds, but if I want to do something like a barley wine, there is no way this setup will handle it.
Is it the perfect solution? No, but it’s dirt cheap, easy to construct, and works very well.
Of course, the idea isn’t original, and I’m more than happy to give credit, but I’ve since forgotten just where I found the info online.