Home Brew Beer

There’s an attitude among some homebrewers that you start off with extract brewing and then, if you’ve got the moxy, you “advance” to all grain brewing.

All-grain brewing definitely has its advantages. The ingredients are less expensive, for one thing, and you can control your final product with a lot more precision. All-grain brewers can modify the chemistry of their mash water, the temperature or stiffness of the mash, or even the style of mash. All these things can help to fine-tune the character of the wort and therefore the flavor of the beer.

But don’t be deceived. There’s a lot you can do with extract. You absolutely do not need to enter the wonderful world of mashing to brew excellent beers!

So recently I’ve been doing some research on “top tips” for extract brewers, and comparing that with my many years of extract batches. Here are the first couple suggestions.

1. Try a full volume boil.

Most extract brewers start off with a relatively small volume of wort — say 2 gallons — and then when the boil is over they pour the wort into a fermentation vessel and add enough cold water to bring the volume up to five and a half gallons. (The extra half gallon allows for any loss when you transfer to secondary, and/or into your bottling bucket.)

There are two big advantages to that method.

• You don’t need to buy a huge pot or a fancy burner, and
• Adding the cold water helps cool the wort after the boil.

But there are also advantages to a full-volume boil.

• You get better hop utilization. Two ounces of hops boiled in two gallons of wort will not produce as much bitterness, flavor or aroma as the very same two ounces of hops boiled in five gallons of wort.
• By boiling all the water, you may avoid possible sources of contamination (in the unlikely event your tap water is infected), and you may drive off unwanted chlorination.

If you have the equipment, give a full-volume boil a try. However, note that your kitchen stove might not have the gumption to give you a good rolling boil with a five-gallon batch. Especially if you have an electric stove. Also, if you do a full-volume boil you really need to do #2 as well.

2. Use a wort chilller.

Rapidly cooling the wort after the boil can dramatically improve your beer.

• The “cold break” you get with rapid cooling can precipitate some unwanted gunk,
• The sooner you cool the wort the less chance you have for hot-side aeration, and
• You lessen the chance of bacterial contamination when you cool the wort quickly.

If you can’t use a wort chiller, immerse your fermenter in a bath of cold water (or even snow, in season). The sooner you chill the wort to fermenting temperatures, the better.

I love homebrew recipe books. But it’s not always because of the recipes.

When you read a bunch of recipes it’s like a casual reminder of all those different styles of beer that haven’t been “top of mind” recently. (“Oh yeah, I haven’t brewed a bock in a while.”)

And I’m always impressed by the incredible variety of flavors and styles you can get from four simple ingredients — malt, hops, water and yeast.

Another reason I love recipe books is that writers are often at their best when they’re straining for just the right adjective to explain this particular pale ale, or what the chocolate malt adds to this other porter recipe.

I have a friend who — before he puts a new style of beer to his lips — asks what he should be looking for. That’s a good idea. The more you know about the varieties of experience you can enjoy from different styles of beer, the more you’ll appreciate the beer you drink.

That’s what you need to focus on in a book of recipes, because that will give context to the slight variations in the ingredients.

At first, the recipes can look awfully similar, because the variations can be rather small. You might think, “Isn’t this one pretty much the same as the last five I’ve read?”

+ 6.6 pounds LME
+ a pound of some specialty malt
+ bittering hops
+ flavoring hops
+ aroma hops
+ yeast

If you look at it that way … yeah. That’s about the shape of it. They’ll all about the same.

And if you went into a homebrew store with that as your shopping list, you really could make a decent beer.

But … what kind of a beer would it be? It could be almost anything, depending on what kind of LME you bought, what the specialty grain is, what hops you used (and when you used them), and what yeast you chose.

That’s where all the fun comes in. Small changes in the recipe make a world of difference in the finished product.

I recently had a side-by-side comparison of two homebrewed beers that were identical — except for the yeast. And I mean as identical as they could be. They were from the very same 10-gallon batch, split into two 5 gallon batches.

The different yeasts gave a completely different character to the two beers. Some yeasts will dry out your beer, while some will leave it more malty. Some will enhance the hop bitterness. Some will emphasize aromas. It’s actually rather amazing how much difference the yeast can make.

And that’s just one ingredient. What about the malt?

Advanced brewers can fine-tune their beers in the mash tun. For example, a stiffer mash at a higher temperature will make a less fermentable wort, which will make a beer with more body and more malt flavor. And an infusion mash will make a different beer than a decoction mash.

Extract brewers need to approach this a little differently. They need to pick the right brand of extract, since somebody else has already done the mashing. Laaglander and John Bull are said to be less fermentable (resulting in more body and maltiness), while Muntons and Alexanders are more fermentable.

If you add a specialty malt to your recipe, that can be a big game changer as well. A pound of rye is going to add an entirely different flavor to your beer than a pound of Munich malt. (Next time you’re at the homebrew store, nibble a few grains of a few different malts to see how different they taste.)

In short, making a good beer is about having good ingredients and following correct procedures. You could walk into the homebrew shop and somewhat randomly pick your ingredients and, if you follow best practices, make a good quality beer. Of some sort.

Making a particular style of beer is about paying attention to the details.

You need to pick your malt, hops, yeast and — if you’re an advanced homebrewer — even your water, to match the style you want to achieve.

So the next time you read that homebrew recipe, pay attention to the details, because that’s what’s going to make the difference when you’re aiming for a particular flavor or style.

To avoid bacterial contamination in your beer, it’s important for homebrewers to sanitize all their equipment — and that means everything that touches your beer after you finish boiling it.

But when I read about sanitizing in homebrewing books, magazines, blogs, newsgroups and so on, I often run across dire warnings — and something approaching religious hysteria — about sanitization.

“I can’t emphasize this enough!!!”

Yikes. Sometimes I get the impression that these people mop their house with sanitizer before they brew.

Doesn’t the homebrewer’s motto say “relax, don’t worry”? So how did we get from relaxing and not worrying to this Niecy Nash cleanliness thing?

(Niecy Nash is one of the stars on “Clean House,” which I’ve never seen. I’m assuming she got the job because she’s cute and a clean freak, but I really don’t know.)

I’ve been brewing for close to 20 years and I’ve never had a batch turn into vinnegar, or had any odd flavors that I attributed to bad sanitation. And — here’s the kicker — I’ve never been a nut about sanitization.

I even suck on the end of my siphon hose!

Okay, recently I did read that it’s a good idea to clean your mouth with a gargle of whiskey before you suck on the siphon, and I took to that like an Irishman to Guinness. It sounds like a great suggestion whether it helps keep the bacteria away or not!

And, honestly, I have thought about other ways to start the siphon to avoid sucking — like the autosiphon — but I rarely get past thinking about it because sucking on the siphon (1) is so doggone easy, (2) gives me an excuse to gargle whiskey, and (3) … I’ve never had a problem.

So either (1) I’m incredibly lucky, (2) I wouldn’t know a bacterial contamination if it bit me, or … (3) maybe a relaxed, “take it seriously but don’t be neurotic” emphasis on sanitization is good enough.

I’ll pick 3.

And you can read my non-neurotic, “works for me” method of sanitization and decide for yourself if it’s consistent with relaxing and not worrying.

Generally speaking I use bleach — about 1 tablespoon in a gallon of water. It’s cheap and easy.

I say “about” 1 tablespoon because I use bleach in two different scenarios. When I soak my bottles I’m not exactly certain how much water is in the basin. So I overcompensate. For other purposes I follow the 1 tablespoon per gallon rule.

If I’m going to bottle my beer, I blast my bottles with one of those inverted bottle washer things, check the insides for anything gross, soak them in a bleach solution for an hour or so, and then blast them again to rinse.

I wipe down the outside of my siphon with a rag soaked in proper solution (not the stuff from the bottle soaking!) and run the solution through the inside of the siphon as well, then rinse it and hang it to dry.

For the fermenter and bottling bucket, I pour some of the solution inside and wipe everything down with a clean rag and let it sit for a while. Then I run the bleach solution through the spigot on the bottom of the bucket and rinse everything.

I boil my bottle caps.

I don’t use bleach on my kegs. I use Easy Clean. You’re not supposed to use bleach on kegs because it can cause pitting, and it’s a real bummer to watch your beer trickle onto the floor out the side of your keg. (Yes, it’s happened.)

I don’t worry about sanitizing anything before the boil because the boil takes care of that, and I use the boiling wort to sanitize my wort chiller — I simply drop it in ten minutes before the end.

After brewing I wipe down my spoon with sanitizing solution before I stir in the yeast.

This routine works well for me, and I don’t feel all scared and … most important, worried.

I should note that some experienced brewers don’t think much of using bleach and prefer other options.

Okay. All I can say is that bleach has worked fine for me. (Except in kegs!)

After the Blizzard of 2010, which buried our neighborhood in more than three feet of snow and inspired Blizzard Bitter, I had a craving for warm summer days, wheat beer and citrus.

I love the winter, but enough is enough!

So I dreamed up Here Comes Summer Wheat Ale, which is made with half malt and half wheat, and is a very pleasant, easy to drink brew.

Here Comes Summer Wheat Ale is mildly hopped to make sure the other flavors — spruce, coriander and orange — get a chance to toy with your taste buds. None of these flavors are terribly assertive. There’s just enough for the discerning palate.

Except maybe the spruce.

I had a great experience with a spruce beer once, long ago, when I used cuttings from the Christmas tree for flavoring. My wife thought I was crazy, but the beer was excellent.

Then I had a horrible experience with spruce extract. I used too much and made a medicinal, nasty brew that I simply couldn’t drink.

This time I was very careful with the spruce. You might want to try this one as I have it, and then if you want to experiment, you might try doubling the spruce extract to see what happens.

Ingredients

1 pound Crystal 20 malt
1 3.3 pound can Briess Golden Light
1 3.3 pound can Briess Bavarian Wheat
1 ounce Amarillo hops
1 ounce Liberty hops
1/2 teaspoon spruce essence
1 tablespoon freshly ground coriander seed
the zest of one orange
1 teaspoon Irish Moss
Safale 05

Procedure

Put the Crystal malt in a grain bag and add to 2 gallons of cold water. Slowly bring the water to 150 F and let the grains soak for 10 minutes.

Remove the grains, add the malt and wheat extract and give it a good stir. (If you let the extract sit on the bottom of the pot, you’ll carmelize it.) Bring it to a boil.

Add the Amarillo hops and the spruce essence.

While it’s boiling you’ve got work to do. You can crush the whole coriander seeds in a mortal and pestle and grate the orange peel. (If you have one of those four-sided graters, use the fine side.)

Of course you should also have a homebrew at hand while you’re doing this, and you should be listening to your favorite tunes. Homebrewing is about enjoying life!

Add the coriander and Irish Moss at 50 minutes. Add the zest of the orange and the Liberty hops at the end of the boil (60 minutes).

Transfer to your sterilized fermentation bucket and add cold water to make 5 gallons. Cool the wort and pitch the yeast.

Brewing Tip

I should note that some homebrewers recommend a full wort boil. They would say that you should boil the whole 5 gallons (actually 6, and boil it down to 5) rather than boiling a portion and diluting later.

If you choose to do it this way, you’ll increase your hop utilization. That is, you’ll get more hop bitterness in a 5-gallon boil than you’ll get if you follow my procedure. I’ve never done a head to head comparison, so I can’t say how much difference there will be.

Another possible benefit of a full wort boil is lessening the danger of contamination when you add unboiled water. (Save us!) But I don’t think that’s a big problem. Municipal water in America is very safe. (You drink it every day, don’t you?)

Also, there’s an advantage to doing a partial boil and topping off. Your tap water has plenty of oxygen in it from the little aerator in the end of your spigot, and the yeast needs lots of oxygen to get started.

So if you choose to do a full wort boil, make sure you do something to get oxygen in the wort — like a vigorous stir!

My son Ben drinks enough of my beer. Okay, he drinks too much of my beer. In any event, it’s about time he pitches in and brews a little, too. Here’s one of his recent efforts.

Ben’s Mild Porter is a very nice homebrew extract porter we brewed a couple weeks ago. This post is a little how to guide so you can make it for yourself.

This is a very dark brown, very mildly carbonated porter. At room temperature (as I’m drinking it right now) it’s silky smooth with wonderful mouth feel and slight hints of the chocolate malt. The hops are unassertive.

This brew is deceptively easy to drink, so you’ll need to come up with some clever combination of relaxing and not worrying — which you must do while drinking homebrew beer — while still keeping a weather eye! We don’t want you to spill your beer!

Ingredients

1 pound chocolate malt
1 3.3# can Briess CBW Traditional Dark
1 3.3# can Briess CBW Pilsen Light
1 oz. Fuggles hops (4.0% alpha)
1 oz. Liberty hops (4.8% alpha)
Safale 04 dried yeast
2/3 cup priming sugar

Procedure

To 5 quarts of cold water add 1 pound of chocolate malt in a grain bag.

Slowly heat to a boil, and remove the grain bag before the boil.

Add both cans of malt extract and return the mixture to a boil.

Add the Fuggles hops.

After 50 minutes, add 1/2 of the Liberty hops.

After 8 more minutes, add the rest of the Liberty hops.

After 2 more minutes (bring you to a total boil of 60 minutes), remove from heat, top up to five gallons with tap water and cool. Pitch the Safale 04, ferment to completion and bottle.

We used 2/3 cup of priming sugar to make this a very lightly carbonated beer. If you prefer more carbonation, use 3/4 cup.