DP Tool Club 19/CD_ASCQ_19_010295.iso/vrac/brewinfo.zip/ALL_GRAI

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Date: Tue, 30 Aug 1994 16:08:49 -0600 (CST)
From: DARREN TYSON <[e-mail]>
Subject: upload to homebrew archives
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Hi,

I wish to have a file uploaded to the hombrew archive.  I have
previously written to you without a reply.  I am including the upload
at the end of this message so that you may upload it directly.  Rich
Webb is the original author of this file.  I am just trying to get it
archived for him.  Thank you.

Darren Tyson                     [e-mail]

Original article follows:
----------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Richard B. Webb" <[e-mail]>

The beginners guide to advanced and all-grain brewing
By Richard B. Webb, the Brews Brother's 1993 Homebrewer of the year

The purpose of this guide is to give you the brewer all the
information you need to strike off into unknown territory, and to help
you become the ultimate brewing god. In it, I will try to communicate
my brewing philosophy and techniques. In short, I will teach you the
summation of everything I know about brewing and life!

Zymurgy (pronounced Zi-mer-gee, with the i pronounced like 'eye') is
the study of living, organic chemistry. It seeks to use and manipulate
chemical compounds (such as salts and sugars), living organisms
(yeast), and a universal solvent (water!) to create a pleasant
tasting, psychoactive substance called alcohol. Alcohol is a drug,
similar to many other drugs that every culture known to man has used
to expand the consciousness, commune with the gods, or just to catch a
buzz. Alcohol in general, and beer in particular, may have been the
driving force behind the eventual civilizing of the beast, man. After
all, without fermentables, there is no alcohol, and without
cultivation, and therefore civilization, there are precious few
fermentables. Some societies come by their alcohol requirements the
hard way, doing all kinds of mean, nasty, stupid things to make it. In
modern times, and with modern methods, you and I can drink like kings,
if not like gods.

The word alcohol describes a range of molecules, formed from carbon,
oxygen, and hydrogen atoms. These molecules are formed by the
metabolization of certain sugars by living organisms, called yeast,
leaving roughly equal parts alcohol and carbon dioxide as a
by-product. We use this special ability of the yeast to make various
types of beverages which include alcohol.

Equipment

1.     All grain brewing: What new equipment do I need?

1.1.  Boiling pots

The process for all grain brewing is actually pretty easy. If you are
an extract brewer now, you probably have the beginnings of an
equipment pile already. An extract brewer can get away with a three or
four gallon boiling container, but this is just a spittoon to serious
all grain brewers. The first thing that you need for all grain brewing
is a larger boiler. All grain brewing typically produces a gallon of
water for every three or four pounds of grain, and it doesn't take
much grain before the volumes of water begin to strain that old coffee
cup of a boiler. My first bit of advice is to invest in a large
boiler, the bigger the better, with a minimum of seven gallons is
best. You may find yourself outgrowing even that size of boiler as
your brewing plans become more ambitious, so consider getting an even
bigger pot to start with.

Stainless steel pots are ideal for brewing, but they can be a bit
pricy. My first big boiler was an aluminum stock pot, coming to the
scale at around eight gallons, but I wasn't very happy with it. The
aluminum scratched easily, and stained too readily.  Cleaning it up
took up layers off the bottom, and fears of excessive intake of
molecular aluminum led to the eventual discarding of the pot. If you
do use aluminum, do not use it to store wort for very long. The
acidity of wort often dissolves the aluminum, leading to discoloration
or worse.

An alternative to stainless steel is enameled steel. This is made by
heating a glaze onto the surface of a cheaper type of steel kettle.
This can work for you, but remember that any chip in the enamel that
exposes the underlying steel will allow that steel to begin rusting.
My advice? Find a used stainless steel mega-pot and use it until you
feel the need to upgrade.

1.2.  Cooling systems

Your old small boiler may have fit just fine in a sink filled with
cold water and ice for cooling the wort after boiling, but your bigger
boiler will never fit. If you don't have one already, invest in a wort
chiller/heat exchanger of some sort, or better yet, learn to make your
own. They are frightfully easy to make, and if you can get other
people interested, you can sell wort chillers that you've made to
them. I prefer the copper coil immersion wort chillers myself. As the
hot wort is cooled rapidly, proteinaceous matter (also called floating
junk) condenses and precipitates out of solution. An immersion type
chiller allows this stuff to settle out to the bottom of the boiling
pot before it is transferred to the fermentation containers. If you
get really creative, you can build a couple of wort chillers and chain
them together, with the first chiller immersed in a bath of ice water,
pre-cooling the water before it begins to chill your hot wort.

Immersion chillers are best kept clean prior to use, and are
sterilized by placing into the wort while it is still hot. If there is
any water inside the chiller, especially if there are also air bubbles
inside, the heat from the kettle will force the water out of the
chiller. Watch your shoes!

Another type of chiller is called a counter-flow chiller. This tube
inside a tube system allows the draining of hot wort through a copper
tube whose outside is being cooled by water. The picture formed is the
opposite of the immersion chiller where the wort is on the outside of
the tube, with coolant water flowing through the tubing. The
counter-flow chiller has the advantage of siphoning the wort from the
boiling container into a fermenter at the same time as it is being
cooled, saving a step of transfer later on.  This idea is seductive,
especially if you have no better way to transfer cool wort to the
fermenters in the first place.

The use and care of the counter-flow chiller is a little more involved
than the immersion chiller. Because the counter-flow chiller is much
more efficient at cooling the wort flowing through it, the
proteinaceous matter that precipitates out of solution tends to stick
to the sides of the tube. Care must be taken to completely flush this
matter out of the tube prior to the next use. Failure to do so will
ensure that your next batch of wort will be contaminated by nasty
beasties growing in your chiller between batches.  Proper cleaning of
the chiller involves back flushing the tube with a series of nasty
chemical baths which themselves leave residue which may taint future
batches!

I guess you can tell which kind of chiller system I prefer. The system
you pick depends on what your priorities are. You can choose high
efficiency, balanced against the need for intensive cleaning protocol,
or you can accept a lower efficiency, easier cleaning system.  In
either case, pick a system that works for you and your brewing system.

1.3.  Mashing and Lautering

A tun is a container that is used to maintain certain environmental
conditions while the malt sugar is being created. The mash tun holds
the grain in a soup of water and sugar during this process. A lauter
tun allows the liquid surrounding the grains to be drained off, while
allowing more rinsing water (the sparge) to be run through the grains,
allowing even further sugar extraction. One attribute of a good mash
tun is the ability to allow liquid to flow easily through a straining
system incorporated in the tun. An example of this kind of mash tun
involves a bucket with some sort of false bottom inside of another
bucket. This sieve design allows the grains to form a filter bed while
allowing the sweet liquor to flow through the false bottom strainer. I
tried this system, but I wasn't very happy with it. The sieve design
took forever to make, and the whole thing suffered a major flaw in
temperature control. Another of the attributes of a good tun is the
ability to maintain a steady temperature, and the un-insulated bucket
system just falls short.  The most versatile tun that I've found is
made from a large picnic cooler, with straining filters placed in the
bottom to let the liquified sugars pass through while restraining the
spent grains. This set up combines the best attributes of the mash and
lauter tuns into a single device, saving money, process steps, and a
mess on the kitchen floor. (Another reason I do my mashing in the
garage...) My tun system incorporates a series of PVC pipe sections
into which slits have been sawn. These sections are joined with PVC
elbow, Tee and X sections to form a sieve type filter. The original
design had a lot of joining sections, with poles of PVC pipe jutting
into the bottom of the grain bed. This unwieldy structure was
connected to the cooler drain spout, which allows the liquid to be
drained out. A small rubber stopper fits over the spout, and a valve
in the other end of the stopper allows the control of liquid flow from
the tun.

My latest design of the sieve is a very simple one. Instead of a
trident design of pipes all along the bottom of the tun, I now use two
four inch sections of slotted pipe, joined at the center with a PVC
Tee section. End caps keep the grain out of the ends of the plastic
pipes, and the outlet from the Tee section is connected to the
cooler's outlet. Not only is this design simpler, but it is also
harder to dislodge from the outlet. The smaller number of slits gives
a longer sparge time, which increases the sugar extraction rate.

If one of your goals is to maximize the amount of sugar that you can
create from your grains (the ones that you've spent good money for!),
then you need to know about sparging. In this example, sparging is the
running of hot water through the hot grains to dissolve the last bits
of sugar from the mash. This is best done gently and slowly. If the
water is flushing through the grain, pathways of water are formed,
channeling the water around, and not through the grains. Hot water is
used, but the temperature of the grains should never exceed 170
degrees Fahrenheit, as this would leech out harsh bitter oils from the
grain husks. And the quantity of water must be such that after a sixty
minute boil, the amount of wort called for in your recipe is the
amount you wind up with. If you do make an error, it's probably better
to wind up with to little liquor after the boil, because it's
relatively easy to add sterile water to the fermenter, while any
excess liquor is subject to contamination as it is stored. The
important points to remember are 1) gentle sparging, 2) temperature
control, and 3) try to get the quantities right!

When creating such a tun and filter system, there are some points that
you should keep in mind. The size of the tun determines the amount of
grain you can mash, and if your tun is too small, you will be
restricted to making light and wimpy beers, because you simply have no
room to mash larger amounts of grain. When buying a cooler to make
into a tun, get one with a drain system already in place. Drilling
your own hole is a gateway to frustration. Finally, use high
temperature PVC pipe for your filtering system.  The maximum
temperature required in a tun is about 170 degrees Fahrenheit, a
temperature sufficient to melt many thinner grades of pipe. The pipes
won't become liquid at that temperature, but they will warp, allowing
grain to enter the sieve, plugging up your system. You haven't lived
until you have to spoon 25 or more pounds of grain into a straining
bag because your filtering system has failed.

The Mash

2.  Sugars, Extracts and adjuncts

Brewing requires sugar to use as food for the yeast beasties. In
ancient times, the only source of sugar readily available was to be
found in the hives of bees.  Honey, exposed to rain water in the
trunks of trees where bees had built their hives, might have been
spontaneously fermented by "wild" yeasts, and likely would have
yielded mankind's first experience with the joys of alcohol. Today, we
seek to make something a little more palatable.

the most common form of sugar is made from distilling the sweet sap of
certain plants, such as sugar cane, or sugar beets. This sugar, called
sucrose, is white and granular in it's purest form, and is most
suitable for putting on your corn flakes. Speaking of corn, the most
easily fermentable type of sugar comes from corn. This sugar, called
dextrose, is light and powdery. But each of these sugars come from
giant processing plants, a process far removed from what we as brewers
can come by on our own. Let us first deal with sugars that we can
create ourselves.

2.1.  All grain brewing: Where does the sugar come from?

Anything with the right kind of sugar can be fermented, and most any
kind of starch can be converted to the right kind of sugar.
Fermentable sugars used in beer have traditionally been made from
barley, a seed grain which has little use outside of brewing, but any
kind of seed grain can be used to make fermentable sugars. The body of
a seed contains mostly starch. When a seed is planted, special
chemical compounds, called enzymes, convert the starch, which the
embryo inside the seed cannot use, into special sugars, which the
embryo consumes in it's early stages of growth. (The yolk of an egg
performs roughly the same function for chickens, but we mostly don't
try to ferment poultry...) We go out of our way to collect special
seeds that have shown that they are especially well suited for
supplying us with fermentable sugars. We then encourage (some say
trick) the seeds into converting this starch into sugar by controlling
certain temperature, moisture, and other environmental needs. This
process is begun at the great malting houses, and, in my case at
least, is completed in my garage. Warmer temperatures (over 153
degrees Fahrenheit or so) encourage the type of enzymes, called alpha
enzymes, that convert long chains of starches into medium length
chains of sugars, called dextrins, which don't ferment very well, but
are necessary for a well made beer.  Temperatures below that encourage
the beta enzymes, which convert the chains of dextrins into
fermentable sugars. In order to get a good balance of fermentable and
non-fermentable sugars, we seek to achieve a balance of temperature of
around 150-153 degrees Fahrenheit.

The process by which seeds are made ready for brewing is called
malting. When the seeds are bathed in warm water under conditions of
continual aeration, they begin to germinate. This germination is
interrupted by the maltster, who dries and sometimes roasts the
partially germinated seeds. It is this drying and roasting process
that determines the ultimate color of the malt sugars extracted from
the malt.

Barley that is taken farther along in this malting process is called
well-modified malt.  Historically, this type of malt has lent itself
to English style ales. When you buy ale or pale ale malt from your
friendly neighborhood brewery supply store, you are buying
well-modified malt. Other types of malt, referred to as
under-modified, or lager malt, are of course, less well modified. This
means that the malting process has not proceeded along as far as is
the case with the well-modified malts. If you desire to get the
maximum amount of extract/sugar from your malts, you need to know how
to treat these two kinds of malt. Otherwise you're throwing money into
the compost pile in the form of starch and sugar that you've neglected
to remove from the malt.

While we call these malts ale malt and lager malt, these terms are
pretty much subjective. There is nothing to stop you from using an ale
malt with lager yeast, or vice-versa. For all intents and purposes,
the only difference in the malts is the method best used to get the
maximum amount of sugar from the grain.

Because the sugar in the well-modified malt is readily available to
us, we can extract the maximum amount of sugar by a process called
single step infusion mashing. Hot water at approximately 165 degrees
is placed into the picnic cooler mash tun, and allowed to sit. This is
necessary to heat the interior of the tun, allowing a constant and
uniform temperature to be achieved. After the temperature settles, the
grain is poured on top of the water and thoroughly mixed in. The
starch tends to settle to the bottom of the tun where it is converted
to sugar and drained away. The grain husks, which tend to float away,
will then settle to the bottom of the tun, forming a filter bed to
work in conjunction with the filtering properties of the slotted PVC
pipe. A constant temperature of about 150-155 degrees is maintained
for about 90 minutes, or until the starch has been completely
converted to sugar. This conversion of starch to sugar is called
saccharification. Some of the hot, sugary liquid is drained away,
while more hot water is added to the tun until the temperature of the
grains is about 170 degrees. This temperature is maintained for five
to ten minutes, which allows the sugar created during saccharification
to be readily dissolved. The liquid sugar soup is then partially
drained away, while new water is allowed to flow through the grains.
This sparge water should be no warmer than 170 degrees, as water
hotter than that will leech out bitter oils and resins from the
grains, potentially ruining an otherwise perfect batch of beer.

One problem with single step infusion mashing is that the initial
temperature of the grains is very hard to control. If the water is too
hot when the grains are added (the strike temperature), then the
enzymes in the grains can be killed, and an insufficient sugar yield
will result. If the temperature is too low, then it will have to be
raised, especially for beer styles that call for rich, thick, and full
bodied beers. The temperature can be raised in a couple of ways.
First, hot water can simply be added to the mash. This works up to a
point, but it has a certain drawback. The enzymes are more likely to
survive the high temperatures of the mash in a relatively thick grain
bed. Adding hot water only serves to dilute the grain bed, resulting
in a loss of enzymes. The other method of introducing heat to the mash
is to remove some of the liquid from the mash. This liquor is heated
up, and then returned to the mash. This process is called decoction
mashing, and is a technique used in program temperature mashing.

This process, most commonly used with lager, or less-modified malt, is
similar to single step infusion mashing, yet different. Because the
malt is less well modified, there are proteins that remain in the
starch which must be dealt with. Instead of placing the grains into a
liquid bath at a single, high temperature, the grains are introduced
at a lower temperature. Then the temperature in the tun or kettle is
slowly increased. As in the single step infusion mash, the hot water
is placed in the tun, the temperature inside the tun is allowed to
stabilize, and the grain is poured into the water and thoroughly
mixed. The main difference here is that the temperature to be achieved
initially is closer to 122 degrees Fahrenheit, as opposed to over 150
degrees as described in the previous method. After a short rest at
this temperature, heat is added to the tun, and the mashing
temperature is allowed to rise. Again the ultimate goal here is a
temperature of about 150-155 degrees.

There are several methods for adding heat energy to the mash tun. One
way that I've tried is by inserting a water heater heating element
into the grain mash. This can work, but constant stirring is required
in order to evenly distribute the heat throughout the tun.  Too high a
heat in any one place will leech out the oils and resins that I
mentioned earlier.

Program temperature mashing also lends itself to heating in a kettle
on the stove.  Constant stirring keeps the temperature at the bottom
of the kettle from rising too high, or from being heated more than the
grain near the top of the kettle. At the end of the process, the
grains need to be placed into some sort of lauter tun in order to
sparge the grains of the hot, soluble sugar. But another method of
gradual heating lends itself to the use of picnic cooler mash/lauter
tuns. Using such a tun, remove some of the sugary liquid and heat it
up independently from the rest of the mash. This liquor can be boiled
for a few minutes and then returned to the mash tun. As mentioned
earlier, this technique is called decoction mashing, and is well
suited to the picnic cooler mash tun, but it can be tricky. Care must
be taken not to extract, heat, and return too much liquor at one time,
lest the temperature inside the mash tun become too great. It takes a
lot of heat added to the tun to increase the temperature
significantly, so after a few small decoctions there is a temptation
to drain the whole batch and boil it and return it to the tun. Try not
to be too impatient...

A variation of this decoction technique is known as the recirculating
infusion mash method. A pump that can handle hot liquids is used to
pump the heated liquor from the boiling kettle back to the mash tun.
The hot liquor is continually being drained from the tun into the
kettle where it is heated, and is then pumped back to the tun,
resulting in a gradual heating of the grains. Recirculating systems
can get complicated, and the pumps aren't cheap, and there is one more
piece of equipment which must be maintained and cleaned. When the
homebrewer sits thinking great thoughts about the best brewing system
possible, thoughts often turn to recirculating mash systems.

There are lots of different kinds of malt and grains to be put in
beer. I have included an appendix to this document with a partial list
of the most common types of malt.

2.2.  Extracts

Commercial malt extracts are made in the same way as I have described
above.  However, the extract manufactures have taken the extra step of
removing some or all of the water that the sugar is suspended in.
Doing this requires a tremendous amount of energy, both in the heating
of the extract, and in the vacuum process by which water is most
economically removed. Furthermore, certain unscrupulous extract
manufacturers have been suspected of substituting corn sugars and
other cheaper sugar alternatives for malt sugar in order to increase
profits on their products. All grain brewing allows you to be 100%
sure about what goes into your pridefully crafted brews.

There is nothing wrong or sinful about using malt extracts. There are
many wonderful malt extract kits available in the market today.
Extract brewers have taken many knocks concerning their "beginner"
status. This is mere provincialism. The use of malt extracts allows
the all-grain brewer to thicken up a batch of normally extracted
sugars without the long term boiling that would otherwise be required
to reduce the sugar solution to the higher gravities required for
styles like bocks and barley wines.

2.3.  Non-barley additives

Other substances, called adjuncts, can be added to the mash or kettle
for a number of reasons. The most common adjunct, at least in British
style brewing are various kinds of sugars. Because the malting of
barley is so labor intensive, and therefore expensive, many types of
sugars have been added to the boiling kettle to stretch out the mix.
Along with the previously mentioned cane and corn sugars are the
intermediate steps in the production of these sugars. Molasses results
from the initial boiling of the sap of the sugar cane. Condensation of
molasses gives a product called brewers licorice, which tastes very
similar. Further refinement yields brown sugar, and finally cane
sugar.

Other type adjuncts are more commonly added to the mash tun, with the
most commonly added grain being wheat. Wheat is hard to malt, because
it lacks a protective husk around the grain. Wheat is also higher in
proteinaceous material, which can lead to a particulate haze in the
final brew. However, it is impossible to make a wheat beer without
wheat, so one must use it to match a particular style. Also, the use
of a little wheat in the mash can contribute to improved head
retention, and so many of my recipes call for a pound or so of wheat
in the grain bill.

Other grains can be added to the mash, but are not always malted. Rice
is often used to stretch out barley sugars. In fact, the big
mega-breweries use a lot of rice (and corn) to make the beer that
makes the money that powers the hydroplanes and dragsters that seem to
be these companies main products. Rice is not malted, but must be
boiled, prepared just like you were going to eat it, to soften up the
starches inside the grain. If this is not done, the enzymes provided
by the barley malt will not be able to gain access to the starch in
the grain.

Another method of making starch available to the enzymes is used with
grains like rye, oats, and corn. These grains are crushed in special
rollers, with the heat released by this operation serving to cook the
grain. The crushing action also makes little grain bits out of big
grain bits, making enzyme access that much easier. These grains,
especially rye and oats, could also be boiled, but this would allow
some nasty oils to be leeched out.

What other kinds of starch can be used to make beer? Your imagination
(and the trust of your friends) is all that stands between you and the
next big micro-brewing revolution. If you can think of a starch, it
can probably be mashed into your next brewing adventure. Many cultures
make their own kind of beer without knowledge of barley, but other
sources of converting enzymes must be found. Sake is a type of rice
beer that uses only rice for starch and sugar. A special mold is added
that releases the enzyme that is responsible for this transformation.
Millet and other grains are used for many intoxicating native
beverages. In many cultures, it is the women's job to masticate (or
chew) the grains to make them soft. Their saliva contains the same
enzyme that converts starch to sugar. (This is where the trust of your
friends comes in. Maybe you don't want to tell them how you made the
beer until after they've tried it...) For other sources of starch, the
sky's the limit. Potatoes? Sure. Pumpkins? Why not. Peanuts? OK.
Chickens?  Well maybe not. The important thing is not to limit
yourself to doing what everybody else does. You can't learn anything
if you don't make mistakes.

3.  Water

What we call water is actually a rather complicated molecule formed
from hydrogen and oxygen atoms. The structure of this molecule gives
it some rather unique and interesting chemical properties. For our
purposes, the most interesting of these properties is the way that
water acts as a universal solvent for stripping bits off of bigger
chunks and suspending the bits in solution. This type of reaction
happens at several stages in the brewing process, and it is useful to
understand how to make this happen to your advantage.

3.1.  Salts

Before you get the water from your tap, the most common form of
substance suspended in your water are various types of salts. A salt
is also a molecule containing various elements or compounds, held
together by a weak electric bond. In water, this bond is broken,
allowing the salt to be dissolved and the component elements or
molecules to be held in solution. The most well known salt, which is
so famous that we just call it 'salt', is a compound called Sodium
Chloride. It is easily dissolved in water, separating into it's
constituent elements of Na (sodium) and Cl (chlorine). Other types of
salts use chemical compounds to make up one or another of these
pieces. Calcium Carbonate, which is popularly known as Chalk, uses a
molecule with three oxygen atoms and a carbon atom to form a Carbonate
group, which binds to a Calcium atom to form the salt. The salt known
as Gypsum (or in some British brewing books as plaster of Paris) also
contains one atom of Calcium, but instead of a Carbonate, it binds
with a molecule formed from four atoms of oxygen and one of Sulphur,
called a Sulfate. The last salt we brewers must be concerned with is
known as an Epsom salt. It uses the same Sulfate group as Gypsum, but
it joins with a Magnesium atom instead of a Sulphur atom.

Water chemistry is as simple as that. You don't even have to know the
names of the different components of the salts. But you do need to do
a little bookkeeping if you wish to keep track of the amounts of the
various salt constituents in your brew. This is what you need to know:

Adding one teaspoon of table salt to a 5 gallon batch gives 110 ppm
Sodium.

Adding one teaspoon of table salt to a 5 gallon batch gives 170 ppm
Chlorine.

Adding one teaspoon of Gypsum to a 5 gallon batch gives 142 ppm
Sulfate.

Adding one teaspoon of Epsom Salt to a 5 gallon batch gives 70 ppm
Sulfate.

Adding one teaspoon of Chalk to a 5 gallon batch gives 57 ppm
Carbonate.

Adding one teaspoon of Gypsum to a 5 gallon batch gives 59 ppm
Calcium.

Adding one teaspoon of Chalk to a 5 gallon batch gives 39 ppm Calcium.

Adding one teaspoon of Epsom Salt to a 5 gallon batch gives 18 ppm
Magnesium.

The abbreviation "ppm" stands for parts per million. It is a measure
of how much of particulate matter is suspended in solution, whether it
is salt in water or smog in air.

It is often the desire of the brewer to match the mineral content of
the world's great brewing centers in order to better match the world's
great beers. This is because the source of water for say, Munich is
unique, due to the various rock and salt formations that the ground
water must flow through before it is used for brewing. It is also
important to know the maximum allowable amount of these various salt
components. There are other sources to tell you the mineral content of
Munich, or Burton-on-Trent, or wherever, and how many ppm of various
salts are required to match the classic pale ale, but here is my bit
of advice for you that I picked up:

Do not exceed 200 ppm of Carbonate.

Do not exceed 150 ppm of Sulfate.

Now all you have to do is keep track of how many ppm of the various
salt constituents to match the beer style you are trying to achieve.
But there is another method for getting the minerals to match the
style.

3.2.  pH

pH is a measure of the acidity of a substance. There are no limits on
the pH measurement scale, but because the scale is logarithmic (like
the Richter scale for measuring earthquakes), a solution with a pH of
5 is ten times more acidic than a solution with a pH of 6, and a
solution with a pH of 4 is ten times more acidic than a solution with
a pH of 5. Pure distilled water forms the neutral point on this scale
with a pH value of 7. Water that has been carbonated by dissolving
carbon dioxide in it (forming a weak carbolic acid) has a lower pH, as
does rain water, which absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. (If
the rain falls through pollution from car exhaust or encounters
sulphur from steel mill or power plant smokestacks, the water becomes
even more acidic, resulting in acid rain.) But there are better ways
to manipulate the acid/alkali balance of water than carbonization or
auto exhaust.

Why do we worry about pH? Because the enzymes which convert grain
starch to sugar work more efficiently in an environment with a pH
value of about 5.2-5.4. Most grains, when suspended in water, tend to
force the pH to a value near that range, but sometimes we need to
intervene to create the optimal conditions. This is done by adding
brewing salts.

Why is Burton-on-Trent famous for its pale ales, while Munich is known
for its darker beers? It's because of the brewing water's pH. OK, it's
really from the dissolved minerals in the water, but that's what
changes the water's pH. Lighter grains leave a higher pH in a solution
of neutral water than darker, more acidic grains. Water that has a
high concentration of Sulfates is lower in pH than neutral water. Put
another way, water that is high in Sulfates is good for brewing pale
grains in because the resulting pH allows the enzymes to work most
efficiently. To sum up, adding Gypsum lowers pH, while adding Chalk
raises pH. Burton-on-Trent water is high in Sulfates (just like adding
lots of Gypsum), and thus lends itself to the making of pale ales.
(This water also accentuates the bitterness of hops, and therefore is
useful for making very hoppy beers.) Darker grains, and thus darker
beers, are made where the water is high in carbonates. So all of the
arguments about matching water to your favorite brewing locale pretty
much boils down to getting the right pH balance for the type of grains
that you want to use.

By the way, if you're putting your spent grains into a compost pile,
be sure to add limestone or other "sweetening" agent to the pile. The
acidity of the grains will create compost that is too acidic for most
plants.

One more word about salts and pH. Chalk does not readily dissolve in
neutral water.  It needs a slightly acidic environment to be suspended
in (such as grains in water in your mash tun). Limestone is also
chalk, formed into ancient geology from the shells of marine animals
which sank to the bottom of the sea when the critters died. Over the
millennia, these shells were heated and compressed, forming into hard
rock formations.  The white cliffs of Dover are just such a geologic
structure. Water flowing through these structures can dissolve
channels through the rock, leading to long caves that follow the
meandering of the river channel that carved it. Water dripping from
the tops of these caves leave a little bit of limestone with each
drip, resulting in a stalactite hanging from the ceiling, while the
water dripping to the floor of the cave piles up the limestone,
resulting in stalagmites reaching up from the floor. These caves form
natural reservoirs which city folk use to collect highly mineralized
water, all the better to make dark beers with!

3.3.  Tap Water

Because water is such a good solvent, there are often things dissolved
in it that don't necessarily make for good beer. I was pleased to read
a test survey from my local water district that reported no detectable
sources of radioactivity were found in my water.  Imagine my relief.
However, there are other things in my water that I wish weren't there.

Chlorine

Chlorine is used in minute amounts to neutralize any organic matter
that may have leached into the water source. Water that has been in
contact with chlorine for a while, such as that found in your hot
water tank, can be considered fairly clean of contaminants.  Chlorine
should be boiled away before it causes off-flavors in the beer, but
who has the time? If you're worried about off-flavors from chlorine,
boil your water before you use it for mashing. Otherwise, don't sweat
it.

Fluoride

Fluoride is added to the water to strengthen the forming teeth of
young people. It is not a communist plot for world domination as the
John Birchers would have us believe. I have not heard of fluoride
becoming a problem for brewers.

Contaminants

This is the everything else category. Run-off from pastures soaks into
the ground and into the water supply. Excess pesticides and
fertilizers do the same. Oil that is not recycled, gas that spills
from a siphon, intentional spills and discharges threaten our health,
as well as the quality of the beer that we make. This is where each of
us, as stewards of the planet, can do our part to ensure healthy
supplies of water for us and for our descendants. And for our beer.

3.4.  Other compounds in solution

Beer is a fascinating collection of chemical compounds all suspended
in water. Pure water has a density equal to 1.000. Anything added to
that changes the density. The specific gravity and the Baling scale
are measures of the amount of suspended particles.  Before the
invention of these scales, the amount of sugar in a particular batch
was a guess at best. One old method of dissolved sugar determination
involved an inspector with special leather pants. A bit of beer wort
was poured onto a wooden chair, which the inspector then sat on. If,
after drying, the chair stuck to the inspectors butt, the amount of
sugar dissolved in the wort was deemed sufficient. But we have
inexpensive instruments that can measure dissolved sugars a lot easier
than that. Get yourself a Hydrometer. It is the single most important
tool in your equipment kit. And it's a lot easier on your chairs.

Water and alcohol mix very easily together, but they don't weigh the
same. One gallon of water and one gallon of alcohol yields a mixture
of 50% alcohol by volume, or 100 proof, but there is now less than two
gallons of mix. This is because the alcohol molecules fit rather
cozily in between the water molecules, physically taking up less
space. Thus our intoxicating mixture of alcohol and water would have a
specific gravity or density of 0.7939, giving 79.4% percent alcohol by
weight. This is why the question of percent alcohol by weight or
volume must be addressed whenever comparing the alcoholic strength of
a brew.

One last mention about living chemistry. The enzymes that promote
fermentable sugars are very temperature sensitive. Our compromise
temperature of 150-153 degrees Fahrenheit is almost too much for the
little compounds to stand. For some reason, the use of one gallon of
water for every three or four pounds of grain for the initial mash
enables the enzymes to survive and work more efficiently than either a
thicker or thinner grain soup. Not that I'm trying to encourage high
alcohol beers. Instead, I'm trying to help you get the most sugar,
fermentable or not, from the starch that you've purchased from your
friendly neighborhood homebrew supply store.

The boil

You've finally finished draining and sparging the grains in your mash
tun. Now what?  >From here on out, the procedure is similar to the
techniques that you use for extract brewing. But here are some tips
that maybe you didn't know.

When you are draining the rather warm sugar liquor from your tun into
the boiling kettle, don't let the liquid fall too far, or splash up
too much. This leads to what is called hot-side aeration, and can lead
to some funny aftertastes. Rather unpleasant aftertastes.

You should bring the wort to a full and rolling boil before you add
any hops, waiting until after the foam, or hot-break, dissolves. There
are important chemical reactions taking place in the wort even then.
The foam consists of proteinaceous matter that you want to coagulate
out of the final beer. Of course, if you want a thick, full bodied
beer (nutritious, as the Brits would say), then a long boil, over 90
minutes, will encourage the protein to re-dissolve back into the wort.
But there are plenty of non-fermentable sugars in the liquor now,
especially if your mash was held at temperatures above 155 degrees or
so. This long boil will also make the finished beer darker, due to
caramelization and other chemical reactions taking place over time. If
you are seeking to keep the beer nice and light, mash at lower
temperatures, and only boil for an hour or so.

4.  Hops

All right you hop-heads, listen up. Be careful with these things! When
you were using malt extract to make your beers, those small boiling
pots made for a denser liquid than you will be using in all-grain.
Consequently, the extraction, or utilization of the hop acids will be
greater. Especially if you've read the section about adding Gypsum
which accentuates the hops to make the perfect pale ale, your hops are
going to be more pronounced in this thinner boiled beer. If you don't
do your calculations very carefully, you'll be scraping bitter hop
resin off of your teeth long into the evening. Here's how to calculate
hop bitterness in beer.

Determine the gravity of the boil (GB). If GB is less than 1.050, then
the gravity adjustment (GA) is zero. If GB is greater than 1.050, an
adjustment should be made to the achieved hop bitterness.

Determining the Gravity Adjustment (GA)

if GB << 1.050, then GA = 0, otherwise: GA = ((GB) - 1.050)/0.2

To determine the IBU bitterness based upon the added hops and boiling time, use
this handy formula. (percents expressed as decimal equivalents, 8%
=0.08) This is good for boils up to 60 minutes long, after which the
minutes of boil isn't changed.

IBU = (Weight_oz * (minutes of boil/200) * (%Acid/100) *
7462)/(Volume_gal * (1 + GA))

To determine the amount of hops of a certain alpha acid needed to
match a particular bitterness level, use this formula:

Weight_oz = (Volume_gal * (1 + GA) * IBU)/((minutes of boil/200) *
(%Acid/100) * 7462)

This chart of my own construction shows the IBUs necessary to achieve
one definition of "balanced" hop bitterness, based on the original
gravity of the wort:

Original Gravity     recommend IBU
    1.010         4
    1.020         8
    1.030         12
    1.040         16
    1.050         24
    1.060         32
    1.070         40
    1.080         48
    1.090         56
    1.100         64

4.1.     Early Additions

Early hop additions make more bitterness than later additions. Using
more hops makes for more bitterness than using fewer hops. And using
more bitter hops makes for more bitterness than less bitter hops.
Hopefully this is obvious to you. What you may not know is that
winding up with 6 gallons of wort leaves your beer almost 17% less
bitter than you would have if you gotten the 5 gallons that you
planned for. (This is also true of the color of the beer, but that's
not my concern here.) This just goes to show how important it is to
not only accurately design your beer, but also how important it is to
keep to that plan.

4.2.  Late Additions

Hops that are added late to the boil do not complete the chemical
changes necessary to extract all of the hop resins available to the
kettle. Instead, the essential oils that are boiled away in long boils
remain to contribute to hop flavor and aroma. Some hops are well known
for their superior taste and aroma, while others are more suitable for
long boil bittering. Try to match the hops to the style that you're
trying to create.

5.  Yeast

5.1.  Ale Yeast

Ale yeasts are happiest at or near room temperature. Fermentation
temperatures below 55 degrees Fahrenheit will pretty much shut down
most ale yeast strains.  Temperatures higher than 70 degrees for any
yeast will encourage alcohols with higher molecular weight which will
affect the taste of your beer. These alcohols will also increase the
severity of your hangover if you over-indulge. There are some styles
which benefit from these alcohols, and are therefore more suitable for
warm weather brewing.  These styles include: Barley wines/strong ales,
Belgian ales (including Lambic, Gueuze, and Trappist ales), Imperial
Stouts, Strong Porter, Brown ales, and some fruit beers.  Wyeast
#1056, the Chico/American ale yeast is a low producer of off flavors
at higher temperatures, so can be used where other yeast strains
cannot.

5.2.  Lager Yeast

The Wyeast lager yeast varieties have a reputation for not finishing
their kraeusen very quickly. What is true is that successive
generations of yeast will become better adapted to the environment in
which they are raised. Saving your yeast can be a good way to save
money and keep the best characteristics of the yeast that you want.

As is the case whenever you go about dealing with yeast, sterilization
must be a way of life. To wash the yeast, you must have on hand some
very cool pre-boiled water.  (Whenever I boil bottle caps prior to
bottling, I always save the water, cooling it before I need to wash
yeast.) After siphoning the fermented wort to either a conditioning
container or secondary fermentation container, pour some of the
sediment from the bottom of the carboy into a sterile jar with a lid.
Pour enough of the cool water into the jar to thoroughly dilute the
sediment. Secure the lid on the jar, swirl the contents of the jar
thoroughly, and place in the refrigerator until you are ready to deal
with it again (typically after bottling). The heavier particles of
sediment, such as hop bits and coagulated protein, will settle to the
bottom of the jar, while the lighter yeast bits will remain suspended
in the water. I pour this water into a clean bottle and cap it,
storing the yeast in the refrigerator. To re-use this yeast, allow the
bottle to warm to the same temperature as the wort that you are
pitching into. Remove the cap, and sterilize the lip of the bottle
with flame. Simply stir up the yeast in the bottle and pour the
contents into the fresh beer wort. Subsequent generations of yeast
should be better adapted to the conditions in which they are raised.
If you do this with enough yeast strains, you will never lack for a
big dose of just the right yeast strain for the beer style that you're
trying to match.

5.3.  Other Yeast like beasties

There are other critters that want to live in your beer. Some of these
beasties are wanted, most are not. To ensure that the only things in
your beer are the things that you want there, try to develop a
procedure for sanitization that will keep your equipment clean. I
store my tubes, hoses, funnels, and other suitable equipment in a
plastic (former) fermentation container that has a draining valve
attached to the bottom. This stuff floats and soaks in a bleach
solution, which I can also drain into carboys or conditioning buckets
through use of the draining valve. When I'm through with the solution,
I just pour it back into the storage container where it waits until
the next time I need something sterilized. I keep smaller bits of
equipment, such as airlock parts and my bottling siphon hose, in a
smaller bucket, also with the same bleach solution. I have never had
much of a problem with contamination, and I don't intend to start
soon.

Concerning those other beasties. For the most part, bacteria cannot
survive in beer.  The alcohol and low pH tend to inhibit most types of
unwanted critters that live around the home. However, we must be on
constant guard for those type of bacteria that thrive in such an
environment, especially those that can establish beach heads in your
wort before fermentation has begun. Anything that comes in contact
with the cool, unfermented wort must be sterile. The most effective
way to maintain sterility is to boil under pressure. Failing that,
boil wort chillers and spoons in the hot liquor when you can.  Other
items of equipment may be better served by chemical sterilizers.
Bleach is effective, but must be thoroughly rinsed off. Otherwise it
will lead to detectable off flavors. Iodine in weak solution doesn't
require rinsing, and is easier on your carpet if you are accident
prone.

6.  Mystery Ingredients

Before hops were popularized in beer making, the sweetness of the malt
was balanced by what was called "gruit". This tended to be a trade
secret of the brewer, and was often grown right outside in the garden.
If you have a creative bent, especially if you're also a prolific
gardener, don't be afraid to try different herbs for bittering
purposes. If you don't trust yourself, try small batches with new
experiments. Maybe you don't want 5 gallons of hot chilli flavored
beer, or maybe you don't have enough onions or garlic to flavor a
large batch. And do you really like oregano that much?

If I'm going to leave you with one thought, let it be this. Try to use
your enthusiasm for this hobby as a springboard to bigger and better
things. And don't be afraid to do something really stupid. It's the
only way you're ever going to learn anything!

Good luck in your brewing endeavors!