Monster Media 1993 #2/Image.iso/health/beerrec.zip/NEWBEER.ZIP/HOW2BREW.TXT

Text File | 1993-05-04 | 17KB | 319 lines

A Beginner's Perspective of What Really Matters
-----------------------------------------------

My Perspective
--------------
I'm not even close to being an expert at brewing but I've just
passed the 50 gallon mark and in those 10+ batches I feel I've
learned a lot of stuff that was never in any book.  I've used
kegs for most of my batches and have had as many as 3
fermentations going at the same time - usually they were minor
variations on the same recipe.  My approach has always been to
find out what does and what does not really matter all that much.
Whether or not you'll be using kegs, I think the beginner might
find this perspective useful.  Be warned:  Much of what I suggest
is profoundly debatable.  I may sound like I'm saying "this is
the only way to go" when in fact there may be any number of ways
to go.  But my goal here is to remove confusion and stress what I
have found to be the things that REALLY MATTER in making good
beer.

Let's start off with the major equipment list.  Later on, I'll
try and clarify exactly how you'd use the stuff.  But I'm
assuming that you're already somewhat familiar with brewing
either by having brewed a batch or read a book.

MAIN EQUIPMENT LIST
-------------------
Fermenter(s) - Use two 6 gallon plastic buckets with a spigot at
the bottom of each.  Don't mess with the 5 gallon glass carboys -
they do not hold enough, are heavy, difficult to clean and
require siphoning.  Plastic buckets are much easier to use and
are cheap.  You can buy one brand new with a spigot, lid and hole
pre-drilled for an airlock for about $13.  Or you can find one
and install your own spigot.  Spigots for the buckets run around
$1.50.  So the total cost for your 2 fermenters will run either
$26 or $3 depending upon whether you have to buy the buckets.

Brewpot - Don't skimp.  I started off thinking I'll just get by
with a 4 gallon pot.  Then I got into mashing and my volumes got
bigger so I bought another 4 gallon pot.  This really didn't work
out so I eventually broke down and bought an 8 gallon pot.  What
a lifesaver.  If you definitely are only going to be doing
extract-only brews, a 4 gallon pot is fine.  Hell, I'll even sell
you one or two real cheap.  But don't even consider mashing
without an 8 gallon pot.  It can be done but it'll be a mess and
take forever.  An 8 gallon pot costs about $40.

Wort Chiller - For extract-only brews a wort chiller isn't really
necessary.  If you do intend on mashing and/or using an 8 gallon
pot you will absolutely need a chiller.  Buy an immersion unit
(the _water_ runs thru the coiled tubing as opposed to having the
wort run thru the tubing).  They cost about $37.

Sparger - Again, this is not required unless you want to mash.
Definitely make your own sparging equipment, though.  You'll need
two 5-gallon plastic buckets.  Drill a lot of holes in the bottom
of one and put a spigot in the other one.  Some folks have
mentioned having problems with the grist getting stuck in the
holes.  An easy way to avoid this is to put a grain bag in the
bottom of the drilled bucket before dumping in the grist.  The
total cost of your sparging system should come to about $7.50 -
$1.50 for the spigot and $6 for the grain bag.  The 5 gallon
plastic buckets are ubiquitous and easily had for free.

Aquarium Pump - And again, only if you're mashing.  I bought my
pump at Kmart for $6 and it works fine.  Aerate that wort and
you'll get nice, healthy fermentation.  But I wouldn't worry
about aeration unless you boil more than half the wort and I
would never boil more than half the wort unless I was mashing.

Something to Put the Beer In - If you're kegging you'll need a
Coca-Cola canister and a Co2 tank.  My kegs were free (the 7-11
people were very nice about that) and I found a company that
rents me the Co2 tank for free also.  They only charge me when I
refill.  It costs $8 to get a refill and the 20 pound tank lasts
about 3 months.  If you're bottling, you'll need bottles, of
course, and some caps and a capper.  There's also another
interesting alternative that falls somewhere in-between kegging
and bottling - 5-liter beer cans.  Buy four of the 5-liter German
beer cans and a "Beer King" tapper.  The Beer King is a gizmo
that fits snugly in the hole of the German beer cans and takes 8
or 12 gram Co2 cartridges.  I think this setup is great.  The
cans fit nicely in the frige and are portable.  The drawback is
that they are impossible to find empty and full ones cost a few
bucks - I paid $64 for a "case" of 4 Dinkel-Akers.  Of course,
the beer was great.  The Beer King tapper costs about $20.

Other Stuff - You'll also need a variety of other small stuff
like an air lock ($1.50), some plastic tubing wide enough to fit
snugly over the outside of the fermenter's spigot ($3), a rubber
stopper for your airlock ($0.50), and a bottle of Clorox for
sanitizing ($1.50?).


Extract Brewing
---------------
Before you start tweaking your recipes and fiddling with the
subtle stuff, you should make a good, basic beer recipe using
reputable ingredients and use that as a benchmark.  Build any
variations in ingredients and/or brewing style around your
benchmark to maintain perspective.  For example, what if you wind
up with an overly fruity tasting beer?  Was it the extract,
yeast, pitching temperature or what?  Unless you know what it
was, you'll be unable to learn from your mistakes.  And the same
thing goes for successes.  Here's your basic high-quality ale
ingredients:

- 1 3.3 pound package of Northwestern Pale Malt Extract.
- 1 4 pound can of Alexander's Pale Malt Extract.
- 1 package of Cooper's dry ale yeast.
- 2 ounces of Cascades -or- Fuggles leaf hops (full boil).

That's it.  Get about 2.5 gallons of water boiling, add all the
extracts and wait until it starts boiling again, then add the
hops and boil for 40 minutes.  If you have a wort chiller, use
more water in the boil and then use your wort chiller to cool it
down.  If not, don't worry.  It's just not all that important.
Pour the wort through a strainer or colander into one of your
plastic buckets.  Don't use a funnel with a filter in it.  They
are more of a pain than they are worth and the hops will work
like a filter even if you're straining thru something as big as a
colander.  If you have a sink-sprayer, spray cold tap water
directly into the bucket and bring the volume up to about 5.5
gallons.  If you don't have a sprayer, just pour cold tap water
in.  A sprayer may cause foaming so you may have to skim that
foam off and dump it into the sink.  That's okay.  Just don't use
anything wooden to do the skimming - use a large stainless steel
spoon or something like that.

If the tap water was really cold then you could pitch the yeast
right away.  Otherwise, just put the lid on the container and put
in the airlock and let it sit there for a couple hours.  You
don't need a thermometer.  If it feels warm to the touch then
it's probably too warm to pitch.  Just ask yourself this: would I
want to swim in this wort?  If it feels warm enough to swim in
then it's probably over 80F.  Wait till when you can stick your
finger in it and the temperature feels fairly neutral.  That's
right, your finger (preferably not the one you pick your nose
with).  Pitch the yeast dry.  Spray in a bit more tap water ontop
of the yeast to mix it up or put the yeast in a glass, add water
and dump it in, same thing.

Somewhere between 3 and 5 days later, drain your fermenting wort
into your secondary container.  Secure one end of a length of
plastic tubing onto the spigot of the primary and hold the other
end of the tubing at the bottom of the secondary and open the
primary's spigot.  Put the lid and airlock on the secondary and
let it sit another 10 days minimum.  You can let it sit longer
than 10 days if it's convenient but don't go less than 10.

When you're ready to keg/bottle, boil 12 ounces of water and toss
in your priming sugar (1/2 cup if kegging or using German beer
cans, 3/4 cup if bottling) and let it boil for a few minutes.
Pour that into your primary and drain the fermented wort from the
secondary into the primary the same way you got it into the
secondary.  Now, take the tubing you just used to transfer the
wort from the secondary and put it on the primary's spigot and
finish racking.


A Few Words About Sanitation Etc.
---------------------------------
Notice how I never say things like "stick your _clean_ finger in
the wort to check the temperature" or "pour the wort into a
_sanitized_ container"?  I'm assuming you have the good sense to
wash your hands (and containers) before allowing them to come
into contact with your brew.  Just keep things clean and you
won't have to worry.  A good way to clean the plastic buckets is
to just rinse them out, pour 1/2 cup Clorox in and fill them up
with water.  Toss in anything else that needs to be cleaned like
tubing or your airlock.  Let that sit for any length of time you
want (at least 20 minutes but out of laziness I've let it sit
there for a week).  Allow the Clorox solution to drain thru the
spigot.  Then rinse it out and turn it upside-down to dry.
Caution: don't use Clorox to clean anything metal.


About Those Ingredients
-----------------------
The reasons why I chose the above ingredients are as follows.
Northwestern extract is fine stuff and also happens to be one of
the least expensive lines on the market - about $8 for the 3.3
pound syrup pouch.  Alexander's is about the same price for a 4
pound can.  The Alexander's is neutral and will not contribute to
the flavor of your beer so I would not suggest using two cans of
it alone.  But it will contribute to the body and fermentables
and will not detract from the flavor.  The hops I've suggested,
cascades or Fuggles, are mellow.  By putting all the hops in at
the start of the boil you won't wind up with much if any hop
aroma, just bitterness (and just the right amount).  The Coopers
yeast is one of the best dry ale yeasts on the market.  It is
extremely forgiving in that if you pitch at what might be too
high a temperature for other yeasts, the Cooper's will still make
it through without putting off-flavors in your brew.  Use these
ingredients for your benchmark batch - IT REALLY MATTERS.


Mashing
-------
First let's look at the economics of mashing.  If you mash you'll
need some extra equipment as mentioned above and that extra
equipment will increase your brewing investment by a little under
$70 (I'm assuming you'd spend about $25 on a 4 gallon brewpot
anyway so the marginal investment for an 8 gallon mashable pot is
only $15).  But grain is cheaper than extract.  Depending upon
the type of grain and where you buy it you'll wind up paying
between $8.50 and $11.50 for 10 pounds (the "right" amount for a
5 gallon batch).  So, after ten batches or less, the extra
equipment will have paid for itself and you'll have great beer.

On the downside, mashing takes longer.  From start to cleanup
might take 1.5 hours using extracts versus 6 hours when mashing.
It's not like you're constantly working all those hours but it's
still extra time and effort.  I've found mashing to be a great
thing to do in the winter.  Or, if you get home from work around
6pm you can mash in an evening and be in bed by around 12pm.

To make your "benchmark" mash, use the same ingredients as
outlined above but substitute 10 pounds of klages malt instead of
the extracts.  Ask your retailer to crush the grains for you.

Dump the grist into your brewpot and add warm tap water until you
can stir the grist without using too much force.  Heat the mash
for 1/2 hour at about 120F to 130F.  Stir it occasionally to
prevent hot-spots.

After 1/2 hour, raise the temperature to 150F, put the lid on the
pot and place it into an oven that has been pre-heated to 145F.
Keep it in the oven for 1 1/2 hours.

Put the bucket with the holes in it inside the bucket with the
spigot, place an empty grain bag over the holes and put the mash
on top of the grain bag.  After all the mash has been scooped out
of the brewpot, cover your plastic bucket that contains the mash
and fill your brewpot with about 4 gallons of hot water and heat
it up until it starts to steam (about 190F).  Attach your tubing
over the sparging bucket's spigot.  Dump the hot water on the
mash and place your brewpot at the other end of the hose.  Open
the spigot a little bit until you get a slow but steady flow out
of the sparger.  Take the first gallon and gently pour it back
over the grist.  Then continue  with the sparge.  You should wind
up with a little under 6 gallons in your brewpot.  If it looks
low, dump some more hot water ontop of the grist and get some
more but you've basically extracted all the good stuff you're
going to get.

From here on, just proceed as you normally would when doing an
extract brew.  After the boil, you'll need to use the wort
chiller to cool things down before you transfer the wort to your
primary.  Don't do the transfer hot.  Put the chiller in the
brewpot a couple minutes before the end of the boil, turn off the
heat, hook up the chiller and let it run for 20 to 40 minutes.
I've found it helps to jostle the brewpot every 5 minutes or so
to mix up the hot and cold water.  Otherwise, you'll find that
the wort in the bottom of the brewpot is cold but the wort at the
top is hot.  It'll all equalize eventually but jostling it speeds
things up.

After you've transferred from the brewpot to the primary, put the
end of the aquarium pump hose (with an airstone on it) into the
primary and turn on the pump for 20 minutes.  This will cause a
LOT of foaming in the primary.  When the foam gets to the top of
the primary, spoon it off.  You'll need to do this several times
during that 20-minute span.  After 20 minutes, turn off the pump,
remove the hose, pitch the yeast and add cold tap water to bring
the total volume to about 5.5 gallons.  Then proceed as normal.

The only thing that can go wrong in mashing is mashing at too
high a temperature.  That will definitely screw things up.  Don't
let the temperature exceed more than 165F either on the stovetop
or in the oven.  It can get up to 165F for maybe a minute or two
without really causing serious damage but try not to let it get
that far.  If the temperature isn't hot enough, everything will
work but you'll wind up with a thinner tasting brew than most
folks normally like.  My suggestion for tweaking your benchmark
mash is to stick with the same ingredients for a while and play
around with the mashing procedure.  This will teach you a lot in
terms of how different the exact same ingredients can taste when
mashed at different temperatures, e.g..

What Really Matters
-------------------
 - Good ingredients.  There are a plethora of extracts and yeasts
out there and a lot of them aren't worth using at any price.
Stick with what you know and what other's recommend.  If you use
a new yeast or extract that you don't know anything about, don't
vary anything else in your standard recipe.  That way you'll know
exactly what effect those new ingredients have.

- Pitching Temperature.  Absolutely don't pitch your yeast at
temperatures over 85F.  If you're not sure, let the wort sit
overnight if you have to.  It will not get infected if it's
covered.  Pitching at higher temps may cause off-flavors.

- Use a Secondary.  This is especially true if you mash since
mashing creates a lot more trub than do extracts.  In any case,
if you use a secondary you never have to worry about whether
you're racking too soon or too late.  You can wait as long as you
want to do your final rack from the secondary (within reason).
It's better to rack later than you need than earlier.

- Use 6 Gallon Plastic Fermenters with Spigots.  This simplifies
everything from fermenting to cleanup.  The easier things are the
more enjoyment you'll get out of it and the more beer you'll
make.

- Use an Aquarium Pump when Mashing.  If you don't do this you're
likely to get a very sluggish fermentation and the brew will
taste sweeter than would normally be the case.  Aeration
contributes to complete fermentation.


Well, that's my perspective for what it's worth.  It'll all
probably change over the next 10 batches but right now I feel I'm
getting great beer with the least amount of effort and expense
possible.

Mike Boss, CIS id# 72000,2137