#beginner brewing

Are you totally obsessed with brewing? Are you ready to expand your homebrew operation past the beginner stages? In that case, you’ll want to seriously consider three areas of your procedure: milling, fermenting and bottling.

Expanding Your Home Brewery: Milling

A grain mill is one piece of equipment that could last us the rest of our brewing careers, so it’s useful to purchase the best possible product to suit our needs. Let’s start by discussing the fact that we cannot mill grain perfectly without the proper piece of machinery. We can attempt to crush the kernels by blending, smacking them with a wine bottle, crushing with a rolling pin or pounding them in a mortar and pestle, but the result will be disappointing. If the kernels are too thoroughly smashed, there could be a large amount of powder in our grain bed, which can lead to a stuck sparge. If the kernels aren’t crushed enough, our efficiency will fall dramatically.

There are two main decisions when selecting a grain mill. You can purchase a mill that crushes the grain with rollers, or a mill that crushes the grain with grinding pads. The roller method is the most precise method for milling barley as it squeezes the kernel in between two rods before dropping the kernel into a container below. One important thing to look for in a grain mill with rollers is the adjustability of the crushing gap. The more adjustable the rollers, the more useful the grain mill will be in the long run. Remember that you’re buying a product to last you as many years as possible, so consider the fact that you might want to brew with specialty grains in the future that require a different grind to barley so that the adjustability will come in handy.

Roller grain mills will come with two or three rollers. The two roller models are perfectly fine, but the third roller ensures you get a more thorough crush the first time through. Most three-roller models will press the grain initially and then push the kernel to a second station for a more comprehensive crush. This means that you could achieve a similar outcome by crushing grain twice in a two-roller model, but it takes twice as long. The decision is yours.

Grain mills that grind grains between two pads are less reliable and not necessarily as precise, but they have one huge benefit; they’re cheap. The motion of moving the grains between two rough pads is naturally more haphazard than pressing the kernels between rollers, but both methods work. Do yourself a favour and read through some online discussions on grain mills. You’ll find that most people are very happy with the model they have, simply because it is particularly effective or because it gets a rough job done for a low cost.

Of course, you’ll want to make sure you read a thousand reviews of the specific model you’re planning on purchasing to make sure that the product is reliable. Also, consider speaking to the people at your local homebrew store to get some trustworthy advice.

Fermentation

When considering fermenting vessels you have three main options: A plastic bucket with an airlock, a plastic fermenter or a glass carboy. A plastic bucket with an airlock is basically a less expensive plastic fermenter. Both of these fermenters are almost always opaque, so you can’t see the progress of your brew, and both are easy to clean since the lid is very wide. Make sure any plastic you buy is food grade and remember that the surface may be easily scratched. Scratches will allow microorganisms to hide in the vessel after an improper clean, so be gentle. Since the plastic buckets require you to be particularly vigilant with sanitation, it’s probably a bad idea to put beer into a used container. The tub in which you mix your pool chlorine or take fishing is probably unsuitable for brewing, even if you’ve never caught a bream.

The plastic fermenter can be more useful if it has a spigot on the bottom, which can be fitted with a bottle filler (bottling rod) to make the final stages of fermentation easier. The purpose built plastic fermenter will also be easier to transport if it has handles since the people who designed it are expecting the vessel to carry over 5 gallons.

Finally, the glass carboy is the best for storing beer long term. If you’re lagering or souring a brew, or trying to infuse some additional flavor with a secondary fermentation stage, then the glass carboy is the most appropriate piece of equipment.

Be aware though, the top of a glass carboy will be very narrow, so sanitation will only be possible by flushing the vessel out and soaking or rinsing with sanitize. Glass is also less malleable, so you won’t be able to install a tap at the bottom; you’ll need a siphon to transfer the liquid properly. Oh, and DON’T DROP IT!

With all of these benefits and complications to individual products, the answer is simple; get them all. Purchase one of each of these fermenters and you’ll be able to keep multiple beers in separate stages of the brewing process. As you’re expanding your home brewing operation, an opportunity to triple the amount of beer you can brew is a prospect that shouldn’t be ignored.

Another factor of improvement in fermentation is to make sure you have some form of temperature control. This can be a converted fridge, or something like the BrewJacket Immersion. Controlling your fermentation temperature is huge as many yeast strains don’t really like being at 68F and prefer the lower to mid 60s. Temp control also opens up the ability to brew lagers, which allows you to brew dozens of new styles.

Bottling

Now we’re on to bottling. Guess what: just like milling and fermenting equipment, you’ll get what you pay for with bottling gear. You could buy a hand capper for a few bucks and expect to simply refill the empty bottles your mates left at your house last weekend, but when those three fermenters we just spoke about are ready for bottling and you need to get 15 gallons into two hundred little glass vessels, you’ll wish you were more prepared. We won’t discus kegging in this article because it’s probably a little too much for us at this stage. If we’re considering milling gear and fermenters, lets focus on that for now and deal with ball lock systems and aluminium cylinders and in a few months.

We can select glass bottles or plastic bottles. Glass bottles need to be capped, plastic bottles use screw on lids. Glass is better for aging beer, plastic is better if you plan on drinking as much of this brew as you can fit in your belly as soon as possible and there’s a moderate chance that you could drop a beer at some point in the evening. Of course, glass can be salvaged for free from your recycling bin.

Again we’re at a stage where each option comes with its benefits. Can you guess where we’re headed now? That’s right, lets plan to use glass and plastic. Since you need to purchase plastic PET bottles (if you don’t already have some), but they’re simple and practical to clean, prepare and re-use, consider keeping thirty or forty on hand. This way, you can quickly transfer a standard beer into bottles to be drunk soon, then cleaned and re-filled for the next time you want a quick brew. But, glass is much better for aging beers, so store your big beers and the darker stuff you’d like to leave in the bottle for a couple of months in glass.

Another consideration for the social home brewer is that glass makes for a better gift. If you bottle a six pack for a friend, you can give them glass without having to mention, “Can I please get those bottles back when you’re done, mate?” Now you’ll need a capper and, just like the grain mill, you get what you pay for. Luckily, even the best cappers aren’t particularly expensive, so you can purchase something that will attach to a workbench and last you for a long, long time for a very reasonable price.

Having enough bottles handy when you need them might also require a little planning, so consider hoarding all the bottles from a celebration. Maybe Christmas is just around the corner, or there’s a particularly rowdy barbeque coming up soon; either way, put a bin or a plastic bucket off to the side and tell everyone to throw the empties into it. You can soak the whole haul in sanitiser and figure out which bottles have the most forgiving packaging. You’ll find that some labels simply fall off and some need to be scraped away. With this in mind, avoid bottles with foil stickers. These things flake off and the metal shavings can get inside your other bottles.

So now you have a mill, three fermenters and a couple of bottling options for your separate needs, what’s next? What a stupid question, we all know what’s next; it’s time to make some beer.

by Daniel Norrish Daniel is an Australian homebrewer, living on the west coast of the country. When he’s not boiling wort or waiting for brews to lager, he writes novels and watches rugby. Dan prefers strong, dark beers, but he’ll drink anything and he enjoys adding strange and peculiar flavors to beer.

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Up until now you’ve been fermenting your beer in the basement, or in that hall closet that stays nice and cool. What if you want to brew a saison that calls for higher fermentation temperature, want to try your hand at lagering, or even dial in your standard ale fermentations more precisely? You need a way to control the fermentation temperature. Temperature control isn’t just for beers that ferment higher or lower than average. All of your batches can benefit from being at the right temperature at the right time…

If you’ve frequented any online homebrewing forums in the past few years,  you’ve undoubtedly noticed the increasing popularity of Brew In A Bag, or BIAB. This method of one vessel, no sparge brewing leads to a much simpler brew day with less time spent on the mash and sparge as well as fewer things to clean. This can be especially good for brewers lacking the space for a traditional system, or brewers who want to shorten their day but still want the control of all grain brewing.

With all of these advantages though, BIAB does have its drawbacks. Perhaps the most limiting factor of BIAB brewing is a decreased efficiency when brewing beers with a larger grain bill. Some also argue that they see a lower efficiency in general with BIAB. This can be somewhat mitigated by milling your grain finer, providing enzymes easier access to starches. Often running your grain through the mill twice will achieve a grist fine enough to gain some additional gravity points. It’s also important to make sure your water chemistry is in check. Similarly, efficiency can be increased with a modified sparge, reserving a portion of your strike water, heating to 170, and pouring it over the bag at the end of the mash. Lastly, mashing out at 170 degrees will decrease the viscosity of your wort making it easier to drain from the grain bag, bringing more fermentable sugar along. With my setup, I routinely get 78% mash and brewhouse efficiencies when using 12 lbs of grain or less. The efficiency gradually decreases as the grain bill increases.

For my home brewery, I employ a 44 qt Bayeux Classic kettle as a mash tun and boil kettle. I use 5-gallon paint strainer bags to hold and strain the mash. A two pack from Lowes costs $3.78 and fits my particular kettle perfectly. A sleeping bag wrapped around the kettle provides more than adequate temperature stability during the mash. On a 90 minute mash, I lose on average 1 degree during the winter, and the temperature stays steady for my usual 60-minute mash. I mash out at 168F for 10 minutes and then squeeze my bag with the kettle lid, pressing over a bread cooling rack. Pretty high-tech, I know. So let’s brew some beer! Here are five recipes I brew throughout the year using BIAB. All of these recipes are written for five-gallon batches and aside from the Belgian Wit have whirlfloc added at 10 minutes. All recipes call for a 60-minute mash and a 60-minute boil.

  5 Must Try BIAB Recipes

Coconut Oatmeal Stout, Oatmeal Stout

Traditionally the Oatmeal Stout is a full bodied ale, somewhat sweet, and usually a seasonal beer. This Oatmeal Stout, with the addition of coconut, is somewhat out of style and perhaps should be listed as a spice, herb, vegetable beer. The roasty, chocolate flavor accompanied by the toasted coconut is reminiscent of Almond Joy or Mounds. I’ve found it’s usually a big hit with people who “don’t like beer.”

Grains Hop Schedule Yeast

9lbs/66.7% Special Pale

1 lb 8 oz/11.1% Flaked Oats

12 oz/5.6% Biscuit

12 oz/5.6% C60

12 oz/5.6% Chocolate

12 oz/5.6% Roasted Barley

1.5oz Willamette @ 60min

1 pkg US-05

1 pkg US-04

Notes: Toast 24oz unsweetened coconut, no additives, and dry hop in a steeping bag for five days if bottling. If kegging, add bag before purging with Co2 and “dry hop” in the keg. Ferment at 67 degrees Fahrenheit.

OG: 1.062 FG: 1.010 ABV: 6.8% IBU: 29.1 &empsp; SRM: 36

IIPA, Imperial IPA

This is a beer that in some shape is probably in everyone’s arsenal. The Imperial or Double IPA is a high ABV, hoppy beer that remains drinkable. The hop bill for this provides an underlying dank quality from the Zeus hops that is overlaid with super citrusy, grapefruit notes from the Cascade and Citra Hops. The light brown sugar gives a bit of color and the appearance of body through flavor that could be toned down by using dextrose.

Grains Hop Schedule Yeast

12/75% lbs Pale 2-row

1 lb 8 oz/9.4% biscuit

8 oz/3.1% C40

2lbs/12.5% light brown sugar

1 oz Zeus @ 30 min

1 oz Zeus @ 15 min

1 oz Cascade @ 10 min

1 oz Citra @ 10 min

1 oz Citra @ flameout, steep 15 minutes

1 oz Citra, dry hop 7 days

1 oz Cascade, dry hop 7 days

US-05

Notes: Ferment at 67 degrees Fahrenheit.

OG: 1.072 FG: 1.007 ABV: 8.7% IBU: 79.5 &empsp; SRM: 10.5

LKPA, American IPA with Lilikoi

This beer is especially close to my heart and stomach, as it’s brewed and named in honor of my son, whose initials and Hawaiian name were the inspiration for this beer. It is a fairly standard West Coast style India Pale Ale, with Galaxy and Citra hops to compliment an addition of passion fruit, which is known as Lilikoi in Hawaii. Although this beer falls within range of the OG for style it finishes drier and with a higher ABV than is called for.

Grains Hop Schedule Yeast

9 lbs/72% Pale 2-row

1 lb/8% Biscuit

8 oz/4% C40

2 lbs/16% Dextrose

2 oz Centennial @ 30 min

1 oz Amarillo @ 5 min

1 oz Citra @ 5 min

1 oz Galaxy @ flameout, steep 15 min

1 oz Galaxy, dry hop 7 days

1 oz Citra, dry hop 7 days

US-05

Notes: Ferment at 67 degrees Fahrenheit. Add 16.9oz of passion fruit concentrate at end of primary fermentation, 2-3 days before adding dry hops. I use Maguary concentrate from Brazil, ordered through Amazon.

OG: 1.067 FG: 1.006 ABV: 7.8% IBU: 78 &empsp; SRM: 7.7

Rye Brown Ale, American Brown Ale

This may be one of my favorite beers of all time. Brown Ales are immensely drinkable, yet full bodied enough to almost count as a meal. Unlike a traditional American Brown Ale, this beer has a subdued hop presence but makes up for that with the spiciness of a large rye malt addition. Shameless plug, this recipe was adapted by my local brewery, Broomtail Craft Brewery, and has become one of my favorite beers to buy as well as brew.

Grains Hop Schedule Yeast

6 lbs 8 oz/51% Pale 2-row

3 lbs/23.5% Rye

2 lbs/15.7% Biscuit

12 oz/5.9% Chocolate

8 oz/3.9% C60

0.5 oz Zeus @ 60 min

0.5 oz Willamette @ 5 min

Nottingham or WLP039

Notes: Ferment at 67 degrees Fahrenheit.

OG: 1.057 FG: 1.012 ABV: 5.9% IBU: 27.5 &empsp; SRM: 26.5

Sophie Wit, Witbier

I’ve gotten into the habit of brewing beers named after newborns in my family, and this is another one of them. A fairly straight forward Belgian Wit, this uses 2-row rather than pilsner malt, but that could easily be substituted. An excellent summer beer, the wit is light, crisp, and with a hint of citrus and high carbonation is very refreshing.

Grains Hop Schedule Yeast

5 lb/50% Pale 2-row

5 lb/50% Flaked Wheat

.75 oz Willamette @ 60 min

WLP400

Notes: Ferment 67 degrees Fahrenheit, allow to free rise after two days until fermentation is complete. .75 oz Coriander Seed @ 5 min .75 oz Bitter orange peel @ 5 min

OG: 1.047 FG: 1.008 ABV: 5.1% IBU: 16.1 &empsp; SRM: 3.4

  by Chancellor Hellmann Chance Hellmann is an Archivist and Curator for a small county museum in the South East. When he isn’t researching, writing, and designing exhibits he is usually digging around through old stuff trying to learn more about beer and taverns in colonial North Carolina or chasing his toddler son away from a hot kettle. Chance has written about some of Southeast North Carolina’s earliest brewers and the imported beer industry prior to prohibition. Through his local homebrew club and with Broomtail Craft Brewery he has been able to brew some beers in honor of Wilmington, NC’s early brewers.

So you want to make your own beer? You’ve come to the right place, but let us warn you – it can be an addicting hobby! Most of us will agree; there is no greater satisfaction than cracking a cold one that you made with your friends.