#making beer

Dry hopping using a hop sphere to infuse the beer with amazing hop aromas and flavours.

Watch us using a hop sphere https://youtu.be/wyWts8VWo4w

Order a hop sphere - https://www.brewbitz.com/search?q=Sphere

OK, I’ll admit to being what could be called an “advanced beginner”- so far, all 20 of the batches I’ve made (not bad for 11 months work!) have started with either LME or DME, otherwise known as Liquid Malt Extract and Dry Malt Extract.  This differs from how the REAL guys make it in that I skip the whole front-end part of brewing, both out of laziness and ignorance. That being said, let me describe the ENTIRE brewing process:

It begins with barley. It’s a nice compact grain, and people over the millennia have discovered that roasting sprouted barley to different degrees imparts different flavors to the end result.  A light roast (10-20L) gives a light color and crisp, grainy flavor, medium roasts (30-60L) impart a golden color and caramel flavor, darker roasts (80+L) impart progressively more burnt flavors and darker colors- from chocolate on the lighter end to burnt coffee on the darker end.  

I’ve ignored other grains, but should not.  Asian brewers (and Budweiser) use rice instead of barley; wheat is similarly used for a category of beers known as Weiss or Wit beers.  Both impart characteristics unique to the grain, but the end result is the same.

A savvy brewmeister will be able to mix the grains in such a way as to impart a bright first flavor, a full mouth in the middle, and a lingering aftertaste of whatever he desires. Often, several different grains are used- from light to dark, depending on the desired outcome.

The grain (being more generic) needs to have its complex sugars in the cotyledon broken down to simple sugars for yeast to work on them.  Fortunately, all the grains I’ve mentioned have all the necessary enzymes built into them to do this work.  All they need is the proper temperature, water, and time.  

Step one of brewing is called the mash.  It’s that mixture of grains added to a kettle into which is poured hot water. Depending on the type of mashing you want to do (and there are several different ones), it’s either all poured in at one time and temperature or added in different temperature ranges to activate different enzymes and improve the conversion percentage.  A great conversion percentage is around 80%; most home brewers are happy with a 70-75% conversion.  But I digress.  For home brewers, this mash kettle (officially called a mash tun) is a cooler, to better keep the temperature where you want it.  You see, the water has to inundate the grains for an hour or more at 150 degrees before the conversion from complex sugars to simple sugars is complete.  

Step two of brewing is called the sparge.  After the mash is done, it’s slowly drained off the grain bed.  The grain bed itself acts as a filter, keeping the mash liquid clear.  Hot water is added at the top of the tun to equalize the mash liquid being withdrawn from the bottom; it is done to rinse the grains of their sugars and improve the efficiency of the conversion.  

Step three of brewing is where I come in- the brewing process itself.  This mash and sparge water are boiled, hops and whatever else you want to add is added, and then cooled as quickly as possible (to minimize the likelihood of bacterial infection) to the happy temperature for yeasts.  For Ale yeasts, that’s between 65-75 F; for Lager yeasts it’s between 45-50 F.  When I buy DME or LME, I’ve given the grain mixing and mashing control over to someone else.  What I gain in convenience, I lose in control of grain selection.  

Yeast- lager vs. ale: Lagers are brewed at lower temperatures than ales.  In general, an ale brews at room temperature, lagers require refrigeration unless you live in a cold climate that you can semi-control.  Lagers take longer to brew as well- the cooler temperatures mean that the yeast doesn’t work as fast, so instead of a week of fermenting, it can take 2-3 weeks.  “Lager” in German means “stored”, which is what you have to do with these.  Again I digress.  The Lager yeast is also a different strain of yeast than its ale yeast cousin; this one works at the bottom of the fermenter, while ale yeasts work at the top.  

What is the flavor difference?  A lager beer will be lighter and crisper than its ale cousin.  That’s partly due to the grain selection, but also due to the lower temperature used in fermentation.  Ales are generally heartier fare all the way around.  

OK, so now we’ve boiled the mash, added the hops and whatever else you wanted to add, chilled it and added the yeast.  Now what? Now it’s time to wait.  The beer is moved to a sealed container that lets CO2 out but nothing else in.  It’s called a fermenter, and comes in many different shapes and sizes.  I use plastic carboys, slightly different than what 90% of beginner brewers use.   Depending on the beer formula, the fermentation can be extremely vigorous, blowing up a standard air lock with the krauesen generated during the first part of the fermentation.  That’s a scummy, frothy mess that sits on top of the beer (but is really necessary to remove bitter proteins from the end result).  I use a blow-off hose instead of an air lock; it’s a big fat tube that works as an airlock without the problem of it blowing up.  

Fermentation takes about a week.  In the summer months and colder winter months, it’s a good idea to control the temperature.  I use a tub of water, which tends to stabilize the temperature.  In the winter, I’ll have to use a heater to keep my beer at the “right” temp, but in the summer, I do it through evaporative cooling and it seems to work out well.  Getting fermenting beer too hot is bad.  The yeast can die and the resulting death chemicals are reportedly very foul-tasting.  Conversely, an ale that’s too cold just won’t ferment.  You can leave it there for a small eternity, and sooner or later the bacteria that you’ve battled for so long will win.  Result: yuck.  

Then, most ales get what’s called a secondary fermentation.  The beer is drained from one fermenter to another, leaving most of the yeast and sediment at the bottom of the first fermenter; it’s called trub. Sometimes, especially with IPA’s and APA’s, hops are added to this secondary fermentation in a method known as dry-hopping.  Adding hops at this stage imparts a very bright, strong hop flavor that goes over and above what’s done when hops are added in the boil.  If you love hops, you’re probably drinking dry-hopped beers.

The beer sits in secondary 1-2 weeks.  Then it’s bottled or kegged.  But the story doesn’t end there!  

Bottling beer as-is would result in a flat alcoholic beverage that tastes like beer but with no fizz.  While that’s admirable, it’s not really beer.  Sugar is added to the beer before it’s bottled- just enough to kick the yeast into gear one last time, this time to capture the CO2 (it dissolves in the beer) and ignore the little bit of alcohol produced.  When you open a beer, the CO2 comes out of solution, generating a nice fizzy feel to your mouth and a creamy head on the beer.  Kegged beer cheats- they add CO2 to the keg from an outside source.  “Nitro” beers have a mix of CO2 and Nitrogen as the dissolved gas.  The Nitrogen is less soluble than CO2 in water, so makes a cool cascading effect in the glass as it comes out of solution.  

Almost done!  Most beers benefit greatly from a thing called “conditioning”.  That means that the yeast, though greatly reduced in numbers, still has some work to do. Now that they’ve eaten all the easy stuff to eat, now they go to work eating some of the other stuff- oligosaccharides, proteins, secondary waste products.  The beer benefits from their efforts by becoming more clear and flavorful- oligosaccharides contribute to cloudiness, proteins and secondary waste products contribute to bitterness and a slightly fishy flavor.  This “conditioning” can take a month or more; if you’re impatient you can still sample your final product, but know that it’ll be better with a little time.  Some beers, especially Belgian lambics, are stored for a YEAR or more. To be honest, I don’t have the patience!

Dwanye makes beer.

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Toilet water to craft beer for Stone Brewing

Stone Brewing Co.’s latest sudsy creation earned a quick nickname: “Toilet to tap.”

That’s because the Escondido brewery’s new craft beer is made with treated wastewater.

The brave souls who taste-tested the Full Circle Pale Ale on Thursday were flush with excitement, calling the beer “delicious,” “hoppy” and “outstanding,” according to local media reports.

“It is fantastic,” San Diego Mayor…

Who says winning beers can't be in existence brewed from your owned residentiary? Home beer in production can potentially trigger your uniqueness to greens nice tasting beers. As them discover the science of beer brewing, you evolve into somebody who could make world-class beer recipes which delight in much turn upside down otherwise those available on the shelves.<\p>

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One example is, getting familiar with other ways of beer brewing raises your knowledge in percolate and all-grain brewing and also in more complex brewing methods. This helps they serendipity out which beer taste best. Your growing knowledge on the lineaments of ingredients means that you derriere prefabricate high-quality beers. Your brewing experience will ultimately turn you into a guru. Certainly, it could take time, nevertheless, alter ego crave have jolly brewing and experimenting as you escort yea. <\p>

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Making beer normally takes four weeks. At all events, from boiling time until such time that it becomes beer are different based on the style of beer you want toward go. Yes, it is authentically exciting to mantle on the very first bottle of your dear batch, even don't forget that waiting around for its maturity could make it far more moneymaking. <\p>

My kitchen has been largely dormant these last few weeks. Usually the onset of autumn triggers my culinary gland into action and pushes me to max out every square cubit of counterspace and all four burners. But this season has been a slow one for a few synergistic reasons. I’ve been deep into three projects, essentially working a job and a half under deadline while driving to the cusp of publishing my first poetry collection (out on Kindle now, soon to be in print). Along the way, I found myself considering starting up a small publishing company based on the response I got from two colleagues at a recent reading, both of whom asked how I got into self-publishing and wound up asking if I’d make their books happen. So I have another project churning even as I put the print edition to bed and prep for a minor book tour, with LLC papers to file, workspace to secure, plans and plans and plans.

Also, I reincarnated TreeHouse BrewWorks, which is a schmancy way of saying I whipped up two batches of homemade beer over the last two months, and keeping the kitchen at a steady temperature has been essential to not having either of them (a hybrid porter/winter ale called Volar Portex plus one currently in the fermenting tank that should come out as something like an ESB with the malt turned up a little) turn skwonky. Tomorrow is bottling day, and the next batches will use a lager yeast that loves lower temperatures than my standard ale-making critters, which means I can move the fermenters into a cooler space that keeps at a steady 60-65 degrees - and allow the kitchen to go a little infernal when needed.

Thanksgiving weekend, though, is a time for cooking one’s ass off, and I managed to stumble through a Bien Cuit-style loaf of bourbon bread (which I nearly burnt but managed to save through some intensive crust intervention), some emergency cornbread in the event that I couldn’t save the bread and which my 15 year old son described as tasting like plastic on top of cardboard, and the cranberry-orange relish/sauce/jam that used to get me laid on a regular basis (and yes, when it’s good it’s that good). And although I broke my favorite coffee mug in the process, I was able to remember that a lame day cooking is better than a good day being lame.

At the moment the low-bid contractor crew is renovating the apartment upstairs, the landlord’s brother having vacated it. They’ve been going at it for about a week now, and I’ve got right of first refusal on it once it’s done (and after they’ve stopped knocking the building’s wi-fi offline by unplugging the router every now and then). It’s about the same size as my current place, but with a deck out back, and possibly an open kitchen. Next week I’ll have a look at it, so I will hold off on starting my next two beer things (a black IPA and another attempt at making a Gruit) in case I need to transport the fermenting tanks upstairs (they don’t like traveling while incubating the Precious). 

Today’s plans are more of the same: tweaking the layout on the book and sending off for a proof copy, collating proposal info for next year’s contract negotiations at the college, looking at workspace options and small business banking and submitting some new(er) poems for publication and not giving a flying fahrvergnugen whether or not they get accepted, because soon enough I’ll be able to to publish them on my own. Then it’s off to the Clark Park Farmer’s Market, a date with Don Memo’s taco truck, and before the cold rain comes I’ll be cooking what needs, demands, aches to be cooked this afternoon while bottling the ESB and maybe even designing some labels for the bottles (so I don’t confuse the winter/porter with the malty bitters).

It’s National Drink Beer Day!

*this is a sponsored post and I could earn a commission should you make a purchase off of this site

So, I know my blog doesn’t actually have anything to do with beer, but today is National Drink Beer Day, and I felt that it couldn’t go ignored.

In honor of that, here’s a toast to you, from me, with a beer from one of my favorite breweries, Mayday Breweryin Murfreesboro, TN (this pic was actually…