my Process (in a nutshell) for extract brewing

This is more or less for a couple of friends that are considering jumping into brewing their own beer. This was essentially my process for extract brewing. I am now doing all-grain brewing, which I have found produces even better beer, but it also requires more time and technique. Kegging is another (probably even more) worthwhile upgrade because it removes much of the time and effort from the process.. and kegged beer seems to taste better. I still occasionally bottle, but only special batches that I want to last longer.

As with most things, finding a technique that works for you while making good beer will aid in the enjoyment and satisfaction of homebrewing. This was my technique and is pretty standard. So check it out and modify it for your facilities and preferences. I still use several books to aid in my own brew planning, and am always on the lookout for others that I may find useful.

Firstly, as the craft beer commercials on TV will claim, quality ingredients are the foundation of a good beer. This sounds like a cliche, but it is easy to overlook this part of it, and this is one area I never skimp. Specifically:

• Good water. I used to always use reverse osmosis water purchased at the grocery. I have a few 5-gallon jugs that I would get filled up at the store. These days, I have a water filter at home that I use to filter water from the spiggot outside. I still fill up my 5-gallon jugs for measurement purposes. The moral of this story is that good clean water is paramount. Get good water. (There is a lot more science to it that I would only worry about if I didn't like my beer. But this, like most other things in my brewing, I try to minimize the efforts if the improvements are small or negligible.)
• Buy the expensive liquid ready-to-pitch yeast. Again, there are $1 packets of dried yeast that some people use and say it does fine. But I buy the $7 vial of liquid yeast from the fridge at the homebrew store and my yeast does great. Different yeasts produce different flavors, so I buy the yeast that is made for the style closest to what I am using. (If I really want to lower the cost of the yeast, I will brew two batches back-to-back and dump my second on top of the yeast cake left by the first in the primary fermenter.) I only use the White Labs yeast. Others are probably fine, but again, I like my beer.

Some helpful stuff:

• An auto-siphon. This is a mechanism that will aid in moving beer out of a carboy with little to no disruption (like stirring or whatnot). Makes siphoning a piece of cake. Make sure you add a good 4-5 feet of tubing to the end of it so it can reach from a counter-top carboy to another carboy on the floor.
• A beer thief: This is a handy tool for taking a sample of beer out of your carboy. I drop my hydrometer right into it after getting my beer to check the gravity.
• A bucket dedicated to sanitizing and a bucket dedicated to cleaning solution. For cleaning, I use PBW.
• A 6.5 gallon glass carboy for primary fermentation. This provides space for the fermentation to balloon up some without overflowing. Most kits come with a bucket primary fermenter, but it is best to go with a glass carboy one for cleaning purposes and because the smaller hole lowers the risk of airborne bacterias getting in.
  
• Hops/grain bags for adding whole hops. These make it much easier to clean and filter the beer after the boil.
• A long spoon for stirring.

Other helpful tips before starting:

• Mark on your carboys where certain amount levels are; like where the 2-gallon and 5-gallon levels are in the carboy. This is only really needed in the primary. I use strips of masking tape.
  
• When you are boiling your wort, don't put a top on the pot. It needs to release stuff that can cause bad flavors.
• Much is said about the importance of sanitation, but keep in mind that sanitation only becomes important in the steps after the boil. If you get a good no-rinse one-step sanitizer like Star San, then it is mostly carefree. Anytime anything comes into contact with post-boil beer, I just put it in the sanitizer first. Not a big deal.
• After the beer is ready and is at the carbonation level you enjoy, put all of the beer in the fridge to stop further conditioning. If left to its own devices, it will likely over-carbonate. This was a problem that plagued me for most of my extract brewing. Refridgeration is the solution.
  

When first getting started, it is usually best to buy an ingredient kit. I like the Brewer's Best kits. But again, buy your own liquid yeast, even though the kit comes with some yeast. Those kits typically do it right and step you through the process. The process in a nutshell is:

• Take the yeast vial out of the fridge and put it somewhere out of the direct sunlight. It needs time to warm up and get ready to start working.
  
• Heat up about 2-3 gallons of water (your pot needs to be large enough to have some decent boil room - and you will be adding quite a bit of liquid extract). Steep your specialty grains. The kit should tell you what temperature and for how long. Don't boil, though. I typically put the grains (in the grain bag) in with the cold water but start timing it when it hits the target temperature. While steeping, if the extract is in liquid form, put the cans in some hot tap water. This will loosen up the extract, making it easier to pour.
  
• Remove the specialty grains and turn up the heat to boil the water. When it hits boil, remove the pot from heat and add the extract by stirring it in. (You are trying to avoid the overflow as well as a caramelizing of extract on the bottom of the pot.) When you put it back on the heat, turn the heat down to bring back to boil slowly. Keep an eye on it as it starts boiling again.. it will foam up a lot. Blow on the foam and stir to keep it from overflowing.
• Once the extract is added and you are boiling again, add the hops according to schedule. You probably want about a 45-60 minute boil (that's actual boiling time - not time on the burner), so add the hops accordingly. (hops to add at 10 minutes means 10 minutes from the end of your boil).
• Everything that contacts the beer at this point (after the boil) forward needs to be sanitized. I use the star san no-rinse sanitizer and love how easy it it. I keep a bucket around just to use for sanitizing purposes. So sanitize your carboy, funnel, funnel filter, beer thief, and air lock with the sanitizer. I typically pour some sanitizer in the carboy and shake it up a bit. The rest of the items I leave in the sanitizer bucket until I am ready to use them. (I typically make about 2.5 gallons of sanitizer water at a time to use. Requires one fluid ounce of star san (i think).)
  
• After the boil, pour your hot wort into the carboy that should already have 2 gallons of cool water. The cool water should protect the carboy from the shock of the heat from the hot wort. Pour it through a filter in a funnel; this will filter out the trub as well as help aerate the beer for the yeast.
• Add enough water to bring the total amount of beer to about 5-5.5 gallons. Take a sample to use for a hydrometer reading. Taste the beer from the reading and then throw it out. If the beer feels close to room temperature, then add the yeast directly from the vial. If it still feels pretty warm then wait until it cools to about room temperature, then add yeast. Either way, the air lock needs to be used to seal the top of the carboy at all times (except for when adding the yeast).
• Now put the beer in a cool dark place. Keep an eye on it to make sure the airlock has sufficient water in it. It should start fermenting within 24 hours or so. It can sometimes take longer to get started.
  

Probably 5-6 days later.....

• When the foam and top layer of fermenting activity subsides and the airlock has essentially stopped bubbling, it is ready to move to the secondary. (It could also be bottled/kegged at this point and there are many arguments about the value of this, but I always move to the secondary, even if just for a few days. I think it smooths out the beer some.) For me, the secondary is a 5-gallon carboy. I just sanitize it and use the auto-siphon to move my beer across, leaving the sediment at the bottom of the primary fermenter.

When you are ready to bottle....

• First, move the secondary fermenter to the location where you want to transfer the beer from the carboy to the bottling bucket. This allows the sediment to settle at the bottom while you do other preparations.
• Boil about a cup of clean filtered water and add about 1/3 cup of priming sugar. Most kits come with a half cup, but I prefer a little less carbonation. Once the sugar water dissolves completely and boils a few minutes, remove from heat and cover and allow to cool some.
• Wash and sanitize your bottles. I just create an assembly line and wash, rinse, and sanitize them, lining them up for use (or putting on the rinse rack).
• Put the caps you will use in some sanitizer water. (Add a few extras)
• Sanitize you auto-siphon, bottling wand, beer thief, and bottling bucket.
• Take a sample of the beer and measure the Final Gravity.
  
• Pour the sugar water in the bottom of the bottling bucket.
• Transfer the beer to the bottling bucket with the auto-siphon.
• Attach the bottling wand and fill your bottles up to about an inch from the top. Too much space and too much pressure can build up. Go ahead and fill all the bottles.
• After filling all of the bottles, set caps on then and then clamp all of the caps down.
• Put the bottles in a dark closet for 1.5-2 weeks. I usually try one after 10-12 days. 2 weeks is the standard time-period for bottle conditioning.

One of these days I will go into my all-grain technique. The first step in that process is to acquire more equipment....

Last night I brewed again, this one was for Beth and Ivan's wedding. I'll be kind of proud to have my own keg sitting alongside a couple kegs from Ivan (brewer for Yazoo) as well as a Yazoo keg. Last night's beer was another of my bitters but, yet again, with a little variation. This time I added some biscuit malt which had the effect of lightening the beer a little, it seems. My perspective may have to do with it being dark outside, but we'll see what the end product looks like and how it tastes. I would prefer, however, to get a deeper, richer color. It sure tastes good, though. I used a British combination of Kent Goldings hops for bittering and some Challenger for aroma. I also went back to my favorite English Ale yeast. This should be a good one.

I like having 15 gallons of beer in fermenters at the house. Last night I cleaned out both of my kegs and cleaned my keg lines in preparation for kegging on Sunday or Monday. New, fresh beer is always something to look forward to.

Beer Wars
I don't really have much to say about the Beer Wars movie I went to. It was less than spectacular, and wasn't as focused in direction as I had hoped. Actually, it ended up being more about one person's struggle to get her idea/product to market than anything else. There is more to it, but let's just say it all made sense when it was revealed that the movie director comes from the same segment of the beer market as this other lady (with the new idea). They work on fringe products that are less accurately craft beers than fringe beer(malt) products that are trying to get some market share. (The director's brand was Mike's Hard Lemonade. The other lady was trying to sell a caffeinated beer called Moonshot.)

If you are interested in a perspective from someone who is more knowledgeable of the industry, check out this blog. I appreciate most of what he has to say. I think his argument that craft brewers actually "own" more retail space than their actual marketshare would dictate is accurate, at least in the stores where I frequent. A full half of the Harris Teeter beer section, for one, is devoted to craft brewers, as well as a couple endcaps and free-standing displays. I know this isn't anywhere near the case in rural groceries I have been in, but then again, if they had so many craft beers, they would probably just sit on the shelves. I may be wrong, but I think that distributors and retailers will usually stock what has the best chance of selling to their market....

Anyway... I think it is a great time to be a beer drinker with so many options.

Today I brewed (and more).

Today I brewed beer. Today it was my favorite English style bitter recipe, sometimes referred to as an ESB. I call mine the "daily bitter" because it is a beer I could be happy drinking everyday (as long as I get the occasional highly hopped beer to satisfy that craving). The Fuller's ESB is one of my favorite beers and the one that other ESB's are based on. Well, I had been looking for it to be carried locally so I could make it a standard beer to keep around, and this weekend, I finally saw it while at the whole foods buying some brewing water. The irony of this beer's arrival to my local shelves, and the reason I didn't make that purchase, was that each six pack cost $12.99. Crazy. I did contemplate it for a few minutes. Then I looked down at my real reason for heading to whole foods. Brewing water. (The whole foods is the only place I know of around here to get jugs filled with filtered water.) The water in my cart was intended for my own ESB. And I can tailor my own ESB to however I want it to taste. I haven't disappointed myself yet. So I skipped the Fullers and went home to drink some of my own. One batch costs me close to $50 and that takes into account the energy to brew, the cost of water, and any consumables that I use in my brewing process. From each batch, I get 5 gallons of beer, which is a little more than 2 cases. 2 cases of ESB would cost, without tax, about $104. So I am getting my beer at half the price, and it is always fresh from the tap. So if you were looking for a good reason to start homebrewing....

A little more on the money side of it... I recognize that getting "up to speed" costs money, and a decent amount at that, but as long as I keep brewing for, say, 5 years, and I brew 20 batches per year (that's 100 gallons of beer per year ;-) ), that cost spread over that 100 batches approaches negligible (in my mind anyway). And the cost of batches can vary widely. As one would expect, though, the beers that typically cost more to make at home also tend to be the more expensive beers in the grocery. So a high-gravity beer costs more for everyone to make, as do highly hopped beers and beers with premium malts. One area that I tend to spend more money on than some others is yeast. I always purchase liquid yeast vials from White Labs that I can just pitch into my wort after a brew. A vial typically costs about $7, which is a premium when you consider a packet of dried yeast can be purchased for a buck. But I am convinced that the gain is definitely worth the extra money. For this reason, though, it is also handy to time batches in such a way that you can re-use that yeast in a safe (from contamination) manner. I could go further to cultivate and re-use yeast, but then the stress level goes up and the amount of work goes up and to me, that's just not worth it.... I am rambling, but the moral of the story is that I believe that the yeast is one ingredient that should never be sacrificed in the name of the mighty greenback.

The batch I brewed today was an example of re-used yeast. A week ago, I brewed what was supposed to be a California Red Ale (with some interesting hopping). It turned out great, but is less red than I expected. I think it is more of a pale ale, but it is a great tasting beer. I usually do not wait a full week before racking my beer to a secondary fermenter, but this week I was unable to do it any earlier; it all worked out for the best, though. While I was waiting for the mash to finish, I racked that CA Red (pale) ale and immediately sealed up the primary as soon as the siphon was finished. What was left at the bottom was a mess of yeast just ripe to eat on some malt sugars. Upon finishing my boil and cooling my wort (which is even more important when pouring on live yeast) I dumped my new beer on top of the yeast, sealed it and shook it a little to make sure it was mixed up well. One of the best things about this technique is that my new beer started fermenting within an hour. And not just a little, but a full accelerated fermentation. And my house smells great now.

So, back to the money... by using the yeast for 2 batches, the price paid for each just went down.

Note that to re-use yeast, it is a good idea to add some yeast nutrients to the boil in order to keep the yeast healthy.

And now for a few pictures....

I recently moved, so now all of my brewing has moved outside. It is sooo much nicer... but I haven't had to brew in the summer heat yet. Maybe with thoughtful planning, I can avoid it... So here is my new brewery.


This is that California Red Ale that isn't so red. Maybe I should call it a Tennessee Pale Ale?


And this is a nice big 4oz bag of Goldings hops I used in my daily bitter today. Mmm mmm.

Beer Wars

Most people who read this personal forum probably already know about this upcoming beer event, but I will mention it anyway....

Beer Wars is apparently a documentary about craft beers and their fight for a place in beer drinkers' fridges. Honestly, it seems kind of silly to me since it is as much of a war as any small business faces against the larger, established conglomerates, but I think will try to support it anyway, and I am interested in what they have to say. They will be showing this film one night, April 16, all around the nation. Here in Nashville, we have two venue options, Opry Mills and Green Hills.

Something tells me I won't be the only person attempting to sneak beer in for the movie.


Cheers.

American Beer

On my iGoogle page, which I use as my personal home page for my own web use, I have a gadget that tells me how to do things. Some of the descriptions are useful, some entertaining, and others don't deserve a second look. One of today's entries I found particularly interesting. How to Know if Beer is American Made. It didn't have much that was new or surprised me, but there were a few choice bits of information I was not aware of (Like that Bridgeport and Shiner are owned by the same parent company.) Maybe you will find it interesting, too.

Cheers.

An outdoor brew.

Yesterday I brewed a batch of beer outside for the first time, and now I see why so many people choose to go this way.  Using an outside propane cooker, I was able to heat water and boil wort much faster and consistently.  It was even more of a pleasure to brew this way.

This batch was mostly a repeat of batch 13, my Daily Bitter, that I brewed back in November.  That one turned out really well and I would like to keep that beer on tap prettymuch all the time.  I used the same grain bill as in November (Maris Otter with some Victory, Crystal 60, and Carapils malts) but I modified the hops this time.  Last time was Magnum and Challenger.  This time was a couple of ounces of some Goldings (a traditional English bitter hop) for bittering with some glacier for bittering/aroma.  Before pitching my yeast, my hydrometer reading was almost identical to that of the first time I brewed this beer (which I would say is a good thing).

I think more outdoor brewing could be in my future.

So.... an update...

Tonight I bottled one batch and kegged another. So I now have no beer fermenting in the closet.

The bottled beer is the Doble Doble I brewed on Christmas day. As of today, it is showing about 9.5% alcohol. I think that a few months of bottle conditioning will be good for that one, so I may wait to try my first bottle around my birthday (early June). It is a good, strong Double bitter beer. It should be good for drinking for at least the next couple of years.

The kegged beer is a Cappuccino Stout. I brewed it 12 days ago. It is a milk stout that I added some espresso concentrate to. For those interested, a milk stout, also known as a 'Sweet Stout', gets its sweetness from Lactose (milk) sugar that is added to the boil. Lasctose is an unfermentable sugar, so it remains in the final product, giving the beer that milky taste. Because of the large amounts of sugars in the wort, the initial gravity was a little higher than most regular-strength beers (1.070), but the final gravity is also higher (1.034). The alcohol level in this beer is therefore around 4.5%. That is not a precise number (since my hydrometer and personal measurement technique are likewise not very precise) but a good ballpark.

Site changes (yes, again):
If you visit www.mybrewing.com, you will quickly find that it directs you back here. I grew tired of (not) updating the other pages, so I removed them. The kegerator write-up is still out there and the myBrewing link on the right now simply points to that page. I moved the beer legend onto this page for ease of updating and lookup.

Cheers.