Your First Brew!

Welcome back everyone!! Now that we had the chance to talk about equipment last week, and types of beer prior to that, let’s talk about actually brewing a beer!

Brewing beer can be a very labor intensive process and it will take up about 5 hours of your day. Most of your time will be spent waiting for the beer to “cook.” During this time, you will be cleaning equipment and preparing for the next step(s). When brewing, it is important to have patience and not rush anything. This is how mistakes are made, and how your beer will become contaminated. Due to the high amount of yeast sugars in your beer, it is easy for bacteria to attack them and ruin all of your hard work! Below I have included some of the steps you can expect while brewing:

• ·      Sanitize everything
• ·         Crush grains
• ·         Heat water to 160 degrees
• ·         Sparge grains
• ·         Heat wort to a boil
• ·         Add hops at given time
• ·         Cool wort with wort chiller
• ·         Transfer to sanitized growler
• ·         Pitch yeast
• ·         Hide in dark cool place and patiently wait
• ·         Drink beer and enjoy your hard work

As you can see it is very many steps, and that isn’t even everything! Those are just the basics! If brewing is a hobby you would like to get into, prepare for a lot of learning! There are so many different ways to brew, and so many creative steps you can follow. Here is a link to some brewing basics! YouTube

Once you have had a chance to review this handy YouTube video, which covers a lot of what I have taught you, you are probably ready to get started with brewing! Here is an easy IPA recipe you can make: Recipe. I personally like this recipe because he is very detailed and in depth!!

Let me know how you like brewing!  I hope your first beer turns out to be a good one! Cheers! 

Brewing is a lot of equipment!

On this week’s blog we will discuss equipment used to brew.

I’ve heard the saying from a friend that “If you can make oatmeal, you can brew beer.” Well if only it was that easy. My first time brewing I did it on my stove, and it took me a total of five hours. Yes, you heard right, FIVE hours. I have never heard of oatmeal taking that long! Regardless, I enjoyed myself and had fun. Then I had to find out what I needed to brew more than a gallon on my stove. So, let’s get a little technical!

First you’ll need a burner, just like the one from your stove, but portable. This is what you will use to bring your water up to temp.

Here is a link for one that is similar to mine: Burner

Next, you will need a brew pot. If you want to brew five gallons you typically want 1.13 gallons of water for every batch you are brewing. So if you want 5 gallons you should do 5 x 1.13 to find out how much water you need. I suggest having at least an 8 gallon pot for a five gallon brew. This is where you will bring your water up to temperature.

Here you can find a nice brew pot:  Brew Pot

Note they are pretty expensive. It is definitely not a cheap hobby by any means! However, you will notice it has a spigot on the front, along with a built in thermometer. So, even though it is expensive, you are able to transfer liquid easily, and keep a close eye on temperature. Brewing is very temperature specific.

Since brewing is so specific, when you are steeping grains, you want them to maintain an even temperature. I personally rigged an igloo cooler. It sounds weird, but they maintain temperature very well! You can actually buy them premade! This contraption is actually called a “mash tune” Pronounced ton.

Check this one out! Mash Tone

While you will find many tools useful, such as high temperature hose, thermometers, and many others, we will touch on two other pieces of equipment. We will talk about a refractometer, and a wort chiller. Both sound pretty silly. Let me explain below.

First, let’s talk about the wort chiller. Once you have boiled your beer it has now become wort. This is pronounced wurt. Fermentation is obviously the key part of making beer. It is a carbonated alcohol. Well, without getting too scientific, the temperature needs to be right for this to happen. In order for it to be done properly, you need to chill the beer you just made to about 65 degrees. There are many pains taking ways to do this, (ask me how I know, HAHA) but the easiest is to use a wort chiller. This is a contraption that has water flowing through copper pipes, which cools the beer faster. The faster you can cool your beer, the less chance for contamination and bacterial growth (a very important step is sanitizing everything). They make a couple different types of chillers, but I like the ones that you just connect your sink or house to. They are easy and fast. 

Check it out here: Wort Chiller

I am sure this is all confusing! Do not worry!  Next week you will start to see the bigger picture!

Lastly, we are going to talk about a refractometer. When you drink beer, you see that it is 5% alcohol, for example. Do you ever wonder how they figured that out? When a refractometer is how! Once your beer is brewed, you can place a few drops on it, and almost like a microscope, look through it and you will see a scale. In brewer’s language, we call this gravity. There are two types, original and finishing. This just refers to when you check the gravity of the beer. There is a mathematical equation that figures out the percentage (my refractometer says right next to it). They also have apps that do this for you.

Check one out here: Refractometer

Again, this is a lot of info to take in at once! You probably have noticed, all of my information came from Northern Brewer. This is personally my favorite site to buy equipment. They are neat, well set-up, knowledgeable, and easy to work with! I hope you enjoyed today, and feel free to ask questions!

Styles of Beer

Hey everyone! Great to see you again! This week we are going to talk about beer styles. I won’t overwhelm you! We will just touch on the basics. Before we get started, you should know that all beer has 4 very specific ingredients. They are as follows: Grains, hops, yeast, and of course water. Three of the items come in different varieties, which is how you get your beer styles!

There are literally hundreds of styles of beer, you can even become certified in knowing all of the styles! So let’s get started and talk about a few. We’ll limit this to 3 so no one gets confused. We will talk about IPA’s, Pilsner’s and Stout’s.

IPA’s: Well, if you drink craft beer, you have probably heard all the rage that is an IPA.  IPA stands for Indian Pale Ale. IPA’s tend to be yellow to orange in color, but can come in other color varieties as well. They range from session ale, which claim to be drinkable in large sessions, such as being on a boat; You can also get imperial IPA’s. Those tend to have higher alcohol content, and are more of a treat than something you would drink all the time. IPA’s are known for their strong hop characteristics. They tend to be very citrusy, and very bitter. If you are new to craft beer, and new to IPA’s a good one to try is Founders All Day IPA.

Pilsner’s: This is the style of beer most people are most familiar with. This is going to be a “standard” beer, the Coor’s, the Miller’s, The Budweiser’s, those are all pilsners. These have a very neutral flavor, that is meant to appeal to a large number of people. According to www.bizjournals.com Bud light is the most popular beer in the US with 19.2% of the market share. Pilsners are known for being light, drinkable, and going with just about anything.

Stouts: Stouts are a lesser known beer, and among beer drinkers they are said to be heavy and malty. Some people like that, some don’t. If you have ever celebrated Saint Patricks’ day, chances are you have drunk Guinness. Stouts tend to be creamy and dark, with flavors of chocolate and coffee in them. Just like IPA’s these too, come in a large number of varieties. I personally think stouts are the best. There is even a proper way to pour it! Check out this video: 

All in all, beer is pretty neat when you think of all the different styles that can be made from the 4 same ingredients! It is cool to learn all about different grains, hops, and yeasts! I cannot wait to teach you more. If you have any questions, feel free to ask!