The Ultimate Beer Brewing Introduction Guide
“Beer, if drank with moderation, softens the temper, cheers the spirit, and promotes health” – Thomas Jefferson.
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WHAT YOU WILL NEED
You will need a few primary ingredients and equipment in your beer kit. I will explain each throughout the process,
Here is a good brew supply store. For your ingredients, you will need water, yeast, grain or liquid malts, hops, and any extra sugars you plan on adding to your beer. I will leave the amounts, boil length, and additions to you. If you want to follow this recipe, I will include a comprehensive ingredient list on the website at cityprepping.com/beer. I will leave up to you what’s in your beer, but some other possible additions are additional sugars, spices, and clarifiers. I am going to use some date sugar and a clarifier in mine.
DO THE MASH
Mash is the grains used in beer when treated with the water used for the beer. It may look like simple oats, barley,
For an all-liquid malt extract beer, the process of malting and extraction from the grain has already been done for you. The result is either a dark honey-like liquid with a grain biscuit taste, or it is dried into a powder. You will need at least a pound of liquid malt per gallon of beer. If you are using all liquid malt, you can add it and start your boil. If you are using any grain, you must follow a mash schedule, essentially slowly raising the temperature of the soaking grains, holding the temperature stable for some time, then washing them clean with hot water at the end. This mash schedule, as it is called, allows the main enzymes the time to break apart the long stands of starch into simple sugars that the yeast can eat to make your beer. Failure to follow a mashing schedule for grains will still give you a beer, but it won’t be very complex, and the yeast will not be able to feast like they need to. I should let you know here, too, that failing to boil for a full 60 minutes will result in specific components of your beer not breaking down. The result will be a bitter beer that isn’t very tasty or even drinkable.
After 20 minutes, I raise the temperature to 120 to 130 and hold it there for another 20 minutes. The rest in this temperature range allows the protease and peptidase enzymes the time to cut larger starch chains into smaller bits and to break down proteins and peptides. After this 20-minute phase, I raise the temperature again to between 148 and 155 degrees for another 20 minutes to allow the beta and alpha-amylase enzymes a chance to work on breaking the grain water all down into digestible sugars for the yeast. Periodically, because I am using a nylon bag, I continually dip it in and out of the water like a tea bag. If I were to allow the grains to float freely in the water, I only need a method for filtering them out of my final liquid and a means to stir it all. After this final temperature, I want to raise the temperature to 168 to 170 for ten minutes, stirring or dipping like a tea bag to denature the enzymes and shake off any remaining sugars or starches from the grain. If I were to pour boiling water over the grains for this part, it would be called sparging the grains. The spent grain can be cooked into bread, biscuits for dogs, or added to your composter.
WORTS AND ALL
At the end of the mashing phase, you are left with what is called wort. This will become your beer. You must boil it
To this wort, you will add any hops, herbs, or additional ingredients throughout the boil.
HOP TO IT
So, you have to understand that the use of hops in beer is relatively new in beer’s history. Hops likely originated in China, but the first documented use was in the 8th century when Benedictine monks used them for brewing in a
Here, like the mash schedule, you need a hop schedule. As you boil the hops, bittering agents are released, but the floral components and lighter flavor notes are reduced. Hops are listed by their bittering capability. If you add them at the beginning of your boil, you will extract all the potential bittering components but lose all lighter smells and tastes. This is why, just like the mash, you want a hop schedule. I add an ounce at 30 to 45 minutes into the boil. I add another ounce in the last 15 minutes of the boil, and I add the final ounce when I turn the heat off and I put the lid on the pot to allow it to cool. Just like a cook layers flavors in their cooking by adding spices and herbs at different points, the same is true for the addition of hops. By varying the types of hops and the amount of time you boil them, you are adding different levels of bitterness and flavors to your finished beer.
For my hop schedule, you can take a look at the complete recipe at cityprepping.com/beer, but I will leave your hop schedule up to you. Remember, the longer the boil, the more bittering acid in the beer. The shorter you boil them, the more floral and nuanced flavors. For the best-tasting finished beer, you need a little of both.
CHILL OUT
Different yeasts like to work at different and specific temperature ranges. Too hot, and the yeast will die or give off flavors that you won’t want in your beer. Too cold, and it will go dormant and stop working altogether or work too slowly. So, the addition of the yeast is best done at room temperature, in my opinion. I also like to make sure the
The other reason to do this, beyond just proving that your yeast is alive, is that it gives those yeast cells a chance to wake up, feast, and multiply. This provides you with millions more hungry yeast cells to devour the sugars in your cooled wort when that time comes. This will allow them to work faster on eating up the sugars and will also then protect your beer from other contaminants that will also enjoy feasting on those sugars. While that proof is setting up and my boil is complete, I can turn the fire off, put the lid on and let the wort sit in its pasteurized environment while it comes down to room temperature. I could also set it in a bath of ice or cool stream to bring it down in temperature more quickly and to let any solids settle to the bottom of the pot.
I can pour it into my brewing container when it is completely at room temperature. Often, the brewing container is a 5-gallon bucket with a spigot and lid affixed with a bubbler. I use that to transfer my wort into the carboy. I could also use a funnel to get the wort in the container. Once it is all in the container, some people top it up with water to the amount they want. I don’t recommend that because I don’t think the flavors come together that way, and you end up with a watery-tasting beer. Plus, you risk introducing contaminants to your beer. If you believe you are under the desired amount after you boil off your initial amount, add water into the last few minutes of the boil cycle before your final hops, and bring it to a boil again.
If I do top up at all, I typically use spring water to get as natural as possible, so I don’t have to worry about the city adding any unwanted chemicals into my brew. You don’t have to, and that’s one of the reasons you boil it all, so here I am, starting with a base of city tap water and then adding in spring water. There are volumes of literature on pH and how that will affect your brewing, and I’m not going to cover any of that here. Suffice it to say, chill out, let it all cool down until you add your yeast– also called pitching your yeast. Then affix your airlock bubbler or rubber glove and wait.
WHEN IS IT DONE?
There are a couple of ways to determine when your beer is done and ready to bottle. I have found over time that a good rule to follow is to wait at least two weeks after the most visible fermentation has stopped. That’s two weeks after your bubbler has almost entirely stopped. After two weeks, you may see a layer of sediment forming at the bottom of your brew container. This is called the lees. Essentially, the yeast completes its consumption of all the sugars that it can, then falls to the bottom of the container in exhaustion. It isn’t necessarily dead at this point. It has attenuated or eaten all that it can, and then the alcohol level became too high, or the nutrient or oxygen level became too low, and it went to sleep. Many people find out that the yeast is dormant and not dead by bottling at this point. This will result in little bombs.
Some say you should pour it off the lees to a secondary fermenter, and that’s an excellent practice for quality beer brewing, but it isn’t entirely necessary. The thing about the lees is that as the yeast eventually does die, they impart off-flavors and stringent, bitter qualities to the beer. If you are waiting the two weeks, as I suggest, you are between the yeast dying off and the yeast mainly having finished converting the sugars to alcohol. You could, at this point, as they do in winemaking, chemically kill all the yeast. You could pasteurize the bottles to kill off the yeast, but you will end up with a flat beer.
The only accurate way you can calculate when your beer is indeed done fermenting is to take what is called a gravity reading at the beginning of the process, right before you add the yeast, and a few measurements each day after you think it is done. This is done by pouring off a small amount, usually a cup or two, and using a hydrometer. Do not pour this sample back into your brewpot. This instrument is used to determine specific gravity. It operates based on the Archimedes’ principle that a solid body displaces its weight within a liquid in which it floats. For our purposes, it’s measuring the elements heavier than water in relation to the alcohols, which are lighter than water. This is also the only accurate method for determining alcohol by volume. The approximate alcohol by volume (ABV) of the beer by subtracting the original gravity (OG) from the final gravity (FG) and multiplying it by 131. Most 5% beers have an original gravity of 1.050. Because I used grain, liquid malt extract, and the added date sugar, my batch is pretty strong and will be a challenge for the yeast.
In my case, my first reading was a very high 1.090. After a week, the gravity reading was 1.013. Doing the calculations, this beer is a little over 10%. It’s going to be strong. Over the next week, it will tick down a little more to make this batch around 11%.
CRASH IT
Your beer may still have a haziness, especially if you use fruit. There are several methods to remove the haze and get a clearer beer. Some of those methods start with additions to the boil. I have gone that route before. For this batch, I am going to use what is called sparkolloid powder, which is composed of basically chalk and seaweed. It’s a little more complex than that, but I am trying to keep this simple. You could also use gelatin. The goal is to change the ionization and encourage clumping, so the heavier clumps fall to the bottom of the brewing vessel. In my case, I simply need to dissolve one tablespoon of sparkalloid in one cup of boiling water for 5 minutes. When it cools a bit, I add it to the brewing container. After a few days, my beer will clear right up.
You can encourage this process or attempt to get the same results without additives by crashing it. That’s a term that means to chill your finished brew as much as possible. Either surround it with ice, drop it in an icy stream, put it out in the snow, or make room in your freezer. You want to lower the temperature as much as possible without freezing it. The result will be the heavier components falling and collecting at the bottom. You can then bottle the top clear liquid.
BOTTLE & CARBONATE IT
To carbonate your beer, you will want to slightly reawake the yeast by adding sugar to your beer. This is often done
Dissolve the sugar in 1 cup of boiling water and add it directly to your brew at least 30 minutes before bottling to combine. Then bottle and wait another two weeks. After a week, you could check your carbonation levels by opening a chilled bottle. Eventually, the yeast will stop because the dissolved C02 level is too high or the sugars and other nutrients are too low. This is your shelf-stable sweet spot. Chill the beer you plan on drinking in the short term. Store the rest in a cool and dark temperature stable location for a later date.
UNDERSTANDING BEER
Beer is any fermented beverage made from malted grains, water, yeast, and herbal additions ranging from the modernly popular hop to spruce, pine needles, mugwort, and a host of other roots and herbs. Beer is one of the oldest and most consumed beverages on the planet. It was likely discovered by accident when an agrarian society
Thus, beer was born. Since then, different styles have emerged as a result of different methods, strains of yeast, water quality, grain variation, and hop or herbal additions. Even the addition of fruit or some honey changes the resulting beer. The same basic wort can be inoculated with different yeast strains in separate containers, and the result will be wildly different tasting beers with varying amounts of alcohol by volume. Divide the same batch with the same yeast strain and expose it to different temperatures, and you will get similar beers in color, but the taste will be far different. Beer is any fermented beverage made from malted grains, water, yeast, and herbal additions. That’s a broad range of drinks, though it sounds so simple. This is why there are so many recipes and so many styles around the world.
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There is so much to brewing. There are so many nuances and lessons learned over the years. You have to make a few mistakes along the way to understand what you can and cannot do. For instance, much attention is given to sanitation, but I prefer clean over sanitized. Very old breweries in Germany have open fermented their vats in rooms with open windows for years. There’s no guarantee of sanitary with that. Some beers are made by simply placing the wort in a clay pot with a loose lid and putting it in a cool cave. Again, that’s not a sterile process. The main thing is keeping everything clean and then creating an environment that encourages yeast to thrive at the expense of everything else that would seek to destroy your great-tasting beer.
Hopefully, this crash course in brewing gives you the basics of how to brew a batch of beer. There’s so much that I didn’t cover, but that should be enough to get even a novice brewing. I would encourage you to try it, even if that’s a kit beer and kit equipment. You would be amazed at how flavorful homebrewed beer is compared to store-bought versions. At the very least, you can still have a cold glass of beer should the breweries ever stop producing this age-old drink. Cheers.
And, as always, stay safe out there.
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City Prepping Strong Brown Ale
Ingredients
Pilsen Liquid Malt Extract (LME) 7.5 lbs
Pilsner Malt Grain 3 lbs
1 lb. Flaked Rice
1 lb. Rice Hulls
American West Coast Ale Yeast
German Hallertau Hop Pellets 1 ounce
Czech Saaz Hop Pellets 1 ounce
Additional 1 ounce of hops of your choice
Grain Mash Schedule
104 to 113 degrees for 20 minutes
120 to 130 and hold it there for another 20 minutes
148 and 155 degrees for another 20 minutes
168 to 170 for ten minutes
Hop Schedule
1 ounce at 30 minutes into boil (Any hop of your choice)
1 ounce 15 minutes before end of boil (Hallertau)
1 ounce at flame out (Czech Saaz)
Boil all ingredients for a minimum of 60 minutes.
Cool while covered until room temperature or cold crash it to room temperature.
Pour to brewing vessel.
Add yeast starter.