Ah, you want to brew beer...

My violin teacher from Boston wrote a book titled Ah, You Play the Violin; I can't think of a better title to kick off this blog about beer, brewing, eating, and everything else out there!  I'm so glad that many of you will follow my adventures...  After writing for Life Told in Recipes, I received many GREAT comments... mostly that my postings were excellent, but when it came down to how to brew and other brewing related topics, most readers were simply lost.  So... here yah go!!  Hopefully, this will be one of very few posts to actually walk through brewing beer... the plan after today is to just be a resource of interesting ideas and topics!

Ah, you want to brew beer... well, it's actually quite simple.  If you can follow a recipe and make, for example, soup, then there is NO reason you can't brew beer.  The basics:  extract sugar with naturally occurring enzymes found in malted barely by steeping in hot water, boil this "tea" with hops to sanitize the liquid and offset the sweetness with some bitterness, and then ferment this liquid with yeast to make alcohol.  Ok ok, it's not JUST that simple, but like I said those are the basics.

Today, we'll go through the basic process for making a Dry Stout, as described in Life Told in Recipes on February 4th.  This recipe is a partial mash, meaning that we'll mash our grains (steep them in water a specific temperature to break down the complex sugars into simple sugars yeast can ferment) and then use a malt extract to give us the bulk of the fermentable sugars.  (Just to clarify, I mostly make beer with 100% grain... known as All-Gran... but as the weather is cold, I'm not doing this outside!!!  The stove top will suffice until it warms up!!)  As I go through the ingredients and the process, I'll try to explain as much as possible... realizing that brewing is VERY complicated, I'll also include some resources at the end for you to investigate further!  BTW if you brew this today or tomorrow, you'll still be able to drink this by St. Patrick's Day (well BARELY... but if you keg, you'll make it).


Dry Stout
6 gallons at the end of the boil, 5 1/2 in the fermenter, 5 gallons in the keg
1.044 SG
1.009 FG
4.4% ABV
41 IBUs

• 2 lbs 2-Row (a base malt with enzymes necessary to break down complex sugars... along with the malt extract, the 2-Row gives us fermentable sugars)
• 2 lbs Flaked Barley (gives us a silken quality to our beer, as well as adds "barley" flavor... whatever that means!!)
• 1 lb Black Roasted Barley (the quintessential roasted malt needed for a dry stout... dark, bitter, sharpness, full of life) - you can crush this a little finer than the rest of the grains
• 3.5 lbs Golden Liquid Malt Extract from Northern Brewer (the bulk of the fermentable sugars come from this stuff)
• 2 oz East Kent Goldings Hops, 4.5% AA (From England) - boiled for 60 minutes
• 1 Pack US-05 yeast
• Extra water for topping off our fermenter

In addition to the ingredients, you will need:

• 2 pots at least able to hold 4 gallons, but 5 gallons or larger are preferable
• Thermometer (I have a NICE lab thermometer)
• Large spoon
• Strainer or colander
• Large grain bag or nylon paint strainer bag
• Fermentation bucket or carboy
• Airlock
• Sanitizer (I started off using One-Step, but now use Star-San)

We can divide our brew day into 3 sections:  the mash, the boil, and post-boil.  If we were just brewing an extract beer (without any grains or anything that needed mashing), we would simply boil up some water, add the extract, hops, cool it, and add our yeast... but this recipe is a bit more complicated!  Since the Barley needs to be mashed, we'll have to make a tea of our grains, hold it at a certain temperature for an hour, strain out the tea, and then complete our boil.

I have found it very efficient to mash at 1.5 quarts of water per pound of grain... So, 5 pounds of grain means we need 7.5 quarts of water, which is almost 2 gallons of water.  Start by heating 2 gallons of water in one of your pots to about 165-170*F (the major enzymes that are involved in starch conversion work best between 148*-158*F... When we combine 165*F water with our grains at room temperature, we're hopefully going to have our temperatures even out to somewhere in this range).  While the water is heating, combine all of your grains in your grain bag (make sure they are crushed by your local homebrew store or wherever you bought your ingredients!) and tie off the end.  Once you've hit your mark in your kettle, turn off the heat (but leave the pot on the burner) and add the grain bag to the pot, making sure all the grains are soaked through.  Check your temperature... if you are above 160* stir with your spoon, if you are below, add some heat from your burner.  Congrats, you are now mashing!  I'm not too concerned on the temperature... ideally you want to have a specific number in mind, but anything in this range will get you starch conversion.  A little on the low side will produce a drier beer, and conversely on the high side, you'll get a beer with more body.


Wait an hour or so checking the temperature periodically... I think I checked every 20 minutes or so.  I also taste the wort (unfermented beer) every step of the way... when you taste, notice how sweet it is.  If your wort isn't sweet, you still need to hold at a conversion temperature.  About 30-40 minutes into your mash, fill your 2nd pot with another 2 gallons of water and heat it up to 165* again.


After your hour, drain your grain bag over the pot... there are all these worries about not aerating your wort when it is hot, but whatever, I've never had a problem.  I set up my grain bag in my colander, with one handle on the edge of the pot and the other set up on my large spoon, which I've placed across the top of my pot.  So you're draining, and eventually all wort in the grain bag has almost drained away... now soak the bag in the 2nd pot.  The purpose of this is to release some of the sugars still on the grain husks; soak for another 10 minutes or so!

Ok, we've now extracted as much sugars as we can from our grains... time to get ready to boil!  Combine both pots together and you should have about 3 1/2 gallons of wort.  For my system, I put these in my big brew pot (even for boiling on my stove) and add a gallon of water to increase my boil volume a bit, but this is not necessary.  Put your combined wort on your burner and crank the heat... it takes a LONG time to bring this pot to a boil!!!  You don't need a super-rolling boil, but more than a simmer, in my opinion.  Once you are boiling, add your hops... in this case, we are doing one hop addition and boiling it for 60 minutes.  Some other recipes may call for different hops or different timed additions... just follow your recipe!  Now sit back and relax and watch your wort boil... just a quick word of advice:  Wort can boil over VERY quickly, and when it does, it makes a HUGE mess... use caution!

After you have boiled your wort for 60 minutes, you need to quickly cool the beer.  We do this for a few reasons, however the most important are 1.) we want to make sure the environment isn't too hot for our yeast and 2.) we want to have our wort spend the least amount of time in a temperature range favored by wild yeasts and bacteria.  The best way I've found to cool my wort is with an immersion chiller, which is a coil of pipe with cold running water going through.  Indoors, this is impractical, at least in a kitchen!!!  Other alternatives are a snowbank (a la John Palmer from How to Brew) or the more popular sink with ice!  Some people say to keep your pot covered, some say to vent a little... I keep my lid on so as not to let wild bugs in!


As your wort is cooling, you need to sanitize your fermentation bucket; we want to make sure the yeast we introduce into our wort consumes the sugars, and not some wild yeast already living in your bucket.  Oh BTW, for all you clean and sanitary freaks out there... there are wild yeasts and bacteria ALL around us, no matter what you spray on your counter tops.  I'm just saying...  I personally use Star-San to sanitize all of my equipment, but I have used One-Step in the past; both are good products.  (I switched to Star-San simply because I've increased the amount of beer that I'm brewing, and the Star-San will last for two weeks or even longer depending on conditions)  You should also sanitize your packet of yeast, the airlock, the scissors you'll use to cut open your packet of yeast, and anything else that might come into contact with the wort-soon-to-be-beer.

We're almost done - once the wort is cooled, pour it into your now sanitized bucket... You can take the lid off the bucket and put it on the counter; better yet, spray the counter down with sanitizer and EVEN better, put some plastic wrap down and spray THAT with sanitizer (yes I go that far.. I have sanitary issues... at least with my beer).  As you pour the wort from your cooled pot to the bucket, this will be enough to aerate and introduce oxygen into the wort (long story short, yeast need oxygen during the first process of fermentation).  Make sure to NOT pour in the hop matter that has fallen to the bottom of your kettle by now.  As our recipe is for 5 1/2 gallons of beer in our fermenter (and we only boiled about 3 1/2 - 4 gallons), we now need to top off our fermenter with extra water.  I suggest natural spring water, but tap water works just as well... make sure you sanitize the faucet before holding it over your wort!

OK... add your yeast (you remembered to sanitize the packet AND the scissors, right?), seal up your fermenter, make sure your airlock is in place with sanitizing solution or rubbing alcohol in the chamber.  There are those out there who are probably yelling at me for not hydrating my yeast... yes yes, dry yeast should be hydrated, but if this is one of your first batches and you've already done so many new things today, this is one small detail which can be overlooked... we'll get it next time!!!

For US-05, I think any fermentation temperature in the lower 60*F's will be fine.  I ferment this in my basement which is 62* right now... I'll assume that the yeast will generate enough heat to bring that temp to 66*F or so.  (Other beers, I control the temperature in a variety of ways)

Et voila... BEER!!!  Packaging your beer is a whole bigger issue... we'll get into it in detail some other time!  For those who bottle, reduce the amount of sugar solution by half so as not to over carbonate your beer.  Those who keg (like I do with 99% of my beers), shoot for 1.5 vols of carbonation.  Serve from Nitrogen if you can!!!!!!!!