Improvise Your Own Beer Recipe

Okay, you’ve brewed a batch or two, and been mostly successful. You ended up with (very) drinkable beer and now you’re thinking that this not all that hard and you should probably try to start making it “your own.”

You’ve trolled the beer brewing websites and online forums, but the formula for crafting your own unique (and – it goes without saying – awesome) brew continues to elude you. How do you do it? Where do you go from here?

Here’s where you begin:

Assume five gallon [18.93 liter] batches (everything I’m about to divulge here is based on 5-gallon, extract-based batches).

For extract-based brewing (the only kind I discuss on this blog) you need to think in terms of controlling four elements -

• Yeast
• Malt extract
• Grain
• Hops

a batch of beer waiting to be set free

Yeast: The yeast you use to ferment is by far the most influential ingredient when it come to the taste of the finished product. Some books and websites will tell you otherwise. But trust me. Seriously. With the right yeast you can make convincing Belgian ale out of apple juice from Target. You can further influence the flavor and aroma by your pitching rate, fermentation temperature, hopping, and so on. But start with the yeast based on the style you’re going for, and everything else is gravy. I use primarily Wyeast products (check out their handy strain guide).  Here’s my quick round-up of the yeast styles I commonly use:

• Wyeast #1214 “Belgian Abbey” heads you in the general direction of Chimay, Lefe, etc.
• Wyeast #3068 “Weihenstephan” heads you in the general direction of European style hefeweizens.
• Wyeast #3944 “Belgian Wit” heads you in the general direction of Blue Moon, Shock Top, and Hoegaarden (but with a more intense coriander flavor).
• Wyeast #1084 “Irish Ale” heads you in the general direction of Guinness.
• Wyeast #1056 “American Ale” heads you in the general direction of all of the American ales and IPAs, including Ranger IPA, Dead Guy Ale, etc.

Once more: When creating your own recipe, begin with the yeast, based on the style you’re going for.

Malt extract: This is the body of your beer. The malt extract determines the underlying taste, mouth feel, color and alcohol content. When brewing with malt extracts, you have basically two decisions to make:

• Liquid or dry? Liquid Malt Extract and Dry Malt Extract (LME and DME, respectively) are identical in terms of the final product. However, you have have to keep in mind that since liquid is generally heavier than powder, it will take more LME to achieve the same sugar content (“gravity”) as DME. There are plenty of complicated formulae for determining the conversion, but basically, for a 5-gallon batch start with 6 lbs of DME and 8 lbs of LME.
• Color? Whether liquid or dry, come in the following options, in order from lightest to darkest: Pilsner, Gold, Amber, Brown, Dark.  Wheat malt extract falls somewhere between Gold and Amber. Some stores carry a Chocolate malt extract, which would be in the very dark category.

Grain for steeping and whole-grain brewing are generally ranked by a number which represents how roasted they are. For example .40L or .15L. In general, the higher the number, the darker the roast. .01L would be very light, .50L would make a nice amber ale, and 1.0L or higher would be getting quite dark.

Plan on 1 lb. of grain for a 5-gallon batch of extract-based beer.

Color? Color is determined by the combination of grain you use during the steeping step, and the color of the malt extract you use as the body. For a light (yell0w) beer, go with Pilsner malt extract and light/low-numbered grains. For a dark beer, go with darker malt extracts and darker/higher-numbered grains. It can take some practice to get the color right. But after the third round the color doesn’t typically matter so much.

Hops. There is a lot to know about hops. There are pages and pages online about hop profiles, there are iPhone and Droid apps for calculating hopping rates. Doctoral dissertations have been written about hop profiles. There are books written about IBUs and what it means when a particular variety of hop is “high alpha.” But for those mere mortals out there with real jobs and limited attention spans, trying to make a beer recipe on the side, here’s what you need to know:

For a five-gallon batch, plan on 1.5 oz. of hops: 1 oz. for aroma, .5 oz. for bittering. Put the aroma hop (1 oz.) in at the beginning of the boil and leave it there for the entire time. Put the bittering hop (.5 oz) in for the final five minutes.

Of course you can choose any hop you like, but in general:

• For American styles, go for American hops like Chinook, Northern Brewer, Willamette, Mt. Hood…
• For British styles (London Ale, Irish stout, bitters), go for East Kent Goldings, Stryian…
• For European styles (Trappist, Hefeweizen…), go for “Noble” hops: Hallertauer, Tettnanger, Saaz, Spatz.

And there it is. You’ve covered the four elements. Assuming you’ve been paying attention, a sample basic ale recipe would look like this:

• 1 lb. grain (crystal), cracked.
• 6 lbs. DME (8 lbs. LME).
• 2 oz. hops (1 for aroma, .5 for bittering (but they typically come in 1 oz. bags, so you just have to buy 2).
• 1 package yeast
• 6 gallons of water (allows for 1 gallon of boil-off).

Applying this basic foruma, a light or “blonde” American ale recipe might be:

• 1 lb. .10 L crystal
• 6 lb. Pilsner DME
• 1 oz. Northern (aroma), .5 oz Chinook (bittering)
• 1 package Wyeast #1056 “American Ale”
• 6 US gallons of tap water

the blonde ale recipe looks like this…

Or, using the same basic formula, an Irish Stout recipe might be:

• 1 lb. “Extra Dark Roast” crystal
• 6 lb. Dark DME
• 2 oz. East Kent Golding (1 oz. aroma, 1 oz. bittering) (stout wants to come out sweet, so maybe bitter a bit extra)
• 1 package Wyeast #1084 “Irish Ale”
• 6 US gallons of tap water.

Finally, be patient. Do one batch, let it age, taste it. Brew it again, but change one variable (one of the four elements). Take notes, take pictures, be meticulous about making the process the same every time. I typically brew three to four batches of approximately the same recipe back to back so that I can compare.

Too dark the firs time? Try a lower numbered grain or go with lighter malt extract. Not hoppy enough? Add hops (.5 oz at a time), try a more intense hop, or bitter more. Color and hopping is about right, but character is still off? Switch up the yeast.

Keep trying until you get the result you want. It’s ‘way worth it. Cheers!

the stout recipe above looks like this…

Chill

By now you’ve successfully brewed a few batches. You’ve impressed yourself and maybe also the neighbors or friends at work. Your wife has mostly made peace with you tying up the garage and the dishwasher for a couple hours per month.

You’re starting to think that this home-brewing thing might be a bit more than just a teenage crush, and maybe it’s time to take things to the next level. You start to think about more and better brewing equipment…

Before you drop too much coin on a fancy stainless steel brewpot (aluminum works just fine) or that 6.5 gallon glass carboy (6 gallons is all the headroom you need for 5 gallon batches), think about a wort chiller. Your carefully boiled wort is never more vulnerable to infection than right after the boil as it sits in your brewpot waiting to cool down to the 70-75 degrees F. required for pitching your yeast. Wort left to simply cool in the ambient temperature can take up to 24 hours to reach 70 deg. F., depending on the weather. The cold water and ice treatment can take 3 or even 4 hours, depending on how much ice you use. But with a submersible wort chiller, you can have your wort ready for transfer to the carboy and yeast pitch within as little as 30 minutes.

Commercially produced wort chillers can run you as much as $70 USD or more(!). But before you go buying one online from Amazon, consider that you can make one yourself for a quite a bit less, with parts from Home Depot or Lowes. Here’s what you need:

• 20 ft. coil of 3/8 in. copper tubing.
• 10 f. coil of clear plastic flexible tubing (large enough to fit snugly over the copper tubing).
• 4 small hose clamps
• 2 garden hose “spray nozzles” (see picture)
• Optional: garden hose valve.

everything you need to make your own wort chiller

Very carefully bend the copper tubing to make a vertical coil about 10 in. diameter. Run the bottom end of the tubing up through the inside, then bend both ends so that they make a small arch (see photo). It’s important to bend the copper tubing very carefully so that you don’t collapse it.

coil the tubing; bend a gentle arch on each end…

Once your copper tubing is coiled and bent as shown, cut the clear plastic tubing in half (end up with two 5 ft. lengths). Carefully work the end of one piece of clear plastic tubing over one end of the copper tubing. Secure it in place with a hose clamp (don’t over-tighten). Do the same thing with the other piece of clear plastic tubing and the other end of the copper tubing.

secure the plastic tubing in place with a hose clamp (one will work just fine – my friend Mike was an over-achiever here…)

Do the same thing with each free end of the clear plastic tubing and the garden hose spray nozzles.

Secure the garden hose “spray” nozzle with a hose clamp. This one has a garden hose on/off valve added.

Your homemade wort chiller is now ready to use. You can add a garden hose on/off valve to one end if you want. This just makes it easier to control the water flow through the wort chiller, but of course it will still work just fine without it.

To use your wort chiller, you just put it into the brew pot long enough before the end of the boil so as to totally sanitize it. I usually put it in about 30 minutes before the end just to be certain. Make sure the arched ends of the copper tubing hang over the edge of the brew pot, and that the clear plastic tubing does not touch either the pot or your stove or fryer (whatever your heat source is), as it will melt.

make sure the arched ends of the copper tubing hang over the edge of your brew pot.

As soon as you’re finished with the boil, turn off the heat, attach your garden hose to the spray nozzle at the end of one of the clear plastic tubes (IMPORTANT: if you’ve added the optional garden hose on/off valve, be sure to attach your garden hose to that end!).

Slowly turn on the tap to get water moving from the garden hose through your wort chiller. Be careful because the water coming out the other end will be very hot! I use it to wash out everything I’ve used up to then – stirring spoon, grain and hop bags, etc. Once the water coming out the open end of the worth chiller starts to feel cool, you can lift the wort chiller up and down and swish it around.

Use a sanitized thermometer to check the temperature of your wort. It should take about 20-30 minutes to cool it down to 70-75 degrees F. Once it’s cooled, remove the wort chiller, pour your wort into a carboy or fermenter, and pitch yeast.

Easy!

Cloning Duvel – Part II

The results of my first attempt to copy Duvel with an extract-based recipe.

(Remember, the recipe)

Here’s how my version looked:

Not too bad. Forgive my pride, but the photograph doesn’t do it justice. This is actually a very pretty beer in real life! Very clear (for unfiltered), and very rich color.

Here’s real Duvel, just minutes later, on the same day:

And… while of course you can see that they’re not quite the same color, for the sake of easy comparison, here they are side by side:

real Duvel on the left; my first attempt copy on the right

Color: obviously, my copy is darker and less bright. This is partially a result of the fact that I’m brewing with extracts, partially a result of the fact that I’m sub-micro brewing (five US-gallon batches inherently have more sediment per bottle, than mass-produced). Next time I might bump up the corn sugar, reduce the DME, and reduce or eliminate the 1.1L crystal to lighten the overall color. I might rack once more at, say 11 days, to increase clarity.

Head: You can see a difference in head retention. This is partially a result of the fact that I poured my copy first, and then let it sit for several minutes while I photographed real Duvel, before putting them side-by-side. In real life, real Duvel still had better head-retention, but the difference was not quite as stark as what you see in the photograph above.

Carbonation: I have to say… maybe I was already, er, ‘compromised’ after a round each of my copy and real Duvel.. But I couldn’t discern a difference in carbonation.

ABV: Real Duvel is 8.5%, while mine finished at 7.5%. Next time I might add additional corn sugar and/or Belgian candy sugar to bump up the ABV.

Taste: This one is the real kicker. Overall, my version lacked both the fruity aroma and dryness that are so characteristic of real Duvel. This is almost certainly a result of the yeast the I used, as well as possibly the ABV controls. Next time I’ll go to extra lengths to get my hands on that Wyeast #1388. Otherwise, the hop and malt profiles seemed pretty close.

Other: I noticed a very marked improvement in flavor and overall enjoyability of my clone after four weeks of bottle conditioning. It tasted great at four weeks, and beyond great at six. If you try this recipe, note that it needs at least a month in the bottle.

Final Verdict?: This recipe definitely gets you headed in the general direction of Duvel, but it’s not Duvel. It needs a few tweaks, most notably the yeast.

That said, it’s a delicious, crisp, refreshing beer. It is absolutely still in the strong, blonde category (7.5% ABV ain’t exactly Bud Light, or even Fat Tire… and after the third round it could almost be real Duvel).

Cloning Duvel – Part I

Duvel is probably my favorite commercially produced beer of all time (so far). I think I could drink Duvel every day and not get tired of it.

Actually, once, in what turned into a 5-day stopover in Amsterdam, I did drink Duvel everyday. Lots of Duvel. Because, as it turns out, one of those little bottles of Duvel that sets you back US $4.50 in the “Land of the Free”, goes for less than 2 Euros in Amsterdam.

The tiny little bit that I remember of that trip involved me sitting down in random Amsterdam pubs and plunking down my 2 Euros for a round of Duvel, while watching well-heeled Dutch couples splurge on 5-Euro (roughly US $6.00 as of today) bottles of Corona Light (complete with a lime wedge stuck in the top).

And so – once I got over my Amsterdam hangover – it was inevitable that I’d get around to trying to clone Duvel (or at least come close) with an extract-based recipe.

[For those who don't know, Duvel is a strong, blonde Belgian ale; very light in color, overall fruity in character, understated hoppiness, moderate carbonation. On the bottle it says 8.5% ABV.]

The first step in my quest to clone Duvel was research. The good news is that Duvel has a fairly large following within the N. American online community of home-brewers. Sadly, most of the discussions look like this (conversation hardly fit for the casual, suburban extract-based home-brewer).

Duvel, as it turns out, is not particularly easy to copy. And it is particularly difficult to copy with an extract-based formula. In fact, I was not able to find even one single extract-based recipe for a Duvel clone. No prior expertise on which to build. Which meant that I was on my own. What to do?

beautiful… just beautiful

Build your own recipe. My first move was to put together a basic blonde-to-light ale extract grain bill: 6 lbs. of “Pilsner” dry malt extract (DME) formed the basis. At one point in the research I’d discovered that “fine Pilsner malts” accounted for the original Duvel grain bill, so I added 1 lb. of Pilsner crystal (1.1L) for the steep.

Noble hops – Saaz and Styrian Goldings -were the most obvious choices. Sadly, my brewing supply store was out of both on the day I went to buy the ingredients for this batch. A quick check of the dog-eared home-brewing grimmoire beneath the counter revealed that Mt. Hood and Sterling hops would make adequate substitutes (er… okay).

The obvious choice of a serious, second-tier home-brewer would be to culture actual Duvel yeast from a bottle of actual Duvel. At the same time several of the “copy Duvel” discussion threads I found seemed unanimous in the opinion that Wyeast  #1388 “Belgian Strong Ale” was more or less the same as the Duvel yeast. But there again, sadly, my brewing store only got #1388 on special order. So, in the weakness of the moment, on a time crunch between humanitarian deployments (thus, no time to wait for special order), Wyeast #1762 “Belgian Abbey II” would just have to do.

I ended up brewing this recipe:

Duvel Clone – First Try

• 1 lb. Pilsner malt (“Crystal” 1.1 L)
• 6 lbs. Pilsner DME
• 4 cups corn sugar
• 1 tablespoon Irish moss
• 1 oz. Mt. Hood hops
• 2 oz. Sterling hops
• Wyeast #1762 “Belgian Abbey”
• 5.5 US gallons water

Process:

• Steep grains (Crystal) at 150 deg. F. 30 min.
• Add Pilsner DME + Mt. Hood hops. Bring to boil.
• After 45 min. of actual boil, add 1.5 oz. Sterling hops + corn sugar.
• After 55 min. of actual boil, add Irish moss.
• After 59 min. of actual boil, add 0.5 oz. Sterling hops.
• After 60 min. of actual boil, turn off heat. Cool.
• Pitch Wyeast #1762 at 70-75 deg. F.

Ferment:

• 14 days.
• rack once at 7 days.
• Original gravity: 1.072
• Final gravity: 1.016.
• ABV: 7.5%

But the real question is, “How did it taste???”

Answer: read the next post…

Process 102: Bottling your first batch

About two weeks ago, now, you brewed your first batch.  And like a new mother enthralled with her firstborn, you’ve spent the past fortnight gazing lovingly at your amber-coloured creation softly bubbling away in your coat closet, or maybe a warm corner of your garage.

But now it’s time get that beer (it’s no longer ‘wort’: once it’s fermented, it’s beer!) into bottles for carbonation and conditioning.

Before you start bottling, make sure you’ve got the following on-hand and ready:

Enough bottles to hold five gallons of beer. This works out to roughly 44 12 oz. bottles. I usually bottle a few larger (22 oz.), and sometimes a few smaller (10 oz.) ones with each batch, but make sure I have enough bottles cleaned and sanitized to have a few left over.

Bottle caps & capping tool. Enough caps for all the bottles you have.

1 cup of corn sugar for ‘priming.’ This is what will make your beer carbonated. Adding sugar just before bottling will give the yeast a bit more to ferment. As it ferments it will emit carbon dioxide (the same as what bubbles out of the airlock when your beer is in the fermenter). However, in the bottle, with an airtight cap, that CO2 will have nowhere to go, and your beer will become carbonated.

(As you get more practice and get into more advanced recipes you can try priming with other things (molasses, DME, etc.). But the standard for basic, straightforward home-brewing is corn sugar: It carbonates in a just a few days and does not impart any flavor to the finished product.)

A long-handled mixing spoon or spatula.

A ‘racking cane’ or enough tubing to siphon your beer out of the fermenter. A racking cane is just a straight, stiff clear plastic tube with a crook on one end (looks like a cane, hence the name). You put the long part of the cane down into your fermenter, and then attach a siphon tube (about four feet) to the crook end at the top.

5 gallon bucket with a spigot added: perfect for priming and bottling.

A 5-gallon bucket for mixing your beer with priming sugar.

I’ve put a food-grade spigot (buy online or at a brewing supply store) about 1/2 inch up from the bottom of mine to make bottling easier.

Several old towels. Bottling can get messy. Good to have towels around for wiping up spills.

Got everything? Great – now you’re ready to start. To bottle your beer, do these steps in order:

1) In small saucepan bring 1 cup of corn sugar and 2 cups of water to a boil, then simmer for about 10 minutes (to totally sanitize it). Cover and cool to room temperature. It takes a while for this to cool, so I always do this step first, then worry about everything else. You can put the saucepan into the refrigerator to cool it down faster.

2) Move your fermenter to wherever you plan to siphon the beer into the bucket you’ll use for priming. I use the laundry room – set the fermenter on the dryer (one of the old towels underneath). When you move the fermenter, you’ll slosh the yeast slurry on the bottom around a bit. Doing the move early allows it to settle back before you siphon (helps your finished beer look clearer).

3) Sanitize all of your equipment thoroughly. I use iodine sanitizer. It’s 1 tablespoon per 5 gallons of cold water. immerse everything and then allow it to air dry: the inside and outside of the racking cane and siphon tubing; the mixing spoon; the inside of the bucket you’ll use for priming; all of the bottle caps…

This is an extremely important step: Follow the directions with whatever sanitizer you use carefully and take the time to do it properly. It doesn’t matter how good your recipe is or how well you brewed, if you get this step wrong, you’ll ruin your beer.

You’ll have to sanitize all of your bottles, too. I sanitize bottles using regular iodine solution, and then running through a fast dishwasher cycle (no soap, just water).

4) Siphon (‘rack’) your beer into the priming bucket and add your priming sugar.

Putting as little of your lips as possible on the end of the tube, suck (siphon) until beer starts to flow into the bucket…Take the airlock off of your fermenter and insert the long end of the racking cane down into the beer. Attach your siphon tubing to the crook end of the racking cane and dangle the other end down into the bucket (you sanitized it, right?) that you’re siphoning into. (see photo)

Once you have about an inch of beer in the bottom, slowly pour your cooled priming sugar solution into the bucket (don’t stop the siphon), and very gently stir with the (sanitized) mixing spoon.

After you’ve added the priming sugar, continue to rack (brewing word for ‘siphon’) the rest of your beer into your priming bucket, stirring occasionally with the sanitized mixing spoon.  Stop racking just before your racking cane begins to ‘suck’ up the sludge from the bottom of the fermenter.

Note: if you use a hydrometer to calculate alcohol content, be sure to capture beer that has not been mixed with priming sugar, as this will throw off the reading. I usually just put my measuring cylinder under the siphon tube to catch beer as it flows into the priming bucket.

5) BOTTLE!

If your priming bucket has a spigot, all you have to do now is fill the bottles. I usually do this in a kitchen sink (put the priming bucket on the counter with the spigot hanging over the sink).

If your bucket does not have a spigot, you’ll need to use a kitchen funnel (with a nozzle small enough to fit into the mouth of a bottle). It will take two people to bottle this way – one to pour, and one to hold the bottle and funnel steady.

Either way, you’ll want to pour slowly to avoid a foamy head coming up out of the bottle. This loses space in the bottle, and increases the chance of ruining the beer by infection.

Let the foam subside before filling to within about 1 inch of the top

Fill each bottle to within about 1 inch of the mouth, then cap tightly with a sanitized cap.

Using a capping tool.

flip-top bottles are super easy to bottle in and reusable, too!

6) Aging. And…. we’re back to the waiting. After bottling you’ll need to age your beer for at least 7-10 days for the yeast to do its’ work on the priming sugar and carbonation to take effect. Most home-brew recipes are drinkable after 1 week (7 days), but I find that most of the ones I’ve made really started to taste good after about 1 month in the bottle.

At any rate, it’s worth experimenting a bit from batch to batch. Keep track of when you bottle which batches and make notes of how they taste at 1 week, 2 weeks, and so on. This way, if you make that same recipe again, you’ll have a better idea of how long it needs to age for optimum taste.

Because taste is what it’s all about right? And this is the perfect segway to…

7) Drinking the finished product…

No explanation needed.

Process 101: brewing your first batch

So, you’ve got your basic equipment. You’ve found a nice recipe for basic ale online. And your wife just gave you a hall pass for Saturday morning. You’re ready to brew your first batch of beer!

Today we’ll cover what you need to turn a grocery bag full of ingredients into five gallons of fermenting beer (we’ll cover bottling in a later post). There are four basic steps:

1) The steep. In this step you bring 5 gallons of water to 155 degrees F. and then place malted, cracked grains (often called “crystal”) in it for 30 minutes. It’s a bit like putting dried leaves into hot water to extract the flavor and aroma when you make tea.

In the process of making beer from malt-extract, this step accomplishes two main things. First, it extracts fermentable sugars from the grains, which increases the alcohol potential of the beer you’re making. Second, at the same time it extracts flavor from the grains – flavor which eventually ends up in your beer. When brewing extract-based recipes it’s easy enough to get fermentable sugar (if all else fails, you can just add white table sugar), but the flavor which comes from grains in this step is one of the controls that you have over the taste of the final product.

So get your five gallons of water into the pot, over the fire on your camping stove or turkey fryer, get the temperature up to 155 degrees as quickly as possible, and then turn down the fire enough to maintain that temperature. Put the grains into the hot water, and stir gently with a large kitchen spoon. Steep for a full 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

After 30 minutes, turn off the heat and remove the grains. If you had your grains in a steeping bag, just take the bag out. If not, fish them out with a regular kitchen strainer. The water should be a distinct beige -to-brown color, depending on the roast of your grains, with steam rising gently off the surface.

remove steeped grains

2) The boil. Once the grains are out, you want to crank up the heat and get that brown water to a boil as quickly as possible. Be sure to watch the pot closely once you begin to see little bubbles coming up from the bottom. At the first sign of boil…

Stir in your malt extract. It doesn’t matter whether you’re using liquid malt extract (LME) or dry malt extract (DME) – the process is exactly the same: get it stirred in and dissolved in your five gallons as quickly as possible. You want to stir constantly during this step a) to keep your malt extract from carmelizing on the bottom of your brew pot, and b) to make sure that you don’t boil over during this step. You’ll know when your wort is about to boil because it will become very foamy on the top and start to rise quickly.

5 gallons with extract added, just about to boil...

Once your malt extract is all stirred in you’ll maintain the heat under your pot until you get a full boil. Add your aroma hops at this stage, too. I usually add aroma hops immediately after stirring in my malt-extract, while the pot is coming to a boil. It is very important to monitor your pot carefully and turn down the heat just as the boil starts so that you don’t have a boil-over. Turn down the heat just enough to maintain a strong boil without boiling over.

You need to boil your wort for a full 60 minutes, measured from the boil begins after you add the malt extract.

10 minutes before the end of the boil (at 50 minutes), add your bittering hops.

At 60 minutes turn off the heat, remove your hops and cover the pot.

3) Cooling the wort. Once the boil is finished you want to chill your wort down to about 70 deg. F. as quickly as possible, as this is the phase where you are most likely to  ruin your batch by infecting it. (It is critical that nothing touches the wort which has not been sanitized. So sanitize everything – more on sanitizing in a later post). You can simply cover your pot tightly and let it sit as ambient temperature to cool, but I don’t recommend this as it will take 5 – 7 hours to cool sufficiently – 5 -7 hours during  which your wort is extremely vulnerable to infection.

A very common way to cool wort is to put your brew pot in a large laundry sink and surround it with ice and cold water. Be sure to keep the lid tightly on the pot so that nothing gets in to contaminate it. When the water in the tub becomes warm, drain it out and replace it with new cold water. Use a sanitized thermometer to check every 10 – 15 minutes (I use a photographic dark room thermometer). If you use ice, you should be able to cool 5 gallons of fresh wort down to 70-75 F. in about 1 hour.

A final way is to use something called a “wort chiller” – basically a coil of copper tube that sits down in your brew pot. Running cold water through the copper tubing chills the wort. You can buy these online for as low as less than $40 USD. Or you can make your own with parts from Home Depot. If you do use a wort chiller, you’ll have to sanitize it completely before immersing it in your freshly boiled wort. Most home-brewers simply put it in during the final 15-20 minutes of the boil to sanitize it.

4) Pitching the yeast. Once you’ve chilled that thick, sweet nectar down to 70-75 degrees, you’ll have to transfer it to your fermenter. If you are fermenting in a plastic bucket, you can just pour it in (slowly, so you don’t get too much of a head). If you are fermenting in a carboy, you will need to use a large funnel. Make sure that everything that touches the wort – fermenter, funnel, anything else.. is totally sanitized.

With your wort safely into the fermenter, you are now ready to pitch the yeast. Sanitize the pack that the yeast came in and cut it open with sanitized scissors. Then just slowly pour it in. As soon as the yeast is poured in (“pitched”), close the top of your fermenter and attach an airlock.

Now put your fermenter full of fermenting beer into a dark place that’s not too hot and not too cold (you want to ferment between about 68 – 75 degrees F.). I use a coat closet.

Voila! You’ve brewed your first batch of beer!

In about two weeks we’ll bottle it…

Recipe: “Feels like the first time”

Another regular feature, here at Ales From the Hood, will be some of my favorite recipes: here’s the first one.

“Feels Like the First Time” is a strong, Belgian-style ale. When made properly, this recipe comes very close to Chimay Red (a classic “Dubbel“). So close, in fact, that it’s almost painful. A lot like, you know, the first time. Thus the name…

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Feels Like the First Time"

Recipe Type: Extract

Volume: 5 gallons

Ingredients:

• .5 lb. Belgian Special Roast Malt
• .5 lb. English Crystal Malt (80L)
• 10 lbs. Sparkling Amber malt extract (liquid)
• 1.5 cups Belgian candy sugar
• 1 tablespoon, Irish moss
• 5 US. Gallons distilled water

Hops:

• 1 oz. Northern brewer
• 1 oz. Cascade
• 1 oz. Chinook

Yeast:

• Wyeast #1214 “Belgian Abbey” (get the “Propagator” [small] pack).

Procedure:

1. Bring 2.5 gal. to 150 degrees. Add grains. Reduce heat to “Low.”
2. Steep grains for 30 min. at +/- 150 degrees F.
3. Reduce heat, add extract, sugar, additional 2.5 gallon of distilled water, and northern brewer hops.
4. At the first sign of boil, add Cascade hops. Bring to full boil.
5. After full boil for 30 minutes, add Chinook hops.
6. After full boil for 45 minutes, add Irish moss.
7. After full boil for 60 minutes, turn off heat, cool to 72 deg. F, pitch yeast.

8. Pitch Wyeast #1214 pitched directly from pack (do not make starter) into wort at 72 deg. F
9. Maintain fermentation temperature at around 70-76 degrees.
10. Ferment for 10 days
11. Prime with 1 cup corn sugar/3 cups water.
12. Bottle condition for at least 14 days

Notes:

Yeast: it is important to use the “propagator” (small pack) of Wyeast #1214 Belgian Abbey without making starter. Under-pitching is a crucial part of what makes this recipe work. Just smack the packet approximately 36 hours before pitching.

Fermentation: Fermenting above 72 degrees F. is crucial to the overall finished flavor as well. If you ferment cooler than 72 F. the result will not be as complex or estery (and less like Chimay Red as a result).

Aging: This recipe is drinkable after 2 weeks in the bottle, but really starts to shine after two months. Don’t be in too big a hurry to start drinking this one.

Equipment 101: the basics

So, you’ve decided that you want to give this home-brewing thing a try, but you don’t want to spend a fortune on special equipment. And even if you had a fortune to spend you wouldn’t know where to start.

Here’s my rundown on the very basics of what you need to start home-brewing (without spending a fortune):

Cooking surface: You need a cooking surface (stove) capable of maintaining a boil on six gallons of liquid for up to 90 minutes. The main considerations are first that for one part of the process you need to be able to maintain the temperature of your brew at around 155 deg. F., which means that you need to be able to control lower temps (for this reason brewing in a caldron over an open fire probably isn’t your best option). The second consideration is that for a later step in the process you’ll want to bring your home-brew to a boil as quickly as possible and then maintain that boil for 60-90 minutes, depending on your recipe, which means that you need power.

Most home-brewers use either a kitchen stove or a propane burner of some kind. In the past I’ve used my kitchen stove (until my wife refused to let me cook in the house any longer), and a Coleman 2-burner propane camping stove. I currently use a propane turkey fryer.

The main issues with brewing in my kitchen were that I’d basically tie up the stove for 3 hours (inconvenient), the house would smell like hops for days after (not an issue for me, but my wife didn’t like it), and the place was all messy with sticky, unfermented beer from the incidental slops that accompany any other kind of cooking. Also, the kitchen stove heated very slowly, which meant that I’d spend the better part of one hour just waiting for my 5-6 gallons to come to a boil.

The camping stove worked okay ($55 from Walmart). I was out in the garage so there were no issues with tying up the kitchen or smelling up the house. However, I had the same problem with time required to bring my beer to a boil. Especially in the winter, since I had to crack the garage door open for ventilation, it could take almost two hours to achieve a boil.

The turkey fryer works beautifully ($30 from Walmart). It’s got good enough control that I can hold 155 deg. F for “steeping”, and then bring 5+ gallons to a boil in under 20 minutes. Most models, including mine, come with an automatic shut-off timer: the thing shuts itself off after 15 minutes unless you press a button or turn the dial back. Not a bad thing. It just means that you can’t “multi-task” as easily while boiling.

Turkey fryer: cooking surface and brew-pot in one, easy purchase...

Brew pot: You need a cooking pot large enough to accommodate five gallons of liquid at a boil. And already we’re embroiled in home-brew class struggle: stainless steel or aluminum?

The home-brew bourgeois standard is a 7 or 9 US gallon stainless steel brew pot. The problem is that these can be a little spendy. The guys who sell these will tell you that only by brewing in stainless steel will you ever achieve anything even remotely drinkable (pinky finger fully extended, of course). But I beg to differ: for the purposes of the casual amateur home-brewer and this website, aluminum works beautifully.

The best is a pot with 6 or 7 gallon capacity. This gives you a bit of headroom so that you can truly boil a full 5 gallons of wort* (6 gallons would be even better, to compensate for boil-down) without boiling over and making a mess of your kitchen or garage floor.

My first brew pot was a 7 US gallon aluminum pot meant for steaming seafood that I picked up new at Target for US $25. I brewed many awesome batches that got many friends fully hammered with that pot until I bought my turkey fryer which came with its’ own pot. Now I have two 7 gallon aluminum pots.

Aluminum pots with 7-9 gallon capacity or greater are easy enough to find at department stores. Like I said, most turkey fryers come with pots, so if you go the turkey fryer route, you’ll end up with a brew pot automatically. Finally, whether you’re okay with aluminum or prefer to hob-nob with the stainless steel crowd, you can find all manner of used and new brew pots online in popular online marketplaces like Craigslist.

Fermenter: You need something to ferment your beer in that can be made air-tight and that has enough room at the top so that five gallons of wort can ferment without too much “blowback” (when wort begins to ferment, it generates a lot of foam and bubbles that can be a problem if you don’t have any space at the top of your fermenter).

The home-brewing standard is a 6-gallon “carboy” (a big glass jug, like the ones you see on water coolers). You can find these used online for very cheap. New, they’ll cost between $30 and $40. (Many brewing supply stores carry 5-gallon carboys, too. I’d advise paying the extra cost and going with a 6-gallon in order to allow for blowback.)

6 gallon carboy

Airlock & Cap

If you’re on the cheap, you can use a 6 or 7-gallon food grade plastic bucket. My first few batches were fermented in a plastic bucket from Walmart. The standard orange buckets from Home Depot work perfectly well, too.

Whether you’re fermenting in a carboy or a bucket, you’ll need an airlock. My advice is to just buy an airlock from a brewing supply store (they cost about $1.00 each). If you’re using a carboy you’ll need a cap to hold the airlock (also at the brewing supply store.  Also about $1.00. See the picture on the left.).

If you’re using a bucket, you’ll need a rubber stopper with a hole in the middle to hold the airlock (brewing supply store), and you’ll need to drill a hole in the lid of your bucket a millimeter or two larger than the small end of the rubber stopper, so that you can fit it in and achieve an air-tight seal.

Bottles: You need enough bottles to hold five gallons. There’s some variation that can occur during the hand bottling process, but basically you can estimate about 42 12-oz. bottles per 5 gallon batch. There are three main ways to get bottles:

bottles ready to be filled with bubbly, golden nectar of the gods

• 1) Buy empty bottles from a brewing supply store. The down side is that it costs money. Who wants to buy beer bottles with no beer in them?
• 2) Save bottles. Save your glass beer bottles, and ask friends to save theirs for you, too. It’s a good excuse for buying beer by the whole case (24 bottles: 2 cases = enough bottles to bottle one batch). Just make sure that you don’t buy/save the twist-off cap style because you can’t re-cap them. You can also bottle in plastic soda bottles (save the screw-off cap). I rarely buy beer these days, but when I do I always buy with the bottle in mind.
• 3) Dumpster-dive. This is my main strategy: I just go to the glass recycling bin near my house and poke with a long stick through the brown glass bin. I prefer “New Belgium” bottles (Fat Tire, etc.) because they accept standard “blank” caps easily and because the labels soak off easily. Check the local laws in your community before dumpster-diving, though, because it may be illegal to “steal” bottles that technically belong to the company that owns the recycling bin.

Miscellaneous: Other things you’ll need include…

• “blank” bottle caps and capping tool– bottle caps that have not yet been used (get at a brewing supply store). Usually come in 100 packs. Capping tool: special tool for crimping black caps onto bottles. Costs about $15 at a brewing supply store.
  

  capping tool & "blank" bottle caps

• About 3 feet (1 meter) of 3/8 in. (1 cm) diameter clear plastic hose (Home Depot, Lowes, or a brewing supply store) for siphoning.
• Miscellaneous buckets and old towels. I always keep a couple of extra buckets and some old towels onhand as I’m brewing.
• Sanitizing solution. Iodine sanitizing solution is by far the easiest to use. 2 tablespoons of iodine in 5 gallons of cold water is the formula (note: this solution will tarnish jewelry, especially silver). Use it to sanitize your brewing equipment (more on this in later posts): basically you dunk whatever it is you’re sanitizing in and then let it air dry. The surface needs to be wet with solution for 2 minutes in order to be sanitized.
• Kitchen measuring cups and measuring spoons.

* * * * * * * * * * *

This is the basic equipment that you’ll need to brew extract-based ales. Start here and you’ll end up with beer. Do it right, and you’ll end up with beer good enough to impress your friends, and certainly good enough to get good and wasted (drink responsibly…)

Ready to take it to the next level? Watch for part two, coming soon…

* * *

*”wort” is the technical name for beer that has not been fermented… yet.

Two easy decisions

“Beer does not make itself properly by itself. It takes an element of mystery and of things that no one can understand.”

– Fritz Maytag

Truer words were never spoken. The esoteric ritual of brewing beer does not self-initiate or self-manage. And what goes on behind the veil somewhere between the enigma of why partially sprouted, lightly toasted grains of barley give up one kind of sugar when soaked at 155 deg. F, and another totally different sugar when boiled, to the inexplicable yet undeniable fact that Wyeast #3944 imparts a clove scent when fermented below 75 deg. F, but a distinct banana scent above, is pure mystery.

The numbers of variables in ingredients in the brewing process are enough to make the first-time home-brewer leave the brewing supply store in despair. But there are two decisions you can make right now which will cut the complexity in half in one fell swoop. You can decide to: brew ales; and brew extract-based recipes.

What does that even mean?

Brew ales: For those who don’t know, there are two kinds of beer: ales and lagers. Without going into the differences at length (if you really don’t know the difference between ale and lager, start here), I’ll just tell you that ales are infinitely easier to make at home, primarily because they do not require the kind of precise control over fermentation temperature that lagers require in order to get a good result (good result = good tasting beer that is more or less what you thought you were going to get when you bought the ingredients and started brewing). Simply by deciding to brew ale, not lager, you halve your equipment needs, reduce by half the number of steps in your process, and cut – also by at least half – the length of time between brewing and drinking. Moreover, the nature of what goes on biochemically when you brew ale is such that there is far more tolerance for variation in the process, while still yielding good beer, than when you brew lager. In short, it’s harder to make ale wrong.

Anyway, the vast majority of home-brewing equipment, ingredients, recipes, and online guidance is geared towards ale.

Brew extract-based recipes: There are basically two processes that you can choose to follow: brewing from whole grains, and brewing from malt extracts. One very significant step in the whole grain brewing process involves very slowly trickling hot water at a specific, controlled temperature, through malted barley (or whatever grain you’re brewing from). This process (called “mashing”) causes enzymes in the grain to break down into sugars, which are then fermented with yeast to make beer. It’s a long, laborious process that involves special equipment and also requires that you have nothing else to do but pay attention to mashing for the 5 or 6 hours that it takes to set up and mash enough to make 5 gallons of beer.

The advantage of brewing from whole grains is that it gives you very precise control over every aspect of the process, which makes it possible to achieve a specific taste or copy a specific beer with greater precision. While you do need some specialized equipment in order to do your own mashing, the real disadvantage is time. As I said, mashing takes 5-6 hours, and that’s before you even begin the final brewing, which is another 2-3 hours. So with whole grain brewing, you’re looking at a front-end process that takes at least seven hours: Seven hours during which you can’t really do anything else – not run errands, not mow the lawn, not cook lunch… It’s seven hours during which it’ll look to your partner and/or kids an awful lot like you’re “not doing anything” but watching brown water boil.

...by this stage none of your friends care whether you brewed whole-grain or extract...

The alternative is to let someone else (okay, a factory) do the mashing and then you buy the result in a concentrated form called “malt extract.” The advantages of using extracts are that you don’t need special equipment, really, and that you can brew start-to-finish in just a couple of hours. For me this is huge: my wife will cheerfully enough let me off the hook for 3 hours Saturday morning once or twice a month. But all day? Not a chance…

The most commonly mentioned disadvantage of brewing from extracts is that you may not be able to brew an exact replica of your favorite commercially produced beer. But for me the worst thing is simply that just like any other hobby you might try out, there’s always someone at work who knows just enough to be a pain in the ass, and who will be forever going on in authoritative tones about that one time, 12 years ago, when he helped a friend do “whole grain” and how much better it is.

Just remember that the process of malting grains to extract the fermentable sugar is only one of the variables in the process – you’ll still control the selection of hops and yeast, specialty grains that you’ll “steep” before adding extract, and even the selection of extract itself. The truth is that you can brew absolutely delicious beer from extracts in almost any style that you prefer. Delicious enough that by the time you’re pouring the third round your know-it-all friend from work won’t be able to tell the difference between real Fat Tire and your extract-based approximation. And delicious enough to just plain impress the hell out of pretty much everyone else.

Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

As you surf home-brewing websites or look through beer-making books at your favorite bookstore, be sure to look for ales made from malt extract.

To brew, or not to brew?

To brew or not to brew? You’ve laid awake nights for several months, now, wrestling with the basic question: to brew or not to brew? You feel a bit dirty every time you open the fridge and see that six-pack of Bud Light mocking you, but you can’t bring yourself to spend US $11 (at least) for a bottle of Chimay “Grand Reserve.” You visited a local brewing store a few weeks ago, but the unshaven,  tattooed guys working there, going on about hop profiles or polysaccharides or “sparging”, might as well have been speaking another language.

Brewing beer – that magical ritual that transforms barley and hops into bubbly golden nectar of the gods – seems hopelessly out of reach. You toss and turn, vexed by the notion that you’ll be stuck drinking factory mass-produced Miller Lite for life (except on special occasions when you splurge for a case of exotic Heineken). Understandably, you feel yourself sinking towards depression.

magik in-progress

But take heart. All is not lost. Grab your destiny! Home-brewing is within your reach, and probably not as hard as you think.

The home-brewing basic needs:

Time (5-10 hours per month):You could spend all of your time home-brewing beer, but let’s face it: most of us have day jobs that we can’t afford to quit right now. But fortunately the basic time commitment required to completely produce single batch of home-brewed beer is about 4-5 hours. You need an uninterrupted 3 hours for the initial brewing, and then another 1-2 hours for bottling about two weeks after that.

You can spend more time per batch depending on your equipment, especially your stove (more on equipment later), and on the number of additional steps of the recipe you’re making. But basically, a 5-gallon batch (the standard for home-brewing) cost you 5 hours. I’m brewing at the rate of one batch every 3 to 5 weeks, so at a maximum I’m investing around 10 hours per month, almost always on weekends.

Space (kitchen or garage + closet): At a minimum you need a space where you can bring six gallons to a boil for up to 90 minutes for the brewing. It’s better if you have access to running cold water and access to a flat surface for preparing. Most people I know brew in their garages or on their porches. Some brew in their kitchens. I used to brew in my kitchen until my wife banished me to the garage.

For fermenting you need a space big enough to hold a 5-gallon bucket that’s not to hot and not too cold and that can be made completely dark. I use a closet.

For bottling you’ll need a flat surface like a table or counter. I use my kitchen counter.

Money ($100 equipment + $30 ingredients): You can spend thousands of dollars on brewing equipment and up to hundreds of dollars for ingredients to make a single batch of beer. But again, the reality for mere mortals like us is that we cannot spend anywhere near this kind of money for I might call a “way of life” but my wife calls “your hobby.” You can set yourself up with the basic equipment needed to produce drinkable beer for less than US $50.00, but I’d recommend planning on around US $100. Once you have the equipment the cost of ingredients obviously varies by the recipe, but what I brew typically comes out to between US$25 and $35 per 5-gallon batch.

5 US gallons typically nets around 45 12 oz. bottles of finished beer = per bottle cost is considerably less than $1 per bottle.

Patience & Commitment. Probably the hardest part of making beer is patience. Patience to manage the step-by-step brewing process exactly. It’s not rocket science, but in order to get good results you do have to pay attention to detail. Patience to wait for good results. Fermentation is a natural process that can vary based on a number of variables. You have to be willing to control what you can, and then let nature do its thing for the remainder. Some beers take longer than others, but basically it’s at least three weeks from the day you brew to the day you crack open the first bottle. Skimp on patience at any stage and you can expect less than impressive results.

In the end, you and you alone can answer the question of whether home-brewing is path you should take. I’m not trying to win any converts – just want you to make an informed decision. But seriously, it’s not that hard. And look at the result…

mmmmmm...

See, that’s not so bad, is it?