Nut Buster Peanut Butter Porter
One of the advantages of being a homebrewer is getting to play with oddball ingredients. It isn’t as big of a deal if a beer doesn’t pan out when you are brewing 5 gallons, but it is a big deal when you are brewing 5000 gallons. So when a friend of mine proposed brewing a peanut butter porter we quickly went to work in figuring it out. This is a beer that doesn’t have many commercial example. Notable beers include Karl Strauss Peanut Butter Cup Porter and the DuClaw Sweet Baby Jesus. So we looked for inspiration from the homebrew community.
The prevailing option seemed to be natural peanut butter that was de-oiled. Oil was removed by letting the oil separate out in the jar and pouring it out. Then letting the jar sit and separate more and pour it out again. We decided we were too lazy for this so looked at other options. One option was to use peanuts that are cracked open to reveal more surface area. This supposedly gives a very nice peanut butter character.
The peanut butter source we decided to use was PB2 Powdered Peanut Butter. When you open the jar of PB2 the peanut butter aroma jumps out at you. We went with this product because it has minimal amounts of oil and is easy to measure and add at any part of the process. The oil in peanuts/peanut butter would be very detrimental to the head retention of the beer.
Recipe Specifications -------------------------- Boil Size: 7.22 gal Post Boil Volume: 5.72 gal Batch Size (fermenter): 5.50 gal Bottling Volume: 5.50 gal Estimated OG: 1.073 SG Estimated Color: 28.4 SRM Estimated IBU: 54.4 IBUs Brewhouse Efficiency: 80.00 % Est Mash Efficiency: 80.0 % Boil Time: 90 Minutes Ingredients: ------------ Amt Name %/IBU 9 lbs Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) 63.2 % 1 lbs 8.0 oz Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM) 10.5 % 1 lbs 8.0 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 20L (20.0 SRM) 10.5 % 1 lbs Barley, Flaked (1.7 SRM) 7.0 % 1 lbs Chocolate Wheat Malt (350.0 SRM) 7.0 % 4.0 oz Milk Sugar (Lactose) (0.0 SRM) 1.8 % 1.00 oz Magnum [12.50 %] - Boil 60.0 min 54.4 IBUs 6.50 oz PB2 (Boil 10.0 mins) 6.50 oz PB2 (Boil 5.0 mins) 1.0 pkg London Ale Yeast (Wyeast Labs #1028) [1.3L starter] Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Full Body, Electric Total Grain Weight: 14 lbs 4.0 oz ---------------------------- Name Description Step Temp Step Time Mash In Add 5.97 gal of water at 162.8 F 154.0 F 60 min Mash Out Heat to 168.0 F over 2 min 168.0 F 10 min Sparge: Fly sparge with 3.65 gal water at 168.0 F
This recipe got us 90% of the way to the beer we envisioned. The beer has a pleasant peanut butter aroma, but doesn’t have much peanut butter in the flavor. When it warms you can pick up some nutty character in the finish. So I think next time I’ll dry nut the beer and add some more PB2 in secondary. The other change I may consider is using a cleaner yeast. There were some fruity esters present, but I may do another run with this yeast and make sure I have a yeast starter that is ready to rip through the beer.
One concern with this beer was getting good head on the beer. Peanut butter is oily and oils destroy head retention. The PB2 removes a lot of the oil that is normally present. We also wanted to use the Carapils and decided to use chocolate wheat to further help with the head retention. Thankfully it seems that all this work paid off. The beer is currently pouring with a nice head. It doesn’t stay around too long, but its definitely bigger to start out than I was expecting.
There are a couple plays with this beer that can be fun. The very obvious one is the peanut butter and chocolate pairing. When I told people about this beer that was the first thing that they would ask. Am I putting chocolate in the beer too. Some didn’t think it could work without chocolate. We chose not to do chocolate right away so we could get a better idea of the peanut butter first. Chocolate is a much more common beer ingredient and there is a lot more collective experience out there.
The other twist on this beer is peanut butter and jelly. We were thinking about taking some of the beer and putting it on some raspberries to experiment with this. When I told a friend of mine who is also a brewer about the beer he opened his freezer to reveal a bag of locally picked concord grapes and handed it to me along with a carbonating cap for a 2 liter bottle. I added 8 oz of frozen grapes to the 2 liter bottle and poured the beer over it to fill the bottle. After carbonating for 1.5 weeks we tried it and it took us right back to our childhood eating a PB&J sandwich. The grapes played nicely with the bit of esters that were present. I was pleasantly surprised with the results of this experiment and I look forward to doing a bigger batch.
Overall this beer went much better than we were expecting on the first go. I’m really looking forward to getting into the hands of more friends to get some feedback. I will definitely be brewing this beer again soon.
Making Beer in 15 Minutes
As a dad with a 20 month old and one more on the way, time is a very scarce commodity for me. Brewing a beer can be a difficult thing to schedule. Carving out 5 consecutive hours can seem downright impossible among the craziness (yet joy) that children bring with them. So when I heard a Basic Brewing podcast about doing a beer in 15 minutes I was very interested.
The method revolves around a 15 minute boil. So overall the time will be more than 15 minutes, but it drastically reduces your brew time. The problem with a 15 minute boil is getting enough bitterness. So this method counts on hop bursting to provide bitterness and hop flavor and aroma in such a short time. In keeping with the theme of saving time you also use extract to save yourself the time of mashing.
I took one of my previous pale ale recipes and attempted to convert it to a 15 minute boil extract recipe fittingly dubbed “Lightning Pale Ale.” The recipe that I converted did call for dry-hopping. I intentionally did not dry hop for the first attempt because I wanted to see what the hop character would be from the 15 minute boil alone.
Recipe Specifications -------------------------- Boil Size: 2.95 gal Post Boil Volume: 2.86 gal Batch Size (fermenter): 2.50 gal Bottling Volume: 2.50 gal Estimated OG: 1.052 SG Estimated Color: 10.6 SRM Estimated IBU: 40.7 IBUs Brewhouse Efficiency: 72.00 % Est Mash Efficiency: 0.0 % Boil Time: 15 Minutes Ingredients: ------------ Amt Name %/IBU 3 lbs 8.0 oz Amber Liquid Extract (12.5 SRM) 87.5 % 8.0 oz Wheat Liquid Extract (8.0 SRM) 12.5 % 0.75 oz Chinook [13.00 %] - Boil 15.0 min 22.9 IBUs 1.00 oz Centennial [10.10 %] - Boil 10.0 min 17.8 IBUs 1.00 oz Cascade [6.90 %] - Boil 0.0 min 0.0 IBUs 1.0 pkg Safale American (DCL/Fermentis #US-05)
The brew day for the beer went very smoothly. I was back in the kitchen for the first time in awhile and my wife quickly remembered all the reasons she was happy that I now brewed in the garage. From rounding up my equipment to being done with clean up was less than one and a half hours. That is less than 30% of the time I spend on an all grain batch on a normal brew day!
Unfortunately, this beer did not turn out as well as I had hoped. There is very minimal hop character currently present. The aroma is pretty sweet and malt forward. I can pick up a slight pine note in the flavor, but I really have to focus to find it. The bitterness could also stand to be bumped up a bit, but it is actually close to where I would want it. This beer definitely could have been helped with the dry hop, but I think it needed some other help as well (more hops in the kettle).
Because this method of making beer relies on hop bursting and putting a lot of hops in the wort within that 15 minutes to get the right amount of bitterness it is limited to hop forward styles. Generally IPAs and pale ales will be the target for this method. However, I would be curious to play with some various hop extracts that could provide bitterness without flavor or aroma. Extracts could be the key to opening up different styles to the 15 minute boil. This is definitely a method I will be toying with in the future even though the first iteration did not work out as I hoped.
2015 Brewing Resolutions
The new year always brings with it promises and high expectations of bettering ourselves (usually centered around the size of our stomachs). I am usually not one to make resolutions, but each year I like to assess where I am with my brewing and look ahead to where I’d like to be or things I want to try. As a new dad my time is at a premium so to move forward with my brewing I have to stay focused.
Over the past year I made a commitment to myself to be more regular when it comes to be days. I tried to gradually increase my pace to get to the point where I was brewing once every 2 weeks. This was largely my only goal in 2014: get back in the saddle after welcoming our son to the world. Despite a few lapses I was largely on schedule by year’s end (Not that you could tell by this blog. More on that later). This success and brewing regularly has me excited for the new year and what’s to come.
Without any further delay here are my goals for brewing in 2015:
- Get more involved in competitions
- Nail down a pilsner, kolsch and pale ale recipe for my system
- Fine tune my system
- Experiment with sour beers
- Be more consistent in sharing what I learn and brew here
Thankfully these goals are not mutually exclusive. Getting more involved in the competition scene will be beneficial for getting recipes right. Anytime you can get some unbiased feedback on your beer its a good thing. I want to get more involved in competitions on the judging side as well. This will help me hone my own skills for evaluating beer.
As I work through the different styles I want to push myself to try new things. Trying for the pilsner and kolsch will also challenge me as a brewer because there is nowhere to hide in these styles. I could brew IPAs and big stouts all year and never figure out that I’ve been doing something wrong the whole time. Doing more styles of beer also makes me want to dabble with sour beers. However, this is the one I’m most hesitant of due to the risk of cross contamination. I keep my equipment clean and sanitized, but the risk is still present that some bacteria could cross over to normal beers.
I have identified a few changes I want to make to my system. Most are just small tweaks that will make things go more smoothly during brew day. The biggest effect any of these will have on the beer is making fixes to my chiller. Due to how I had to mount my counterflow chiller I could not counterflow with it. Defeats the purpose, huh? A simple fitting should fix it, but I just have not taken the time to deal with it. I want to take care of this and some other small changes to the system.
Lastly, I want to be more consistent with updating this site. Part of the lag in updates was my decision to stop posting brew day recaps until I have the finished beer. This was done mostly for the beers on which I was making my first attempt. It does not help anyone to get a recipe if it turns out to be a terrible one. Documenting what I am working on and learning throughout the year will not only be helpful to me, but hopefully can help or inspire someone out there make great beer. My little way of giving back to a wonderful homebrew community that has helped me immensely.
Like normal resolutions, I’m sure this list will be fluid, but this is how I see the year right now. What are your brewing goals for 2015?
Planning for Problems
Over the past couple weeks I have been one of those times where I had bad luck if I had any luck at all. Every simple task was made more difficult for no good reason. A simple beer transfer that should take 20 minutes turned into a 3 day affair as I had to source replacements for equipment. After a couple similar brewing issues in a week span I started to think about how I could avoid this problem in the future. For me there are two areas that I am going to be working to improve.
The first is organization. I have my space in the garage for my brew system and a space under the stairs for fermentation and storage. Outside of these spaces I have equipment scattered in the basement and around a couple different sinks in the house. This is a product of not having a true space in the garage to clean my equipment. I need to have my brewing things in one place. I also need to have bins for all of the small pieces like airlocks and stoppers. Having better organization will not only help speed up my brewing tasks because I will not spend as much time looking for what I need, it will also help keep me aware of items that need attention.
The second area I am going to improve is eliminating single point failures in my homebrewery. Basically, I need to stock spares. I started doing this for beer dispensing earlier this year by getting a second CO2 tank. It always seemed to happen that I would run out of CO2 on the day the homebrew shop was closed and I had friends coming over to enjoy some homebrew. Now I always have spare CO2. I need to extend this philosophy across the rest of my brewery. I should have spare tubing for every size that I use in the brewery. I should be swimming in air locks and stoppers. Most of the items that I need spares for would only cost a few bucks to make it happen. There is no reason to cause myself more pain by running out and not being able to transfer beer over $2 worth of tubing.
These changes are mostly about being prepared for when things go wrong. Being prepared has become more important now that I have a son and another on the way. My free time to do brewing tasks is now mostly at night. I can no longer just stop what I am doing and head to the homebrew shop when I need something. I need to be my own homebrew shop for common items. By making these changes I should be able to remove some of the frustration when things go wrong.
Learn to Homebrew Day 2014
On Saturday, November 1, homebrewers across the country will be reaching out to friends and community members to teach them how to make beer. The American Homebrewers Association created Learn to Homebrew Day in 1999 to spread the word and get more people involved in this wonderful hobby. If you have ever been interested in making your own beer this is a great low risk, high reward opportunity to learn. No need to buy equipment and ingredients. Your friendly neighborhood homebrewer will supply it all, and, who knows, they may even be nice enough to give you some of the beer you help brew. You can find a Learn to Homebrew Day event near you here.
Whether you are a seasoned homebrewer or new to the hobby, find a way to help a potential homebrewer learn how great this hobby can be. Be an ambassador for homebrew and make a brewing buddy in the process.
Wort Chilling Methods
Following the boiling of your wort, the next step is to chill it down and prepare to ferment the beer. Every brewer has to chill their wort because if the yeast was added to near boiling wort it would not survive in that environment. Most ale yeasts are happiest around 68-70 degrees Fahrenheit. The faster the wort is cooled to the proper temperature and the yeast is added, the less likely the wort is to be inoculated by a wild yeast or bacteria.
Fast wort chilling forms what is called “cold break.” The cold break is a group of proteins that forced out of solution by the rapidly changing temperature. Forcing these proteins to precipitate out of the wort will protect the beer from developing chill haze. Chill haze is mostly a visual ‘defect.’ It will cause the beer to appear cloudy. However, it has been linked to long-term viability of the beer. So removing these proteins can help the beer last longer.
Here are some of the most common wort chilling methods, ranging from extreme low cost to more sophisticated set ups.
Ice Bath
An ice bath is the most basic method to chill wort. It does not require any additional equipment. It is also the slowest method of chilling. The ice bath is as simple as the name suggests. Fill the sink or a tub with ice water and very carefully move the boil kettle into the ice bath. Gently stirring the ice water around the kettle can help speed up the cooling process. Be careful not to splash any of the water into the kettle as this could introduce contamination. Gently stirring the wort in a circular motion will also help speed things up. Be sure to use a sanitized spoon. I recommend stirring the bath and the wort in opposite directions. Otherwise the wort and ice bath will move together and negate some of the benefit of stirring.
Immersion Chiller
Stepping up to an immersion chiller is the most common first step for many homebrewers. The immersion chiller is the lowest cost option compared to the counterflow and plate chillers. As the name suggests this chiller is immersed in the boil kettle. Cold water is then run through the coils to cool the wort down. The water can come from a garden hose or the sink faucet. Make sure the chiller has the right connections for your situation when purchasing. The immersion chiller should be placed in the kettle with fifteen to twenty minutes remaining in the boil to sanitize the chiller. I recommend having the water source connected when placing the chiller in the wort. Similar to the ice bath, the wort can be gently stirred in a circular motion with a sanitized spoon to speed up the cooling process.
Counterflow Chiller
Counterflow chillers are coils with an interior and exterior coil. The wort is moved through the interior coil and cold water is moved through the outer coil. The wort could then be transferred directly into the fermenter or recirculated back into the kettle. Again the name is very descriptive because the wort and water run in opposite directions, counterflow. If the wort is connected to go in one side, the water should be connected to exit the chiller on that side and vice-versa. This design allows the chiller to take advantage of large temperature differences throughout the cycle which speeds up the chilling process. Because the wort needs to be moved through the chiller most brewers will use a pump. This adds to the cost of using this method However, it would be possible to use gravity to drain the boil kettle into the chiller. To sanitize the chiller you can pump sanitizer through the inner beer coil or pump boiling water through it for 5-10 minutes. It is not necessary to sanitize the water side because the wort will not touch the inside of that coil.
Plate Chiller
Another creative name, plate chillers are a metal box with a series of thin metal plates on the inside of the box. Water is run through the chiller to cool the plates. The wort is run through a different compartment and is cooled by the plates. Using plates increases the surface area and chills the wort more efficiently. This method also requires a way to move the wort, preferably a pump. Sanitize the plate chiller in a similar fashion to the counterflow chiller. Pump sanitizer or boiling water through the chiller prior to use. One downside of plate chillers is they can be difficult to clean. All of the plates provide a lot of nooks and crannies for hop matter or proteins to get stuck inside the chiller. Therefore it is important to flush the beer side of the chiller with water and a cleaning solution immediately after use.
No matter which method you choose, make sure you focus on the reason for this step in the process: to chill the wort as quickly as possible. Developing an over complicated process that doesn’t improve the speed of the wort chilling is just going to create more problems. One final reminder to be very careful with the beer after chilling! Anything that touches the wort after this step needs to be sanitized prior to use.
La-Brew Day
Beer puns are pretty awful, but I’m working on my terrible dad jokes so I am going with it. On Labor Day I brewed the newest rendition of my Russian imperial stout. This brew day I was joined by my brother-in-law and I was just hoping that things would go more smoothly than my last brew. An easy brew day would be just the thing to cap off the holiday weekend.
The day started out with only a minor hiccup. I left the valve of the mash tun open and poured some water on my shoes. Thankfully that is an easy remedy and doesn’t effect the end product. The mash lagged a little low on temperature getting started. It could make the stout dry out a little so I will have to keep an eye on that. The sparge of the mash went well until I checked the pre-boil gravity and it was again low by 0.010. The good news is that I still had some extract left over from correcting the Belgian dark strong ale. The bad news is I can no longer blame this on Denny. I need to figure out what is going wrong.
The boil went well until I started trying to chill. Once again the system stopped draining after transferring about 3 gallons of wort. I have a couple ideas on dealing with this issue. First I am going to try increasing the height differential between the kettles and the pumps. I can lower the pumps another notch on the stand and I think I can raise the kettles a notch and still do everything comfortably. If that doesn’t work then I will need to investigate replacing the hop stopper I use with something that won’t clog as easily.
To finish the day I decided to just dump the remaining wort into the fermenter and let it chill to the proper temperature in the fermentation fridge. I was frustrated and did not feel like fussing with the pumps and hoses for an hour to get the last couple gallons out of the kettle. The starting gravity was correct after the addition of extract.
Recipe Specifications -------------------------- Boil Size: 6.72 gal Post Boil Volume: 5.72 gal Batch Size (fermenter): 5.50 gal Bottling Volume: 5.50 gal Estimated OG: 1.091 SG Estimated Color: 63.1 SRM Estimated IBU: 104.5 IBUs Brewhouse Efficiency: 85.00 % Est Mash Efficiency: 85.0 % Boil Time: 60 Minutes Ingredients: ------------ Amt Name %/IBU 12 lbs 12.0 oz Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) 73.9 % 1 lbs 12.0 oz Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM) 10.1 % 1 lbs 12.0 oz Roasted Barley (300.0 SRM) 10.1 % 1 lbs Extra Special (Briess) (130.0 SRM) 5.8 % 1.50 oz Columbus (Tomahawk) [16.80 %] - Boil 60.0 min 100.5 IBUs 0.50 oz Centennial [10.00 %] - Boil 10.0 min 4.0 IBUs 0.50 oz Centennial [10.00 %] - Boil 0.0 min 0.0 IBUs 1.0 pkg British Ale Yeast (Wyeast Labs #1098) [2 liter starter] ---------------------------- Name Description Step Temperat Step Time Mash In Add 7.19 gal of water at 160.7 F 152.0 F 60 min Mash Out Heat to 168.0 F over 2 min 168.0 F 10 min Sparge: Fly sparge with 2.32 gal water at 168.0 F
Recently, I mentioned I was going to be changing this stout recipe despite winning the stout category in my club’s competition. I want to give the malt profile more depth. To do this I added a pound of extra special malt. I also wanted to maintain the malt-bitterness balance so I increased the bittering hop slightly.
Luce Cannon – Belgian Dark Strong Ale
Recently I was visited by my good friend Denny and one day we got together to brew a beer. Based on his recent experience with Gulden Draak, Denny wanted to brew a Belgian Dark Strong Ale. I have never brewed a Belgian style beer so I consulted one of my favorite brewing books, Brewing Classic Styles. The recipe we used is very close to what is provided in the book so out of respect for the authors and as part of my belief that this is a must own book I won’t be providing the recipe in this post.
The day began with the ritual I demand of all new initiates that brew on my system: hand cranking the mill. Due to the large amount of grain in this recipe I showed mercy and offered that we skip straight to using the drill to turn the mill, but Denny rose to the challenge in an effort to get ‘the full experience.’ After a couple false starts with the handle not gripping the crank shaft, Denny started powering through almost half of the 17.5 pounds of grain we were using for the beer.
Denny Stirring the Mash
While Denny was toiling with the mill, I prepared the water for the mash. I poured the grain into the mash tun while Denny stirred the mash to breakup any dough balls. Initially we had some false alarms because some grain had clogged the sight glass causing it to show a lower volume than expected. About 20 minutes into the mash the pumps that recirculate the mash and the hot liquor tank overheated and stopped working. Denny had the idea of hooking up a fan to keep the fans cooled. Both pumps finally started working again with about three minutes left in the mash.
We started sparging the mash and calibrated the refractometer. When we finished sparging and took a pre-boil gravity reading we found the biggest issue with the brew day so far: the gravity was way too low. There was light cursing and we took a couple more readings trying to convince ourselves that the first one was wrong. It wasn’t. The boil kettle element was turned off and the kettle was covered. We jumped in the car and went to the local homebrew shop to pick up some dry malt extract to increase the gravity where we needed it.
We returned to the garage following a brief pit stop for lunch. We were ready to continue the brew day. A final pre-boil measurement was taken to confirm the amount of extract we needed to add to the wort. We used amber malt extract which should not significantly alter the flavor of the beer. The rest of our ninety minute boil went well. Only having one hop addition allowed us to recoup after a hectic morning.
Near the end of the boil we sanitized the chiller and hooked the water hoses up. The fermenter was sanitized and waiting for the cooled wort. The start of the chilling process was smooth. When the fermenter had about 3 gallons of wort in it everything changed. Suddenly the wort would not drain out of the kettle fast enough to keep up with the pump. Thus began our dance of lifting and dropping hoses and trying to force gravity and the pumps to help us out. In the end we only ended up with a little over 4 gallons in the fermenter before we gave up fighting the hoses.
The ground water we were chilling with was rather warm due to the hot weather we’ve had recently. We couldn’t pitch so we stuck the fermenter in the fermentation fridge and went to have a beer while it cooled down. After a couple hours we went to check the beer and it was still too warm to pitch the yeast, but we took a sample to record our original gravity. The gravity was slightly high, but the unfermented sample tasted good. You could already pick out the different malt layers. Denny got the full experience of homebrewing that day. We fought through quite a few issues, and in the end we were rewarded with some good tasting wort.
Winter Is Coming
Sure we have a few more months of nice weather ahead, but as Ned Stark would remind us: winter is coming. Before you know it, the temperature will drop and you’ll be sitting in front of the fire wanting a big barleywine or Russian imperial stout to drink. So you’ll go ahead and brew one and have it ready to enjoy in front of the fire in a few weeks, right? Wrong. These big beers take time to condition and let the flavors meld and develop. The time to think about and brew these beers is now. It can take four to six months before these beers hit their peak flavor.
I have started putting together my recipes for my barleywine and imperial stout. I’ll share the imperial stout recipe I brewed last year. This beer won gold for stouts in my club’s annual competition. I will be changing the recipe this year. Seems crazy to change the recipe of a gold medal winning beer, but there is still room to improve. I will be trying to add a little more malt complexity to this beer.
Recipe Specifications -------------------------- Boil Size: 6.72 gal Post Boil Volume: 5.72 gal Batch Size (fermenter): 5.50 gal Bottling Volume: 5.50 gal Estimated OG: 1.088 SG Estimated Color: 64.6 SRM Estimated IBU: 99.1 IBUs Brewhouse Efficiency: 85.00 % Est Mash Efficiency: 85.0 % Boil Time: 60 Minutes Ingredients: ------------ Amt Name %/IBU 12 lbs 12.0 oz Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) 78.5 % 1 lbs 12.0 oz Chocolate Malt (300.0 SRM) 10.8 % 1 lbs 12.0 oz Roasted Barley (500.0 SRM) 10.8 % 1.40 oz Columbus (Tomahawk) [16.80 %] - Boil 60 min 95.0 IBUs 0.50 oz Centennial [10.00 %] - Boil 10 min 4.0 IBUs 0.50 oz Centennial [10.00 %] - Boil 0 min 0.0 IBUs 1.0 pkg British Ale (Wyeast Labs #1098) [2 liter starter] Name Description Step Temperat Step Time Mash In Add 6.81 gal of water at 160.7 F 152.0 F 60 min Mash Out Heat to 168.0 F over 2 min 168.0 F 10 min Sparge: Fly sparge with 2.58 gal water at 168.0 F
Normally I advocate only changing one thing at a time in a recipe. Otherwise it can be difficult to determine what change caused the end result. However, in this case I will be changing the malt bill and the hop schedule. I want that additional malt complexity, but I don’t want to lose the balance I currently have between the bitterness and residual sweetness. So I will also be increasing the bitterness slightly in this beer to accommodate the change in malt bill.
Why Brew Beer?
People sometimes ask me why I brew my own beer. Why don’t I just buy it from the store? To me the answer is pretty simple. Brewing is fun and rewarding. I like handing someone a beer and being able to say, “Yeah. I made that.” Hopefully they get the same enjoyment as I do! For me brewing is also a stress reliever. When I am brewing, it doesn’t matter what happened at work this week or anything else that is going on. I can just focus on the sweet smells coming from the kettle.
Brewing beer also scratches that creative itch while satisfying my geeky science side. The mix of science and art is something that can’t be found in many hobbies. For example, hops can give you different flavors and aromas and the timing of those hop additions will affect what you get. The science behind hop isomerization melds with the art of blending the right flavors to create a magical experience.
There are plenty of other reasons that people homebrew. Maybe they can’t get good beer near them. Maybe they discovered their new favorite beer while travelling and want to be able to drink it at home (don’t forget to ask the brewer for tips!). Some brew to have beer cheaper than they can buy it for. Others brew for the pride of making something better than they can buy at the store.
There is some aspect of brewing that will appeal to just about anyone. Here are a few examples:
Artists – brewing provides a creative outlet to make a delicious beverage to share with friends and family or selfishly enjoy on your own. You can use endless combinations of ingredients to bring together wonderful flavors and aromas.
Scientists – brewing involves thermodynamics, chemistry, and biology. Many choose to ignore the science behind brewing and still enjoy the hobby. But for others, diving deep into the processes and reactions that brewing entails is a big part of the fun.
DIYers – building homebrew equipment is a large component of the hobby for many homebrewers. There are projects large and small that can make brewing easier or just plain cooler.
Why do you brew?