How To: Brew Beer Using Extract
Brewing beer is simple. When people ask me how hard it is I tell them that if you can boil water, you can make beer. Sure there is a little more that goes into it, but not so much that it should be intimidating. Most brewers start out brewing malt extract. Malt extract is a condensed form of the sugars used in brewing. It comes in both liquid and dry forms. Using extract simplifies the brewing process because someone has already done part of the job for you: getting the sugar out of the malt. We will use a simple pale ale recipe as an example for this process. The general process is the same for any beer.
Be sure to read through the steps a couple times before you start your brew day. That way you won’t be surprised by anything you need to do.
Easy Drinking Pale Ale
8 lb gold liquid malt extract
1 oz Cascade hops (6% AA) 60 min
1 oz Cascade hops (6% AA) 20 min
1 oz Cascade hops (6% AA) 0 min
1 packet US-05 dry yeast
Brewing Process:
- Clean and sanitize your equipment. Follow the instructions on your sanitizer to mix a solution to the proper concentration.
- Heat 3.5 gallons of water to boil in a 5 gallon kettle.
- When the water is boiling, turn off the heat and stir in the malt extract. Stir well to avoid the extract dropping to the bottom of the kettle where it could burn.
- Turn on the heat and return the wort to a boil.
- When the wort starts boiling again, add your 60 minute hop addition (1 oz of Cascade hops) and start a timer for 60 minutes. The time next to the hops is the amount of time they spend in the boiling wort. It is possible that the wort will foam up and boil over the side of the kettle within the next 10 minutes or so. If the beer starts to foam up turn the heat down and stir until it subsides. You really want to pay attention to your kettle during this time. Cleaning up a boil over is not fun and a quick way to get kicked out of the kitchen when brewing beer.
- Continue your boil and add your hops at the proper times. For this recipe that is an ounce of Cascade at 20 minutes left and an ounce of cascade at 0 minutes left.
- Turn off the heat when the timer goes off and begin chilling the wort. There are many ways to chill the wort. One inexpensive way is to just put the kettle in an ice bath in the sink. Be very careful moving the kettle while it is full of boiling wort. Another option is to use a copper immersion chiller. If you are using the immersion chiller, you need to put the chiller in the kettle with about 20 minutes left in the boil in order to sanitize the chiller.
- Chill the wort until it reaches 68 degrees Fahrenheit. Once the beer is chilled, make sure that everything that touches the beer is sanitized. No reason to risk letting your precious beer getting infected!
- While the wort is chilling, make sure your fermenter is sanitized and ready to receive your delicious wort.
- Transfer your wort to the fermenter. You can pour it in if you are using a bucket. If you are using a carboy, you can still pour the wort into the fermenter but you will need to use a sanitized funnel to get the wort into the carboy. I prefer to use a siphon to transfer the wort. Using a siphon is easier on your back and you do not have to worry about spilling the wort or dropping the kettle.
- Top off your wort with cool water until you reach a 5 gallon volume. Chances are your tap water won’t cause an infection. If you are concerned about infection you can boil water in advance and cool it in the fridge prior to adding it to the fermenter.
- Now it is time to pitch the yeast. Follow the instructions on the yeast packet to rehydrate the yeast and add to the fermenter. Technically you now have beer! Very weak beer.
- Put the lid or stopper in your bucket or carboy, respectively. Attach the airlock and fill it with a sanitizer like Star-San or cheap vodka.
- Store the fermenter in a cool dark place that will stay at a constant temperature (preferably 68 degrees Fahrenheit) for three weeks. Light will skunk the hops in the beer and ruin the flavor. Fluctuating temperatures can stress the yeast causing them to create off flavors in the beer and/or stop working before the beer is done.
Congratulations! You made beer! Now you need to have patience. Let the beer ferment fully. Don’t rush it. Too many beginning brewers will try to speed up the process and end up disappointed in the final product. Let the yeast do their thing and be rewarded with some tasty beer.
How To Sync Beersmith 2 Using Dropbox
I recently picked up a small Windows tablet/netbook that will let me work on the brewing stuff and the website without being tied to the desktop. Now I can be more present with the family and more easily pick up and work when I have some spare time. However, this makes me stuck with how to manage my BeerSmith 2 software that is now installed on two computers.
Beersmith does offer cloud support, but you are limited to 15 recipes before starting on a monthly plan. I have more than 15 recipes so I would have to decide what to put up there and constantly juggle what I have in the cloud. I am too lazy for this. In addition, you cannot store equipment profiles, inventory, etc. So any adjustments made to your equipment will not be carried across to the other computer.
Enter Dropbox. Surely there has to be a way to sync my files in the cloud. After spending some time surfing the web I came across a very simple solution thanks to user calumscott on the Home Brew Forum. I had my Beersmith files share between my machines in less than 15 minutes. The instructions below assume default installations. If you have changed the location of any of the desired folders then update your pathnames accordingly. Follow these instructions for both computers to setup syncing for your Beersmith files.
- Create a Dropbox account and install Dropbox. If you are using Windows 8 you need to install Dropbox on the desktop. The app will not work for this purpose. This will give you a folder on your hard drive that syncs with the cloud. (e.g. C:\users\<username>\dropbox)
- Create a local copy of your Beersmith folder as a backup. This is your safety net in case something ever goes wrong. This folder should be located here: C:\users\<username>\documents\beersmith2
- Move a copy of your Beersmith folder into your dropbox folder. The path should now be: C:\users\<username>\dropbox\beersmith2
- Delete the existing Beersmith folder. (Don’t worry. It’s ok. We made a backup, remember?)
- Create a symbolic link to the Dropbox folder that will take the place of the Beersmith folder you just deleted.
- Open a command prompt. Search for “cmd” and hit enter to open the prompt. If you do not have administrator rights on your machine you will need to right-click on “cmd” and select “Run as Administrator.” You cannot create the link unless you have administrator priveleges.
- Change directory to where your Beersmith folder was.
cd \users\<username>\documents
- The command to create a symbolic link is: “MKLINK /D linkname target”. So in this case you would type:
MKLINK /D BeerSmith2 C:\users\<username>\dropbox\beersmith2
There are some limitations with this setup. You must be online when wanting to use BeerSmith. If you need to use Beersmith while offline, you will need to plan ahead and recreate your local folder. You cannot use both installations of Beersmith at the same time (nor should you).
However, now I can have my beer recipes with me anywhere in the house with full editing functionality. Huzzah! I will be doing more testing with this setup and I’ll update this post if I come across anything new.
Quest for Kolsch
Recently I have been seeking out Kolsch beers. They are a nice light style that is a great change of pace from the bigger bigger bigger trend in the craft beer world. With the addition of temperature control to my fermentation set up, brewing a Kolsch for myself is now within reach. I decided that developing a good Kolsch recipe is my goal for this summer. I started my quest with the Kolsch book by Eric Warner. Warner’s book is part of the Brewer’s Publication’s Classic Style Series. It gives history, techniques and recipes for Kolsch beers. After getting an understanding of the history of the Kolsch beer and consulting Brewing Classic Styles, I came up with the recipe below. There was one change from my initial recipe to what you see below. I planned to use Kolsch yeast, but my local homebrew shop was out. I substituted the German Ale yeast as the closest alternative.
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: 1.049 SG Estimated Color: 3.2 SRM Estimated IBU: 24.7 IBUs Brewhouse Efficiency: 85.00 % Est Mash Efficiency: 85.0 % Boil Time: 90 Minutes Ingredients: ------------ Amt Name %/IBU 8 lbs Pilsner (2 Row) Ger (2.0 SRM) 94.1 % 8.0 oz Wheat Malt, Ger (2.0 SRM) 5.9 % 1.00 oz Hallertauer [4.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min 17.9 IBUs 0.25 oz Perle [8.00 %] - Boil 40.0 min 6.8 IBUs 1.0 pkg German Ale (Wyeast Labs #1007) [0.75L Starter] Mash Schedule: Temperature Mash, 2 Step, Light Body Total Grain Weight: 8 lbs 8.0 oz ---------------------------- Name Description Step Temp Step Time Protein Rest Add 3.38 gal of water at 127.7 F 122.0 F 30 min Saccharification Heat to 148.0 F over 15 min 148.0 F 75 min Mash Out Heat to 168.0 F over 10 min 168.0 F 10 min Sparge: Fly sparge with 5.58 gal water at 168.0 F
I wanted to start simple. Starting simple allows for easier changes and in many cases achieves what you want without muddling the beer. From here I intend to make changes one at a time until I have the beer I want. Making small incremental changes will allow me to understand the effect of each change. If I made multiple changes and the aroma got better, but the flavor was worse I may not be able to decipher what change to keep and which to revert back to original. The sample I tasted when I took my final gravity reading and transferred to the keg was nice and light. There was a slight fruitiness that may be cleaned up as it sits. It could be a byproduct of the German Ale yeast. I will try this same recipe again with the Kolsch yeast to see if there is a difference there.
Guinea Pig IPA For All
Today was the American Homebrewers Association Big Brew Day. Big Brew Day happens on the first Saturday of May each year to celebrate National Homebrew Day. My homebrew club was holding a big brew event at the local homebrew store, but because my system is all electric it is not exactly portable. I chose to celebrate at home and invited a friend over to teach him how to brew. My goal is to have this beer ready for Memorial Day weekend festivities.
We brewed a batch of my Guinea Pig IPA. This beer got the name because this was my first original recipe. I used my friends as test subjects, aka guinea pigs, to get feedback on how to improve the beer. This IPA initially featured Amarillo (a favorite hop of mine), but that hop became scarce locally. I now use Columbus, Nugget, and Simcoe to give a nice big hop punch.
Ingredients are not the only thing that has changed in this beer. I have also adjusted my process. A recent add to my brewing arsenal is the Blichmann Hop Rocket. The last couple times I brewed this beer I moved the 0 minute Simcoe addition to the Hop Rocket right before the chiller. This has made my aroma big and bold. I’ve been very happy with the Hop Rocket because the aroma was the not where I wanted it with this beer prior to using the Hop Rocket.
Our brew day today went pretty smoothly. Only a couple of hiccups that should not impact the beer negatively. First, after getting the Hop Rocket sanitized and loaded with hops I forgot to connect the hose to the chiller. So when the timer went off that the boil was done it took me an extra minute or so to get the hose set up and start chilling the beer. The other issue is something I am going to have to adjust in my recipe design. When I have beers with more hop matter I need to account for that in the recipe so I can have a bit more liquid at the end of the brew. We ended up about 0.5 gallon short in the fermenter.
Recipe: Guinea Pig IPA (1.3) Style: American IPA TYPE: All Grain 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: 1.070 SG Estimated Color: 6.8 SRM Estimated IBU: 89.9 IBUs Brewhouse Efficiency: 85.00 % Est Mash Efficiency: 85.0 % Boil Time: 60 Minutes Mash: Single Infusion, 152 degrees F Ingredients: ------------ Amt Name %/IBU 10 lbs Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) 80.0 % 1 lbs Caramel/Crystal Malt - 20L (20.0 SRM) 8.0 % 1 lbs Munich Malt (9.0 SRM) 8.0 % 8.0 oz Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM) 4.0 % 0.60 oz Columbus [17.50 %] - Boil 60.0 min 45.4 IBUs 1.00 oz Nugget [13.20 %] - Boil 20.0 min 19.2 IBUs 1.00 oz Simcoe [13.70 %] - Boil 15.0 min 15.8 IBUs 1.00 oz Nugget [13.20 %] - Boil 5.0 min 9.5 IBUs 1.00 oz Simcoe [13.70 %] - Hop Rocket [0 min] 0.0 IBUs 1.50 oz Columbus [14.00 %] - Dry Hop 7.0 days 0.0 IBUs 1.50 oz Simcoe [13.70 %] - Dry Hop 7.0 Days 0.0 IBUs 1.0 pkg American Ale (Wyeast Labs #1056) [1.25L Starter]
Homebrew Equipment for Beginners
There is an infinite number of equipment combinations that you can use to brew beer. We are going to focus on the things you must have to start brewing. Many homebrew shops sell kits that will include everything you need. However, you may have some of the equipment already at home! In case you need to fill out your equipment, a list of homebrew starter equipment is below. The recommendations in this list assume a 5-gallon batch size.
Kettle – You will need a pot that can hold at least 3 gallons of boiling water. Preferably you want a pot that is capable of bringing 7 gallons to a boil, but these pots can be expensive. If it is not in your budget, just get the largest kettle you can afford. Stainless steel is generally the favored material among homebrewers, but an aluminum or enameled stock pot will work and they are generally less expensive.
Fermenter – A bucket fermenter is the cheapest option and is included with most basic equipment packages. The bucket should have a 7 gallon capacity and be made of food-grade plastic. The bucket fermenter will also need a lid with a grommeted hole for an airlock.
Airlock – The airlock serves two purposes. It allows the fermenter to release excess CO2 created by the yeast and keeps airborne contaminants out of your beer. There are two types of airlocks, three-piece and bubbler. I prefer the three piece airlocks because they can be disassembled and are easy to clean.
Bottling Bucket – The bottling bucket will be used to mix the beer with the bottling sugar and transfer the beer to the bottles. The bucket is the same style as a fermenting bucket, but with an attached spigot.
Siphon – To transfer your beer between the kettle and the fermenter and again between the fermenter and the bottling bucket, you will need a siphon. The siphon consists of a racking cane and tubing. There are auto-siphons available that will create the suction needed to start the flow of beer.
Spoon – You will need a long spoon to stir the wort. It can be metal or plastic. The size of the spoon really depends on the size of your kettle. Make sure the spoon can reach the bottom of the kettle while you can comfortably maintain a grip on the spoon.
Sanitizer – Making sure your equipment is sanitized will ensure that you will not introduce bacteria into your beer that can cause an infection. Star-San is my preferred sanitizer. It is easy to use and works quickly. Regardless of what sanitizer you choose, make sure it is a no-rinse sanitizer. If you have to rinse your equipment after using the sanitizer then your equipment will no longer be sanitized.
Cleaner – Normal dish soap will leave behind residues that can harm your beer and may not be strong enough to get your equipment clean. There are excellent cleaners available that are specially formulated to deal with the beer mess left behind in your equipment. Some cleaners, like PBW, are so powerful they won’t even require you to scrub your equipment!
Bottles – You can buy bottles from a homebrew shop or save money by reusing bottles from the beer you drink. Just make sure to clean the bottles thoroughly. You can’t use screw top bottles. Screw top bottles will not seal properly and your beer won’t carbonate. I just gave you an excuse to save money by drinking beer. Use it early and often.
Bottle Filler – A basic bottle filler is a tube with a spring-loaded valve on the end. When the filler is pressed against the bottom of a bottle, the valve opens and releases beer. The valve closes when the filler is lifted off the bottom of the bottle.
Bottle Capper – There are two types of bottle cappers: winged and bench. A winged capper is a handheld model that requires both hands to secure the cap on the bottle. A bench capper is a stationary capper that can be operated with one hand and some models will cork bottles as well. Winged cappers are less expensive and popular among most homebrewers.
Use the equipment that works best for you. One size does not fit all in this case. Is there something you can’t live without in your home brewery? Please share in the comments.
The Most Important Part of Brewing Beer
When I started this site, the first thing I imagined posting was a welcome message to the site for people to learn about what they will find here. Or perhaps a step-by-step tutorial on how to homebrew. That is what the people want to know! I wrote the tutorial, and it will be coming soon. However, I realized that I needed to take a step back to talk about what I think is the most important step in brewing: sanitation.
Sanitation and cleanliness are the most important aspects of brewing. Some people will tell you that a good fermentation is more important, but a good fermentation won’t help you if your beer is infected. It is more important that having a perfect recipe. It is more important than any other topic that I will discuss on this website. There is a reason that many professional brewers refer to themselves as glorified janitors. They are focused on keeping everything clean. If you do not properly clean and sanitize your equipment then nothing else matters. You will introduce bacteria and other organisms that will spoil your beer. If the beer is infected in the bottle, there is a chance the bottles could explode which creates a safety issue.
So sanitation is important, but here is the good news: it is easy. Just mix up your cleaning solution to the specified concentration and soak your equipment. I prefer using PBW when cleaning my equipment. If you have some tough build up you can speed up the process with a soft sponge. Do not use the scrubby side of the sponge because that will leave scratches in your equipment for bacteria to hide. When your equipment is clean, prepare your sanitizer and soak your equipment again. Simple as that. My sanitizer of choice is Star San. Most sanitizers only take a couple minutes to be effective. Just remember: if it’s not clean, you can’t sanitize it. If you have any build up on your equipment it won’t be sanitized because bacteria can live inside the gunk!
A clean brewery is a happy brewery. Poor sanitation is one of the biggest causes for new brewers making bad beers. It happened to me on my second batch and I almost stopped brewing. Don’t be a statistic. Be thorough and sanitize everything before you use it. Make good sanitation a habit so you can focus on all the fun parts of making delicious beer.