Homebrewing Tales

I was fortunate enough to live in Colorado during my graduate school years. Living in Fort Collins allowed me the opportunity to test out 6 different breweries when I first arrived and just as many more by the time I defended.

My first attempt in brewing beer started with a malt grain extract and a 5 gallon glass carboy. Over the course of the next few years, I upgraded my equipment to an all-grain operation. Currently, I have 3-15.5 gallon Sankey kegs (which I ferment in), two keggles (Sankey kegs that have had their tops cut off and a spigot added), 3 or 4 glass carboys (for wine and experimental beers), a mash-tun, a wort-chiller, a hydrometer, several thermometers, a siphon, rubber tops and airlocks, and all the necessary cleaning equipment.

After my graduate years, I was never in any location for very long to warrant hauling my brewing equipment with me ... until now.

About 3 weeks ago, my fiancée and I busted out the equipment and started brewing. We had already decided to do a very simple light ale using nothing more than American 2-row grain. We purchased all of our ingredients from a local brew shop in West Knoxville and decided to do a generic pale ale clone, based in part on Bass Ale from Bass Brewers in the UK.

I've had Bass Ale before, and it is always a treat. Numerous mistakes were made throughout the process, so let's hope that the end result is good enough for our tastes. Fortunately, making beer is very forgiving!

The General Recipe

Equipment

• Brew Kettle
• Ingredients (see below)
• PBW Sanitizer
• StarSan Solution
• Iodine
• Siphon with rubber hose
• Fermenting vessel
• Mash tun
• Rubber tops and airlocks
• Copper wort chiller
• Thermometer
• Hydrometer

First step

• Sanitize and sterilize your equipment!

Indeed, I cannot stress how important cleanliness is to a brewing operation. In the end, this is why I believe my beer will turn out fine, even with all the mishaps that happened during this brew!

Use PBW for sanitizing your brew equipment. Sanitizing, in the homebrew nomenclature, refers to removing all organic matter. This is normally accomplished with soaking your equipment for about 30-45 minutes in luke-warm water. Rinsing is done after the soak is complete with tap-water of the same temperature. After sanitation is complete, sterilization occurs by placing the equipment in a diluted bath of StarSan solution. Sterilization inhibits the growth conditions of organisms.

• Basic Idea :

1. Kill organisms.
2. Destroy environment that allows them to grow.

Ingredients -- 15 Gallons (56.718 Liters)

Feel free to adjust the proportions accordingly.

• 27 pounds of American 2-row
• 5.25 ounces (147 grams) of Chinook Hops
• .75 ounces (84 grams) of Perle Hops

Mashing

Place your grains in the mash tun. For every pound of grain (~454 grams), bring about 1.5 quarts (~1.4 liters) of water to about 170-175 degrees Fahrenheit (76.66-79.44 Centigrade). Be careful to take into account the size of your mash tun! I am not quite capable of doing all 24 pounds of grain in 1-40 quart igloo cooler converted into a mash tun. As such, I do this in two steps.

We want to mash the grains for about 1 hour anywhere from 145-155 degrees Fahrenheit (62.77-68.33 Centigrade). The reason that we bring the temperature of the water above 155 degrees Fahrenheit (68.33 Centigrade) is due to the water cooling during transport and when it hits the much cooler grains.

Monitor the temperature of the grains during the hour and add hot water as needed to maintain proper temperatures (~145 F / 62.77 C or 155 F / 68.33 C). If you have a properly insulated container, you should have very little cooling occur and will not have to add too much.

After the grain has soaked in the correct temperature water for 60 minutes, take a small cup and obtain some of the sweet wort with as few of grain particles as you can. (Feel free to take a sip, if you'd like, but that's not what this is for!)

Take a small amount of iodine -- the kind you would find at any drugstore -- and put it in the liquid wort. If the iodine stays the same color, you are done. However, if it turns a darkish purple, then starches are still present in the wort. If this is the case, let the grain mash for another 15 minutes, and then perform the iodine test again. Repeat this until you've passed the iodine test, all the while keeping the water of the mash at the right temperatures.

Our Experience

My mash temperature throughout throughout the process was a bit higher than the recommended temperature, approximately 165 degrees Fahrenheit (73.88 Centigrade) during the mashing stage. This was due to me forgetting the proper temperatures in which starches are converted to sugars (and refusing to look it up online). This was to be our second mistake, the first is yet to come!

Sparging the Grain

After the mash has completed, the mashed grain needs to be "sparged." This is nothing more than adding more hot water to the wort, which causes the conversion of starches to sugars to stop, dissolves all the sugars into the wort, and rinses the grains free of the sugars.

There are several ways to "sparge the grain," but I will elucidate the method known as "batch sparging." Most commercial brewers will do a process known as "continuous sparging," which is the most efficient method. Batch sparging, in comparison, is nearly as efficient, especially for a homebrewer.

Bring about 2.25 quarts (2.1292 liters) of water per pound (454 grams) of grain to a temperature of 180 degrees Fahrenheit (82.22 Centigrade). Begin draining the wort from the mash tun to your brew kettle and add the sparge water to the top of the grain in the mash and let it percolate through. Once the wort changes color, you can stop draining the wort into the brew kettle.

At this point, you can see how much wort you have collected for the boil. Expect about 1 gallon (3.7812 liters) of wort to evaporate during the boil stage, regardless if you are preparing 5 gallons (18.906 liters) or 15 gallons (56.718 liters) of brew. Add however much water you need to have the right amount after the boiling process.

For example, if you are doing 10 gallons (37.812 liters) of brew, then you should have about 11 gallons (41.5932 liters) of wort.

Our Experience

My mash tun has a metal mesh tubing that blocks the grains and allows the wort to flow out of the spigot. Unfortunately, as the mash tun was bought second-hand, the wire mesh kinked up and failed to drain the wort towards the end of my first stage of sparging! I managed to massage the wire mesh enough to have the wort finish draining so I could mash a second time.

Then, when I sparged the second time, the kink reappeared as soon as I began the sparge process. I had to remove the grains and the wort and put it into a secondary vessel, take off the metal hose, chop off the kink, which was fortunately near the spigot, and then put it back on.

Leftover Grains

After the sparging process, a lot of grains are left over. As I am ecologically mindful and attempt to live sustainably, I did not want to just throw these grains out. In fact, they have quite a few uses! Here's a small list:

1. Composting
2. Worm-composting
3. Bread
4. Granola
5. Other Treats (Mississippi Mud Brownies, for example)
6. Animal feed
7. Edible mushroom substrate

Our Experience

We went with door number 2. We mixed up the grains with a bunch of coir (coconut fiber) bedding. I think this may have been a poor decision to mix the grains with the coir and should have instead placed the grains in the feed corner, like you would with other scraps. Mixing the grains caused too much excessive heat, and the worms did not like it! Live and learn ...

Boiling

This is the stage in which you add all the bitterness and aroma to the beer. You add bittering hops at the beginning of the boil, flavor hops towards the near end, and aroma hops at the very end.

Bring the wort to a boil for 60 minutes. At the beginning of the boil, add 3 ounces (84 grams) of Chinook hops. After 45 minutes, add .75 ounces (21 grams) of Perle hops. Boil for 5 more minutes and then add 1.5 ounces (42 grams) of Chinook hops. Boil for 9 more minutes and add .75 ounces (21 grams) of Chinook hops.

Our Experience

The burner we used was not working and would not heat the wort very quickly. I ended up taking it apart and moving the piece that directed the flame closer to the bottom of the keggle.

In addition, in our folly, we failed to buy the right amount of hops. In fact, our clone book gave the recipe for only 5 gallons and that's the amount we bought (approximately). We did, however, account for the increased grains.

In the end, we ended up using 2 ounces of Chinook and 1 ounce of Perle. Fortunately, the Perle is a decent enough hop substitute.

Cool the Wort and Pitch the Yeast

The wort needs to be cooled from boiling to 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21.11 Centigrade) as quickly as possible. This is achieved with a copper wort chiller.

After placing the wort chiller in a diluted StarSan solution to remove verdigris, hook up the wort chiller to a garden hose, place the wort chiller in the boiling wort, and turn on the hose. A better solution would be to use ice-cold water and a water pump and recirculate the water that has flowed through the wort chiller back to the ice bath. Several bags of ice will sufficiently chill the water before it recirculates through the wort chiller again.

After the wort is brought to 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21.11 Centigrade), use a (sanitized and sterilized) siphon to move the the wort into the fermentation vessel. Add the yeast, seal with a rubber top, and add an airlock.

Within a few hours to a day, you should see bubbling of the airlock, which indicates fermentation activity. Congratulations! Welcome to the world of homebrewing ... although, you aren't done yet.

Our Experience

While starting to chill the wort, the metal clamps on the rubber hose of the wort chiller were not sufficiently fastened and came off. This caused the wort chiller to sink into the wort, and the ends of the chiller began to fill with wort. After much persuasion with a pair of tongs, I was able to fetch the wort chiller from the boiling wort.

I ended up re-boiling again (but not a complete 60 minute boil) and then brought the wort down to 78 degrees Fahrenheit (25.55 Centigrade), as I (once more erroneously) thought the temperature at which yeast thrived was 80 degrees Fahrenheit (26.66 Centigrade).

Anyway, the next few hours showed no activity, but the next morning, the air lock was bubbling vigorously, so I assumed all was good in the world.

To be continued ...