"We hereby proclaim and decree, by Authority of our Province, that henceforth in the Duchy of Bavaria, in the country as well as in the cities and marketplaces, the following rules apply to the sale of beer:
From Michaelmas to Georgi, the price for one Mass or one Kopf, is not to exceed one Pfennig Munich value, and from Georgi to Michaelmas, the Mass shall not be sold for more than two Pfennig of the same value, the Kopf not more than three Heller. If this not be adhered to, the punishment stated below shall be administered.
Should any person brew, or otherwise have, other beer than March beer, it is not to be sold any higher than one Pfennig per Mass.
(Translation Excerpt from the German Beer Purity Decree 1516, the oldest recorded consumer protection law in the world; enforced in its original form until 1993)
(Translation Excerpt from the German Beer Purity Decree 1516, the oldest recorded consumer protection law in the world; enforced in its original form until 1993)
I was in a conference earlier this year in Dublin
In the previous article here, Philipp and I provided directions for brewing Ginger Beer. The challenge a year ago was to brew stuff wit just relying on ingredients readily available from the grocery store. Although, this yielded a nice refreshing drink the battle against LCBO monopoly pricing was far from over. Ginger beer is ok, but this time we went pro and did original Irish Stout.
Before we go into the fun part lets survey a bit of the advanced technique. In a nutshell what you need for beer brewing is malt (grains: barley, rye, wheat...), hops, water, yeast, time, and most importantly the right temperature. The last one sounds subtle but from my perspective the fermentation temperature is the most distinctive property of the beers. Since you won’t necessarily have access to a well-tempered cellar or temperature-regulated room, this will ultimately limit what you can brew at home. Out in the professional field it boils down, to lager beer which is fermented at very cool temperatures and top-fermented beers like German wheat beer, British Pale Ale, Irish stout (the last one is subject to debate for historic reasons, but the old-school stout process was top-fermenting). In essence Lager ferments at about 10-12C and the others in the range of 18-22C. So first thing to do before you happily throw money at brewing equipment is to find a spot that matches either one of those temperature ranges in your house. That spot should not encounter any significant temperature shifts (i.e. no bathroom) and be relatively shady.
Equipment
In order to gear up from ginger beer to professional level, you need to invest in some equipment. Here is what we got.
● Brewers best brewing kit (got it for 60 US$ on a shopping spree down south), this one comes
○ 6 gal fermenting bucket + airlock
○ 6 gal bottling bucket + spigot
○ Hygrometer
○ Thermometer
○ Stirrer
○ No-rinse disinfection solvent
○ 6ft Hose with clamp
○ Crown-cap-press
○ 5.5 gal carboy (not needed)
○ Auto-siphon (not needed)
● Electronic scale (was on sale for 10$ in Canadian Tire)
● Large stock pot (you may already have one of those)
Consumables
● Malt extract kit (note we are avoiding the mashing process by buying the extract directly, if you want to be hardcore, you can mash the malt yourself)
I got the malt kit fromIreland as a souvenir from Dublin
I got the malt kit from
● 15g Coopers yeast. This stuff allegedly works over a wide band of temperatures and ferments almost anything (~2$)
● 320g corn sugar (dextrose). This will be needed for the carbonation.(2$)
● 2 oz (50g) hops (~3$)
If you buy hops the beer guy will show you numerous different brands of hops. I just told him to be creative and affordable.
If you buy hops the beer guy will show you numerous different brands of hops. I just told him to be creative and affordable.
● 50 - 60 empty beer bottles (got it by asking nerdy questions at BBQ parties)
● 50 - 60 oxygen-barrier crown caps (~3 US
This will make about 5 US
Approach
The approach entails the following steps.
● First everything needs to be cleaned and disinfected.
● Second you need to prepare the beer worth.
● Third you have to have the beer fermented.
● Fourth you bottle the beer for carbonation.
● Fifth, you wait...
● Finally, you enjoy your fully carbonated beer.
1. Cleaning and Disinfection
The key to a successful brew is cleanliness. Make sure that all of your equipment is properly cleaned and disinfected. Brewers yeast is very slow fermenting; that said, any organic contamination of your brew will grow faster than the yeast, especially contamination from animal or human hair, mould spore etc. Make sure everything is pristine and clean, before progressing further. Here you see my roommate Ivan disinfecting the fermenter.
2. Preparing the Beer Worth
As you have noticed the malt extract kit comes in a can. The malt extract has a consistency that comes close to syrup. The best way to get it out of the can is to heat the can up first in a water bath.
While that happens prepare the hops, you need about two ounces (~54 g) to get the bitterness of a stout. If you Google for hops and recipes you will find all sorts of advanced recommendations.
In the old days the whole point of hops was not only taste but also disinfection. The hops that were left in the fermentation absorbed and killed various germs. If you Google up old beer recipes from the middle ages in Germany Germany
Warm up about 1.5 gal (~4l) of water and add the malt extract to it. Bring the whole thing to a simmer. Here it is essential that you have some spare capacity in your pot. As this stuff comes closer to a boil it will foam a lot because of the high sugar content. Stir it continuously so that the worth does not stick to the bottom of the pot. This is good exercise as you will be doing it for the next 60 minutes. We overestimated the pots capacity and in the end had to do this game with two pots. After the 60 minutes add the hops into the worth and continue another 30 minutes.
When this is done it is time to mix everything together. Fill the cleaned, disinfected, rinsed fermentation bucket to about ½ of its capacity with cold water. Note there is some debate towards this procedure. In the old days usually the whole worth was cooked in order to kill any germs that you could have picked up with the water. These days the water quality should be sufficient to mix it up with the worth.
Now add the worth. We poured the worth slowly into the fermentation bucket. Amateurs or professionals these days are usually told to carefully siphon the worth out of the pot into the fermenter not to pick up too much hops or residuals at the bottom of the pot. We on the contrary side wanted to have all this stuff in the fermenter, as the hops also has a germ-killing function and should therefore be included. People who keep the hops in nylon bags or siphon off the worth will tell you that without the hops you may have a crisper taste of the beer.... well if you are doing Irish-style Stout like us, it got to be bitter as hell :D.
Top up the fermenter with more water to come close to the desired quantity (in our case 5.5 gal).
Now wait until the temperature is about room temperature (~25C max).
A walk-in fridge certainly helps with that.
3. Fermentation
When the beer is at room temperature it is essential to record the so called gravity of the beer. This measure will allow you to later assess the alcohol content of the beer. To do so, immerse the hydrometer into the worth and spin it. The spinning is supposed to avoid any distortion from floating particles (i.e. hops) or carbonation (after the fermentation). Our worth had about a gravity of 1.05. This task should be familiar to anyone (like me) who worked on cars before, it is essentially the same measuring process as assessing the water content of brake fluid or anti-freeze.
After that (assuming the beer is at room temperature), add the yeast. I purchased coopers and according to my beer store guy 15 g would be sufficient for one batch.
No close everything up, add the airlock and leave it in the previously determined temperate spot for 1-1.5 weeks for fermentation.
4. Using the Idle Time During the Fermentation
Instead of wasting idle time, get busy on getting the right amount of bottles for bottling the beer. Cleaning the bottles, removing the labels and disinfecting the caps can take a substantially long period. I did everything on the day of bottling and it took me hours to get them ready.
Most of the bottles I used were dirty and have been sitting in the box for a while. That means that a lot of other stuff already contaminated them. If they were in contact with any mould spores the mould has already grown into substantial size. Make a hot bath of steaming water and soak the bottles there for at least an hour or so, to loosen the dirt and the labels. Here is an example of a cleaned and a dirty bottle. You see the yellow mould has already grown to substantial size in the bottom. If this gets in contact with your brew, your brew will be screwed. That said the best way to inspect the bottles after cleaning is to look at the bottom and see if there are any residuals left.
The second stage of the cleaning process after soaking is removing the labels. Those labels may also be contaminated and can easily stain your disinfection solution. Most brewers use water-based glue for the labels, while others use water-proof glue. For example Rickards labels are easy to remove after soaking, Sobeys Gracie labels were a real pain to remove.
The third stage is a throughout cleansing of the inside of the soaked bottles after removing the labels. Use a bottle brush for that. In order to make sure that the bottom is throughout cleaned rotate the bottle by 360 degrees while brushing intensely. Hours later all of my 58 bottles were cleaned.
5. Bottling the Beer
Now after 1-1.5 weeks of waiting open up the fermenter and enjoy the smell of fresh beer. After this period all the foam that is usually created during the first few days of the fermentation should already have disappeared. If you still see large patches of foam, it may be an indication that you still have to wait for a few days. In any case you should measure the gravity of your brew to assess the alcohol content.
My beer measured 1.01 after one week. Referring to the table below, you can easily calculate the alcohol content from the initial gravity.
Gravity | Potential Alcohol Scale |
1.000 | 0.00 |
1.005 | 0.72 |
1.010 | 1.44 |
1.015 | 2.15 |
1.020 | 2.84 |
1.025 | 3.53 |
1.030 | 4.22 |
1.040 | 9.98 |
1.045 | 6.24 |
1.050 | 6.90 |
alcPct [vol %] = PotAlc(initial) - PotAlc(finished)
6.9 (1.05) - 1.44 (1.01) = 5.46 vol %
Note follow the directions of your hygrometer. Some hygrometers are temperature adjusted for about 20C and therefore have gravity readings below 1.0, like mine. In that case they come with a custom gravity and potential alcohol mapping. According to my hydrometer table the content should actually be closer to 4.3 vol %. If you buy a hydrometer or your kit contains one always use its specific table.
Once you decide to bottle, move the worth from the fermenter into a bottling bucket and save a bit for the carbonation (described later). By any means do not pour the worth into the bottling bucket, instead siphon it into the second bucket. You want to place the siphon in the middle height of the fermenter, so that you do not scoop up any floating particles from the top, nor bitter hops that sunk to the bottom.
Take about a gallon (~2.8l) from it and put it into a stock pot again. The big issue we have with our home brew process is that it is a non-pressurized fermentation. The beer does not really contain a lot of carbon-dioxide anymore to pour a good bloom. The trick we are going to apply is to keep the fermentation going for a little longer after the beer is bottled. To do that bring this worth sample to a simmer and add the corn sugar (dextrose). Be careful the sugar provides ideal condensation particles for the remaining carbon-dioxide; it will generate a lot of foam while you pour it into the worth. There are actually tables how much sugar to add based on the measured gravity. When I got the initial utilities, I just followed the ball-park estimate of my brewer’s supplies guy to add about 300g for 6 gal (24l).
Afterwards let it cool down to room-temperature, or add cold water.
Although the bottling bucket comes with a spigot, the ideal way to get the worth into the bottles is to use a siphon and a clamp again. I got about 10-15 bottles ready on a table and then siphoned the worth from the bucket into the bottles. As you also pick up lots of stuff during the initial transfer from the fermenter into the bottling bucket, it is best to siphon the beer for the bottling from the middle of the fermenting bucket as well.
Also don’t be greedy and bottle everything the stuff at the bottom will be very bitter. My roommate wanted to try my brew and actually tasted from the bottom. He now thinks that I did a very bitter and strong brew :) and was potentially surprised the next time he headed into a washroom.
The capping process is straightforward. Just add the raw crown caps and cap them down with the capping press. In order to fully assess the quality of the closure, shake each bottle and hold it under water for a few seconds. If any bubbles come up the seal is not tight enough.
5 Waiting for the Carbonation
I decided to leave the capped bottles out in room-temperature for a little while to get the carbonation going. After 2 days all the bottles went into the walk-in fridge for 2-3 weeks. In an ideal case, you would store the beer right after capping at about 8-12C in a nice beer cellar. A fridge may be too cold and room temperature is too hot. From my ginger beer experiments, I remembered that you could mock that storage profile by leaving it out at room-temperature first and then store it cold. Pros will tell you that you should store it cold (8-12C) right away for it to clear. Since we are doing ultra-dark Irish Stout we can make an exception here.
Conclusion & Future Work
I have not tasted the fully carbonated beer yet but I took some scoops of the young uncarbonated beer. It just tastes awesome and comes really close to Irish Guinness. My vision that I had in the Guinness brewery to brew it myself one day certainly came true. The beer-brewing-process is linear and straightforward. As long as you pay attention not much can go wrong. According to friends who practiced brewing for quite a while in Canada North America it is not uncommon for professional breweries to add plenty of preservatives and even replace corn sugar with dextrose to brew beer. Ironically, the poor quality of North American beer created a large and elaborate and professional crowd of home brewers here, especially on the US
After seeing and tasting the success of this operation my landlord and several friends encouraged me to step it up to wine as well. After discussing with some local Japanese folks (landlady and her dad) and Chinese friends, I realized that the process towards Japanese Sake and Yellow Rice wine is actually simple and close to beer brewing. For the sake of purity and simplicity, I will probably be following the Japanese approach for simplicity.
The most ROFL moment I had throughout the time was my landlady coming into the kitchen: “What are you doing here, this looks like a ‘meth-lab’...”, which actually sparked the discussion about the upcoming Sake project.
Last but not least, drink responsibly and do not drink and drive. Although, I’m from Germany
See beer as a delicate dessert or side dish to savoury dishes, not as a cheap drink that goes with anything. It was not too long ago, when beer brewing was only the privilege and well-kept secret of monks inGermany
See beer as a delicate dessert or side dish to savoury dishes, not as a cheap drink that goes with anything. It was not too long ago, when beer brewing was only the privilege and well-kept secret of monks in
