100 Bottles of Beer - Goin' with the Grain and Gettin' Some Culture

Hello again fellow brewers and loyal readers. I apologize for the long wait since the last installment. I wish I could say I have been busy brewing but that is not the case. It has been that time of year when the garden is full and the farmers markets are bustling with activity. I have been busy cleaning and cutting and chopping and freezing and boiling and canning the bounty of the season. But, as promised, I have returned and we are about to move ahead to more advanced brewing procedures.

The first of our 53 remaining brews is my first attempt at an all-grain brew. No extracts this time, except for priming. Just pure water, malted barley, hops, and yeast. Just as God intended it to be. OK, I admit there is Irish Moss to aid in the clearing process, but it is still all natural.

This brew comes from Homebrew Favorites by Karl Lutzen and Mark Stevens. It is credited to Carl Eidbo of Fargo ND. It was originally designed for ten gallons of beer, but due to my limited capacity for mashing and sparging, I have cut it to 25% for a 2 ½ gallon brew.I am also using different crystal malt due to availability.

Prairie Pale Ale

5 lb American 6-row malt

5 1/2 oz British 53L crystal malt

1/2 oz English Kent Golding whole cone hops (60 min)

1/2 oz English Kent Golding whole cone hops (15 min steep)

1/2 tsp Irish Moss (15 min)

Wyeast 1056 American ale yeast

Priming: ¼ cup corn sugar & ¼ cup DME

You may recall back in part two of our journey, I briefly explained what all-grain brewing was about and promised to provide more information when we got there. Well, here we are...

The all-grain brewer requires some additional equipment not necessary for the extract brewer, the first being a larger kettle. An eight gallon kettle would be ideal for brewing five gallon batches of beer. I make do with a 30 quart or 7 ½ gallon kettle. It works fine.

The reason for this larger kettle is that we are no longer brewing condensed wort which we later dilute with water to bring to our 5 gallon volume. We are now starting with a larger volume, 6 ½ to 7 gallons, and boiling it down to our 5 gallons. Many home brewers use a modified beer keg, either ¼ barrel (7 ¾ gallons) or ½ barrel (15 ½ gallons), over a propane fired burner commonly called a Cajun Cooker. Using the ½ barrel allows for 10 gallon brews. The keg is modified by simply cutting the top off of it.

The next piece of equipment is the mash-tun. This is a vessel in which to hold the grains and hot liquor (water) at a steady temperature during the mash. Many brewers use an ice-chest or cooler for this. I find I can just use the 30 quart kettle.

Next we need a lauter-tun and sparging system. Up to this point I have used just a large strainer to sparge the smaller quantities of specialty grains added to the extract brews. For this first all-grain I am using the strainer and colander arrangement described for the Scotch Ale in part 12. You can buy both a mash-tun and lauter-tun at the home brew store. Charlie Papazian describes how to fabricate both a mash-tun and a lauter-tun in The New Complete Joy of Home Brewing. As I said, I use my kettle for the mash-tun. My lauter-tun is a basic, somewhat crude, two bucket arrangement known as a Zapap lauter-tun.

The Zapap is simply two 5 gallon plastic food-grade buckets. The top bucket has hundreds of 1/8 inch holes drilled in the bottom. The bottom bucket has a spigot or tap placed in the side of the bucket as close to the bottom as possible. A plastic hose is attached to the spigot. The top bucket is placed inside the bottom bucket. The mash is poured into this arrangement which keeps it suspended 2 or 3 inches above the bottom and allows the sweet wort to drain into the bottom bucket as the sparge water is slowly poured in the top. The wort settles in the bottom bucket and drains out the side spigot and hose into the waiting kettle. You can buy a device called a sparging arm to slowly sprinkle the sparge water in the top. I just use a large plastic colander which sits on top of the bucket and pour my sparge water through this one gallon at a time.

The final piece of equipment is the wort chiller. Yes, you can simply immerse the kettle in an ice water bath, but this method is slow. The two most common types of chillers are a counter-flow chiller and an immersion chiller.

The counter-flow chiller is a 15 - 20 foot length of copper tubing placed inside a similar length of garden hose. Various plumbing fittings are attached to allow the hot wort to pass through the copper tubing and cold water to pass through the garden hose in the opposite direction. Very efficient but somewhat cumbersome and I have always wondered, how do I know the inside of that copper tubing is sanitary?

The immersion chiller is a coil of copper tubing about 8" or 9" in diameter coiled about 12 times with the coils stacked on each other. A hose with fittings is attached to either end. This is immersed in the kettle of hot wort and cold water is passed through the tubing rapidly cooling the wort. It could also be used in the reverse by passing the hot wort through the tubing immersed in an ice water bath. But again, how do you know the inside of the tubing is sanitary? You can clean the outside and visually inspect it.

I use the immersion chiller placed in the kettle. A word of warning: Make sure the out hose end is secured at the drain location. The cold water going in comes out very hot and if the hose is loose it can whip around like a loose garden hose spraying scalding hot water everywhere. Learn from my mistake so you don't have to learn from yours.

OK, now that we have assembled all this equipment, what do we do with it? Silly question! We are going to make beer!

Now to the all important mash, for it is the only way we will get from here to beer. The malted grains have been crushed or milled to expose the starches, sugars, proteins, and enzymes hiding inside. Mashing is the combination of the grains added to hot water for a period of time at controlled temperatures to activate different enzymes which will then break down the soluble starches and proteins. Water is added at a rate of one quart per pound of grain.

Various proteolytic enzymes are activated in a temperature range of 113 - 140 F and break down proteins to provide nutrients for the yeast. Diastatic enzymes alpha- and beta-amylase are activated at 145 - 158 F and break down starches into fermentable sugars.

An infusion mash is the simplest and most common mash process. This involves stabilizing the mash at a temperature of 150 - 158 F for 30 - 60 minutes. The higher end of the temperature range will convert the starches more quickly but will result in a more full-bodied beer. The lower end will result in a lighter bodied beer but a higher ABV as it will produce more fermentable sugars. There will be a temperature drop of 16 - 18 F when the water and grains are combined. So, if your target mash temperature is 152 F start with a water temperature of 168 - 170 F. If adjustment is necessary, you can add more heat or more hot or cold water as needed.

A step infusion mash starts at a lower temperature of about 122 F. This "protein rest" for about 30 minutes can result in a more stable final product and less problem with "chill haze." After 30 minutes the mash temperature is raised to 150 F by adding more hot water and letting rest for 10 - 15 minutes before raising temperature again to 158 F for a final 10 - 15 minutes.

A decoction mash actually involves boiling a portion of the mash and adding this to back to the mash-tun. This is done several times to bring the mash up to the target temperature. This is a very old method which predates the invention of the thermometer. A few European breweries still use this age-old traditional method. I have not tried it but it might make a unique brewing experiment.

OK, the mash is complete. Now we need to separate the sweet liquor from the spent grains. How do we do that? Lauter and sparge, of course.

Like everyone, I hate to admit when I have been doing something wrong, especially if I have been doing it wrong for twelve years. As I have been writing this I have been reviewing Charlie's Bible and his recommendations for how to use the Zapap lauter-tun would have saved me a lot of headache over "stuck" mashes. I have been simply dumping the mash into a dry lauter-tun and adding the sparge water to the top. Never again! That compacts the grain-bed and makes it harder for the sparge water to trickle through.

What we should be doing is this. Fill the bottom of the lauter-tun with hot water (170 - 180 F) to a level about 3" above the bottom of the top bucket. This is called "foundation water. Then alternately add some of the mash and more water, keeping the water level just above the surface of the grain-bed. When all of the mash is in the lauter-tun, commence draining into the kettle. If the collected wort is excessively cloudy you can recirculate it through the grain-bed to filter out more particulate. Then continue sparging by gently adding more hot water to the top. For a 5 gallon brew, collect 6 ½ - 7 gallons of wort which you will then boil down to 5 ½ gallons. This takes about 90 minutes.

Do ya' got all that? Good! Now back to our Prairie Pale Ale...

Remember, this is my first all-grain brew, so I did not do everything exactly as described above.

Toast 4 oz of the 6-row malt for 10 minutes at 350 F and let cool a bit before milling along with the other malts. Heat 8 quarts of cold water to 158 F and add malts, readjusting temperature to 158 F. Remove from heat and cover and let mash for 60 minutes, check at 10 minute intervals and adjust heat as necessary to maintain 158 F. Actual temperature varied from 150 - 178 and actual time was 80 minutes.

Pour mash into colander and strainer arrangement and sparge with 6 quarts 190 F water. Return wort to brew kettle and bring to boil, add ½ oz hops and boil for 45 minutes. Add Irish Moss and boil for 15 minutes. Add final ½ oz of hops, remove from heat, cover and let steep for 15 minutes.

Remove hop bags and place kettle in sink full of ice water. When the ice melted and the water got warm I moved the kettle outside in the snow. When cooled to a safe temperature, pour into carboy and place carboy in sink of ice water until cooled to pitching temperature before adding yeast.

I bottled this after 6 days in the primary and 7 days in the secondary. The sediment in both the primary and secondary was heavier than it had been for most extract brews. This is typical and there are ways to minimize and/or remove some of the trub before fermentation; more on this later.

This beer turned out well. It had heavy chill haze, light carbonation and flavor with not enough hop to truly be called a Pale Ale. It kind of reminded me of Michelob. I didn't take any gravity readings but the OG and FG given in the original recipe were 1.052 and 1.018 which would indicate about 5.5% ABV.

For our next beer we are going back to an extract brew but adding another advanced procedure; culturing our own yeast from the sediment found in a bottle of commercially produced beer, Orval Trappist Ale to be exact.

You may recall back in part 8 of our journey a couple of Belgian Abbey Ale recipes attempting to make something similar to Orval Trappist Ale. I alluded to another attempt using yeast cultured from a bottle of Orval. Well, here we are...

First, what does it mean to "culture" yeast? Send it off to a preppy boarding school where it will learn about etiquette and the finer things in life? No-no, it would come back far too snobby to get down to the business of consuming sugar and excreting alcohol and co2.

Culturing yeast is the process of isolating and propagating a specific strain of yeast for use in your home brew. Of course you can go all "white lab coat and Petri dish" to accomplish this and that is how commercial brewers and yeast labs do it. We are going to take a "low-tech" approach.

Sanitation is of the utmost importance when doing this, even more so than when brewing. No open windows. No drafty, smoky, dusty environments. Even try not to breath on anything.

Select a bottle of the beer from which you wish to culture the yeast that has a visible layer of yeast sediment in the bottom of the bottle, the more, the better. Obviously, this would have to be a bottle conditioned or unfiltered beer. In this case we are using Orval Trappist Ale. I have read that Orval bottle conditions with a different strain of yeast from what it is fermented with. Probably true as they do want to keep their yeast proprietary. But the yeast in the bottle will still be a major part of the flavor profile.

Sanitize the top of the bottle before opening being careful not to disturb the sediment in the bottom. Gently pour all but the last ½" or so containing the sediment into a glass and enjoy. Sterilize the top of the bottle using a butane or propane lighter or torch and immediately wrap the top of the bottle tightly with aluminum foil. Set aside to let stabilize to room temperature.

Boil one cup light DME in one pint of cold water until fully dissolved. Pour this hot wort into a 22 oz bottle which has been sanitized with boiling water. Sterilize the top of the bottle with the lighter or torch and immediately wrap with aluminum foil. Set aside to cool to room temperature.

When both bottles are at approximately the same room temperature, swirl up the sediment in the first bottle and carefully pour into bottle of wort. Immediately attach a sterile stopper and fermentation lock. Place bottle in a safe location at room temperature where it will not be disturbed and wait to see what happens.

In this case it took about a week for any activity to begin. It continued for about four weeks and stopped. I carefully withdrew a small sample using a sanitized plastic tube. Eureka! It tasted like Orval. I immediately capped the bottle and placed it in the refrigerator until needed in the brew.

I tried to culture 3 other yeasts using this method. The Unibroue Maudite was a failure. Unibroue La Fin du Monde was successful. Aventinus Dunkelweiss was a failure.

Now let me tell you a much simpler way to do this. Sanitize the top of the bottle you want to culture the yeast from, open it, pour ¾ of the beer in a glass and enjoy, swirl up the sediment in the remaining beer and pour all of it into your home brew in the secondary and attach the fermentation lock. Done! Seem too simple? Trust me, it works! Even better if you use two bottles!

So how did the beer turn out? Read on...

Belgian Abbey "Orval" Trappist Ale

3.3 lbs Bierkeller Plain Light LME

2 lbs Laaglander Plain Extra Light DME

1 lb Belgian White Candi Sugar

1 lb Belgian Caramunich malt

8 oz Belgian Biscuit malt

3 oz Belgian Special B malt

1 tsp gypsum

1 tsp yeast nutrient

1 oz Hallertau Hersbruker hop pellets (60 min)

1 oz English Fuggle whole cone hops (60 min)

1/2 oz English Fuggle whole cone hops (30 min)

1/2 oz Hallertau Hersbruker hop pellets (5 min)

1/2 oz each Hallertau & Fuggle (Dry hop in secondary)

2 oz. oak chips (secondary)

White Labs Trappist Ale Liquid Yeast

Cultured Orval Bottle Yeast (secondary)

Priming: ¾ cup corn sugar & ¼ cup DME

Heat milled grains in 4 quarts cold water treated with gypsum to 152 F. Actual temperature reached a high of 162 briefly but came back down when stirred. Remove from heat and cover for 30 minutes.

Strain into brew kettle containing 6 quarts water which has been heated to boiling while grains were mashing. Sparge with 2 quarts boiling water. Stir in extracts and return to boil. Add candi sugar and stir until dissolved. Add hops at times indicated for a total 60 minute boil.

Pour into carboy with cold water topping to 5 ½ gallons. Pitch Trappist Ale yeast when cooled.

After two days of no activity I added the yeast nutrient dissolved in one cup cold water. Activity began later that same day. After three more days, rack to secondary with steamed oak chips, ½ oz each Hallertau & Fuggle, and bottle of cultured Orval yeast. There were signs of increased activity soon after racking which continued slowly for two weeks before bottling.

This turned out wonderful. The taste and aroma were very close to the real thing. No chill haze and a beautiful red-orange color. Still was lacking the champagne-like effervescence of Orval but, with everything else, who needs it? This was easily the best brew I had made up to this point.

There you have it, a couple of advanced procedures and two more brews down leaving 51 still on the shelf. We will have a mix of extract and all-grain brews from here on.

I have always described this as my personal journey through my craft. The next edition will be somewhat different from what you may have come to expect. It will be very personal. It may take a while for me to get through it but, be patient, I will be back.

To be continued...

References:

Charlie Papazian, The New Complete Joy of Home Brewing, 2^nd edition, October 1991

Karl F. Lutzen & Mark Stevens, Homebrew Favorites, Third printing, February 1995