100 Bottles of Beer - the Journey Continues

I previously wrote about beginning my love for beer by experiencing many different beers, from the mass produced American beers to the Imports to the American Microbrews or Craft Brewed, as they have since become known. Now that I have started home brewing, that same philosophy continues. I do not want to make the same beer over and over. I want to try making as many different styles and flavors of beer as I can. If I can hit on something exceptional, I probably will make it more than one time, along with other new experiments.

The first installment of this journey ended with the successful first brew which, although was intended to be a clone of Sam Adams, turned out to be just a really nice light Amber Ale. On that first brew I was truly a complete novice just following the instructions and not really understanding why. Since then I have read the book that came along with the brewing equipment I received for Christmas. "The New Complete Joy of Home Brewing" by Charlie Papazian, the Godfather of home brewing, founder of The American Homebrewers Association and The Great American Beer Festival or GABF as it is commonly referred to.

This "Home Brewer's Bible" explains in detail the basics of brewing for the beginner, the intermediate, and the advanced home brewer in a non-technical, easy to understand manner. If you want the technical aspect, it is there as well. The book has been revised and updated several times over the years but no matter what edition you find, it will be your Bible. My copy is, I believe, the second edition, published in 1991. It was the source of inspiration for most of my early brews and still, after nearly fifteen years, I find myself referring back to it every now and then.

I actually met and spoke briefly with Charlie at The GABF in 2004 or 2005, I am not sure which. I probably made a bit of a fool of myself after having many several samples of Craft Brews from all around the nation. I recall shaking his hand and saying, "Thank you, man, you have enriched my life, thank you."

My intent as we travel through this journey is to document and share 100 of my homebrews and relevant experiences. We have already covered the first one so, as the song goes, "We have taken one down, passed it around, 99 bottles of beer on the wall."

My second brew comes from Charlie's book and he calls it "Sparrow Hawk Porter"

The ingredients have been modified due to availability at Highlander Homebrew.

3.3 lbs (1 can) German Bierkeller unhopped light liquid malt extract (LME)

1.5 lbs M&F plain light dry malt extract (DME)

3.3 lbs M&F plain dark DME

1 lb black patent malt

1 1/2 oz Northern Brewer hops (boiling 60 min)

1 oz Tettnanger hops (finishing 2 min)

3 pkg (15g) dry ale yeast - M&F?

This would be a good time to explain the three basic different kinds of home brewing; extract brewing, extract with specialty grains, and all grain brewing.

Brewing with extracts is where most home brewers begin. Extracts are available as liquid, actually very thick syrup, or spray dried malt extract. Liquid malt extract is generally referred to as LME and contains slightly less fermentable sugars than dry malt extract or DME. This is due to there being higher water content in an equal weight of LME than DME. Both types of extracts are also available with hops already added or plain, un-hopped. They also are produced in varying colors; extra light, light, pale, amber, dark, and extra dark. This allows nearly every style of beer to be made simply from extracts. It is possible to make very good beers using extracts and I still do use them to this day. Brewing completely from extracts is akin to opening a can of Campbell's Soup, perfectly acceptable. The addition of more hops to an extract brew is sort of like adding salt and pepper to your soup.

Extract brewing with specialty grains is the next step in the maturation of the home brewer. To continue the soup analogy, we are now adding our own fresh prepared meat or veggies to the can of soup stock. This fine tunes the final product more to your own personal taste from the style designed by the malting company which produced the extract. Typically, we would not use a hopped extract with specialty grains. The grains will need to be crushed or milled, most home brew shops provide a mill for customers to crush the grains at the point of sale or you can buy a mill for home use. These crushed grains will then need to be boiled or steeped in one to two gallons of hot water to extract the flavors. This is usually called a mini-mash. Mashing is the process of converting the starches in the grains to sugars for the yeast to consume and produce alcohol. The hot water, or liquor, from this mini-mash is added to the kettle along with the extracts. The grains are strained out and rinsed, or sparged, with additional hot water to remove all of the sweet liquor.

One additional comment on extracts, many come as a kit, which includes a packet of dry yeast. Extracts do not require refrigeration, yeast does to preserve freshness. The kit has not been refrigerated. I recommend not using the yeast supplied with the kit. Buy fresh yeast from the cooler at the home brew shop. Yeast is available as either dried or liquid. The liquid is preferable because the process of drying the yeast can increase the possibility of contamination. I have never had a problem with this and have brewed many great beers with both types. Liquid yeasts are produced for specific styles of ales or lagers while dry yeast, whether ale or lager, is more generic.

All grain brewing; now the home brewer is the chef, making the soup from scratch. Selecting the basic workhorse grain, typically 2-row pale malted barley, and the specialty grains which are also malted barley, wheat or rye which have been roasted to varying degrees of darkness or processed in other ways. These grains provide the color and flavor to the brew. All the grains need to be crushed or milled. They are then mashed, which, as I previously stated, converts the starches to sugars. This full mash requires a little more control than simply bringing to a boil or steeping the grains. There are many different chemical compounds produced in the mashing process at different temperature levels and lengths of time in the temperature range. Many of these are desirable and some are not, depending on the style of beer. I will get into this in more depth when our journey takes us there.

So, now, where were we? Oh yes, Sparrow Hawk Porter...The brewing process was as follows:

Boil crushed black patent malt in 1 gallon cold water for 10 min

Strain and rinse with hot water (later on I will learn to call this sparging)

Add all extracts and boiling hops. Boil 60 minutes.

Add finishing hops final 2 min.

Now these instructions seem simple enough and really they are. A couple of things to be aware of that I was not at the time. Remove your kettle from the heat source when you add the extracts. They are rich in sugars and will scorch very easily on the bottom of the kettle. Make sure they are fully stirred in and dissolved before placing the kettle back on the heat. Also, do not add the boiling hops until your wort, which is the correct term for the unfermented beer, has come to a boil. Start your boil time from this point. I did not note whether I used whole cone hops or hop pellets in this brew, either are fine.

You have probably guessed by now that I did scorch the extracts a bit and did not get a full 60 minutes boil. You would be correct on both counts.

Pour the hot wort into a sanitized fermentation bucket with enough cold water to bring to 5 gallons. Pitch the yeast when wort is cooled. Again, I did not know to re-hydrate the yeast. Hey, I haven't gone to the home brewing class yet.

After the fermentation activity has stopped, it is time to rack, or transfer, the beer to a secondary fermenter, typically a 5 gallon glass carboy like is used on an old fashioned water cooler. These are available at your home brew shop and I had received one with my kit for Christmas. This is done by siphoning the beer from the bucket to the sanitized carboy. The reason for this is to get the beer away from the spent yeast and other debris which settles out of the beer after fermentation. It will continue to settle in the secondary as the beer clears but there will be far less. These sediments, called trub, can add some off-flavors to the finished product and the less you have to deal with at bottling, the cleaner and clearer the finished product will be.

I had not yet learned the simple tricks for getting a siphon started and only knew to suck on the hose by mouth. However, I was fighting a bad winter cold at this time and was concerned about contaminating the beer. What to do, what to do? Ah-ha, Jim Beam, a swish and a gargle with a couple shots should surely do the trick, followed by a couple more for good measure.

After 2 weeks in the secondary it seemed time to bottle. The beer was very clear as near as I could tell since it was very dark, nearly black, as a good porter should be. I had been a little disappointed with the carbonation level of my first brew so I decided to try a little experiment with this one. At bottling, it is necessary to add a little more fermentable sugars to the beer for the remaining yeast to consume and produce more carbon-dioxide which adds the fizz to the finished product. Most recipes call for either ¾ cup corn sugar or 1 ¼ cup light DME. On my first brew I used the corn sugar. I decided to try a combination of the two this time so went with ¾ cup corn sugar and ¼ cup DME. This should bump up the carbonation level a little bit and using DME is supposed to increase the head retention in the glass. Dissolve these "priming sugars" in about one pint of water and boil for 5 minutes to sanitize. Let cool before adding to beer in bottling bucket.

After two or three weeks of bottle conditioning, as this carbonation process is called, I tried the first one. This is good but did taste a little burned. As I progressed through the bottles over the next weeks I noticed the burned flavor was diminishing, the carbonation level was right on, and this was perhaps the best beer I had ever tasted. I vowed I would make this again, and I did, two more times.

The next time was about one month after finishing the first one, after I had started attending the home brew class. The recipe was the same, adding ½ oz. extra boiling hops and remembering to re-hydrate the yeast. However I did still scorch the extracts a little, not as bad as before. This was as good as or better than the original and did not taste burned. The additional hops were a great improvement.

The third time I made this was nearly 2 years later. The recipe was again identical to the second with the exceptions of using different brands of malt extracts and different, but still dry, yeast. This one worked much more vigorously in the primary fermenter actually bubbling out through the fermentation lock and making quite a mess. This version was very enjoyable but not quite as good as the first two. Or, perhaps I had just become much more critical by this time.

Well, we have now taken four down, passed them around, 96 bottle of beer on the wall.

Happy Brewing!

To be continued...

References:

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