Next Level Beer

After a LOT of 5 gallon extract batches, I felt it was time to go to the next level.  For those not familiar with brewing, all beer is made from crushed grains.  You soak those grains in high temp water to pull out flavors/sugars and get what you call “wort”.  To get good wort requires a lot of extra work/hardware/attention, so companies have made it easier for the casual homebrewer by de-hydrating wort into syrups and powders.  These are the “extract”, which makes up extract-brewing.

I wanted to take the leap to all-grain brewing, but as I mentioned it requires a few more toys to get there.  First thing you need is a Mash Tun(MT from here on out).  The MT is what you soak the grains in, for up to 60 minutes, with a water temperature of ~170 degrees (water temp varies based on the recipe).   Next you need a big pot to do a full boil(already got that!).  And finally you need a way of adding additional hot water to the grain to “sparge” or rinse the grains.  I wanted to keep my options open while going the hardest way possible so I decided to do “fly” sparging(as opposed to “batch” sparging).  Batch sparging is basically draining the grain completely, filling it up with new hot water, stir, settle and drain again.  If you hit your temps/volumes right this makes very good beer.  Fly sparging is different in that as you drain the wort from the MT, you also fill it with new hot water at the same rate.  This lets you keep the water level the same while draining the good wort from the bottom and filling from the top.  Obviously this requires more toys to accomplish then with batch sparging.

As with most things, there are very fancy(and pretty) stainless steel parts that cost a pretty penny as well.  But homebrewers are supposed to be handy, and if anyone knows me I am the most handy person on earth.  So I built some.  A nice little Christmas request to my parents and I received the biggest piece, a 10 gallon gatorade-style cooler.  A quick(actually long) trip to Home Depot and I picked up some parts and pieces.  Put it all together and you get this!

 

 

So inside this the grain sits (several pounds to upwards of 20), you add high temp water and give it a good stir.  Then you seal it up and let it sit for up to 60 minutes.  This draws out all of the flavors and sugars needed to make beer.  The next trick is, how do you get the water out and leave the grain behind?  This is called “Sparging”.  A stuck sparge happens when draining the wort, and the grain compacts and clogs the valve/pipe.  So we need to find a way to evenly drain the wort, without disturbing the grain and/or causing a clog.

Again, there are fancy pre-made ways of doing this(SS false bottoms and other contraptions).  But I decided to take the hard road and fabricate.

 

 

This is a handy little manifold made out of copper pipe and fittings.  It’s all friction fit, and it lets only water (and possibly very small grains) out.  How?  Simple…

 

 

Some very tiny cuts, and a lot of them!  This allows water to evenly leave the grain without disturbing the grain bed!

I also recently upgraded the MT with SS parts and a nice digital thermometer to keep an eye on the water temperature.  The cooler does a great job at keeping the temperature stable, but I’m too anal to not know exactly where it is at.

 

The other side of this is the “Hot Liquor Tank” or HLT.  This can be another pot with a valve(eventually) or another cooler(much cheaper).  So I picked up a big cooler, threw a valve on it and done!  This just holds hot water that I attach to the lid of the MT and re-fill it.

 

Oh yea, the lid of the MT was another piece to build.  Looks pretty harmless from the outside, just a PVC valve, right?

 

I drilled it and filled with expanding foam insulation to provide a little better thermal properties.  Oh yea, remember that the grain bed can’t be disturbed?  How do we evenly distribute the NEW water that goes in?

 

Again, handy remember?  This lets the new hot water be evenly spread over the grain bed.  No stuck sparges, no uneven runnings or fillings.

To cap this all off, the brew pot needed some upgrades.  One problem I’ve always had was knowing how much wort was in the pot before/after I boiled.  Hitting your volumes is a big part of brewing.  I used to use a marked off spoon, but 5+ gallons boiling makes a lot of steam and a hard time to measure.  So a quick order to http://www.brewhardware.com and I had my sight valve with extra thermometer, because I like keeping an eye on everything.  Also, siphoning from the pot as easy as it is, can still be a pain.  What’s easier then just adding a SS valve and pickup tube?  Done and done.

 

We now have a handful of all-grain brews under our belt.  Everything has come out tasting great, but the other part of legit brewing is a numbers game.  I am still fine-tuning my skills to hit all of my numbers.  But we are now brewing all-grain full 5 gallon batches.  Time to make some custom recipes!

Humble Beginnings

I thought I would show how were have progressed through the brewing world.  It all started with one of the best birthday gifts ever, a deluxe homebrewing kit!

This consisted of almost everything one would need to start making basic extract kits at home.  This is one of the better kits I have seen put together, and anyone interested in starting up brewing should look into it! I still use ALL of the parts from this kit today.

The main thing we needed was a big brewpot.  A quick trip to Target and that was solved as we purchased our 5 gallon pot!

(excuse the dirty stove, we cook a lot!)

This pot would handle all the extract beer our heart desired.  As great as this pot was, it has two main downsides.  The first one is more of a technicality, that while it is a 5 gallon pot you can’t sustain 5 gallons at a rolling boil.  So you are forced to boil only 3.5-4 gallons at a time.  The second is a physics problem. Brewing consists of boiling for 60 or more minutes. Boiling any liquid for that long will result in some water turning into steam and floating away. When you combine those two facts, you start with almost 4 gallons and end up with around 3.

For those unfamiliar with home brewing, most kits are designed to make a final volume of 5 gallons of beer.  What this means is that after the boil, we have to add whatever extra amount of sanitized water we need to hit 5 gallons.  And what is the easiest way to sanitize water?  Boil it.  So we boil more water, and cool it, to hit our 5 gallon mark.

So before long, the itch hit me to upgrade my stuff.  A quick trip to Amazon and before I knew it, I had a 10 gallon aluminum pot at my door!

Combine this with a propane burner stand (pic to come), and we can now do full 5 gallon boils!  This eliminates one more annoying step, which also removes one more area of possible un-sanitary water, and make brewing that much more consistent!

Our First Critics!!

We recently brewed up a Moose Drool clone beer, with a nutty twist.  We added some hazelnuts to the specialty grains during steeping, and more importantly adding a small amount of hazelnut extract to the secondary fermenter.

Now I’ve never tasted the real Moose Drool (only another clone that I’ve made), but this one came out great regardless.  It is a smooth, nutty brown ale, and the light hazelnut finish is an excellent touch.  The beer is easy to drink and packs some good flavor.  If we ever do open a brewery, I think this will be one of the first things we make.

We liked it so much that we started handing it out to friends with tasting sheets!  Hopefully their palates are up to the task of giving us some useful advice.  Once we get some results back, I’ll tally them up and put them here.

<fancy tasting graph>

We also gave it to our good friend Pete, who happens to work at Fairground Wine & Spirits.  He is a beer aficionado, and had nothing but great things to say about it.  Since he was so nice, we decided to give him a second bottle and he made us a tasting video, enjoy!

Getting our feet wet

Our good friend Jenn Arata over at That’s SO Jenn wrote an article and made mention of us and our brewing skills.

After sharing all of our homebrews with just about everyone we know, a few of them were interested in making their own brew.  So I sent them a link to the Northern Brewer site and had them pick out an extract kit to their liking.  The three kits were an IPA, an Irish Stout, and a basic porter.  The porter brewer decided to run to the store and pick up some custom spices; cinnamon, allspice and some nutmeg to make a holiday porter.  Once all the parts arrived, we then set the date and began a very long brew day!

I tried to teach as much as I could on the first 2 brews of the day, giving the guys more and more freedom as I felt they could handle the job without screwing up.  Eventually the last brew of the day was my most hands-off, and they all pitched in to brew it as a group.  I will say it felt great to sit down!

A few weeks later we bottled, and a few more weeks after that had a tasting day.  Everyones brews came out great, quite an accomplishment considering we brewed for almost 9 hours straight. Everyone had such a great time we are doing it again later in January!  Hopefully I can sit down for most it and just supervise.

Check out Jenn’s blog for more details on the process!

http://thatssojenn.wordpress.com/2012/01/05/beer-makes-me-hoppy/

First post!

A blog to post any and all thoughts regarding my new addiction to brewing!