Beer's been with us for thousands of years, so i thought it was worth posting up a recipe here.
I'm not going to be super-technical here, but do shout at me if i digress and ramble too much, i will edit.
I thought i'd make a basic brew. It's really no more complicated than cooking, except with slightly more stringent hygiene controls than most people are used to.
The photos here are all taken by me, but there are a couple i took from a previous brew, which show things better than the pics i took this batch.
To start off, we need our ingredients.
From left to right, we have 10% povidone iodine solution, a 5l water bottle with some of the iodine diluted in it (1.5ml per litre), Whirlfloc, yeast nutrient, campden tablets, and a bowl of grain. This is just a portion of it, i am using in total 4kg of crushed Maris Otter variety grain. The glass instruments are a pair of thermometers and a hydrometer.
Here are the hops, ready measured into 30g, 15g, and 5g. These will be added at specific intervals during the boil.
Second, we have our equipment. A boiler and a mash tun, with a fermenter off camera. The mash tun is the most special part. It will keep things warm while the enzymes in the grain do their work.
The first thing we need to do is heat the water we'll be using to mash the grains.
My boiler is a 10 gallon plastic barrel with a 2500 watt kettle type element in it. We need roughly 2.5l per kg of water for the mash. Toss in half of one campden tablet. The campden tablet will neutralize both chlorine AND chloramines which can result in unplesant tastes in your finished product. 10 litres will take some time to heat, so now is the time to do something useful!
Any brewers among us will possibly notice the little mistake i made here. More on that later.
Here's some of the iodine solution in my fermenter. My fermenter was clean when i added the iodine. It's always best to clean your fermenting vessel straight after draining your fermented beer or wine, otherwise the caked on waste is a nightmare to get out. Shake the iodine solution around in here for a good 30 seconds and it will be sanitized sufficiently to continue brewing. Drain well, and allow to drip dry upside down while we mash. You don't need to rinse iodine at this concentration. This type of iodine (10% povidone iodine w/w, betadine/videne) is water based, don't substitute it for lugol's iodine or tincture of iodine etc.
Don't leave your iodine in there too long, or it will leave unsightly brown stains. They won't hurt anything, but are ugly. This includes anything else the solution comes into contact with that isn't metal.
Note, if you're sensitive to iodine do NOT use this method! Simple thin unscented chlorine bleach at around 3-5 ml per litre will kill just as effectively, but requires immersion rather than just wetting. Rinse well.
Now we need to "mash in"...
Once the water is heated to the requisite 76 degrees, pour the water into your mash tun, and stir in the grain. I'm using a cool box type mash tun, but there are many ways of making a very effective version just from plastic buckets and a sleeping bag.
You'll lose a good few degrees to the grain, and it will soak up one litre of water per kilo. It will start to look like porridge...
Almost immediately, the enzymes in the grain will start converting the starches to sugar. You may well get a good head of foam on top already.
Once everything is mixed well, seal up your mash tun and set your timer for 90 minutes. This will allow the enzymes to convert all the sugars. You should only lose a few additional degrees during this process.
We need to heat up around about another 15 - 20 litres of water while this is going on, to around about 79 degrees. Don't worry if this takes longer than expected and your mash goes on longer than 90 minutes. I've heard of guys leaving them for hours on end becuase they walked the dog or went out for a night on the town.
Once it's done, feel free to dip your finger in and taste the sweet wort. Yes, it really will taste like beer later!
Don't worry, you won't infect anything.
Once your mash is complete and the extra water is hot, pour your new hot water into the mash tun. It may well foam up, but don't worry. This is pretty normal. Open the tap and drain the resultant fluid into the boiler.
There's actually a lot that can go wrong here, but i won't burden you with the woes of a stuck mash. Burdening with woe upon request.
So now we've got our 5 gallons (or thereabouts) of sweet wort in the boiler, and we need to bring it to the boil to sanitize it and extract the bitterness from the hops.
This layer of scum floated to the surface as the wort heated. This is not unusual. Some people skim it off, some stir it back in. Usually i skim, this time i stirred. Mostly out of laziness.
After the wort comes to the boil, we add the 30g batch of hops. This is going to provide the majority of the bitterness and balance out the sweetness of the malted grain.
After 30 minutes, we add the 15g batch of hops. Some people don't add the hops in batches like this, but its a good way of getting a good blend of hop aroma and flavour.
With 20 minutes to go, i will throw in my wort chiller. 20 minutes of sitting in boiling wort will kill anything that may be on it.
When we're down to 15 minutes, i throw in the whirlfloc tablet. This is a pretty clever thing! It's made of Irish Moss, which the cooks among us may recognise. This will cause the protiens suspended in our beer to flocculate, stick together, and fall out of suspension so our beer is (one day) clear. It also fizzes and whirls about while it dissolves.
In the last five minutes we add the last 5g of hops. This will make the beer smell like beer.
At this stage, ordinarily one would run water through the chiller in order to cool it before transferring to the fermenter. This both helps with clearing, and brings the beer down to a temperature which won't kill the yeast.
I'm only making a 5 gallon batch here, so the chiller won't reach the liquid over the side of the big ten gallon bucket, so we transfer the hot liquid to the fermenter.
This is largely considered A Bad Idea, since it can darken the brew and isn't conducive to good oxygenation.
Ah well.
You remember i said i made a little mistake? The mistake was i forgot to put the hop strainer in there, so i had to make an impromptu-strainer out of a piece of metal gauze and a funnel.... fun times..
Once its all in the fermenter, we put the chiller in the new bucket, plug it onto the tap, and pump water through it.
The black towel is to absorb water that leaks from the (rather poor) fittings, so it doesn't get on the floor or in my beer.
As the beer cools, it will start to look more like beer. Once it's down to around 18 degrees, or whichever temperature your yeast likes, you can add your yeast and nutrient. Before you do, it's a good idea to stir it vigorously with a sanitized long handled plastic spoon. Never wood! Yeast likes a lot of oxygen in its early stages of life.
Predictably, the water that comes out of the chiller is Rather Hot, so take care if you try this at home.
I haven't taken a picture here becuase my liquid yeast disappeared instantly into the mix, not to resurface for some hours...
This head of foam is called a krausen, and is a mass of healthy happy yeast cells. This one has mostly fallen in, this is becuase i brewed on Saturday and only just remembered to take the damn picture.
I won't go into the mathematics of how we guage the alcohol, but i estimate nearly 5% for this brew depending on just how healthy and happy the yeast was.
Apart from falldown juice, one of the happy byproducts of beer making is spent grain, which composts well, and spent hops which also compost well. I also understand pigs like to munch on the spent grain.
Thanks for reading! More when i add finings and rack into the keg.
Nico
I'm not going to be super-technical here, but do shout at me if i digress and ramble too much, i will edit.
I thought i'd make a basic brew. It's really no more complicated than cooking, except with slightly more stringent hygiene controls than most people are used to.
The photos here are all taken by me, but there are a couple i took from a previous brew, which show things better than the pics i took this batch.
To start off, we need our ingredients.
From left to right, we have 10% povidone iodine solution, a 5l water bottle with some of the iodine diluted in it (1.5ml per litre), Whirlfloc, yeast nutrient, campden tablets, and a bowl of grain. This is just a portion of it, i am using in total 4kg of crushed Maris Otter variety grain. The glass instruments are a pair of thermometers and a hydrometer.
Here are the hops, ready measured into 30g, 15g, and 5g. These will be added at specific intervals during the boil.
Second, we have our equipment. A boiler and a mash tun, with a fermenter off camera. The mash tun is the most special part. It will keep things warm while the enzymes in the grain do their work.
The first thing we need to do is heat the water we'll be using to mash the grains.
My boiler is a 10 gallon plastic barrel with a 2500 watt kettle type element in it. We need roughly 2.5l per kg of water for the mash. Toss in half of one campden tablet. The campden tablet will neutralize both chlorine AND chloramines which can result in unplesant tastes in your finished product. 10 litres will take some time to heat, so now is the time to do something useful!
Any brewers among us will possibly notice the little mistake i made here. More on that later.
Here's some of the iodine solution in my fermenter. My fermenter was clean when i added the iodine. It's always best to clean your fermenting vessel straight after draining your fermented beer or wine, otherwise the caked on waste is a nightmare to get out. Shake the iodine solution around in here for a good 30 seconds and it will be sanitized sufficiently to continue brewing. Drain well, and allow to drip dry upside down while we mash. You don't need to rinse iodine at this concentration. This type of iodine (10% povidone iodine w/w, betadine/videne) is water based, don't substitute it for lugol's iodine or tincture of iodine etc.
Don't leave your iodine in there too long, or it will leave unsightly brown stains. They won't hurt anything, but are ugly. This includes anything else the solution comes into contact with that isn't metal.
Note, if you're sensitive to iodine do NOT use this method! Simple thin unscented chlorine bleach at around 3-5 ml per litre will kill just as effectively, but requires immersion rather than just wetting. Rinse well.
Now we need to "mash in"...
Once the water is heated to the requisite 76 degrees, pour the water into your mash tun, and stir in the grain. I'm using a cool box type mash tun, but there are many ways of making a very effective version just from plastic buckets and a sleeping bag.
You'll lose a good few degrees to the grain, and it will soak up one litre of water per kilo. It will start to look like porridge...
Almost immediately, the enzymes in the grain will start converting the starches to sugar. You may well get a good head of foam on top already.
Once everything is mixed well, seal up your mash tun and set your timer for 90 minutes. This will allow the enzymes to convert all the sugars. You should only lose a few additional degrees during this process.
We need to heat up around about another 15 - 20 litres of water while this is going on, to around about 79 degrees. Don't worry if this takes longer than expected and your mash goes on longer than 90 minutes. I've heard of guys leaving them for hours on end becuase they walked the dog or went out for a night on the town.
Once it's done, feel free to dip your finger in and taste the sweet wort. Yes, it really will taste like beer later!
Don't worry, you won't infect anything.
Once your mash is complete and the extra water is hot, pour your new hot water into the mash tun. It may well foam up, but don't worry. This is pretty normal. Open the tap and drain the resultant fluid into the boiler.
There's actually a lot that can go wrong here, but i won't burden you with the woes of a stuck mash. Burdening with woe upon request.
So now we've got our 5 gallons (or thereabouts) of sweet wort in the boiler, and we need to bring it to the boil to sanitize it and extract the bitterness from the hops.
This layer of scum floated to the surface as the wort heated. This is not unusual. Some people skim it off, some stir it back in. Usually i skim, this time i stirred. Mostly out of laziness.
After the wort comes to the boil, we add the 30g batch of hops. This is going to provide the majority of the bitterness and balance out the sweetness of the malted grain.
After 30 minutes, we add the 15g batch of hops. Some people don't add the hops in batches like this, but its a good way of getting a good blend of hop aroma and flavour.
With 20 minutes to go, i will throw in my wort chiller. 20 minutes of sitting in boiling wort will kill anything that may be on it.
When we're down to 15 minutes, i throw in the whirlfloc tablet. This is a pretty clever thing! It's made of Irish Moss, which the cooks among us may recognise. This will cause the protiens suspended in our beer to flocculate, stick together, and fall out of suspension so our beer is (one day) clear. It also fizzes and whirls about while it dissolves.
In the last five minutes we add the last 5g of hops. This will make the beer smell like beer.
At this stage, ordinarily one would run water through the chiller in order to cool it before transferring to the fermenter. This both helps with clearing, and brings the beer down to a temperature which won't kill the yeast.
I'm only making a 5 gallon batch here, so the chiller won't reach the liquid over the side of the big ten gallon bucket, so we transfer the hot liquid to the fermenter.
This is largely considered A Bad Idea, since it can darken the brew and isn't conducive to good oxygenation.
Ah well.
You remember i said i made a little mistake? The mistake was i forgot to put the hop strainer in there, so i had to make an impromptu-strainer out of a piece of metal gauze and a funnel.... fun times..
Once its all in the fermenter, we put the chiller in the new bucket, plug it onto the tap, and pump water through it.
The black towel is to absorb water that leaks from the (rather poor) fittings, so it doesn't get on the floor or in my beer.
As the beer cools, it will start to look more like beer. Once it's down to around 18 degrees, or whichever temperature your yeast likes, you can add your yeast and nutrient. Before you do, it's a good idea to stir it vigorously with a sanitized long handled plastic spoon. Never wood! Yeast likes a lot of oxygen in its early stages of life.
Predictably, the water that comes out of the chiller is Rather Hot, so take care if you try this at home.
I haven't taken a picture here becuase my liquid yeast disappeared instantly into the mix, not to resurface for some hours...
This head of foam is called a krausen, and is a mass of healthy happy yeast cells. This one has mostly fallen in, this is becuase i brewed on Saturday and only just remembered to take the damn picture.
I won't go into the mathematics of how we guage the alcohol, but i estimate nearly 5% for this brew depending on just how healthy and happy the yeast was.
Apart from falldown juice, one of the happy byproducts of beer making is spent grain, which composts well, and spent hops which also compost well. I also understand pigs like to munch on the spent grain.
Thanks for reading! More when i add finings and rack into the keg.
Nico
