Hurricane Irene had an interesting effect on DC area. People were rushing for last minute shopping, at one of the local
Target's there were no D size batteries, and my weekly early morning shopping trip found the cashiers struggling to keep up with the unexpected rush. I tracked the storm on and off as it approached and decided that a few hours housebound would be most productive in the kitchen. As long as there was electricity the only thing to do is make a batch of home brew.
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| Brewing Pot |
Home brewing is a science and art project which creates beer for personal consumption. The nice thing is that with the right ingredients you can make a darn good beer... the not nice thing is you have to wait! Wait for the water to boil, wait while the wort (wort is jargon for unfermented hop, malted barley water) boils, wait while the wort cools, wait while the wort goes through 2 or 3 fermentation stages. The average amount of time is about a four to five weeks from start to finish; 5 hours of actual brewing and clean up, two/three weeks of first and secondary fermentation, and two weeks of conditioning. Conditioning is a mini-fermentation stage that creates the in-bottle carbonization that brings about a nice head of foam when poured into a glass.
Perhaps the most noted person in the US for spurring interest in home-brewing is Charlie Papazian. His book,
The Complete Joy of Homebrewing
, was the first one I read back in 2004 when I began brewing.
The Brewmaster's Bible
by Stephen Snyder is my favorite guide book. It has some great recipes and advice about brewing. Both are great resources if you decide to take up this hobby. Kits can be found with dry malt extract, liquid malt extract and specialty grains. Specialty grain brewing requires special equipment for extracting the sugars but the results are incredible.
The recipe for Hurricane Irene was an IPA kit from the good folks at
homebrewers.com. It contained one lb of specialty grains (the raw ingredient for malt extract), seven lbs Briess golden light (liquid) extract (basically malt syrup), one oz Galena bitter hops, two oz UK Challenger hops and an eleven gram packet of beer yeast. The kit also came with instructions that are great for the first-time brewer. I did it my way... here's how.
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| Used Specialty Grains saved for Bread |
Start by putting 4 gallons water on to boil. While water is heating, though still cold, add 1 lb specialty grains to steep. My stove is wimpy so it takes about 40 minutes to bring the water to a boil. Just before the water boiled, I removed the specialty grains from the pot. (I save the specialty grains and make bread with them.. there will be a future blog entry on making bread.) Now add the LME (liquid malt extract) and bring to a boil. Once the wort has a nice rolling boil, I add the bitter hops and continue to boil for an hour. After 40 minutes (of the hour long boil) I put my wort cooler into the pot. (The wort cooler is a long coiled tube of copper that cold water to run through, and cools the wort in about 20 minutes. The cooling hoses can be seen in the picture of the brewing pot... this tool allows to work with larger quantities of water during the brewing process.) Finally in the last 10 minutes of the boil I add the finishing hops. When the hour long boil has complete, I turn off the heat and begin cooling. In 15 minutes, the wort has cooled from 212 to 120 degrees. 10 minutes later it's below 100 degrees and I transfer the wort from the brew pot to the sanitized fermenting bucket.
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| Wort in Fermenting Bucket |
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| un-yeasted wort or spiese |
During the brewing 3/4 of gallon has evaporated. I added 1 and 3/4 gallons of water to bring the fermenter up to 5 gallons and stir the wort. Next, I proof the brewing yeast in one cup of wort and take 32 oz of un-yeasted wort, called speise, for the conditioning step which will be about three weeks. By doing this I don't have to add bottling sugar when it's time to bottle the beer.
The last step before pitching the yeast is to measure the the specific gravity of the wort. Specific gravity tells how much dissolved sugars are in the wort. Specific gravity is needed to determine the amount of alcohol in the beer when fermentation is complete. The SG for the Hurricane Irene IPA was 1.044 which could result in a 5.375% alcohol by volume (ABV). To get a more accurate ABV, SG has to be measured when fermentation has stopped and then you have to do the math. This batch will probably be about 4.8% ABV. Now that everything is done it's time to move the brew to a dark corner, put a cover on it and seal it with an air-lock. The air-lock looks like a sideways S which is filled with water. The water allows gas (oxygen and CO2) to escape but doesn't allow air from outside to flow back in.
This batch will be ready for drinking right around halloween...maybe I should have called it pumkin head IPA? Nah!
It's been two days since I pitched the yeast and the fermentation is highly active. The air-lock actually bubbles frequently while fermentation is active.
Facebook comments has been enabled if you feel like sounding off.
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| Secondary Fermenter |
Update 9/10/11 - Transferred Hurricane Irene IPA to the secondary fermenter. My primary reason for doing this is sediment. I do not filter my homebrew, which means the yeast, hop and malt particles that have settled to the bottom could end up in my bottles. By transferring to a second fermenter most of the sediment stays in the primary fermenter. I don't expect additional fermentation but there is a potential for more fermentation. The SG 1.008. ABV is pretty close to 1.044-1.008=.036, 36/7.5=4.8% (check my original estimate.) The next step will be bottling.... the waiting continues...
Update 9/24/11 - Bottled today. Specific gravity unchanged - yield 36-16oz bottles. The yeast cake was rinsed and saved for a future batch of homebrew.
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| Carboy fermenter, bottling bucket, siphon and bottles |
