So you want to homebrew?

I received an email from an individual wanting some advice on how to start homebrewing. If their is anything I love more than craft brew, it is homebrew. I do offer a word of warning, once you catch the homebrew bug you will become hopelessly addicted. You will not stop until you have 30 or 40 gallons of homebrew at various stages of production in your house. You have been warned!

First things first, we need to get some equipment. Unless you have some sort of equipment already, you will most likely need to order a kit from a retailer. There are countless online retailers and a couple of local shops to purchase from. I am going to mention the two retailers I am familiar with, Bacchus and Barleycorn which is the local shop and MidwestSupplies.com. Please note I am not paid in any way for my opinions and I have no financial interest in your purchasing decision. With that being said I purchase most of my all-grain ingredients from the local shop Bacchus and Barleycorn. I purchased my equipment starter kit from Midwestsupplies.com and purchase most of my replacement equipment from them. Bacchus' equipment is a bit too expensive in my opinion. However they do offer a frequent shopper card that gives you $20.00 back for every $200.00 you spend, so that is a plus.

There are two basic ways to make beer, extract or all-grain. With extract brewing you will be using a malt extract which will be either syrup or powder. This extract will be added to water, boiled, and provide the sugar needed for the yeast to convert to alcohol. All-grain brewing utilizes grain soaked/rinsed in heated water to make wort. The wort is boiled and is the sugar source for the yeast. Here is my guide for the necessary equipment for brewing extract brew. I will make a separate post regarding the equipment necessary for all-grain brewing at a later date. Here we go!

Mandatory Reading - HowToBrew.com

Bare Bones Brewing Equipment -

This is the equipment you will need to brew extract recipe ales up to about 6.0% ABV. These recipes will require you to boil 2.5 gallons of wort and will not require a secondary fermentor. It should be fairly easy to find a vessel capable of boiling 2.5 gallons and you can use your stove top to boil it. Bottles can be either purchased from a retailer or you can save the bottles after you drink your favorite craft brew. Bottles that are not screw top and have the single lip are suitable for your homebrew.

Midwest Supplies Basic Kit - $64.99

- Instructional Homebrewing DVD
- 6.5 Gallon Plastic Fermenter
- 6.5 Gallon Bottling Bucket with Spigot
- 8 oz Easy Clean
- Airlock
- Hydrometer
- Bottle Brush
- Bottle Capper
- Bottle Caps
- Bottle Filler
- Racking Cane
- Tubing

Not included in the kit but you will need:
- Long stem Thermometer - $10.99
- Funnel w/strainer - $6.10
- Bottles - 52 12oz or 28 22oz
- Big 15 gallon plastic tub (for putting your kettle in to cool the wort after the boil) - $5.00 Dollar Store/WalMart

Optional Equipment:

If you are wanting to now or in the future brew lagers, high gravity brews, or more than one batch in a 3 week period you will need carboys as secondary fermenters. I prefer glass but they do have plastic versions that will save you some money.  In addition to a secocondary fermenter, lagers require temperature control (extra fridge with manual controller $50.00) during fermentation.  Due to this added complexity of brewing lagers I would avoid them for your first couple of brews.  If you think you will ever brew all-grain you will need at least a 7.5 gallon brew kettle. So my advice, if you are investing in a brewing kettle do not purchase one less than 7.5 gallons or you will kick yourself in the butt later. Another option for brew kettles is to acquire a 15.5 or 7.75 gallon keg and cut a hole in the top of them. You can usually find the full sized kegs on Craigslist for $50.00. Also with 7.5 gallons of wort you will need to migrate from the stove top to a dedicated burner (turkey fryer).

- 7.5 gallon stainless steel brew kettle - Midwestsupplies.com - $79.99
- Glass Carboy $29.99
- Turkey Fryer Burner - Bayou Classic @ Homedpot.com - $49.97

Ingredients:

For your first two or three batches I recommend you order a recipe kit. These kits will have all the ingredients you need to make a batch of brew accompanied by detailed instructions. The only recipe kits I have personally used are the Irish Red and Cream Stout from Midwestsupples.com. Both of these kits procuced delicious brew so I wouldn't hesitate to recommend them. The local shop Bachuss also has ingredient kits available. Once you get the mechanics of making homebrew down, you can venture out on your own and start developing your own recipes. In developing your own recipes I find Brew Your Own magazine and the book Designing Great Beers to be valuable resources. Along with these publications you can search the ever expansive Internet for other peoples ideas. My recipes with tons of others are posted at Hopville.com and I have found some good recipes at MaltoseFalcons.com.

- Irish Ale Recipe Kit - $26.99 for 5 gallon batch

Local Shop:

Bacchus & Barleycorn
6633 Nieman Road
Shawnee, KS 66203
Phone: 913-962-2501
www.bacchus-barleycorn.com

Hops in Containers update 08/24/2011

Cascade Cone

The end is near for the hop plants. The fruits of my labor are on the vines and it is a matter of time before I will have a FatCat Estate brew in the works. All three plants are displaying cones and I am getting anxious to start harvesting some of my bounty. Seems that the cones are growing the best the higher they are on the trellis. The excess part of the vine (the slack in the adjustable trellis system) is very bushy but doesn’t seem to be producing any substantial cones. I pruned the plants once before and haven’t pruned them since. Not sure if under pruning was a factor. My previous pruning didn’t seem to effect the growth rate all that much. I do think the pruning helped with the browning of the leaves when it was very hot. I also started watering a lot more after the near death experience the Cascade plant endured, so this may have also helped the brown leaf situation. I fertilized with Miracle Grow once a week. I think next year I will dilute the Miracle Grow and fertilize twice a week. I did have a problem with a grasshopper eating my plants but I “dispatched” a grasshopper and haven’t seen any since. They must have got the message. I’ve been using an organic soap insecticide throughout the season which seemed to help protect the plants. However in recent weeks the Hallertau plant has been assaulted by insects leaving a majority of the leaves riddled with holes. Bastards!



The Cascade plant made a miraculous comeback after the initial main vine death scare. As I mentioned earlier a smaller vine was climbing the trellis post after the main vine died. I allowed this vine to climb and it appears will actually produce cones! The cones on the Cascade plant have matured the most and should be ready for harvest shortly.

Cascade

The next best looking plant is the Centennial which is in-ground plant. This plant seems to have the most cones but they are not as big as the Cascades.

Centennial

The Hallertau went from best to worst in the health category. It has been eaten alive by insects and there are very few cones showing on the plant. Hopefully it’s a late bloomer and I will be surprised by the plant once again.

FatCat brew day - WTF Roggenbier

OG:  1.045
IBU:   19.5

In my quest to brew all the styles recognized in the BJCP guide, I find myself face to face with beers I've never even heard of.  This is one of them. 

Roggenbier is a German rye beer which was originally brewed in Regensburg, Bavaria.  It was a specialty beer intended to be a more distinctive variant of a dunkelweizen with rye instead of wheat.  It's supposed to be moderate to strong in spicy rye flavor, similare to rye or pumpernickel bread.  The taste is dominated by rye grain and weizen yeast character (banana, clove, maybe citrus) with very little hop bitterness.

This is one of the styles that would be nearly impossible to find a commercial version in the US.  This is one of the few recipes I have serious doubts about whether it is actually going to taste good.  But I laugh in the face of homebrew danger and venture forth.  If I'm not back in a couple hours call the authorities.

Hop University - Extra Credit - Hop Composition Chart

If you made it all the way through Hop University here's your reward.  I compiled the composition data for some common hops and posted them in a spreadsheet.  This should make choosing your hops for your homebrew easier.

Hop University – Day 3 How to choose hops for homebrew

It is the final day and you are close to graduating. This last bit is geared exclusively towards homebrewers and how to utilize the Hop University knowledge. For those of you who are not homebrewers, I do have a reference below from a Beer Advocate thread giving you examples of commercial brews with specific hop profiles. If you want to experience specific hop flavors, this list will be a good start. The Sam Adams Deconstructed sampler was a great way to try different hops profiles, but I think it is very close to being sold out in the area.


You have a good idea of what you want your hop profile to be, now what? Well now you have to do some leg work and pick out the hops which will fit your intended profile. Luckily, I’ve done most of the leg work for you. You have two choices for the resource you can use to help define the hops you will use. If you are doing a traditional style, you can find the style guidelines in the BJCP guide and it will usually tell you what hops to use. You can also find websites or books that will explicitly tell you what hops are traditional for a style. That is the easy way out.

The other avenue you may choose is to make up your own hop profile regardless of what tradition says. Going this way is a little more tricky because there are no guides on the internet for the style in your head. You have to decide what hops to use on your own. There are several great resources for the composition of hops and their oils. Yakima Chief and Hop Union provide Hop handbooks that list information like the Alpha Acid percentage, Beta Acid percentage, Cohumulone percentage, as well as the percentage of the four essential oils (Myrcene, Humulene, etc.). It will be a good idea to look at both handbooks as each will have more information in different areas than the other. You can now narrow down the hops that will fit into your intended hop profile.

Hop University - Day 2

OK homebrewers and the brave few who have made it to day 2.  Hop history is down, on to the fun stuff, how hops are used in beer making.  We’ve discussed that hops offer bitterness to beer which balances the sweet malt.  In order to get the bitterness out of the hops, they must first be boiled in the beer (wort).  The boiling causes the hop oils to isomerize and become soluble in the beer.  The hop oils contain two types of acids, Alpha acids and Beta acids.  Alpha acids provide the bittering component.  The Beta acids do not isomerize in the boil making them insoluble and provide only hop aroma to the beer.

Hops are typically rated based on their Alpha acid percentage by weight.  This rating gives the brewer a guideline for how much bitterness can be expected from a particular hop.  For example, a Cascade hop is around 4.5 Alpha acid % and a Galena hop is around 12.5 Alpha acid %.  So the brewer will need to use a lot less of the Galena hop at 12.5 AA% then they would Cascade at 4.5 AA% hop to get the same amount of bitterness.  Brewers measure the amount of expected bitterness for their beers with IBUs (International Bitterness Units).  The higher the IBUs, the higher the expected bitterness in the final beer.  Below are some typical values for certain styles of beer.

Light Lager (Bud Light, etc) – 5-10 IBU

Dry Stout (Guinness) – 30-45 IBU

American Pale Ale (Sierra Nevada) – 30-45 IBU

American IPA (Founder’s Centennial) – 40-60 IBU

Double IPA (Stone Ruination) - 60-120 IBU

Generally speaking the higher the IBU the more bitter the beer will be.  Although the Dry Stout and the American Pale Ale have the same IBUs, the stout has sweet malts which will balance the bitterness.  So even though they could have the same IBU, the stout will seem less bitter because of its sweeter malt components.

Now that we know how hops provide bitterness to beer, we need to figure out what is it going to taste like.  There are two types of Alpha acids, Humulone and Cohumulone.  Humulone is thought to provide the softer more desirable bitterness.  Cohumulone in contrast is thought to be harsher in its bitterness and therefore less desirable.  The next consideration is the four main essential oils in hops which contribute to flavor.  They are Myrcene, Humulene, Caryophyllene, and Farnesene .  The two oils that brewers are concerned with (at least I only worry about the two) are Myrcene and Humulene.  Myrcene lends a more citrusy and tropical note to the beer while Humulene has a more spicy and floral signature.   With information regarding the Cohumulone levels and the amounts of the essential oils in particular hops, brewers can get a good idea of what hop characteristics they can expect from their finished brew.  Below are some examples of hop flavor characteristics for certain styles.

IPA – Bell’s Two Hearted – uses Centennial hops which are high in Myrcene causing big citrus and grapefruit character.

Pilsner – Pilsner Urquell  - Uses Saaz hops which are high in Humulene lending a mellow spice and floral note.

American Lager – Sam Adams Boston Lager – uses Hallertau which is high in Humulene making it spicy.  It is also low in Cohumulone so the bitter is more pleasant and less aggressive.

IPA – Bridgeport The Czarr – is brewed with Chinook hops which are high in Cohumulone and give it a very aggressive, harsh bitter character.

 References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hops

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/Adlupulone#Adlupulone

http://beeradvocate.com/forum/read/3808775

Hop University - Day 1

Ever wonder how to choose hops for your homebrew? Ever think, I don’t homebrew so what the hell is a hop? Well fret no longer because I present to you over the next couple of days Hop University! In my personal quest to brew an IPA, I have conducted extensive research on hops. Bell’s Two Hearted Ale and Founder’s Centennial IPA inspired me to single hop my IPA. So I set off on a quest to pick my one magical hop that will make FatCat’s IPA the best ever. My research, coupled with the Sam Adams Deconstructed sampler, has given me great insight into which hop I will choose. If you wish to attend Hop University proceed onward and bask in the knowledge of hoppy goodness.




Day 1 – Background and History of Hops

Hops (Humulus Lupus) are used in today’s brew to provide a bitter flavor to balance the sweetness of the malt. Only the female flowers/cones are used in the brewing process. The bitter flavor was the original reason for brewers to use hops in brew, but hops had a much greater impact on the brew and those who drank it than flavor alone.

The first documented cultivation of hops was in the year 736 in the Hallertau region of present day Germany. Hops were not used in beer in that area until 1079. Before then brewers used dandelion, burdock root, marigold, horehound, ground ivy and Heather as bittering agents. When hops are used in the brewing process, it not only provides a bittering element but also provides an antibiotic effect to help ward off bacterial infections. The Discovery Channel documentary, “How Beer Saved the World”, explained how the beer and the hops used in the beer had health benefits for people in the past. Hops prevented the beer from spoiling and provided a safe alternative to water. Untreated water will eventually develop bacteria that would cause illness and even death in ancient times. Beer which had been boiled with hops was more resistant to bacteria and could be consumed with lower risk of getting sick. Beer was also prescribed to treat illnesses in ancient times. It turns out the chemicals from the hops actually have a limited medicinal effect which can help treat some illness.

Hops are a climbing plant and grow on vines. These vines can grow upward of 25ft in a single season. The main hop producing regions are Hallertau in Germany, Yakima Valley in Washington, Williamette in Oregon, Canyon County in Idaho, Kent and Worcestershire in the UK. Only female plants are allowed in the hop fields to prevent pollination. The hop cones are harvested and dried before being used for brewing. Commercially the only major use for hops is in beer with some other minor uses in other beverages. Hops are also used in herbal medicine to treat anxiety, restlessness, and insomnia. But beware hops are not all rainbows and butterfly dust, they are toxic to dogs. So don’t let Fido eat any.

The source for most of my information was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hops.

Growing Hops in Containers update

Hope everyone had a wonderful Memorial Day.  I did some yard work and broke into the Sam Adams Deconstruction sampler.  I will post my results of the Deconstruction sampler in a few days so stay tuned.  I finished one of the trellis systems for my hops.  I'm using the idea I got from BYO to use an adjustable system.  Basically you let the hop plant grow up the string untill it's almost to the top.  Then you let string out and lower the hop plant and it continues to grow towards the top.  I used an 8ft piece of cedar, but about 1ft is down inside the PVC holder.  With part of the post inside the PVC holder I've only got about 7ft total height.  There is a cedar cross member I bolted to the main post to give the whole structure some stability against the wind.  I put small eyelets in the top of the post for the string to go through.  I chose Jute twine as the string component which the hop will climb.  I'm a little concerned that it may rot before the end of the season but I've got my fingers crossed.

Cascade

As far as the hop plants are going the Cascade is almost 2ft tall and is growing the best. 

Hallertau

I think in my original post I mixed up the location of the Hallertau and the Centennial.  The Hallertau is in the second container and is growing the slowest.  It has barely sprouted. 

Centennial

The Centennial is the one planted in the ground and has started out strong but hasn't grown very fast since.  Perhaps the lack of adequate sunlight is stunting the Centennial's growth.

I ran across a good post on the net while doing research for the hops.  It is another bloggers chronicles of hops in pots.

Cheers!

Ever Wonder How to Homebrew?

It's easier than you think!  It's basically like making tea, you can make tea can't you?

First Step:

Visit http://www.howtobrew.com/.  Author John Palmer has put his entire book on the internet to teach us how to brew.  It walks you through all aspects of brewing from simple extract brews to more complicated all grain brews.  Awesome website and thanks to Mr. Palmer it is free. 

Step Two:

Visit http://www.bacchus-barleycorn.com/ which is the local homebrew shop here in the KC area.  It is off of 67th and Nieman.  They have all the ingredients and supplies you will need to get started.  There is also a homebrew shop in Olathe http://www.brewcat.com/.  You can search the internet for online homebrew shops which will have everything you need as well.  The local shops are usually even in price when you factor in shipping so it's better to support local folks.  Bacchus has a rewards program where you get $20.00 back after you spend $200.00 so that's a bonus savings.

Step Three:

If you bought a recipe kit, that's it.  Get to brewing! 

If you are going to go your own route and concoct your own recipe then http://www.beercalculus.com/ has a great free recipe calculator if you are going to go the all grain route.

 I also recommend Gregory Noonan's book, Designing Great Beers.  It is great recipe starting place for several styles outlined in the book.  It also has all the calculations you may use for recipe calculations. 

The BJCP guideline app for android is a great resource for beer style information.  You can get the online version at http://www.bjcp.org/.


See easy as tea.

Cheers