Until last Sunday, I hadn’t brewed a batch of beer in a year. The reason for the delay was that I didn’t want to brew another batch until I could do it the “real” way.
For those unfamiliar with homebrewing, there are two methods: extract and all-grain. Until Sunday, I had been an extract brewer - that is someone who purchases a pre-made malt extract, adds water and hops and boils it all.
On Sunday, I became an all-grain brewer. The difference is instead of buying a can of malt extract, I make it from grains of malted barley. The process is pretty easy. I was making an English Pale Ale, so I looked up some recipes, finessed the recipe. In this case, I used 7 pounds of Marris Otter Pale malt, and a half-pound each of two different Crystal malts.
Now, the reason I haven’t brewed in so long is that there’s some special equipment one needs for all grain brewing. The first piece of equipment you need is kettle (or pot) large enough to hold six gallons of liquid. Luckily for homebrewers, the pot that comes with a turkey fryer can handle this gracefully and comes with the added advantage of a nice burner to use as the heat source. Although, there is some debate about the health benefits of heating Aluminum…
The second piece of special equipment is called a Mash Tun. In order for the magic that is the brewing process to work, you’ve got to convert all of the starch in the grain into fermentable sugar. To do that, you heat up the grain to a specific temperature and let it sit for an hour.
Most brewers use a simple picnic cooler for this process. The complicated part involves plumbing (doesn’t it always?). In my case, I bought a six-gallon Home Depot branded Gott cooler. I removed the cooler’s valve, made the hole a little bigger and fit it with a valve from a bottling bucket. Inside, I attached a stainless steel false bottom to a female hose bib with a small length of vinyl tubing. I then purchased an adapter that allowed me to attach the hose bib to the bottling bucket valve. When I got everything together and filled it with water, I noticed a little leak, so I caulked the outside of the valve with silicon, which took care of the leak.
So, now that I have all my equipment together, it’s time to brew! The process is pretty simple, but does take some time. It’s broken up into 3 parts: Mashing, Sparging and Boiling.
The Mash:
Mashing involves heating up the grain to convert starch into fermentable sugar. The first step is to heat a couple gallons of water to 170 degrees. Once the water has reached that temperature, you pour it into your Mash Tun and add all the grains. Stir the mixture up so that each grain gets wet and you don’t have any clumps. Then take a temperature reading and when the mixture drops to your desired mashing temperature, close the cooler lid and let it sit for an hour.
There are times when brewers do more complicated Mashes, which involve keeping the grain at different temperatures for different periods of time. I didn’t do that. I did what is called a “single infusion” mash.
The Sparge:
Sparging is the process of separating the Wort (the liquid) from the grains. There’s an easy way and a more complicated way. I did the easy way, which is called Batch Sparging. In a nutshell, after the mash is completed, you add some 170-degree water to the mash tun, let it sit and then drain it all out into your kettle. Then you add more hot water to the mash tun and drain it out into your kettle until you have the required amount of liquid – usually 6 gallons.
The Boil:
Once you have collected all your wort in the kettle, it’s time to boil it. This process is fairly simple, although you need to keep an eye on the kettle or it will boil over and make a huge mess. Yes, that happened to me. Next time, I’m going to go for a gradual boil…
After you’ve boiled the wort, you need to cool it to below 78 degrees before you can add the yeast. To do this, I used a homemade wort chiller. It’s simply a coil of copper tubing that you submerse in the kettle during the last 15 minutes of the boil (to sanitize it) and then run water through it for 15 minutes or so.
Once the wort is cooled, you transfer it to your fermenter, add the yeast and attach a fermentation lock, that allows gas to escape, but not get in. then you wait… After that you bottle or keg, then wait again. Finally you get to drink it. As I’m still in the waiting phase, you’ll have to wait as well to hear how it turned out.
Post new comment