It's been more than a year now since I first got into brewing and so far I've successfully brewed a lager, a wheat, an IPA, and a bitter. However all of these tasty beverages have a common denominator in that they were all kits. That is, all of these beers were made with cans of malt extract and most of the hard work had already been done for me. While there is still brewer's caution to be maintained while making beer this way it still has an overarching theme of simplicity.
Enter, my girlfriend.
Sue witnessed the beginning of my time as a brewer and correctly assumed that I was always interested in exploring other avenues of brewing tasty things to drink. I also have the penchant for constantly talking about things that interest me. For Christmas she got me a one gallon beer kit from the Brooklyn Brew Shop (BBS), a small homebrew start-up company. The kit consisted of a bag of grain, hops, and yeast; all the things I would need to do a mini-batch of all-grain beer. At this point I'd become pretty comfortable with kit brewing and this awesome gift hurtled into my comfort zone like an exciting cyclone of novelty steeped in mysterious, mushy passion.
Or something.
Anyway it was about time that I upped my game a bit and ventured into new territory.
Thanks, girlfriend.
In preparation I watched another Craigtube video or two about mini-mashes and partial extract brews to take a good look at the process on which I was about to embark. All grain brewing like this while fun can also be intimidating because of the added steps of mashing, sparging, boiling, cooling, etc.
None of which I had done before.
I was in the kitchen for about ten minutes double checking a print out of the recipe, shuttling back into the living room to look up a few things, planning each step as I hit it and making notes. I felt like I was brewing my first beer again.
"Fuck it!" I said, then snipped open my packet of hops and I was committed.
Unfortunately my recipe is not as specific as I would like, but I can give a general list of what went into this beer.
The recipe:
- Malted Barley and Wheat blend grains
- Styrian Golding Hops (pellets)
- Kit yeast of some kind
I've emailed the BBS asking for more specific measurements/weights of the ingredients, but I'm still waiting to hear back.
Anyway, I got out one of my new brew pots and heated two quarts of water to 160 F (71C) and then added my grains. If you are doing something similar, such as a batch from the BBS or a partial extract brew, its important not to dump all your grain in at once. Add it in a bunch at a time and stir like the dickens. You want all of your grain to be in contact with the water to maximize your conversion efficiency.
I stirred until I thought everything was wetter than a coed's t-shirt in Cancun and checked my temperature and put the lid on the pot. This process is called mashing and does not involve potatoes. However it does involve soaking your grains in hot water in order to get the sugars needed to make beer.
Every ten minutes or so I came back and gave the pot a stir and checked my temperatures. The recipe called for a mashing temperature between 144-152F (62-66C) for an hour and I did my best to stay within that range. You might find it necessary to fire on the burner a few times to get back to a better temperature and that's totally fine, just make sure that when you are taking temperature readings that you take them from a few different places in your pot as they won't all be the same. Temperature is very important during your mash because if you mash too high or too low and you won't be able to convert your starches into sugars, so be vigilant.
Once my one hour mash was finished my entire house smelled awesome and it was time for the sparge.
I know this word sounds like something hordes of little purple aliens would scream when rushing into battle against the attacking forests of carniverous broccoli only found on Planet IX, but it's really something much simpler.
Sparging is pouring hot water through your grains to rinse out the rest of the sugars and get them into your wort. There are a few different ways to do this, so I'll focus on what I did because that's what you came here to read, right?
"SPAAAARRRGGEE!"Basically I took my grains, now the consistency of oatmeal, and dumped them into a sieve that was on top of my second brew pot. I heated 4 quarts of water to about 170F (76C) and then poured it over the grain bed, making sure to pour it everywhere and not just in the center. The resulting liquid is your wort and will soon become your beer.
You should resist the temptation to press on your grain bed and squeeze out more liquid as this will bring out lots of tannins and other compounds that will give your beer an astringent taste.
Yuck.
So, once I had my wort I chucked it on the stove brought it up to a boil. After about ten minutes it got good and foamy with some chunky bits, this is called the hot break. I did my first hop addition and started my one hour timer. Boiling these hops for the full hour extracts lots of alpha acids which add bitterness and act as a preservative. At 30 minutes I did another addition at for flavor, and then one more at 5 minutes for aroma.
Time for the tricky part.
Up until this point I wasn't that concerned with sanitizing everything my boil would do that for me, but now I needed to cool my brew down so I could pitch my yeast and the longer this took the higher the chances of my beer getting spoiled.
About 20 minutes before my boil ended I filled my sink with water and chucked in a fuck-load of ice. My pot sat in this ice bath for probably 20 minutes. It's a good idea to swirl your wort in the pot to keep mixing in the cooler temps from the sides and bottom to get it cooler faster. Time is a factor.
I sanitized my thermometer and checked the temperature every couple minutes until I hit about 74F (23C).
Cool enough.
I put a sieve with a very fine mesh on my funnel and dumped the wort through it. This helps to filter out a great deal of the particulate and knock some oxygen back into the liquid. Yeast need oxygen to propagate and make your beer so don't be afraid to shake your beer or stir it a lot.
A month or two ago I got tired of taping those damn stoppers into my fermentors and melted holes the caps that came with the bottles and hot glued my airlocks into them. For this brew I used a cap with a blow off hose in case my headspace wasn't enough and some foam wants to escape during fermentation.
It took around four hours from when I started heating my water for mashing to when I had the bottle in the closet. I had my one gallon of Smoked Wheat beer. Before I pitched my yeast I made sure to measure out a slug and take a reading with my fancy new glass hydrometer.
OG = 1.040
It's been 8 days since I brewed and I'll probably let this one sit for another week or two before I bottle; I haven't quite decided yet. I usually let my bigger batches of beer sit for three weeks before bottling because I find it hurries the conditioning process and is great for clarifying my brew.
So, until tasting day keep your eyes peeled for more brewing adventures and go make some brew!