Ah Yes...A
truly marvelous sight. A fresh pint of home-brewed best bitter. (I know, there's
a bit of chill-haze but it doesn't affect the taste at all.)
In fact, I brew the best
beers in the world. No really! Don't run off cussing at that egotistical SOB
(me), let me explain. One of the real advantages of home brewing (among many
advantages) is that you can adjust the recipe to make the beer taste exactly
like you want it to. If your homebrew is not the best beer you've ever had...then
change the recipe.
I've been brewing for
about five years now (off and on) and I've arrived at several recipes that
make beers that I really like. You can skip right to the recipe
page if you want, but it will all make more sense if you read about the
process first.
Besides
being able to make really excellent beer really cheap, one of my favorite things
about home brewing is that it gives you the ability to control the amount of
alcohol in the beer. It is possible to make really tasty brews that are only
about 2.5-3.0% alcohol. (Of course you can't really do this with styles that
require high alcohol content like IPA's or barley wines.) Although beer is a
basically healthful beverage, there is no doubt that the excessive consumption
of alcohol has deleterious health effects. If you lower the alcohol content...that
means you can drink more beer. When you do go to my recipes
page you will notice that all of my beers are very low gravity and with
most yeasts will ferment out to about 2.5-3.0% alcohol.
I got started in home
brewing as I expect many people do...several of my friends were brewing their
own beer and were letting me taste their excellent beers. When I couldn't
stand it any longer I found a decent homebrew shop in a nearby town, bought
a bunch of stuff, and started brewing.
I made exactly one beer
according to a recipe (the equipment kit I bought came with a beer kit). Then
I started experimenting. I was brewing beer from malt extract (I've used both
syrup and dry extract with very similar results). I was from the very first
trying to develop recipes that produced beer that tasted the way I wanted
it to. I had read (repeatedly) the classic homebrew books by Charlie Papazian
which provide great information on the brewing process, but only limited information
on developing recipes. Then I found this book by Ray Daniels..."Designing
Great Beers" doesn't give directions about the process, but does give
a huge amount of information about what each style of beer should contain
and a really interesting historical perspective.
Of
course, I couldn't leave the brewing process alone either. I started with all
extract beers (just a little grain for flavoring). I really liked the idea of
all-grain brewing but I wasn't ready for the additional equipment necessary
or the additional trouble. I started using a "mini-mash" process where
I mashed a couple of pounds of grains and then strained it into the brew pot.
I really wanted a three-step brewing system, but those are all made for all-grain
brewing. I really didn't want to deal with the problems of boiling 5 gal of
wort and trying to cool it instantly. So I developed my own system. I think
it's pretty darned clever and it gives me the advantages of all-grain brewing
with none of the drawbacks.
So how do you get the
advantages of all-grain brewing without the trouble? How do you have a 3-step
brewing system without spending a lot of money (and without having a system
that takes a lot of trouble to run)?
I built a system that
gives me just what I want. I bought a couple of cheap 20qt stainless kettles
(I already had a good heavy duty brew kettle).
I
soldered a ball valve into a hole in each of the new kettles with a flare fitting
on the outside.
On
the inside I soldered a copper elbow so that the open end of the elbow is just
about 1/8" above the bottom of the kettle.
From
the lid of one of the kettles I built a false bottom. This fits tightly into
the kettle and has legs to hold it about 1.5" above the bottom of the kettle.
I drilled a large number of 1/16" holes in the lid to make a strainer for
sparging the mash (you will want to borrow a drill press for this process, a
hand drill is not sufficient). This false bottom supports the grain bed and
serves as a strainer for collecting the wort.
Although
most homebrew supply shops will grind grain for you, if you've gotten this far
you are going to want to mill your own grain. This is my home-made grain mill.
I built it before I had my home machine shop and some aspects are pretty crude,
but it is effective. It is electric powered (an old surplus vacuum cleaner motor
and a dimmer switch). It will grind eight (8) pounds of grain in about five
or six minutes. It is assembled on a large piece of plywood so I can set it
on top of a kettle and I can grind the grain directly into the kettle with the
false bottom (the mash kettle).
The
grain shouldn't be ground into flour, just thoroughly cracked and partially
ground. This is how the grain looks coming out of my mill. There are some small
grits and fine flour, but they settle below the coarsely cracked grain on top.
So
now you have about 8 pounds of ground grain in a mash kettle with a false bottom
in it. You will need to add warm (hot) water to the grain to begin the mash
process. I start with 4.5 gallons of water in the other kettle (remember I said
I bought two and put valves and fittings in both). I put the kettle of water
on the stove and heat it to about 168°F (you can see my thermometer on the
counter). I usually heat the water while I'm weighing and grinding the grain.When
the grain is ready I put it on a chair (middle step of my 3-step system) and
add a tube to the kettle of hot water. The valves on both of the kettles have
flare fittings on them so that I can put the tube (or the sparge ring) on either.
My usual strike is about 2.25 gal. of water at about 168° F. With most recipes
this gives me a mash-in temperature of 150-155° F. You can adjust the temperature
of the strike water and/or the exact amount of strike water for recipes that
have more or less grain.
I've
been using a simple one-step mash. I hold the mash at 155-150°F for about
one hour. It may require adding heat (turning on the stove burner) to keep the
temperature up. Most of the generally available grains are well modified and
don't need a protein rest so the one-step mash works pretty well. I've been
getting good conversion with this process. I check conversion using the old
iodine method and it's usually pretty well done after one hour. Then I turn
on the burner (low) and raise the temperature to 165° F for mash-out. Meantime
I've been heating the 2.25 gal. of water remaining in the other kettle to about
180° F, this is going to be the sparge water.
Now I really get to use
my three-step system. (Notice the glass of homebrew on the counter.) The heavy-duty
brew kettle is on the floor. The mash kettle with the grain and water is on
the chair and the tube has been added to direct the wort in to the brew kettle.
The kettle of hot water is on the range. I've attached the sparge ring to
the kettle on the stove. This is just a spiral of copper tubing with a fitting
to attach to the valve and holes drilled in the bottom. When the valve in
the mash kettle is opened the wort flows into the brew kettle on the floor.
When the valve on the sparge kettle is opened hot water flows onto the top
of the grain bed to wash the sugars into the wort. There is a little trick
to only opening the valves a little and allowing the water to flow through
slowly. The wort that flows into the brew kettle at first will have a lot
of grain, bran, and trash in it. I usually collect the first quart of wort
and put it back into the mash kettle to filter it.
For
my set up sparging usually takes 30-45 min. and I can collect about 2.5 gal.
of wort. There is a lot of water lost in the grain itself. The wort at this
point will be very low gravity, but it will contain all the flavors of the grains
that you put into the mash.
That's
it! I told you it was clever! You've got all (at least almost all) the advantages
of all-grain brewing but you only had to boil 2.5gal. of wort! Now you have
about 2.5gal of low gravity wort (but, it has all the flavors of mashing the
grains). From this point continue as you would with any recipe for a 2.5gal
boil (i.e. most extract recipes). You will need to add some extract, but not
a lot since you've already got some fermentable sugars from your mash. I usually
add 1.5-2lbs. of extract, but I'm aiming for low-gravity worts (if I can brew
a really tasty beer at 3% alcohol I can drink more of them). If you are going
for a more normal 5-6% alcohol you will need to add about 4-5 lbs. of extract.
If you're still here
you might like to check out my page
of recipes. Remember that these recipes are designed for my partial-mash
system. They may not work if you modify them for other systems.
No matter what recipe
you use, enjoy your homebrew. If you have any questions, or if you've enjoyed
my webpage I'd like to hear from you.
