For my next brew, I'm planning to make a small batch of very small beer: 2.5% abv. When I say this to people, they almost always have the same reaction "why?".
It seems that often in the micro-brew world beer is judged by its "size". That is, it's alcohol level, it's bitterness level (especially for IPAs) and in general how much havoc it will ring on your body systems. Whereas the average alcohol content of commercial beers seems to be around the 4.5 to 5 percent mark, for microbrews 6 percent seems to be the minimum acceptable level, with many beers topping 7 and 8 (and 9) percent alcohol by volume.
I think possibly part of that trend is a reaction to the lower-alcohol, lower-flavor approach of commercial (or I should probably say, large-scale commercial) beers. It's a way to distinguish your brew from the crowed. And that's fine. Truly, when microbrews got their start in the late seventies and eighties they needed every advantage they could muster, so upping the ABV was fair game. When you are trying to sell beer to people who's spent their entire life drinking industrial pale lager, you need to be able to have as many selling points in your arsenal as you can. Nothing wrong with that.
But I think that this had also had an inadvertent effect on micro-drinkers. We've come to identify quality beer with higher-than-average alcohol level. I imagine that the penetration of Belgian-style beers into the micro-drinking market didn't help either. Though it's probably a chicken and the egg kind of scenario: Belgians became popular (partially) because they were "big", and people came to seek out big beers because they were popular. The fact that you can now get Leffe beer (which, incidentally, is owned by nBev ) just about anywhere shows that restaurant owners have long wised-up to the idea that people like high alcohol beverages.
Another aspect of this is that people like to feel like they're getting their money's worth. At most restaurants and bars, there is no real difference in price between a bottle of 4% beer and 7% beer. So people choose the 7% because it's "more bang for the buck" and will get them drunk sooner, for less money. Unfortunately, in as much as we beer geeks adore the drink for it's qualities, most people still drink to get happy. (whether that's a fight worth having is a discussion for a different post).
The thing is, however, that this is no longer the same beer world as it was in the seventies and eighties. Over the years, a fairly large drinker base has developed that drinks beer for its quality and flavor, not (just) it's alcohol content. People who smell, and look at, and taste their beer fully, and who can spend half an hour admiring the hop qualities of a brew. In short, a consumer base that you don't have to "sell" on beer, but that you can sell beer to based on its merits.
And for those people, with whom I humbly consider myself, alcohol is just one the many facets that make up beer, and is not very high on the list. We want quality and flavor. And I submit that if a beer has quality, and has flavor, and is satisfying to hold and smell and taste, then the level of alcohol becomes much less important. In matter of fact, the level of alcohol is important only in as much as it contributes to the overall character of the beer, and so if you reduce the alcohol level, you must make up for it in other ways.
And so that's the answer to the people who ask me "why": Because it's a challenge. Because making a 2.5% beer is much harder, in my opinion, than making a 6% beer. You have much less to hide behind. You have to make a beer that has flavor and body, and that doesn't feel like a "light" beer. formulating a recipe for a low alcohol beer is a complicated balancing act of body, flavor, hopping, and a dozen variables that don't work quite the way they do in a normal beer. If, in a 6% beer, we can mash at 67-68C and get a full body beer, at 2.5% that will yield a watery feeling beer. And so we have to work extra hard to make sure everything balances out right, and the drinker has a wonderful experience. The test of a "great" low-alcohol beer, in my opinion, is that you should be able to serve it to someone without telling them it's low alcohol, and they wouldn't know it. :)
And then, of course, there's the other answer to the question of why make it: "Because it's there."
Monday, November 5, 2012
Monday, October 22, 2012
It's suppose to look like that, honestly!
English has several idioms that mean basically the same thing: To
"Con" or to "Gip" someone means to deal with them unfairly. The terms
come from the words "Convict" and "Gipsy" respectively, with the second
one reflecting the popular belief that Gipsies were thieves.
I mention this because over the last couple of years that I've been pouring beer for people I've come to the conclusion that Israelis tend to think that whenever I pour them a beer, I'm trying to "Gip" them by giving them a beer with, heaven forbid, a visible head of foam on it.
Israelis seem to think that foam is a vise, and that it has no place in a beer cup. That I pour them foam because I'm trying to save on beer and steal their money. The Irony is that Israelis also really love Wheat beer, which is the biggest head-producing style there is. The combination of these two factors often lead to unhappy customers that, having been conditioned by low-head, low taste lagers, complain to me about only pouring them half a beer, and trying to save on them.
So I would like to take a moment to set the record straight: THIS IS WHAT BEER IS SUPPOSE TO LOOK LIKE =========>
If anyone serves you a beer that doesn't have any head on it, send it back. It's bad.
Seriously. We (brewers) put a lot of effort into our head. We mix in special grains, fiddle with carbonation, beer line length, and aeration, and have a standard of glass cleaning that wouldn't be out of place in a hospital. All to make sure that when you get a glass of beer, it'll have a nice cap of foam on it. When you insist on not having the foam, you're insulting the beer, and you're insulting the brewer.
And the thing is, beer is not only a a drink, it's an experience that involves all five senses. It's not just something you drink, it's something you smell, and feel, and look at. A clear body topped with a tall foamy cap is a beautiful thing. Take a moment to admire your beer before you guzzle it down. If your only purpose for drinking is to get drunk then, frankly, there are faster, easier choices. Beer, good beer, is an experience to be savored.
In this context I want to take a moment to thank whoever it was who came up with the notion of putting measure lines on beer cups. It's great. It lets me, as a beer server, show the customer that I'm not cheating them. That they actually got the full third or half liter they paid for, and then some in the form of foam. People don't like to feel like they're getting taken advantage of, I understand that. And even though that feeling is the result of their own lack of understanding, it's much easier to make the point when they have visual confirmation. In other words, it's easier for me to say "no no, it's suppose to look like that" and make it stick. In the hope that if I say that enough time to enough people eventually some of them will change the way they see the drink.
Change come slowly. But it does come. I do see people who take my beer, look at it, smell it, feel it, taste it in small sips instead of throwing it down. We're working against a long tradition of "quaffing" and "throwing back a pint". And while you can rile against people's ignorance, it does no good to yell. It's better to try to educate, one drinker at a time.
So I keep pouring, and (when I have the time) I talk to people about the experience of beer. And I invite them to visit our local brew pub and enjoy a real drink. And I keep dreaming. I dream of the day when someone hands me back a glass and says "I don't like this, it doesn't have enough head on it..."
I mention this because over the last couple of years that I've been pouring beer for people I've come to the conclusion that Israelis tend to think that whenever I pour them a beer, I'm trying to "Gip" them by giving them a beer with, heaven forbid, a visible head of foam on it.
Israelis seem to think that foam is a vise, and that it has no place in a beer cup. That I pour them foam because I'm trying to save on beer and steal their money. The Irony is that Israelis also really love Wheat beer, which is the biggest head-producing style there is. The combination of these two factors often lead to unhappy customers that, having been conditioned by low-head, low taste lagers, complain to me about only pouring them half a beer, and trying to save on them.
If anyone serves you a beer that doesn't have any head on it, send it back. It's bad.
Seriously. We (brewers) put a lot of effort into our head. We mix in special grains, fiddle with carbonation, beer line length, and aeration, and have a standard of glass cleaning that wouldn't be out of place in a hospital. All to make sure that when you get a glass of beer, it'll have a nice cap of foam on it. When you insist on not having the foam, you're insulting the beer, and you're insulting the brewer.
And the thing is, beer is not only a a drink, it's an experience that involves all five senses. It's not just something you drink, it's something you smell, and feel, and look at. A clear body topped with a tall foamy cap is a beautiful thing. Take a moment to admire your beer before you guzzle it down. If your only purpose for drinking is to get drunk then, frankly, there are faster, easier choices. Beer, good beer, is an experience to be savored.
In this context I want to take a moment to thank whoever it was who came up with the notion of putting measure lines on beer cups. It's great. It lets me, as a beer server, show the customer that I'm not cheating them. That they actually got the full third or half liter they paid for, and then some in the form of foam. People don't like to feel like they're getting taken advantage of, I understand that. And even though that feeling is the result of their own lack of understanding, it's much easier to make the point when they have visual confirmation. In other words, it's easier for me to say "no no, it's suppose to look like that" and make it stick. In the hope that if I say that enough time to enough people eventually some of them will change the way they see the drink.
Change come slowly. But it does come. I do see people who take my beer, look at it, smell it, feel it, taste it in small sips instead of throwing it down. We're working against a long tradition of "quaffing" and "throwing back a pint". And while you can rile against people's ignorance, it does no good to yell. It's better to try to educate, one drinker at a time.
So I keep pouring, and (when I have the time) I talk to people about the experience of beer. And I invite them to visit our local brew pub and enjoy a real drink. And I keep dreaming. I dream of the day when someone hands me back a glass and says "I don't like this, it doesn't have enough head on it..."
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Having your (yeast) cake, and brewing the beer too...
I made a comment to a facebook post earlier today about saving yeast from a smack pack. A previous commentator admonished the owner of said smack pack to wash the yeast for re-use once he had brewed the beer. I commented and said that there's no reason to wash the yeast, since you could just save a portion of the starter and re-cuture. I then got yelled at that you "don't save a piece of any starter, certainly not of lager." Seemed to me like a good chance to crunch some numbers.
So lets start with the basics. Why do we build a starter to begin with? Well, it's because we need a certain number of yeast cells to insure a healthy fermentation and, dang it, the yeast we get from the store just isn't enough. Let's take the case of my friend's brew as a test subject: He's planning to brew a fairly strong lager, so let's assume he's starting with an OG of 1.060. Using the handy-dandy Mr. Malty pitching rate calculator I find that I need no less than 439 Million yeast cells.
Now, given that the average yeast vial or smack pack is suppose to have about 100 Million cells in it, it would take four of them to pitch a proper pitch. But the fact is that yeast dies in transit, and over time the viability of that vial degrades. If I'm really lucky, and the vial was transported cold, and was very fresh when it was bought, and I pitched it right away, I might get about 40% viability. So of that theoretical 100 Million cells, I have about 40 Million to work with. Mr Malty doesn't tell me how big of a starter I'd need for that, but yeastcalc.com does: it would take a 12 liter starter to make enough yeast for this beer. For those following at home, we're talking about a 18.9 Liter brew.
The reason it takes so much starter wort to generate this much yeast is that growth is not liner to starter size. In other words, a 2 Liter starter will not propagate twice as many cells as a 1 Liter starter. It's the law of diminishing returns, on a cellular level.
So how do you make that much yeast? Well, you try to always pitch as much yeast as would hit the optimal growth rate for that size starter. In other words, the more starter wort you have, the more yeast you need to pitch. Or, flip it, the more yeast you have, the larger a starter you can pitch it to. This is called making a step-up starter.
So lets take our 40 Million cells that we got in the smack pack, pitch them into a 1 liter starter, and throw it on a stir plate until it ferments out. At the end of fermentation, our yeast has grown to about 139 Million cells (according to yeastcalc). Now lets do it again, take those 139 Million, and pitch them into 2 Liters (more yeast means bigger starter, right?) let it ferment and we get 377 Million cells. Getting close to the target, but not quite there. So lets do it one more time, and pitch into a 3L starter. At the end of that cycle we get...ready for this?...a whooping 779 Million cells! WAAAAY more than we need. In matter of fact, if we took that 3 Liter starter, mixed it well, and pitched only 1.75 liters of it into the wort, we will hit our target rate almost exactly. And the rest? That's enough yeast slurry there to fill a couple of vials and share with friends, and we've made it using half of the starter it would have taken in a single-step starter.
So yes, you can save a portion of the starter and re-culture it. in fact, if you do your step-up right, you probably wont need to re-culture. You'll have enough ready to use yeast that you can pitch what you need and save the rest. So get starting!
So lets start with the basics. Why do we build a starter to begin with? Well, it's because we need a certain number of yeast cells to insure a healthy fermentation and, dang it, the yeast we get from the store just isn't enough. Let's take the case of my friend's brew as a test subject: He's planning to brew a fairly strong lager, so let's assume he's starting with an OG of 1.060. Using the handy-dandy Mr. Malty pitching rate calculator I find that I need no less than 439 Million yeast cells.
Now, given that the average yeast vial or smack pack is suppose to have about 100 Million cells in it, it would take four of them to pitch a proper pitch. But the fact is that yeast dies in transit, and over time the viability of that vial degrades. If I'm really lucky, and the vial was transported cold, and was very fresh when it was bought, and I pitched it right away, I might get about 40% viability. So of that theoretical 100 Million cells, I have about 40 Million to work with. Mr Malty doesn't tell me how big of a starter I'd need for that, but yeastcalc.com does: it would take a 12 liter starter to make enough yeast for this beer. For those following at home, we're talking about a 18.9 Liter brew.
The reason it takes so much starter wort to generate this much yeast is that growth is not liner to starter size. In other words, a 2 Liter starter will not propagate twice as many cells as a 1 Liter starter. It's the law of diminishing returns, on a cellular level.
So how do you make that much yeast? Well, you try to always pitch as much yeast as would hit the optimal growth rate for that size starter. In other words, the more starter wort you have, the more yeast you need to pitch. Or, flip it, the more yeast you have, the larger a starter you can pitch it to. This is called making a step-up starter.
So lets take our 40 Million cells that we got in the smack pack, pitch them into a 1 liter starter, and throw it on a stir plate until it ferments out. At the end of fermentation, our yeast has grown to about 139 Million cells (according to yeastcalc). Now lets do it again, take those 139 Million, and pitch them into 2 Liters (more yeast means bigger starter, right?) let it ferment and we get 377 Million cells. Getting close to the target, but not quite there. So lets do it one more time, and pitch into a 3L starter. At the end of that cycle we get...ready for this?...a whooping 779 Million cells! WAAAAY more than we need. In matter of fact, if we took that 3 Liter starter, mixed it well, and pitched only 1.75 liters of it into the wort, we will hit our target rate almost exactly. And the rest? That's enough yeast slurry there to fill a couple of vials and share with friends, and we've made it using half of the starter it would have taken in a single-step starter.
So yes, you can save a portion of the starter and re-culture it. in fact, if you do your step-up right, you probably wont need to re-culture. You'll have enough ready to use yeast that you can pitch what you need and save the rest. So get starting!
Monday, September 10, 2012
Tasting Notes: ESB
The genesis of this beer was in a period of intense brewing leading up to this year's Longshot competition. I had decided to enter pretty much at the last second, and was kind of scrambling for a third beer to enter (my friend Levi was supplying three beers, and with my three we were splitting Beer-d's six-for-the-price-of-five deal.) Eventually, I ended up not submitting it, favoring instead the Kosher (oyster) stout. As a result this has become somewhat of a neglected beer in my collection, and it wasn't until a couple of days ago that I decided to give it a proper tasting and write up notes. I kind of wish I hadn't waited so long, since Bitter should be drunk fresh, and after five months, this beer is beginning to loose its sparkle.
The Recipe:
Taste Notes:
Overall the impression is of beer that is good, but past its prime. The carbonation was always a little light on this one, but when I tasted it it seemed particularly low. Don't know if that was just the specific bottle tough.
Small stable head over translucent maple color 4/5
Aroma of some hops, caramel and brown sugar 6/10
Taste of some wood and light caramel medium body 6/10
Palate a little odd, and woody 2/5
Overall 12 Cumulative 29/50
This beer happened to also be reviewed by Keren MK in her blog where she says it was "Amber color, with aromas of malt and a touch of fruit, a little watery, bitter, with a grainy finish" (Translated from Hebrew). Others that have tasted this liked it a lot, but unfortunately, I don't have anything more detailed then "This is good" by way of review. :)
OOPS, Had a feeling I forgot something: The yeast used was English Ale Yeast (obviously). I used Dunstar Windsor, but I think it's no longer available in this country. I imagine Fermentis 04 would do a pretty similar job. (Thank Noam for the catch!)
The Recipe:
Recipe: E.S.Bitching (ESB) TYPE: All Grain Style: Extra Special/Strong Bitter (English Pale Ale) ---RECIPE SPECIFICATIONS----------------------------------- SRM: 7.6 SRM SRM RANGE: 6.0-18.0 SRM IBU: 35.3 IBUs Tinseth IBU RANGE: 30.0-50.0 IBUs OG: 1.057 SG OG RANGE: 1.048-1.060 SG FG: 1.015 SG FG RANGE: 1.010-1.016 SG BU:GU: 0.614 Calories: 535.8 kcal/l Est ABV: 5.6 % EE%: 72.00 % Batch: 20.00 l Boil: 30.48 l BT: 90 Mins ---WATER CHEMISTRY ADDITIONS---------------- Total Grain Weight: 5.08 kg Total Hops: 90.00 g oz. ---MASH/STEEP PROCESS------MASH PH:5.40 ------ >>>>>>>>>>-ADD WATER CHEMICALS BEFORE GRAINS!!<<<<<<< Amt Name Type %/IBU 4.75 kg Pale Malt (Weyermann) (3.3 SRM) Grain 93.5 % 0.23 kg Carahell (Weyermann) (13.0 SRM) Grain 4.5 % 0.10 kg Caraaroma (130.0 SRM) Grain 2.0 % Name Description Step Temperat Step Time Mash In Add 14.19l water at 74.7 C 67.0 C 60 min ---SPARGE PROCESS--- Batch sparge: 3 steps (1.37l, 10.48l, 10.48l) of 75.6 C water ---BOIL PROCESS----------------------------- Est Pre_Boil Gravity: 1.046 SG Est OG: 1.057 SG Amt Name Type %/IBU 60.00 g Goldings, E.K. [5.50 %] - Boil 60.0 Hop 35.3 IBUs 0.50 Items Irish Moss (Boil 15.0 mins) Fining - 30.00 g Goldings, E.K. [5.50 %] - Boil 0.0 Hop 0.0 IBUs ---FERM PROCESS----------------------------- Primary Start: 5/8/2012 - 7.00 Days at 20.0 C Secondary Start: 5/15/2012 - 10.00 Days at 18.3 C Style Carb Range: 1.50-2.40 Vols Bottling Date: 5/15/2012 with 1.9 Volumes CO2: ---NOTES------------------------------------ Fermentation seemed to be over within 72 hours, so I started
letting temp drop by one degree every 12 hours. This may not
have been a good idae as FG ended up 1.019 instead of 1.014.
Also ended up with 17.5L of beer instead of 20.
Taste Notes:
Overall the impression is of beer that is good, but past its prime. The carbonation was always a little light on this one, but when I tasted it it seemed particularly low. Don't know if that was just the specific bottle tough.
Small stable head over translucent maple color 4/5
Aroma of some hops, caramel and brown sugar 6/10
Taste of some wood and light caramel medium body 6/10
Palate a little odd, and woody 2/5
Overall 12 Cumulative 29/50
This beer happened to also be reviewed by Keren MK in her blog where she says it was "Amber color, with aromas of malt and a touch of fruit, a little watery, bitter, with a grainy finish" (Translated from Hebrew). Others that have tasted this liked it a lot, but unfortunately, I don't have anything more detailed then "This is good" by way of review. :)
OOPS, Had a feeling I forgot something: The yeast used was English Ale Yeast (obviously). I used Dunstar Windsor, but I think it's no longer available in this country. I imagine Fermentis 04 would do a pretty similar job. (Thank Noam for the catch!)
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
What's common to a Chessmaster and Brewmaster?
I learned how to play chess when I was five years old. Took about fifteen minutes for my father to explain all the pieces and the way they move, and when he was done I asked him what else was there. He said that was it, and the rest was tactics and strategy. As a kid this annoyed me greatly: why would adults spent so much time thinking about a game who's rules I could recite in under a minute? Then my father showed me a whole (thick!) book about chess openings. WHY? What difference does it make what you start with?
Later, of course, I found out it makes a great bit of difference, and that arguably the opening is the most important part of playing chess. It is what sets you up for the rest of the game. A good opening may not guarantee a win, but a bad one can put you much closer to a loss. Brewing is a lot like playing chess.
It really is, too. Just like in chess you got the opening, the middle game, and the end game. And just like in chess, while the most spectacular action happens in the middle, you depend on a "good opening" to set you up.
So what's a brewing opening? To me, it's everything that happens until your wort hit the kettle. That is recipe, grain selection, milling, water, starter (you'll use that in the end, but you make it in advance), equipment building and maintenance, mash, luther, etc. Everything that happens between the moment you wake up at night with an idea for your next brew, until your wort is ready, is the opening.
And just like in chess, a great opening doesn't guarantee success, but a bad one can guarantee failure. You could have produced the best wort on earth, boiled it covered or scorched it, added stale hops or let it get infected, and ruin it. Or you could have done everything right in the boil and ferment, but over-sparged your wort and end up with beer full of tannins, mashed too high and end up with syrup, or just used bad tasting water and ended up with bad tasting beer.
There's several key factors in the opening that can effect your final beer. I'll try to discuss them in more details in future posts, but for now lets do an overview:
1. Recipe
This is where it all begins. Sure, you can just throw some grains and hops into the pot and probably come out with something fermentable. But if you are trying to make beer, and especially a particular kind of beer, it helps to have a good recipe.
"Good" is the key word. You can get a ton of recipes just by browsing the web, but just because someone posts something online doesn't mean it's good. Finding yourself trusted sources for recipes would make your life much easier, but you should also understand how recipes work, how flavors mix, and how your particular ingredients and process will effect the final beer. When I published my recipe for my award winning IPA a month ago I had people telling me I was a fool. But the fact is that you will never be able to make my beer. The most you could do is to use my recipe to make your own beer. Your ingredients, your equipment, and your process will invariably be different than mine, and so your beer will be different. (It might, in fact, be better, but that's a different question).
2. Water.
Water makes up 99% of your beer. It's what all the sugars from the malt and all the alpha acids from the hops dissolve in. If your water tastes bad, your beer will taste bad. Unfortunately, if your water tastes good your beer may still taste bad. This is because the mineral composition of water effects the mineral composition of the beer, and not everything that tastes good in water will taste good in every kind of beer. For example: Water high in minerals (a.k.a "Mineral Water") can taste good. But put it in a Pilsner, or a light, malty beer, and it'll taste all wrong. Understanding your water, and how to adjust it to suite your particular beer, is crucial.
3. Equipment.
When you formulate a recipe, you are preforming a juggling act. You have to keep maltiness, bitterness, carbonation, body, mouthfeel, and flavors in perfect balance. You tweak it and tweak it until it looks perfect on paper. But then you brew it and it all falls apart. I had that happen the first time I tried to brew all grain: I researched and found that BIAB (which was what I was going to use) gets about 75% efficiency, so that's what I based my calculations on. Well, it turned out that my bag was all wrong, and I got 58%. All of the sudden, my big Belgian beer turned into a bizarre, over-hopped, over-spiced concoction (ok, truth be told, it was that before hand - never try to formulate your own recipe with three week's worth of experience..). The point is, I didn't know what to expect from my equipment, so all my fancy calculations weren't worth anything.
4.Ingredient storage and preparation.
This is the other side of knowing what to expect from your equipment: If your grain is crushed differently every time, than your equipment will preform differently every time. If you buy pre-crushed grain and then wait sometimes months to use it, it will preform differently than fresh-milled stuff. Ideally, you should always have your grain milled the same way, and close as possible to brew day. Likewise, when you buy hops you should pay particular attention to how they're stored. Hops that have been stored improperly (exposed to heat, oxygen, light, or humidity) will have dull flavors, lower alpha acid content, and in extreme cases can actually add nasty spoiled flavors to the beer. If you buy hops in bulk make sure you store them well, too. (BTW, this also pertains to yeast, but seeing as we're talking about the beginning stages of brewing, we haven't gotten there yet.)
5. Process.
Assuming your equipment is consistent, and your grain is milled the same, you can still get great variation in your wort depending on how you produce it.Sparging and luthing are major parts of this equation: the sparge method can impact your efficiency, and over-sparging can result in tannin extraction. Sparge temperature can also extract tannins. Grain-to-water ratio, mash method (infusion, decoction), water source and composition - All of these factors can change the efficiency, and composition of your beer, and make it more difficult for you to produce consistent results.
There are, of course, many smaller parts to making a successful start for a brew day, and many things that come into play later are crucial for great beer (Sanitation, anyone?). Hopefully we'll cover some of those in future posts. But before I end this one I would like to offer one last thought: When a chess player approaches a chess board, he is always starting from the same place - from scratch. Brewing is the same way: Your beer is the sum total of your decisions as a brewer, and every time you make a batch of beer you have the chance to make better, more informed decisions, and make great beer.
Later, of course, I found out it makes a great bit of difference, and that arguably the opening is the most important part of playing chess. It is what sets you up for the rest of the game. A good opening may not guarantee a win, but a bad one can put you much closer to a loss. Brewing is a lot like playing chess.
It really is, too. Just like in chess you got the opening, the middle game, and the end game. And just like in chess, while the most spectacular action happens in the middle, you depend on a "good opening" to set you up.
So what's a brewing opening? To me, it's everything that happens until your wort hit the kettle. That is recipe, grain selection, milling, water, starter (you'll use that in the end, but you make it in advance), equipment building and maintenance, mash, luther, etc. Everything that happens between the moment you wake up at night with an idea for your next brew, until your wort is ready, is the opening.
And just like in chess, a great opening doesn't guarantee success, but a bad one can guarantee failure. You could have produced the best wort on earth, boiled it covered or scorched it, added stale hops or let it get infected, and ruin it. Or you could have done everything right in the boil and ferment, but over-sparged your wort and end up with beer full of tannins, mashed too high and end up with syrup, or just used bad tasting water and ended up with bad tasting beer.
There's several key factors in the opening that can effect your final beer. I'll try to discuss them in more details in future posts, but for now lets do an overview:
1. Recipe
This is where it all begins. Sure, you can just throw some grains and hops into the pot and probably come out with something fermentable. But if you are trying to make beer, and especially a particular kind of beer, it helps to have a good recipe.
"Good" is the key word. You can get a ton of recipes just by browsing the web, but just because someone posts something online doesn't mean it's good. Finding yourself trusted sources for recipes would make your life much easier, but you should also understand how recipes work, how flavors mix, and how your particular ingredients and process will effect the final beer. When I published my recipe for my award winning IPA a month ago I had people telling me I was a fool. But the fact is that you will never be able to make my beer. The most you could do is to use my recipe to make your own beer. Your ingredients, your equipment, and your process will invariably be different than mine, and so your beer will be different. (It might, in fact, be better, but that's a different question).
2. Water.
Water makes up 99% of your beer. It's what all the sugars from the malt and all the alpha acids from the hops dissolve in. If your water tastes bad, your beer will taste bad. Unfortunately, if your water tastes good your beer may still taste bad. This is because the mineral composition of water effects the mineral composition of the beer, and not everything that tastes good in water will taste good in every kind of beer. For example: Water high in minerals (a.k.a "Mineral Water") can taste good. But put it in a Pilsner, or a light, malty beer, and it'll taste all wrong. Understanding your water, and how to adjust it to suite your particular beer, is crucial.
3. Equipment.
When you formulate a recipe, you are preforming a juggling act. You have to keep maltiness, bitterness, carbonation, body, mouthfeel, and flavors in perfect balance. You tweak it and tweak it until it looks perfect on paper. But then you brew it and it all falls apart. I had that happen the first time I tried to brew all grain: I researched and found that BIAB (which was what I was going to use) gets about 75% efficiency, so that's what I based my calculations on. Well, it turned out that my bag was all wrong, and I got 58%. All of the sudden, my big Belgian beer turned into a bizarre, over-hopped, over-spiced concoction (ok, truth be told, it was that before hand - never try to formulate your own recipe with three week's worth of experience..). The point is, I didn't know what to expect from my equipment, so all my fancy calculations weren't worth anything.
4.Ingredient storage and preparation.
This is the other side of knowing what to expect from your equipment: If your grain is crushed differently every time, than your equipment will preform differently every time. If you buy pre-crushed grain and then wait sometimes months to use it, it will preform differently than fresh-milled stuff. Ideally, you should always have your grain milled the same way, and close as possible to brew day. Likewise, when you buy hops you should pay particular attention to how they're stored. Hops that have been stored improperly (exposed to heat, oxygen, light, or humidity) will have dull flavors, lower alpha acid content, and in extreme cases can actually add nasty spoiled flavors to the beer. If you buy hops in bulk make sure you store them well, too. (BTW, this also pertains to yeast, but seeing as we're talking about the beginning stages of brewing, we haven't gotten there yet.)
5. Process.
Assuming your equipment is consistent, and your grain is milled the same, you can still get great variation in your wort depending on how you produce it.Sparging and luthing are major parts of this equation: the sparge method can impact your efficiency, and over-sparging can result in tannin extraction. Sparge temperature can also extract tannins. Grain-to-water ratio, mash method (infusion, decoction), water source and composition - All of these factors can change the efficiency, and composition of your beer, and make it more difficult for you to produce consistent results.
There are, of course, many smaller parts to making a successful start for a brew day, and many things that come into play later are crucial for great beer (Sanitation, anyone?). Hopefully we'll cover some of those in future posts. But before I end this one I would like to offer one last thought: When a chess player approaches a chess board, he is always starting from the same place - from scratch. Brewing is the same way: Your beer is the sum total of your decisions as a brewer, and every time you make a batch of beer you have the chance to make better, more informed decisions, and make great beer.
Monday, August 27, 2012
Lonely Brewery ISO New Brand Name.
After a year of working under the name "Three Cats Brewery" I've decided that my beer need a new name.
Not the brewery, mind, just the beer. Something short. In the same way that you walk into a bar and say "gimmie a Bud/Hiny/Goldstar/Stella/Guinness" (I could name plenty more, but the example is clear. A good beer name is one word. Two, max).
I've been racking my brain trying to figure out how to come up with a name, and then it occurred to me: Ask the target audience! And furthermore, make it a prize-winning competition! So...
Announcing the Three Cats Brewery "Brand our (gl)ass" Sweepstake!
How to enter (in three simple steps):
1. Go to our facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/ThreeCatsBrewery) and hit 'like'
2. Suggest a new name for the beer, along with a short explanation as to why it's good
3. That's it!
Top entries will be put up to vote on our facebook page. And the submitter of the winning entry (subject to executive veto, cause there's some things I just refuse to name my beer) will receive a prize: A whole case of the first beer brewed under the new name! Free beer, and the thanks of a grateful brewery! What could be better?
So go forth, get the creative juices flowing, and get posting! There could be beer out there with your name on it. Literally.
Not the brewery, mind, just the beer. Something short. In the same way that you walk into a bar and say "gimmie a Bud/Hiny/Goldstar/Stella/Guinness" (I could name plenty more, but the example is clear. A good beer name is one word. Two, max).
I've been racking my brain trying to figure out how to come up with a name, and then it occurred to me: Ask the target audience! And furthermore, make it a prize-winning competition! So...
Announcing the Three Cats Brewery "Brand our (gl)ass" Sweepstake!
How to enter (in three simple steps):
1. Go to our facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/ThreeCatsBrewery) and hit 'like'
2. Suggest a new name for the beer, along with a short explanation as to why it's good
3. That's it!
Top entries will be put up to vote on our facebook page. And the submitter of the winning entry (subject to executive veto, cause there's some things I just refuse to name my beer) will receive a prize: A whole case of the first beer brewed under the new name! Free beer, and the thanks of a grateful brewery! What could be better?
So go forth, get the creative juices flowing, and get posting! There could be beer out there with your name on it. Literally.
Friday, August 3, 2012
Paying your debts forward
When I started brewing I had no idea what I was doing. I read a lot of "stuff", much of it contradictory (or simply wrong) and much of it I didn't understand. I started brewing, got over excited, made a beer with carob, and cinnamon, and anise (and 58% efficiency, because I REALLY didn't know what I was doing.) And basically made all the typical mistakes that a new, overly excited homebrewer makes.
But I learned, and I got better. And one of the major reasons for that is that I have a strong community of brewers in this country who welcome new brewers into their ranks and help them. There's a long list of people I can thank for my advancement this past year, including Dagan Bar-Ilan, who gave me access to his homebrew forum even though I didn't quite "qualify", Noa'am Shalev, who spent several hours talking me through my first BIAB batches (before I had a mashtun), Shahar Klien, who gave me me first taste of liquid yeast (and a lot of good advice), Shahar Hertz, my "dealer" in homebrew goods until he closed shop, and many many others.
But there's one man that I credit more than anything with helping me become the brewer I am today, and that is Emanuel Zaidman, also known as E.Z. Much has been said about Emanuel over the years, mostly having to do with his, um, people skills. But two facts have never been in doubt: One, that he is an extremely competent brewer (and the long list of awards his beer has won would testify to that) and Two, that he is never stingy about sharing his information. Oh, he may yell at you for doing everything wrong. But he'll also spend hours patiently explaining how to do it right (in his opinion, at least.)
One thing I remember particularly about Emanuel is his first post to the brewing forum after last year's Longshot competition. He won first prize, I believe in the wheat beer category and, true to his promise from before the competition, he posted the winning recipe online. He got a fair amount of crap for that, and people were telling him that he should keep the recipe for himself so he can win the next year. But he said that it's the brewer that makes the beer, and that the purpose of the forum is to make us all better brewers. So he published the recipe. And you know what? Last night, at this year's Longshot, he took first for wheat again.
When I saw the recipe posted I remember thinking to myself that he was an idiot for posting it. But then I rethought about it, and I realized he was right, and that I hope one day I could be like that. Well, last night at Longshot, I won first prize as well, in the Light Ale category. After which I walked up to Emanuel and told him that I own half of this prize to him. And so, in the spirit of paying my debts, and with the belief that information makes better brewers of us all, it is my honor to share my winning recipe with the world at large. Enjoy:
- I have a small mash tun, so I couldn't add much water for mash-out, and obviously adding 360ml of water wasn't going to bring the mash to 77C, so instead I did a 2L THIN mash decoction to bring the temp up. You don't necessarily have to do this, it's just something that helps with batch sparging.
- Fermentation Temperature was 19C, for two weeks
- Preboil Gravity: 1.043 OG: 1.053. FG: 1.015
- Carbonation was 2.5 volumes
- I didn't forget the dry hop addition in the recipe. Believe it or not, this beer was not dry hoped. :)
See you all in Longshot 2013! (oh, and if anyone has pictures, share them on facebook, I was a little too busy to take any :) )
But I learned, and I got better. And one of the major reasons for that is that I have a strong community of brewers in this country who welcome new brewers into their ranks and help them. There's a long list of people I can thank for my advancement this past year, including Dagan Bar-Ilan, who gave me access to his homebrew forum even though I didn't quite "qualify", Noa'am Shalev, who spent several hours talking me through my first BIAB batches (before I had a mashtun), Shahar Klien, who gave me me first taste of liquid yeast (and a lot of good advice), Shahar Hertz, my "dealer" in homebrew goods until he closed shop, and many many others.
But there's one man that I credit more than anything with helping me become the brewer I am today, and that is Emanuel Zaidman, also known as E.Z. Much has been said about Emanuel over the years, mostly having to do with his, um, people skills. But two facts have never been in doubt: One, that he is an extremely competent brewer (and the long list of awards his beer has won would testify to that) and Two, that he is never stingy about sharing his information. Oh, he may yell at you for doing everything wrong. But he'll also spend hours patiently explaining how to do it right (in his opinion, at least.)
One thing I remember particularly about Emanuel is his first post to the brewing forum after last year's Longshot competition. He won first prize, I believe in the wheat beer category and, true to his promise from before the competition, he posted the winning recipe online. He got a fair amount of crap for that, and people were telling him that he should keep the recipe for himself so he can win the next year. But he said that it's the brewer that makes the beer, and that the purpose of the forum is to make us all better brewers. So he published the recipe. And you know what? Last night, at this year's Longshot, he took first for wheat again.
When I saw the recipe posted I remember thinking to myself that he was an idiot for posting it. But then I rethought about it, and I realized he was right, and that I hope one day I could be like that. Well, last night at Longshot, I won first prize as well, in the Light Ale category. After which I walked up to Emanuel and told him that I own half of this prize to him. And so, in the spirit of paying my debts, and with the belief that information makes better brewers of us all, it is my honor to share my winning recipe with the world at large. Enjoy:
Recipe: Left Hand of IPA Brewer: Boaz Asst Brewer: Style: American IPA TYPE: All Grain Recipe Specifications -------------------------- Boil Size: 30.48 l Post Boil Volume: 25.48 l Batch Size (fermenter): 20.00 l Bottling Volume: 20.00 l Estimated OG: 1.053 SG Estimated Color: 6.7 SRM Estimated IBU: 64.4 IBUs Brewhouse Efficiency: 73.00 % Est Mash Efficiency: 89.4 % Boil Time: 90 Minutes Ingredients: ------------ Amt Name Type # %/IBU 2.70 kg Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 1 56.0 % 0.80 kg Carapils (Briess) (1.5 SRM) Grain 2 16.6 % 0.80 kg Wheat Malt, Pale (Weyermann) (2.0 SRM) Grain 3 16.6 % 0.40 kg Medium Caramel/Crystal Malt - 45L - Shac Grain 4 8.3 % 0.12 kg Carafoam (Weyermann) (2.0 SRM) Grain 5 2.5 % 30.00 g Centennial [7.50 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 6 29.2 IBUs 0.50 tbsp Irish Moss (Boil 15.0 mins) Fining 7 - 70.00 g Hallertauer [3.20 %] - Boil 15.0 min Hop 8 12.3 IBUs 30.00 g Perle [6.00 %] - Boil 15.0 min Hop 9 9.9 IBUs 30.00 g Tettnang [3.00 %] - Boil 15.0 min Hop 10 4.9 IBUs 30.00 g Amarillo Gold [4.80 %] - Boil 5.0 min Hop 11 3.2 IBUs 30.00 g Cascade [4.50 %] - Boil 5.0 min Hop 12 3.0 IBUs 20.00 g Styrian Goldings [4.40 %] - Boil 5.0 min Hop 13 1.9 IBUs 1.0 pkg Safale American (DCL/Fermentis #US-05) Yeast 14 - Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Full Body, Batch Sparge Total Grain Weight: 4.82 kg ---------------------------- Name Description Step Temperat Step Time Mash In Add 15.82 l of water at 75.3 C 68.9 C 90 min Sparge: Batch sparge with 3 steps (0.36l, 10.48l, 10.48l) of 75.6 C water
A couple of notes from the brewing notes:
- I have a small mash tun, so I couldn't add much water for mash-out, and obviously adding 360ml of water wasn't going to bring the mash to 77C, so instead I did a 2L THIN mash decoction to bring the temp up. You don't necessarily have to do this, it's just something that helps with batch sparging.
- Fermentation Temperature was 19C, for two weeks
- Preboil Gravity: 1.043 OG: 1.053. FG: 1.015
- Carbonation was 2.5 volumes
- I didn't forget the dry hop addition in the recipe. Believe it or not, this beer was not dry hoped. :)
See you all in Longshot 2013! (oh, and if anyone has pictures, share them on facebook, I was a little too busy to take any :) )
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