Last time we posted blog text about beer ingredients. And now is time to write about the brewing process itself. I’m not going to make this overly complicated. The point is showing the fundamentals in beer making and pretty much skip all the fine chemistry and scientific things that would make Heisenberg proud. And the truth is, you can make very good, even excellent beer in your home without knowing every little detail that happens during the process of brewing beer (this, of course, would help you a lot in making beer but it would make this post waaaaaayyyyy too long if I would write everything in here). And sorry about the bad quality of the pictures. I’m brewing by myself so there’s no one to take pics.

And even though this is homebrew edition, the same principles are applying in the real breweries as well.
I’m going to document one of my homebrewing session all the way from mashing the malts to a final product in bottles. I’m using the Brew-In-A-Bag (BIAB) method for my homebrewing purposes and I’m showing how I make beer. There are about as many ways of making beer as there are (home)brewers and I want to show you one way of making beer.

 

STEP 1 MASHING

Malted grains must be crushed prior to mash. Every beer making process starts with mashing (well, for real it starts with planning the recipe and cleaning the equipment and possibly making a yeast starter). Mashing breaks down the starch in the grains to sugars. And the yeast then turns these sugars into alcohol. I use single temperature infusion mash which means that the malt is kept at the single temperature usually an hour. If you mash very low, let’s say 63-65 celsius then the mash might need 90 minutes. Typical mash temperatures are between 63-69 degrees. To get your desired mash temperature, you need to know the temperature of your grains and water to grain ratio (mine is usually 3:1 so three litres of water for every kilo of malt). For example, in this beer, I needed to mash at 68 Celsius so the water needed to be heated at 74,7C. I missed the mash temperature about 0,5 (67,5 C) degrees but that’s ok, it’s not the end of the world. The mash needs to be stirred to ensure there are no clumps of grain and so that the temperature stays equal between the layers of malt (for my equipment the mash temperature usually drops about 1-2 Celsius during an hour but that’s not the end of the world either)

 

STEP 2: SPARGE also called Lautering (OPTIONAL)
After the mash is done its time to sparge. Purpose of this is to rinse out residual sugars still in the mash. I’m using so-called English sparge. Which may not be the best way but its most suitable for my equipment. The others being continues and batch sparge. And then you can choose the No sparge. You can read different sparge methods in here. The idea of sparging is to get every available sugar out of the grains, thus increasing your efficiency. To achieve this, you must sparge with hotter water than you used for mash. Let us say 80-81 degrees. But don’t go over this, because it can extract tannins in your beer leading to astringent in your finished beer.

 

STEP 3: BOIL

 

After you have sparged (or skipped that step) is time for the boil. Boiling usually takes 60-90 minutes. Some beer styles such as Berliner Weisse are boiled only 15 minutes or less and some styles such as the Barleywines or Imperial stouts could be boiled several hours. The boil affects gravity, colour, bittering, flavour, purity and clarity…to name a few important things, During boiling hops are added which gives bitterness in beer and also flavours and aromas. Longer the hops are boiled, more bitterness is going to be extracted. Aroma and flavour hops are usually added when there are less than 20 minutes left in the boil. If any sugars are used they are added in the boil as well. During the boil, the boiling vessel must not be covered! The boil evaporates and drives off sulfur compounds that can lead to off-flavours in the

finished beer. Boiling the wort reduces the amount of liquid that ends up in the fermentation vessel. If I brew and boil a very malty beer with little hops and the boil time is 60 minutes, I probably lose about 3,5 litres of wort. When I use that same boil time for an example for heavily hopped Imperial IPA, I might lose 6 litres because the hops will absorb some of the wort to themselves. Also, it’s important to note that the amount of wort you loose in very much individual.

 

 

 

STEP 4: COOLING THE WORT AND PITCHING THE YEAST
After your boil is finished it is ideal to cool the wort to pitching temperature as fast as possible (Usually around 20 Celsius). There are wort coolers in every homebrew shop but I don’t have one of them myself (yet). Don’t worry, you can also just so-called “No chill” method which means you let the wort cool at itself. This takes several hours in summer time but can be done very fast in winter. Here in Finland, we can have –30 degrees or colder so the wort cools pretty fast. After boiling everything the wort touches MUST BE sanitized properly, or else it would be the end of the world (at least for the beer). After the boil, the wort is transferred into the fermentation vessel (but not in the glass one if you use the no-chill) or you can let it sit and cool in the boiling kettle/kettles.

When the pitching temperature is achieved the wort must be aerated so the yeast can reproduce and ferment your beer completely. Yeast is the single most important ingredient in beer! If your yeast isn’t happy your beer will be bad. No matter if you have spent thousands of euros or yens in your equipment. You will have off-flavours and/or incomplete attenuation. The are several aeration techniques. I have an aquarium pump to push air through a filter and then a diffusion stone, infusing sanitary air into the wort. After aeration you pitch the yeast, close the fermentation vessel and let the beer ferment (don’t forget the airlock).

 

The fermentation usually takes 1-2 weeks but in my Wild beer (100% Brettanomyces) it took about 2 months. This and even longer time is common for beers fermented with wild yeasts. You can rack the beer to the secondary/bottling vessel after fermentation or just left it to the primary vessel. Add dry hops, spices, oak chips/cubes or whatever your recipe calls for and when you are happy, bottle or keg and enjoy.

I always bottle my beers. And when I bottle I add a tiny amount of sugar (priming sugar) so the beer will carbonate.

 

-Jari from Pint Please