This #Beersaturday I decided to brew a batch of beer and I found two strange four packs of beer at the local liquor store. I will start this post with the brewing of an IPA Beer which is a clone of Deschutes Brewing in Bend, Oregon IPA called Fresh Squeezed. If you have never had a Fresh Squeezed IPA from Deschutes you are missing out. This is currently my favorite IPA beer. Fresh Squeezed has a great hop smell and taste without being overly bitter, great balance. This beer comes in at 6.4%.
-Photo from Deschutes Brewing website.
This Saturday was a warm sunny day in California and a great day for some home brewing. Home brewing has been a hobby of mine for over 27 years now. I got started brewing with my dad and back then home brewing was limited due to what was available. 27 years ago there were only a few malts, a few yeast strains, and about 5-10 hop varieties available to the home brewer. Now a days there are numerous malts, 50 or so yeast strains, and what seems like 100’s of hop varieties. So brewing at home can be much more creative than in the past.
-This is how I grind the grains and barley for the beers. You can also buy grain already ground but I prefer to do it myself.
-This is my all grain brewing setup that I built from some spare parts of an old metal fence. I use a pump which is mounted below the kettles and a copper cooling coil for cooling after the brewing process.
If you are unfamiliar with home brewing I will give a brief explanation of how it’s done. Home brewing is accomplished two different ways either extract brewing or all grain brewing. Extract brewing is where you buy a liquid or powdered malt which is a finished product of extracting the sugars from barley and other grains. The all grain brewing process is you take barley and other grains grind them and extract the sugars from them yourself. The difference between the two home brewing processes are that all grain brewing allows you a more creative approach, allowing you to make the characteristics of the malt however you want. The all grain process allows you to change the mouth feel of the beer, making the beer feel watery or thick and syrup like. The all grain process is a more advanced process and additional equipment is need. I have brewed both ways and made excellent beers using both methods.
-This is the grains added to my kettle and the sugar extraction process is underway.
Now that I have explained the different processes, I will explain the brewing process from having the malt. You first start by vigorously boiling the malt with water. You will start to add your hops which depending on how long you boil the hops for will determine whether the hops contribute more to bitterness, flavoring, or aroma. For bitterness hops are added and boiled for about 60 minutes. Some recipes add additional hops with a 30 minute, 15 minute, 10 minute, 5 minute, or when you turn the heat off (Called flameout). After boiling the now created beer mash will have to be cooled quickly. You can cool your boiling kettle in ice bath or if your willing to spend the money getting a coil that you can run cool water through. Once it is cool you will place your mash into a vessel (Bucket) and let it settle. Your next step is transferring the mash to a fermentation vessel, add your yeast, and put it somewhere for a few weeks. You will now have flat beer. To carbonate you can add some corn sugar and bottle or keg it. Once the carbonation has come up in the beer and you have chilled it, it is ready to drink. If you are interested in brewing I suggest you start with the extract process. I am willing to help or answer any questions anyone has on home brewing.
-Here the beer mash is boiling, the basket on the side is where I put the hops.
If you have every been interested in brewing, give it a try. I must say one thing about home brewing, it takes a lot of time and some people I have taught thought the process was quicker then it is. People I have taught loved brewing but many didn’t have the time to spend and only brew once in a while. Extract brewing will take 3-6 hours from start of brewing to getting it into a fermenter. All grain brewing can take 4-8 hours from starting grinding your grain to getting it into a fermenter. The times vary a lot due to the size of the batch, how long it takes to cool, and how long it takes for the sediment to settle out of the beer. There are people who will brew faster and some slower but I give you these times so that you can make a decision if you ever wanted to brew yourself and I recommend you do, it is a rewarding experience.
When I started I was brewing extract beers and fermenting them in plastic buckets. I was making great beer with simple items. You can buy everything you need from a store like morebeer.com, which is where I get most of supplies. They even have starter kits ready to go such as this one below. This was something similar to what my dad and I started with.
Photo from morebeer.com
I have moved to the all grain brewing and fermenting in stainless steel fermenters that are heated and chilled electronically. Below is a picture of the fermenters with a glycol chiller connected to the fermenter currently holding my IPA I brewed today.
This recipe I used can be bought in a kit form from morebeer.com and is called Fresh Pressed from them. If you buy the kit from morebeer.com you can order it as an extract or all grain kit. I will list their recipe in both extract and all grain, so that you can see what the differences are.
-This image is from morebeer.com
EXRACT PROCESS RECIPE
Grains
9 lbs liquid pale malt extract
2 lbs Munich malt
12 ounces Crystal malt 75
Hops
.5 ounce Nugget 60 minutes
1 ounce Citra and 1 ounce Mosaic 15 minutes
1 ounce Citra at flameout
1 ounce Citra and 1 ounce Mosaic dry hopped.
I use the Wyeast 1056 American Ale yeast, but you can use any other yeast you prefer.
ALL GRAIN RECIPE
Grains
11 lbs 2-row barley
2 lbs Munich malt
12 ounces Crystal malt 75
Hops
.5 ounce Nugget 60 minutes
1 ounce Citra and 1 ounce Mosaic 15 minutes
1 ounce Citra at flameout
1 ounce Citra and 1 ounce Mosaic dry hopped.
I again use the Wyeast 1056 American Ale yeast.
On the Friday before I was ready to brew I went to our local liquor store and saw two unusual beer cans. These cans had a cartoon type look and did not look anything like a regular beer. I thought I have seen cans like this before but this time I will give them a try. After I spent the morning and first part of the afternoon brewing, I was ready for my first beer which is from Paperback brewing in Los Angeles, California. The beer I choose was called “Bunny with a Chainsaw” and it was a hazy double IPA. The Bunny with a chainsaw was strong as most doubles are and had a ABV of 8.2%. This beer was not bad for being so high in ABV, it was a little sweet for my taste but for being a double IPA it was easy to drink because of the sweetness. It uses Idaho 7 and El Dorrado hops which add some of those sweet fruit flavors. The can is a little crazy looking and definitely grabbed my attention.
The second beer I choose was “Fluent in Sarcasm” brewed by Devil’s Canyon Brewing of San Carlos, California. This beer is another double IPA and has an ABV of 8.5%. This beer was easy to drink and even though it was a double it drank more like a traditional IPA. I really like this one. It was brewed with Azacca, Cashmere, Citra and Pilgrim hops. This beer has some bitterness but is very well balanced. Again the name and the can design drew me to it.
Being such a nice day my wife and I were able to enjoy our beers into the evening on our deck. We listened to music and started a fire as it got later into the evening. It was nice to be able to enjoy such a great day with two unusually packaged beers.
I hope everyone is #aliveandthriving. Enjoy your week and look forward to next #beersaturday.
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Wow, fantastic DIY. Home brewing looks complicated to me. It's great to brew your own beer though. Locally, we have a few independent beer makers and have tasted a few. They're tastier than the commercial ones.
A happy weekend to you!
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Oh what a great equipment ! It's beautiful a good brew day with good energy that in the end will be Felt in a good beer ! Excellent post ! Cheers !
The beer packaging is just so cool! It definitely just draws people's attraction! I would definitely grab one if I was there.
Amazing brewing set up there my friend you sure have it down to a fine art.
Have a wonderful weekend
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That is quite the set up. Super cool.
I've brewed from extract several times and once with extract and a small amount of specialty grains. I've never done an all grain brew before though. I'm impressed.
The amount of time it takes for all grain makes sense 4-8 hours. There's a lot of work involved, especially when you factor in cleaning and sanitizing. I think brewing is one of those hobbies that you have to enjoy the process to make it worth while.
What's the difference in cost between extract and all grain? if you don't mind sharing :)
you are exactly right the cleaning and sanitizing is a long process in itself. The overall savings of all grain is minimal just a few dollars a 5 gallon batch.
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