Plan "B"

Well, I was planning on doing that example beer on Wednesday, but I couldn't find my yeast. So, I ordered more along with ingredients for a super-simple stout, and I'll show you the process for a full five-gallon batch of that for now. I'll still do that small batch of bitter, just not today.

Okay, these are the ingredients:

9 lbs Maris Otter (that's an English malt)

1 lb roasted barley (un-malted barley that's been cooked to darn near black)

1 oz Northern Brewer hops

1 packet Danstar Nottingham ale yeast

I'm going to be trying out my new mash tun, which is just a term brewers use for whatever vessel you are soaking the grain in. That soaking process at a controlled temperature is called a mash, and what you are doing there is allowing the enzymes already present in malted barley to convert the starches still in the grain to sugar.

Anyway, I'm using a new 70 quart Coleman cooler here, and I haven't modified it with a screen of any kind to help in draining, so we'll see how this works.

Okay, so I've heated my water up to 77 degrees celsius, dumped my grain into the cooler and added the water, and stirred to get everything mixed together and soaked. The temperature after the 10 lbs of grain cooled things off is about 67 c, which is exactly what I wanted. I'll close the lid and leave this be for an hour, by which time the mash should be finished.

After an hour the mash is done, I've checked the temperature again and I haven't lost a degree celsius, which is great. The cooler is doing its job. Now I'm going to sparge, another brewer's term that basically means rinse. I'll add some more hot water to bring the temperature of everything back up to about 77 celsius, which is hot enough to deactivate the enzymes and also adding some more water so I can get more sugars into solution. I'll stir gently and drain into my kettle, then add another 2 gallons of hot water to rinse the rest of the sugars I didn't get the first time. I could keep doing this ad infinitum, but I'm content with just 2 additions of water.

Here I'm draining using a colander under the drain to catch the grain that's spewing out along with the hot, sugary liquid (that's now called wort). This is working, but before I brew again I'm going to put in a slotted manifold or something like that so I don't have to use a colander next time. Lesson learned.

And here's the damage. This spent grain is now good for composting, or putting ~1/4 cup of in a loaf of bread.

Now I've got a brew kettle full of wort, about 7 gallons of it. I said I was making 5 gallons, right? Right, between what's going to evaporate during 60 minutes of boiling, what's going to get sucked up by the hops, and what I'm not going to be able to use due to sediment when fermentation is finished, I'll end up with about 5 gallons.

At this point I add the hops, in a mesh bag for easy removal later. Lots of brewers wait to add their hops until after the boil starts, and you can add different amounts at different times in the boil to emphasize bittering, flavor, or aroma, but all I'm interested in here is bittering so I'll add them now, which also helps prevent the boil-overs that can happen when you add them later.

Yeah, that sucker is spanning all four of the burners on my cooktop. Be sure and do what your weight coach in high school told you and keep your back straight when you lift it. Deadlifts are good practice for brewing.

Now I just put the spurs to it and stir every once in a while until it boils to prevent scorching. Once it comes to a boil I'll start timing 60 minutes, and it's important to pay close attention for the first half-hour or so just in case a boil-over starts.

Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

When there's about 15 minutes left in the boil I'll introduce another piece of equipment, my wort chiller. This is a length of copper tubing used to cool the wort quickly to a temperature yeast like. It works by running cold water through it while it's immersed in the hot wort. I'll stick it in the kettle so the heat can sterilize it. One thing to note if you've never used one of these before is that they usually have some water in them from the last time, so when you put them in boiling wort that water is going to turn to steam and spew out. Be careful.

Once I turn the heat off, everything that comes in contact with the wort must be sanitized. I use a solution called Star-San to do this. You dissolve it in water and it uses oxygen to kill microbes. There's also a product called Iodophor that does this with iodine, but that tends to dye your stuff funny colors so I stopped using it. It works just as well though.

I've also got my yeast sitting there rehydrating. I didn't used to do this and it worked anyway, but I recently found out the manufacturers include nutrients in their dry yeast that help them get off to a quicker, healthier start, so I decided to start following the instructions on the package. I know, instructions. Bleah.

And here's the cooling setup. Note the decorative basement utility sink. I'll let this go until the wort is down to about 70 degrees, at which point I'll rack (siphon) the wort to a fermenter, pitch (add) the yeast, and aerate (shake the everloving crap out of it to get as much oxygen dissolved in the wort as possible).

Looks like science!

That's about all. After the fermenter is full, I dump the yeast in, slap on an airlock, and cover the whole deal with an old shirt to keep light from skunking the beer before it's even beer. In a couple weeks I'll bottle and in a couple more it'll be ready to drink.

And that's how I make beer.