Time for part two of my little brewing series. None of this is intended to really get into detail since there are plenty of great great sites and books to read if you want to get into brewing. This series is just here to answersome of the questions I get about how I brew and whatnot.
This post will focus on the ingredients and things that are not a one time purchase, the consumables. I'll mention some different ways in which I've done things. Just like someone that like baking, sometimes you have the time to make your own recipe and make everything from scratch, sometimes you gotta just get some
Pillsbury's lol.
Grains
Grains are the heart of all beer. More specifically Malted Barley is the heart of all beer. Even Wheat beers usually contain a good amount of Barley. Barley is soaked in water gor a day or two at least, then it is germinated. To germinate it they put it in a room thats about 60 degrees F and leave it (about 8 inches depth worth) for about 8-15 days, with daily turning and moving of the grains. After this they gather the ones that have an acrospire growing from it and kiln them. The kilning process takes two steps. First they dry the grains over low heat (around 90-100 deg F) for about 2 days. Next, they are put to around 170-220 deg F for another day and a half or 2.
At this point the grains are lightly malted and grains that are malted to this point are categorized based on the time and heat used since it affects the malt variety and then these are used as the
base malt.
But to create the huge variety of beer in the world, more than just these base malts are needed. They also continue to malt some of the grains at an even higher temperature and create many colors of malt. From the browner ones used in brown ales and red ales, to the darker ones used in porters, stouts, etc... These are all called
specialty grains.
When you brew beer you use mostly a base grain, and augment it using a mix of specialty grains.
Then depending on your setup you either buy the base grains and go through the process of extracting the malted sugers and whatnot, or you buy the malted sugars in a jug or can. You always buy the specialty grains whole. Eventually most brewers use the base malt grains themselves (all-grain brewing). I don't have the equipment and time to learn that right now unfortunatly so I am doing it the chump way and buying the malt extract (extract brewing).
Water
The next major part is water. I wont get into detail on this because I don't know much about it yet. For brewing I usually use tap water (through my brita recently). I used to buy a few gallons of water, but now I don't. If I was going to become a serious brewer that needed very consistent results I would take some readings of the chemicals and ph of the water and use salts and chemicals to make the water harder or softer and to adjust magnesium and calcium levels and whatnot, but I don't. To learn more go read a brewing book.
Hops
Hops give the beer bittering and aroma. Without hops beer would taste sweet and malty with only grainy smells and tastes. The hops are collected and dried, and then sold as either pellets or whole. I have sofar only used pellets. Different varieties have different acidic properties and provide different flavors and aromas, but I am no expect in this yet. Generally my beers use 2 or maaaybe 3 hops varieties.
Yeast
Yeast is the last major player in this masterpeice. There are many strains of yeast, both top-fermenting (generally used in Ales) and bottom-fermenting (generally used in Lagers). The yeast eats the sugars in the cooked ingredients and breaks them apart releaseing other varieties of sugar and flavor, alcohol, and CO2. The CO2 eventually kills off the yeast. I'll talk more about yeast when I explain the brewing process. Just know that lagers use bottom-fermenting yeast that prefer lower temperatures and give you smoother, crisper lagers. Top-fermenting yeasts prefer room temperature environments and give you frutier, sweeter ales.
Other
Beer purists, like the Germans, will tell you that beer only contains the above ingredients. But many brewers employ extras sometimes. You can add honey, or spices, or juices, fruits, peppers, salts, etc. There is an infinite number of things you can add to the beer to affect it's flavor, it all depends what you want to do. These final things are usually used in special beers and often in small doses. The more common ones are the spices, honey, and juices.
One last thing that get's bought is a little it of fine sugar to help bottle-carbonate the beer. I'll talk about that in the bottling day post.
Sometimes I use recipies and buy the ingredients on their own at the Gaslight or online. Sometimes I use northern brewers recipe kits. Lungfish is really based off of northern brewers irish red recipe:
http://www.northernbrewer.com/brewing/recipe-kits/extract-kits/extract-ale-kits/irish-red-ale-extract-kit.html, Dark Templar was based on a recipe i found online, firebat was a mix of that same recipe and my desire to put peppers in something.
Anyway, next time I'll talk about the actual process on brewing day.
