12-10-11 English Brown (Mild) -- Brewing Classic Styles by Jamil Zianasheff and John J. Palmar (2007)

I very much thank James for opening up his home and his mental vault of experience to allow us to brew and ask a ridiculous number of questions.  I learned a great deal and I think we got a pretty damn good beer out of it.

December 10, 2011

Today Tony and I joined James at his place for a brewing session.  We decided to brew an English Brown (Mild) recipe we found on page 146 in Brewing Classic Styles by Jamil Zianasheff and John J. Palmer (2007).  James normally does all-grain brewing, so this served as my first opportunity to take part in an all-grain brewing process.

James had already sanitized everything before we got there.  He uses Star San for sanitizing and Straight A for cleaning.  Essentially, anything that is going to come into contact with the wort or the beer needs to be sanitized, including tubes, spoons, scissors, packets, fermenters, buckets, etc.

For this recipe, we used the following malts:

Maris Otter – English Pale Ale Malt – 7 pounds

Crystal 60L – caramelized malt – 0.5 pounds

Crystal 120L – caramelized malt – 0.4 pounds (120 is darker than 60; the range is 10 to 120)

Pale Chocolate Malt 200L – 4 ounces (much more of a burnt flavor)

Black Patent 500L – 2 ounces (very burnt flavor)

We put all of these whole grains through a grinder to crack open all of the grains.  It is important to only crack the grains, as opposed to grinding them into small pieces or a powder.

James uses a converted insulated water cooler as his mash tun.  It is important to use a vessel for the mash tun that can hold in heat for long periods of time so that you are able to maintain the temperature of the mash.  We poured water into the mash tun that had been heated up to 166 degrees F.  We then poured in the ground malts, which are approximately 66 degrees F at this point.  We mixed these together, aiming for a target temperature for the mash of 154 degrees F.  The initial mixing of the malt grains with hot water is called the “strike.” 

We left this mixture covered for one hour, stirring gently about every 10 minutes to allow for the enzymatic reactions to occur.  It is important to maintain the temperature of the mash between 149 and 158 degrees F for the full hour, which is why the heat-preserving element of the vessel you use as your mash tun is so important.  If necessary, you can add more hot water to keep the temperature stable.

At this time we smacked 2 yeast packets to allow them a few hours to swell.  For this recipe, we used the Wyeast 1968 London ESB.  You have to smack the packet in order to break open the nutrient packet inside of the yeast so that the yeast can feed and start to become active.

After the one-hour mash was complete, we drained the liquid into the brew kettle.  This is referred to as “malt tea” or wort.  Then we went through the process of “sparging” the mash.  We sparged the mash in order to get as much of the flavor out of the mash as we could.  We sparged the malt by taking water at about 175 to 180 degrees F and running it slowly through a strainer over the mash.  It is important to not just dump water in as you don’t want to displace the malt in such a way that the water won’t run through all of the malt since you will miss a lot of the sugars.  We continued to sparge until we had the amount of wort that we needed.  We sparged until we had collected about 7 gallons of wort.  We did not start with all of the water we needed when we first did the strike as the malt to water ratio during the mashing process enables the enzymes to break down properly.

Once we completed the sparging, we added 0.85 ounces of US Goldings hop pellets to the wort.  These hops have 5.3% alpha acids.  This percentage indicates the bitterness of the hops being used.  These hops have a moderate amount of bitterness, as alpha acids in other hops can go as high as 13-14%.  We did not use any aromatic hops at the end of the boil as they were not called for in this particular recipe since it is not meant to be a particularly hoppy beer.  We then actively boiled the wort for 60 minutes.

Next, we needed to cool down the wort.  We used a wort chiller to do this.  A wort chiller is a large copper coil apparatus with 2 tubes coming out of it – one tube for cold water to go in, and one tube for hot water to come out.  We placed the wort chiller into the wort in the boiler, connected one tube to a hose producing cold water and stuck the other tube into a bucket for the hot water to exit.  We ran the cold water through for about 30 minutes until the wort was cooled to about 65 degrees F.

Using a siphon device, we then transferred the cooled wort from the kettle into the carboy, running the liquid through a strainer in order to remove any hop bits and granulated proteins from the wort.  The substance is now called “sweet liquor.”  We also put a small amount of the sweet liquor into a small cylindrical vessel and took a hydrometer reading.  The original gravity at 64 degrees F was 1.042.

We then sterilized the yeast packets and a pair of scissors in order to pitch the yeast.  We cut open the yeast packets and slowly poured them into the sweet liquor in the carboy.  At this point, we needed to let the beer ferment for 14 days at about 62 to 68 degrees F.

December 16, 2011

On this date, we were six days into the fermentation process.  Using a siphon, James transferred the beer to another fermenter in order to clarify the beer.  The beer is clarified as a result of leaving the inactive yeast on the bottom of the first fermenter.  The beer in the second fermenter still contains yeast as the active yeast is still suspended within the liquid eating away at the sugars.

December 23, 2011

On this date, we were thirteen days into the fermentation process.  James and I bottled the beer.  James used a siphon to transfer the beer from the fermenter into another fermenting bucket in order to leave behind the inactive yeast.  At this point, we measured the final gravity and found it had settled to 1.014 at 64 degrees F.  This gives us an alcohol percentage of 3.7%.  As Milds generally fall between 3.2% and 4.0%, this was pretty accurate.

We also tasted a bit of the “green” beer.  At this point, I found it a bit thin and sweet, but still rather nice. 

James then boiled 2/3 of a cup of corn sugar in 1 pint of water to sanitize the priming sugar.  After boiling this solution for 15 minutes, he then added it to the beer.

We filled the sanitized beer bottles from this fermenting bucket using a tube with a filler at the end of it that could reach down to the bottom of each beer bottle.  It is important to fill from the bottom of the bottle in order to prevent air from getting into the beer.  We filled 26 22-ounce bottles, and had a bit left over, so we filled two jelly jars as well and gave them to Tony to drink later.

We expected at this point to give the beer about a week to a week and half in order to condition in the bottles.

January 2, 2012

Nine days into the bottle conditioning process, we decided to open our first bottle and try the beer.  All three of us concluded that it was a wonderful success.  The beer has a full mouthfeel, a heavy, sweet malt presence, a touch of hops, and very light, natural carbonation – the way a Mild should be. 

We brought home half of the bottles for our own sharing/consumption.  I will definitely be opening another bottle a week from now to find out how it is after another week of bottle conditioning.

January 7, 2012

Fourteen days into the bottle conditioning process, we decided to open another bottle to see if the beer has benefitted from further conditioning.  Although, Tony liked the beer so much originally that only 6 of our bottles have survived to this weekend.  I believe the beer definitely benefited from another week of conditioning.  The taste became fuller and richer with the sweetness of the heavy malt presence becoming a bit more subtle.  It is a shame that we didn’t save a few bottles to condition for a bit longer, but, alas, it was such a success that they are all gone from our household.  James still has a few in his household though, so I may be updating this entry with another remark.

11-24-11 Australian Bitter - Cooper's Brewery Beer Kit

The description below is my very first experience with home brewing of beer.  While the ultimate result was less than satisfying, it was a great deal of fun and an extremely valuable learning experience.  I have a great deal of gratitude for Vic for opening up his home, his heart, and his home brewery to me so that I could dive into my first home brewing experience!  Also, I learned a great deal that has already proven itself to be quite useful in my endeavors following this one!

November 24, 2011

My foray into beer brewing began with my dear friend Vic and my boyfriend Tony!  On Thanksgiving Day of 2011, we showed up a bit early to the party in order to brew.  Unfortunately, I took virtually no pictures (very unusual of me – I have no idea what I was thinking!) and very few notes, so this article is purely from my corruptible memory bank with a bit of consultation with other more or less equally corruptible memory banks.  Also, Vic was able to supply a few pictures, which are what is included.

Vic provided a selection of 3 brew kits he had available.  I decided to use the kit for Thomas Cooper's Australian Bitter.  

 

A little note on Cooper’s Brewery itself: Cooper’s Brewery is Australia’s only remaining family-owned brewery.  This brewery was founded by Thomas Cooper in 1862.  This brewery is also the largest producer of home brew kits in the world – and aren’t we grateful to them!

 We started out boiling water in a very large metal pot on the kitchen stove.  While that grew to a boil, we sanitized the equipment using an iodine solution and water at 200 p.p.m.

We then dissolved the syrupy contents (malt extract) of the can into the boiling water.  We also slowly added about a cup and a half of sugar to the boil.  Once that had all dissolved appropriately, we poured it into a five gallon carboy.  We topped it up with water, checking the temperature along the way.  Once we reached a temperature of about 75 degrees F., we pitched a 7-gram packet of dry yeast into the mix.  While at this point, Washington State considers it beer, I would not recommend pouring off your first pint!

The waiting begins.  Departing Vic’s the following day, we loaded the carboy with its precious contents into the car and drove it home to house it in the basement.  Protected from light, we let it ferment away for 2 weeks at room temperature ranging from 64°F to 69°F.  A thermostatically controlled heater was used to ensure the temperature did not drop below this range.

December 8, 2011

With busy and conflicting schedules, December 8^th, 2011 ended up being bottling day.  We filled the kitchen sink with water and half a capful of Five Star Acid Sanitizer.  We submerged over 40 16 –ounce to 22-ounce bottles into the sink (this was done in several batches as we certainly don’t have that big of a sink in our kitchen!) to sanitize the bottles.  Then we rinsed every bottle with hot water and set them to dry on a bottle tree.  Once dry, we added about a ¼ teaspoon of priming sugar to each bottle.  The bottles were now ready to be filled.

Using a bottle-filler that functioned as a sort of siphon device, we filled 33 16-ounce to 22-ounce bottles.  For some reason, we had quite a bit of trouble with the siphon.  Poor Tony had to suction out the beer with his mouth to get rid of air pockets.  An extension tube was used to do this so as not to risk contamination of the filling tube. This was a rather messy enterprise with lots of swearing and devising (by Tony!), but once we finally got it to function properly, the bottling finished up rather smoothly.  We filled each bottle to the bottom of the neck, making sure to give plenty of room for the secondary fermentation process.  If you do not give enough room for this process, you can end up with caps popping off of bottles long before you are ready for a pint!

The next step was capping.  We purchased a small capping machine for the job.  While the machine only capped one bottle at a time, it was fairly easy to use and went smoothly.  Once the capping was complete, we set the bottles of beer on a shelf in the basement to give them time to go through the secondary fermentation within the bottles.  Again, the temperature of the room at this time of year floats around in the 60s degrees Farenheit, so it is a reasonably good room in which to allow the secondary fermentation to take place. We plan to open a bottle and try the beer on New Year’s Eve.  This will give the beer 23 days to mature in the bottles.

December 17, 2011

Tony decided to open a bottle and try the beer 9 days into the bottle fermentation process.  He described it as a bit yeasty, very thin on flavor.  He tried it at basement temperature.  Rereading the directions at this point, we did discover that there was some additional light malt extract that was supposed to be added to the wort during the boiling process.  Of course, this was not added, and instead white sugar was added.  The additional wort probably would have given the beer a bit more body and more complex flavor.  The addition of the white sugar probably just increased the alcohol content without having much effect on the body of the beer or the flavor (aside from the strong alcohol taste that was added).  Lesson learned from this: follow directions!

December 25, 2011

I decided to open a bottle and try the beer 17 days into the bottle fermentation process.  I don’t believe there is much point in waiting until New Year’s Eve to open more bottles.  I believe this beer has improved as much as it is going to improve.  I put it in the fridge and allowed the beer to cool considerably (based on Tony’s comments from his previous tasting).  The beer comes across as relatively light and crisp.  It does have a bit of a malt presence in the mouthfeel, but you taste the malt a bit more in the after taste.  The main flavor I get is a bit of a sharp astringency.  I get the feeling this is a relatively high alcohol beer (no hydrometer readings were taken throughout the process, so I don’t actually know what the alcohol content is).

Basically, not a great beer.  It is light and crisp and seems like it would be refreshing on a hot day, but it leaves a bit of an astringent after-taste as well.  It sort of reminds me of Heineken – not a good association at all.

December 31, 2011

After testing the beer out on several people and having virtually no takers, we decided to empty out the bottles so we would have them ready for our next brew.  Tony decided he wanted to try it one more time, and concluded the drain was the best place to put it.  I had a few sips and concluded that it had become virtually carbonated water as the carbonation drowned out even the slight malt flavor it previously possessed – sigh.