Upgrading to a 5-gallon System

Greetings Alehounds! Alemonger here.

So, I promised you last time that I'd tell you about upgrading to a 5-gallon homebrewing system. Upgrading your equipment and your batch size can have a huge effect on the overall quality of your beer. After about nine or ten batches with the Mr. Beer kit for homebrewing beer, I realized that I was in this hobby to stay, and that it was time for bigger and better equipment. I did some research and some talking to my local homebrew guy (yeah, we became pretty good friends!), and I learned that five gallons is sort of the standard homebrew batch size.

I searched around and settled on a homebrew equipment kit very much like this one, which includes most of what you need to make some excellent beers from ingredient kits. This kit includes the Fermtech Auto Siphon, which makes transfers from the fermenter to the bottling bucket a simple task. It's also got a brewing book, 6.5 gallon primary fermenting bucket with lid, bottling bucket with a spigot, fermentation thermometer, bottle filler, 5ft of 5/16in flex vinyl tubing, hydrometer, bottle capper, bottle Brush, 3 piece airlock, and sanitizer.  You may want to pick up some Beer Bottle Caps as well.  The great thing about a kit like this is that you can further upgrade your equipment and improve your beer later on without replacing any of what you already have.

The first few beers I made with this kit were just as easy to make as the ones I did with Mr. Beer (See my Homebrew Beer Recipes page), but were of far better quality because of the larger batches.

Now, I tend to prefer hoppy beers over malty ones, so I picked up a Muntons Gold India Pale Ale Home Brew Beer Ingredient Kit from my local brew shop. Like the Mr. Beer kits, this is a pre-hopped malt extract kit in two cans and a packet of dry yeast. The process goes like this:

-"Wake up" the yeast by pouring it into a small sanitized container (a coffee mug will do) with some lukewarm water and a teaspoon of sugar. Set this aside for later;
-Sanitize your primary fermentation bucket (VERY IMPORTANT!);
-Pour the contents of the two cans into the bucket. I recommend soaking the cans in some hot water first to soften the malt syrup and make it pour a little easier;
-Pour boiling water--about two gallons or a little more--into the bucket on top of the extract;
-Top off the remaining volume of the bucket to the five gallon mark with cold water;
-Check the temperature of the wort to see if it is within the zone tolerated by the yeast (this can be found on the yeast packet or in the kit instructions). Set the bucket aside to cool if necessary;
-Measure the sugar content with the hydrometer (see the instructions included with it). This can take a little practice!
-Record the measurement someplace you won't lose it. You're measuring Specific Gravity, but in this case, this measurement is called Original Gravity, or O.G. It will help you later to determine your beer's alcohol content. Now would be a good time to get a notebook and start a Beer Log if you haven't already done so!
-If your wort is cool enough, pour the yeast mixture from step one into it, and cap the bucket tightly. Place the airlock with a little bit of water in it into the hole on the top of the bucket. Set the bucket aside, preferably someplace cool and dark and out of the way.

Almost as easy as making jello, huh?

After a day or two, you may notice the airlock bubbling rather vigorously--this is completely normal!  When the airlock stops bubbling or slows to one bubble every minute or so, take a measurement with your hydrometer. When this measurement reads the same on two consecutive days, your beer is ready to bottle.

You may want to bribe a friend with beer to get him or her to help you out on bottling day. Wash and sanitize some bottles. About 50 12-oz. bottles will probably do, but you may want to do a few extra, just in case!  You can either use plastic PET bottles as I mentioned in another post, or buy/reuse amber glass beer bottles. If you're using glass, make sure not to use twist-off bottles (Coors, Bud Light, Bud, etc.), but only use the kind where you have to pry off the caps (Sam Adams, Bass, etc.). Transfer your beer to the sanitized bottling bucket using the Auto Siphon (this is called racking), and mix in the proper amount of priming sugar indicated in the kit instructions. Attach the bottle filler to the spigot on the bottling bucket (this step is easier if you place the bucket on a table with the spigot hanging over the edge. Use the bottle filler as the kit instructions state to fill your bottles, and then cap them tightly with the bottle capper if using glass bottles, or plastic caps if using PET plastic bottles.

Put the capped bottles in a cool dark place and leave them alone for a week or two, then chill and enjoy!

Start at the Beginning

Greetings Alehounds--Alemonger here.

There are no two brewers out there with exactly the same tastes or levels of brewing knowledge and experience.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, I resisted for a long time becoming a brewer because I thought it was not only complex, but also expensive.  My simplest response to that is while it can be both, it needn't be either.  With that in mind, I'd like to take you back a few years to when I started homebrewing beer to prove that it can be a very simple and inexpensive yet rewarding hobby even at its most basic levels.  I'll also walk you through a few of my earliest adventures in homebrewing, and share a trick or two I discovered along the way.

It all started in 2002.  I had a new job in a new city, and new points of view on a lot of things.  Once I got set up in my new place, I started exploring the area and found out there was a homebrewing supply store just a few blocks from my apartment.  I stopped by one day, and when I walked through the door the first thing I noticed was the aroma.  No, it didn't smell like beer, but it was intoxicating.  The exotic air tickling my nostrils spoke of grain and spice and sweetness and, as I found out later, pure awesome!

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  I was a clean slate the day I stepped through that door, an empty mug.  I found myself confronted with an amazing array of items: sacks of grain and powdery stuff, hops, yeast, and cans of syrup, buckets and beakers and bottles, oh my!  I had no idea where to begin.

Apparently the blank stare on my face labeling me as a first-timer was nothing new to the gentleman behind the counter.  Long story short, I walked out with a Mr. Beer Home Microbrewery System.  Looking back now, I realize that the shop owner could have up-sold me and made three times as much as he did on that sale, but in me he seemed to recognize someone who was on the fence.  He'd probably heard a thousand times the same story I've heard about the brother or cousin or uncle or buddy who'd tried making beer once upon a time, only to have it turn out horrible.  He knew the kit was a high quality, yet inexpensive place for beginners to learn about the craft of brewing.

Unpacking the kit, I found a two and a half gallon fermenter; an ingredient kit with a can of pre-hopped malt extract, a packet of brewers' yeast, and a "Booster Pack" of brewer's sugar; some PET plastic screw-top bottles for the finished product; and a recipe book with a short explanation of the brewing process.  A single ingredient kit for this system is good for about a case of beer--that is, twenty four 12 oz. bottles.  Using this kit is as simple as boiling water and combining all the ingredients together in the brewing container.  It is probably one of the most basic types of kit out there, and I highly recommend it as a way to dabble a little and find out if brewing is something you want to explore more.  You can always get bigger and better equipment, as I eventually did; on the other hand, if you decide that brewing is not your mug of ale, you're out less than fifty bucks.

A great aspect of the Mr. Beer system is how cheaply expandable it is with a little ingenuity.  When I realized that the fermenter was nothing more than a barrel-shaped plastic jug with a spigot, I went to Wal-Mart and tripled my brewing capacity for about the cost of a good twelve pack.  After that, I was able to stagger my batches and have three different ones fermenting at the same time.

When it came to packaging, I found that the bottles included in the Mr. Beer kit were useful, but functionally not much different from other PET plastic bottles.  At the time, I lived in a place where the tap water had way too much chlorine, so I just happened to have a couple of cases of 12 oz. bottles of Dasani spring water.  Batch after batch, I used the water (which was just enough) to brew the beer, and the bottles (also just enough) to store it.  Put a teaspoon of sugar in the bottom of each bottle, fill with beer and screw the cap on tightly--a week or so later, your beer is carbonated and ready to enjoy!  Two warnings, though, if you're re-using water bottles as I did:  first, most beer bottles are colored brown in order to keep out sunlight that can change the flavor of your beer, so store any beer bottled in clear water bottles in a dark place; and second, some bottled water companies have changed their packaging over the last few years in order to use less plastic, so it's possible that the ones on the market now might not stand up to the pressure that develops in beer during the carbonation process.

Well, that's it!  In my next post, I'll talk about stepping up to a five-gallon brewing setup, and to more complex brews.  If you've brewed with Mr. Beer before, leave me a comment and tell me all about it.  And don't forget to check out my Recipes page, where I've got recipes for all the beers I've made, including these first few with Mr. Beer ingredient kits.

Happy Brewing!

Five Easy Steps to Brewing

Greetings, Alehounds--Alemonger here.

You know, for a long time I wanted to be a homebrewer, but I held off because I thought it was such an involved process that I was scared away. I suspect many budding homebrewers are in the same boat, so I want to share some of my thoughts on how to begin.

I'd first like to address the notion that homebrewing is or has to be difficult. Sure, it can be as complicated or involved as you want, but in its most basic form it's as easy as cooking, and just as rewarding! I posted a basic explanation of how beer is made a couple of posts ago, so check that out along with these five easy steps, and you could be having your first homebrew in just a few days.

Five Easy Steps to Homebrewing

• Equipment.  It all starts with selecting the right equipment. Home brewing will not be successful if you are not armed with the right equipment. Now don't be distracted by the costs associated with buying these items--for less than $100 you can have your own basic set of tools that you can use to make many batches of great beer. At a minimum, to start out you'll need a brewing bucket, air lock (which lets carbon dioxide out, but doesn't let outside air come back in), bottles, and a big cooking pot--two gallons or bigger.  You should have a hydrometer as well.  There is more equipment available out there that you can get later, but this will get you started.

• Ingredients. You can either buy the ingredients separately, or pick up an ingredient kit from one of the many homebrew supply companies out there. If you're a first time brewer, I'd suggest using a kit for whatever style of beer you find most appealing. The kit should include the malt extract, hops, and yeast at a minimum, plus a set of instructions on how to use these ingredients. Additionally, the kit may include a mesh muslin or cheesecloth bag for infusing the hops, brewing sugar for the bottling process, specialty grains, and spices or flavorings if applicable to your beer.

• Preparing the beer. This is where the cooking part comes in. Start by making sure all your equipment is cleaned and sanitized. I cannot overstress the importance of cleanliness in brewing--there's nothing more disappointing than spending time and money to make a great beer, only to have it contaminated by bacteria or wild yeasts. Following the directions that come with your kit, start with one to two gallons of water in your cooking pot and heat it to the proper temperature. You will then add the malt extract and bring to a boil. Once the wort (that's what it's called before it becomes beer!) is boiling, add the hops and other ingredients according to the schedule in the instructions--the boil should go for about an hour. It's very important during process this that you stay close and keep stirring--all that sweet syrupy goodness can make quite a nasty mess if it boils over, and if you look away even for a minute, chances are that it will! Once the boil is done, it is important that you cool down the wort as quickly as you can. More advanced brewers will use fancy counterflow chilling aparatus, but when I started out, I used a simple ice-water bath in the kitchen sink. When the wort is cool enough, pour it into the brewing bucket, add cold water to make the proper volume, and add the yeast--this step is called pitching the yeast. Cap the bucket and add the airlock.

• Monitoring the fermenting process. This is where the yeast does its job. There is little to do but wait during this process, which takes anywhere from a week to a month, depending on a host of factors. Just make sure the temperature stays constant, and check daily to see if carbon dioxide is still bubbling out of the air lock.  When this stops, or slows down to about one bubble a minute, it's time to check the beer with a hydrometer. We'll talk about this tool in another post, but for now, just use it to measure the specific gravity of your beer. When the reading is the same on two consecutive days, you're ready to bottle.

• Priming and Bottling. There are lots of options for packaging your beer. When I started out, I reused 12 ounce plastic water bottles, which worked great. You can also purchase or re-use glass beer bottles. Some advanced brewers will even keg their beer, which saves time. Priming the beer means adding a small amount of sugar to the beer to "wake up" the yeast cells for a small amount of fermentation. The primed beer is then put into bottles, which are capped tightly. Meanwhile, the yeast cells consume the priming sugar and make carbon dioxide, which goes into solution inside the capped bottles, creating carbonation. This process takes about a week or so. After that, chill a few down, open one up, and enjoy!

A Real Character

Greetings Alehounds--Alemonger here.  I figured if we're going to be talking about our favorite subject (and just so we're all on the same page, that would be BEER!), we should get to know how to taste it (YAY!) and how to describe it.  In other words, what do all those fancy words like "hoppy" and "malty" mean, and what does carbonation have to do with flavor, anyway?

I found this article out in the ethers of cyberspace, and thought it explained how all the flavor components of a beer work together to give it its character.  Don't worry--it's reprinted with permission!  Go grab a pint and settle in for an educational read.

Na zdrovyeh!



Beer Character - Breaking Down the Flavor Equation


By Dustin Canestorp

American beer drinkers once had only watery, weak options when it came to their beer choices. However, the rise of craft brewing has changed that irrevocably and consumers today have access to a very wide range of beer options with a variety of different characteristics. In fact, sampling the various styles of beer out there can be an incredible experience. Beer tastings give you the chance to explore your various options but those new to "tasting" their beer can find some of the terms used to describe a beer a bit confusing. For instance, what exactly is a "hoppy" beer? What does a "malty" beer taste like?

Words Pale in Comparison

It's important to understand that the terms used to describe a beer's flavor and character profile are really very poor alternatives to tasting it yourself. For instance, one person might describe a particular brew as having mild citrus overtones but that really doesn't tell you much. Does it mean that there's a hint of lemon? Does the beer taste like oranges?

The terms used to describe a beer are hard to pin down unless you have a point of reference in your own experience. The best option here is to conduct your own taste testing with some beers with easily identifiable qualities and characteristics.

Beer Tastings Increasing

The good news for beer lovers is that an increasing number of breweries and pubs are holding tastings. These make for excellent options if you want to develop your understanding of what goes into making a beer's flavor. You will find that these are excellent places to learn from others, compare notes and learn what you are looking for in a beer's taste before you drink it.

Quite a few pubs and brewers are holding tastings during which the host will describe the flavor character of the beer beforehand. Often, the host will also be available for questions from burgeoning tasters during and after the tasting. You will even find tasting classes out there, but these are still a bit rare outside of major metropolitan areas.

If you find that you have no options nearby to attend a tasting, you can actually buy some pretty decent tasting guides and do your own analysis for the various beer types listed in the guide. That might be a great excuse to get some friends together to explore some of the options available to you in the realm of beer.

Look for Clues

If you're new to tasting beer, a few helpful pointers will get you going in the right direction. One of the most important clues you'll have is the beer's color. While you can't always pin a beer's taste on its coloration, it usually does have a lot to do with it. For instance, very dark beers usually have a heavier malt taste than lighter beers, while lighter beers are often more hoppy in nature.

Another clue is the amount of visible carbonation in the beer. Staring at the bubbles rising from the bottom isn't a good indicator of carbonation, though. You need to look toward the head. Good head retention and "lacing" as the head subsides are excellent indicators that a beer has plenty of carbonation. Too little carbonation results in a "flat" or stale taste. Too much carbonation is not a good thing either.

Getting to the Meat of the Matter

All beers have two main components when it comes to flavor - bitter and sweet. The bitter usually comes from the hops (particularly from bittering hops). The sweetness is usually from the malt used, though there can be many other things that increase the sweet and bitterness of a particular beer (additives, flavorings, etc.).

If a beer is defined as being "hoppy", it is usually relatively bitter with lots of plant-like flavor from the hops used. Bitter hops give beer its bite while aromatic hops give it a "grassy" aroma and flavor. Malty beers usually have a sweetish flavor. Heavier roasts to the malt will color the beer darker but also impart a roasted flavor to the finished brew as well. Malty beer can also have an "earthy" flavor.

The flavor of your beer is not all about what your mouth experiences, though. The aroma of the brew also goes a long way in creating what your brain ultimately decides is "flavor". Quite a few factors go into creating a beer's aroma, including any additives (fruit extracts, etc.) that are used, the type of hops used and the type and roast of the malt in the brew.

Mouthfeel is another important consideration that goes into the drinking experience. The best way to get a good idea of what mouthfeel is all about is to drink a good stout or robust porter and then compare it to something like a pale ale. You will find that the stout has a very "smooth" feel in your mouth while the pale ale will be lighter in body.

The final part of the equation is the "finish" or the aftertaste left by the beer. Different styles will have different finishes. Some will last for quite some time while others will begin to fade almost immediately. Some beers even have a completely different finish than their original taste while you are drinking them.

As a note, when you hear someone saying a beer has a particular "odor" it refers to an unwanted quality of the beer. Odors are usually caused by something going wrong in the brewing process or by the beer being too old and becoming "skunky". Sulfur, vegetables, oil and chlorine are all terms used to describe odors found in beer that's either been brewed incorrectly or has aged past its prime.

Get Out There and Experience It

As mentioned at the beginning, it is very difficult to develop an understanding of beer's characteristics without experiencing them yourself. If you want to get more involved with beer tasting, find a brewery or pub in your area that offers regular tasting events. You'll find quite a few options, particularly with craft breweries. In addition, attending this type of event can help you learn from those with more experience and really develop your palate.

Poto Cervesia,

Dustin Canestorp


Dustin Canestorp is the Founder and General of the Beer Army. Join the ranks of the Beer Army at http://www.BeerArmy.com. Take a stand and let the world know your position. If you are going to drink, drink BEER!
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