Making Beer

In the past, I made beer fairly regularly but then I lost interest and stopped for a number of years. I am now making beer once or twice a year now, more to just do it than to drink it.

Grain in the water to start

My neighbor has been growing hops as a climbing plant, not for the hops themselves for a number of years. I finally asked if I could harvest some to use for beer and he said take them all. So I went over and picked a bucket full in short order. I have never used what is known as 'wet' hops, this just means the hops are not dry. The difference is that the wet hop doesn't have the same flavor as the dry ones and you need anywhere from 4 to 7 times the amount. In a standard beer, you may use 4 to 8 ounces of dry hops, in some cases you uses more. I picked about a pound and a half so I would have a fair amount but not a huge amount.

When using fresh hops you have to use them right away, not more than a couple of days can go by after picking, so I picked a bunch just before I brewed. This would mean the hops were as fresh as I could get. I piled them on a tray to pick over and then moved them to a bucket to wait for the pot. I wanted to make sure I got all the leaves and such off the hops and to see that they were clean.

Grain at end of seeping time

Ingredient List:

Light Malt Extract - 6 pounds
Crystal Malt 15 - 1 pound
Caramel Vienna Malt - 8 once
Caramel Munich 60L Malt - 8 once
Vienna Malt - 8 once
Wheat Malt - 8 once

Vern's Cascade hops - 24 once

American West Coast Ale Yeast

Fresh Hops

I brew in accordance with the German brewing standards, only four ingredients. Water, malt, hops and yeast. I use a mix of extract malt and grain to get the base of the beer. Adding grain gives the beer more character and allows an infinite number of variations. The grain is cracked and put into a mess bag that goes into water to seep for about 30 minutes. This releases a lot of sugar and color, plus adds starch to give the liquid some mouth feel.

Once the grain is done and rinsed, the extract is added and the liquid is brought to a boil, them the hops go in over a staged time period. How long the hops boil is what give the beer the bitter taste. I put 8 ounces at the 60 minute mark, then every 15 minutes I added 8 ounces more, at the end of the 60 minutes, I added the last 8 ounces.

Hops in the boil

After all the hops were removed and the raw beer was cooled, I put the liquid in the primary tank to ferment with the yeast. The beer is at a boil, but you have to get the temperature down to under 80 F to add the yeast. In order to keep unwanted yeasts to get into the beer, you have to cool the beer as fast as possible. And easy way is to use a coil of copper tubing and run cold water through it. It will bring the temp down in about 15 minutes.

Beer in the tank ready for yeast

Once the 5 gallons of beer goes into the primary ferment tank, the yeast is added and an airlock is installed, this allows the gas to escape from the tank but nothing gets in to spoil the beer. It takes about an hour for the yeast to start growing and after 8 hours the tank is alive with bubbles.

The fermentation will go on for about a week, the major part lasts a few days but you need to let the yeast finish and have the beer settle. Then you can bottle the beer and let it sit for several weeks. It takes about one month for the beer to be ready to drink with good results, a month in the bottle is best, but it is not necessary to wait that long to start to drink.

Fermentation begins