Post by Duveldiver on Jul 10, 2009 14:28:39 GMT -5
Home brewing Tips from the GTHB
Water
When in doubt, run all water used in the mash and sparge steps through a carbon filter to remove chlorine, sulfur, heavy metals and other impurities that can affect the taste of your beer.
We recommend using a water additive (pH 5.2) to improve sugar conversion and extraction efficiency.
If your recipe requires adding calcium chloride, calcium sulfate, calcium carbonate or other water modifier, do so in the mash tun water (strike water).
Grain
It is important to grind the grains to the proper texture. If it is too finely ground, the grain will cause you to have grain debris in the boil kettle and it can plug the false bottom in the mash tun. If the grain is not cracked enough, you will experience low sugar conversion and extraction efficiency.
Mashing
A standard mash tun made from a 15 gallon keg will not hold more than 38 lbs of grain and the associated strike water. It is preferred to stay below 30 lbs of grain. Plastic 6 gallon mash tuns can also be used, with a maximum grain bill of 15 lbs.
Use between 1 and 1.25 quarts of water per pound of grain in the mash. This provides a balance between being too thick in the mash (which can cause poor conversion of starch to sugar) or too thin (limits the amount of sparge water that can be used to extract sugars). For example, if the recipe you are using requires 30 lbs of grain, you should add 30 – 37.5 quarts (7.5-9.5 gallons) of water to the mash tun to start the process.
The strike water temperature should be 15-20 degrees above the target mash temperature depending upon whether you are heating the water in the mash tun or in another pot. Depending upon ambient temperature, the strike water should be heated to 165-175 degrees F in the mash tun before the grain is added.
Always add the grain to the hot strike water slowly in the later stages of addition, sometimes even stop occasionally to check for dough balls. Never add water to grain !!! Stir vigorously to mix the hot water and grain and to prevent formation of “doughballs”. Doughballs are areas where grain clumps together and has a relatively dry center. The presence of doughballs reduces sugar yield.
Mashing temperatures generally should be between 145 and 156 degrees F unless a step mash is required. All recipes should specify a mash in temperature. If in doubt, aim for the higher side of the mash temperature range; the grain/water mixture can be cooled by adding ice, but heating a full mash tun will usually result in a charred grain crust on the bottom of the vessel. A blanket or other form of insulation should be used to prevent the mash tun from cooling off once all of the grain has been added.
The mashing process normally is complete in about 30 minutes, although more time may be needed depending upon how thick the mash is and how the grain was cracked. To check whether the mash is complete, circulate the liquid in the mash tun bottom to top using a pitcher until there is almost no grain remaining in the liquid. Pour a small amount of the liquid (wort) into a flat plate and add a small amount of Iodophor to it. If a black particulate forms, there is still starch present and the mash needs to go longer. Mash times of up to one hour are not unusual.
Sparging
While the mash is going on, additional water should be heated up to about 170 degrees F and treated with the pH 5.2. Most recipes specify a sparge temperature. Make up at least 10 gallons of sparge water; it’s better to have some left over than to run out early.
Once the wort has been recirculated and the grain bed is set (so that no grain is in the wort), sparge water should be slowly added to the top of the mash tun. The drain valve in the bottom of the mash tun should be slightly opened such that a liquid level of about an inch is maintained on top of the grain.
There are two basic types of filter placed in the mash tun to keep grain out of the wort being drained to the boil pot. The most used is a false bottom made from either steel (with a series of narrow slots cut in it) or plastic (molded with many fines holes in it). The second type is the “tee” or “cigar” filter which consists of a cylindrical wire mesh section with a copper tubing and fittings that insert into the mash tun exit valve hole. The tee filter takes very little circulation before the grain bed is set relative to the false bottom, but it can be dislodged if you are not careful when stirring during mash-in.
The sparge step should be done slowly, generally 1-2 hours. The sparge water should be maintained at 170 F (or recipe goal temperature) throughout the process. About 13 gallons of wort should be collected for a nominal 10 gallon batch. This means leaving 1-2 inches of freeboard in the boil kettle.
Boil
You can start heating the wort when the level in the boil kettle reaches about 5 gallons (just above the first ring). Your recipe should specify a boil time, usually 60 minutes for lighter beers, and 90-120 minutes for big beers and stouts. It is best to have the boil pot reach temperature about the time you have finished the sparge.
The hop schedule is set based on the end time of the boil; there is usually no hop addition during the first 30 minutes of a 90 minute boil. A vigorous boil is preferred in order to drive off 2-3 gallons of water.
There are several ways to add hops to the boiling wort. The simplest method is to just toss them in; the drawback is that you will lose more wort after boiling due to the high level of debris in the bottom of the boil pot. A second method is to suspend a large bag above the boiling wort and down into it. Hops can be added to the bag per normal schedule. The disadvantages of this approach are that it makes it difficult to add the chiller to the boiling wort and there is always a chance that the bag will come loose. The third method is to use small knotted bags full of hops at each addition. The disadvantage of this way is that it may lower hop utilization. Hops can be bought either as ground pellets or as cones. The pellets tend to perform more reproducibly in a home brew environment.
The boil kettle is very prone to boiling over, especially early in the process. A fan or spray bottle of distilled water or wort from the mash tun can be used to cool the surface of the wort and reduce the potential for boil over. Boil over is more likely to occur shortly after each hop addition since the oil in them reduces the wort surface tension. The boil kettle should be watched at all times if possible.
At fifteen minutes before the end of the boil, Irish moss or other flocculent should be added to the boil kettle along with the wort chiller. The last 15 minutes are counted once the wort has begun boiling again.
Cooling, Settling, and Yeast Pitch
Once you begin to cool the wort, everything that contacts the wort must be sterilized to prevent an “infection” from wild yeast or bacteria. The fermenter, air lock, cork (if used), stirring spoon and your hands should all be treated with Iodophor. Iodophor does not need to be rinsed off after the fermenter is drained as long as it is added at no more than 2 caps full per 5 gallons of water. Do not use bleach to sanitize as it must be rinsed off and it can get into most plastics after a while, causing bad flavors in your beer.
You should be able to reach 70-85 degrees F in the boil pot using the wort chiller and city water depending upon the time of year. This can be lowered by rigging up an extra 5 gallon keg to fit into the hose line to the chiller. When no more progress can be made using hose water, the keg can be charged with 20 lbs of ice and the flow restarted slowly. Temperatures as low as 50 deg F can be reached this way.
Once cooling is completed, the wort should be whirlpooled vigorously and allowed to settle (covered) for at least 30 minutes. This step assists the flocculent in precipitating any grain or hops that are in the boil pot. Once the settle period has been reached, the wort can be gravity transferred to the fermenter(s). The fermenter can be either plastic or glass, but glass is preferred as it cannot absorb off tastes from cleaning or sanitizing.
It is very important that the wort is fully cooled to the bottom end of the fermentation temperature range specified in the recipe before yeast is added. For ales, this can be done by placing the fermenter in an ice bath for a while before adding the yeast. For lagers, the fermenter should be placed in the lagering refrigerator and cooled prior to pitching the yeast. Beginning fermentation at too high a temperature will cause various off flavors to develop in your beer. Fermentation generates some heat as it proceeds, so it is more difficult to control fermenter temperature at goal if it starts high. If fermentation occurs below the recommended temperature, the fermentation rate will be slow and in the case of ales, the taste may not be true to style.
Yeast starters are generally recommended when brewing any beer with a starting gravity above 1.080. A starter is made by boiling water and adding either DME (dry malt extract) or liquid extract. The boiled mixture is added to a 2 or 4 quart bottle with an airlock. Yeast is then added and allowed to multiply. The starter should be maintained at the same temperature as recommended in your beer recipe to avoid making off flavors. A starter should be made 2-3 days before you plan to brew for best results.
Oxygen should be present at the beginning of fermentation, and excluded from the beer after that. Initially, oxygen aids in yeast reproduction, but later in the process, oxygen can react with the finished beer, giving it a “cardboard” taste. Oxygen can be added via vigorous shaking or stirring of the fermenter or by sparging the fermenter with oxygen gas.
Last Steps
After about 1 week for ales and 3 weeks for lagers, the contents of the fermenter should be transferred to a secondary fermenter. The semi-finished beer is siphoned from the primary to the secondary with the sludge in the bottom of the primary excluded from the secondary.
Beer can be left in the secondary for as little as a week or for as long as 6 months as long as water is maintained in the air lock and the fermenter maintained at the proper temperature. The beer is then ready to be bottled or kegged. If bottling, about ¾ to 1 cup of corn sugar should be added to a small amount of boiling water (or beer) and added to the bottling bucket. Brown sugar can be substituted for some stronger or darker beers. This sugar is added to allow the yeast to produce carbon dioxide and naturally carbonate the beer. This type of beer is “living” as the yeast remains alive and can affect the flavor of the beer during storage. The bottling bucket with wort and priming sugar should be mixed well with a sterile long handled spoon and bottled out normally. Bottles should be sterilized in Iodophor immediately prior to filling. Care should be taken to avoid introduction of air into the bottles during the fill step. Kegging does not require the corn sugar as CO2 is used to generate carbonation, although once the keg is filled, it should be pressured/depressured three times to remove any oxygen present at the beginning of the fill step.
Water
When in doubt, run all water used in the mash and sparge steps through a carbon filter to remove chlorine, sulfur, heavy metals and other impurities that can affect the taste of your beer.
We recommend using a water additive (pH 5.2) to improve sugar conversion and extraction efficiency.
If your recipe requires adding calcium chloride, calcium sulfate, calcium carbonate or other water modifier, do so in the mash tun water (strike water).
Grain
It is important to grind the grains to the proper texture. If it is too finely ground, the grain will cause you to have grain debris in the boil kettle and it can plug the false bottom in the mash tun. If the grain is not cracked enough, you will experience low sugar conversion and extraction efficiency.
Mashing
A standard mash tun made from a 15 gallon keg will not hold more than 38 lbs of grain and the associated strike water. It is preferred to stay below 30 lbs of grain. Plastic 6 gallon mash tuns can also be used, with a maximum grain bill of 15 lbs.
Use between 1 and 1.25 quarts of water per pound of grain in the mash. This provides a balance between being too thick in the mash (which can cause poor conversion of starch to sugar) or too thin (limits the amount of sparge water that can be used to extract sugars). For example, if the recipe you are using requires 30 lbs of grain, you should add 30 – 37.5 quarts (7.5-9.5 gallons) of water to the mash tun to start the process.
The strike water temperature should be 15-20 degrees above the target mash temperature depending upon whether you are heating the water in the mash tun or in another pot. Depending upon ambient temperature, the strike water should be heated to 165-175 degrees F in the mash tun before the grain is added.
Always add the grain to the hot strike water slowly in the later stages of addition, sometimes even stop occasionally to check for dough balls. Never add water to grain !!! Stir vigorously to mix the hot water and grain and to prevent formation of “doughballs”. Doughballs are areas where grain clumps together and has a relatively dry center. The presence of doughballs reduces sugar yield.
Mashing temperatures generally should be between 145 and 156 degrees F unless a step mash is required. All recipes should specify a mash in temperature. If in doubt, aim for the higher side of the mash temperature range; the grain/water mixture can be cooled by adding ice, but heating a full mash tun will usually result in a charred grain crust on the bottom of the vessel. A blanket or other form of insulation should be used to prevent the mash tun from cooling off once all of the grain has been added.
The mashing process normally is complete in about 30 minutes, although more time may be needed depending upon how thick the mash is and how the grain was cracked. To check whether the mash is complete, circulate the liquid in the mash tun bottom to top using a pitcher until there is almost no grain remaining in the liquid. Pour a small amount of the liquid (wort) into a flat plate and add a small amount of Iodophor to it. If a black particulate forms, there is still starch present and the mash needs to go longer. Mash times of up to one hour are not unusual.
Sparging
While the mash is going on, additional water should be heated up to about 170 degrees F and treated with the pH 5.2. Most recipes specify a sparge temperature. Make up at least 10 gallons of sparge water; it’s better to have some left over than to run out early.
Once the wort has been recirculated and the grain bed is set (so that no grain is in the wort), sparge water should be slowly added to the top of the mash tun. The drain valve in the bottom of the mash tun should be slightly opened such that a liquid level of about an inch is maintained on top of the grain.
There are two basic types of filter placed in the mash tun to keep grain out of the wort being drained to the boil pot. The most used is a false bottom made from either steel (with a series of narrow slots cut in it) or plastic (molded with many fines holes in it). The second type is the “tee” or “cigar” filter which consists of a cylindrical wire mesh section with a copper tubing and fittings that insert into the mash tun exit valve hole. The tee filter takes very little circulation before the grain bed is set relative to the false bottom, but it can be dislodged if you are not careful when stirring during mash-in.
The sparge step should be done slowly, generally 1-2 hours. The sparge water should be maintained at 170 F (or recipe goal temperature) throughout the process. About 13 gallons of wort should be collected for a nominal 10 gallon batch. This means leaving 1-2 inches of freeboard in the boil kettle.
Boil
You can start heating the wort when the level in the boil kettle reaches about 5 gallons (just above the first ring). Your recipe should specify a boil time, usually 60 minutes for lighter beers, and 90-120 minutes for big beers and stouts. It is best to have the boil pot reach temperature about the time you have finished the sparge.
The hop schedule is set based on the end time of the boil; there is usually no hop addition during the first 30 minutes of a 90 minute boil. A vigorous boil is preferred in order to drive off 2-3 gallons of water.
There are several ways to add hops to the boiling wort. The simplest method is to just toss them in; the drawback is that you will lose more wort after boiling due to the high level of debris in the bottom of the boil pot. A second method is to suspend a large bag above the boiling wort and down into it. Hops can be added to the bag per normal schedule. The disadvantages of this approach are that it makes it difficult to add the chiller to the boiling wort and there is always a chance that the bag will come loose. The third method is to use small knotted bags full of hops at each addition. The disadvantage of this way is that it may lower hop utilization. Hops can be bought either as ground pellets or as cones. The pellets tend to perform more reproducibly in a home brew environment.
The boil kettle is very prone to boiling over, especially early in the process. A fan or spray bottle of distilled water or wort from the mash tun can be used to cool the surface of the wort and reduce the potential for boil over. Boil over is more likely to occur shortly after each hop addition since the oil in them reduces the wort surface tension. The boil kettle should be watched at all times if possible.
At fifteen minutes before the end of the boil, Irish moss or other flocculent should be added to the boil kettle along with the wort chiller. The last 15 minutes are counted once the wort has begun boiling again.
Cooling, Settling, and Yeast Pitch
Once you begin to cool the wort, everything that contacts the wort must be sterilized to prevent an “infection” from wild yeast or bacteria. The fermenter, air lock, cork (if used), stirring spoon and your hands should all be treated with Iodophor. Iodophor does not need to be rinsed off after the fermenter is drained as long as it is added at no more than 2 caps full per 5 gallons of water. Do not use bleach to sanitize as it must be rinsed off and it can get into most plastics after a while, causing bad flavors in your beer.
You should be able to reach 70-85 degrees F in the boil pot using the wort chiller and city water depending upon the time of year. This can be lowered by rigging up an extra 5 gallon keg to fit into the hose line to the chiller. When no more progress can be made using hose water, the keg can be charged with 20 lbs of ice and the flow restarted slowly. Temperatures as low as 50 deg F can be reached this way.
Once cooling is completed, the wort should be whirlpooled vigorously and allowed to settle (covered) for at least 30 minutes. This step assists the flocculent in precipitating any grain or hops that are in the boil pot. Once the settle period has been reached, the wort can be gravity transferred to the fermenter(s). The fermenter can be either plastic or glass, but glass is preferred as it cannot absorb off tastes from cleaning or sanitizing.
It is very important that the wort is fully cooled to the bottom end of the fermentation temperature range specified in the recipe before yeast is added. For ales, this can be done by placing the fermenter in an ice bath for a while before adding the yeast. For lagers, the fermenter should be placed in the lagering refrigerator and cooled prior to pitching the yeast. Beginning fermentation at too high a temperature will cause various off flavors to develop in your beer. Fermentation generates some heat as it proceeds, so it is more difficult to control fermenter temperature at goal if it starts high. If fermentation occurs below the recommended temperature, the fermentation rate will be slow and in the case of ales, the taste may not be true to style.
Yeast starters are generally recommended when brewing any beer with a starting gravity above 1.080. A starter is made by boiling water and adding either DME (dry malt extract) or liquid extract. The boiled mixture is added to a 2 or 4 quart bottle with an airlock. Yeast is then added and allowed to multiply. The starter should be maintained at the same temperature as recommended in your beer recipe to avoid making off flavors. A starter should be made 2-3 days before you plan to brew for best results.
Oxygen should be present at the beginning of fermentation, and excluded from the beer after that. Initially, oxygen aids in yeast reproduction, but later in the process, oxygen can react with the finished beer, giving it a “cardboard” taste. Oxygen can be added via vigorous shaking or stirring of the fermenter or by sparging the fermenter with oxygen gas.
Last Steps
After about 1 week for ales and 3 weeks for lagers, the contents of the fermenter should be transferred to a secondary fermenter. The semi-finished beer is siphoned from the primary to the secondary with the sludge in the bottom of the primary excluded from the secondary.
Beer can be left in the secondary for as little as a week or for as long as 6 months as long as water is maintained in the air lock and the fermenter maintained at the proper temperature. The beer is then ready to be bottled or kegged. If bottling, about ¾ to 1 cup of corn sugar should be added to a small amount of boiling water (or beer) and added to the bottling bucket. Brown sugar can be substituted for some stronger or darker beers. This sugar is added to allow the yeast to produce carbon dioxide and naturally carbonate the beer. This type of beer is “living” as the yeast remains alive and can affect the flavor of the beer during storage. The bottling bucket with wort and priming sugar should be mixed well with a sterile long handled spoon and bottled out normally. Bottles should be sterilized in Iodophor immediately prior to filling. Care should be taken to avoid introduction of air into the bottles during the fill step. Kegging does not require the corn sugar as CO2 is used to generate carbonation, although once the keg is filled, it should be pressured/depressured three times to remove any oxygen present at the beginning of the fill step.