A brew day

In order to give you a rough overview of what my brew day looks like I've created the schedule below that shows the order and the timing of the various steps that I go through when brewing a batch of beer.

00:00 weigh grist, heat mash water
00:15 crush grist (using barley crusher)
00:30 mash-in (add 80C water)
01:30 mash-out (add 100C water)
01:40 first batch sparge
01:55 add sparge water
02:05 second batch sparge
02:10 90 min: big kettle reaches boil, weigh hops
02:20 80 min: small kettle reaches boil (a little later as this contains the second sparge)
02:40 60 min: add bittering hops
03:25 15 min: add flavour hops, insert immersion chiller
03:30 10 min: add irish moss or whirlfloc, add yeast nutrient
03:40 0 min: add aroma hops, flame-out
03:45 start chilling (submerge small kettle in cold water. run tap water through chiller)
04:25 siphon wort into fermenter (splashing)
04:45 add yeast, oxygenate wort
05:30 done cleaning

A brewing session usually takes somewhere between 5 and 6 hours depending on how good I am at multi-tasking. I also get a couple of longer breaks, the first one throughout the 1 hour mash and the second between the addition of bittering hops and flavouring hops. I usually spend that time reviewing the recipe and the process itself.

As you can see above I mash for 60 minutes. The mash itself lasts 60 minutes, then boiling water is added to raise the mash to about 76C. I'm not always successful hitting that temperature, but that really depends a little on how much water there is in the mashtun already. Then I wait 10 minutes so that the mash can settle, making it less turbid. I then open the ball value and vorlauf about 1 liter, which I then pour on top of the mash through some aluminum foil.

I boil for a total of 90 minutes, but add the bittering hops 30 minutes into the boil. I do this to get a better hot break. The proteins coagulate more easily when there are no hops in there. This should in theory give clearer beer. The difference in bitterness extraction is minimal, so this a pretty good trade-off.

My chilling procedure is perhaps not the best one. I use a home-made immersion chiller which is decent. Since I have to boil in two pots I can only insert the chiller into the biggest one (20 liters). This means that I have to chill the small pot (12 liters) in the sink with cold water. This is not the most efficient way to chill wort, but it works. Chilling the wort as quickly possible is a good thing. The longer the aroma hops are steeped in the wort the more likely it is to extract vegetal flavours. Once I get my new kettle going I'll be able to chill all the wort in one go. I think the immersion chiller should work. If not I'll look into getting a plate chiller or a counter-flow chiller.

When transferring the chilled wort into the fermentation vessel I try to splash the wort as much as possible to get some in oxygen into it. The yeast needs lots of oxygen during the reproduction phase. Once everything is transferred I close the lid and shake it vigorously for a minute or two. Combined with lots of yeast this seems to work just fine.

The brewing process

These are the steps you will have to go through in order to make beer:

1. malt
   
2. crush
3. mash
4. sparge
5. boil
6. chill
7. ferment
8. package

Malting is a process to let the malt develop its enzyme content and render it suitable for mashing. The process involves soaking, sprouting and then drying grain.

Unless you've got too much time on your hands you might what to skip the malting process as professional malting companies will do this for you at low cost. Their malting quality will very likely be much better than anything you could make yourself. So you typically buy premalted grains off the shelf instead of making it yourself. That said, it would of course make an interesting research project.

The malt quality have a big impact on your brewing efficiency. A low quality malt will get you a less flavourful beer and (fortunately) less beer. A high quality malt will be much more consistent and let you extract more malt sugars.

If you make your beer from malt extract you can skip the crush, mash and sparge steps as these have been done for you. The malt extract is the end result of these steps (plus the fact that it has been concentrated down to syrup or powder). With malt extract you can move right on to the boil. This will save you a couple of hours in your brew day.

The crush is when you take your malt and crush it in small particles exposing the inner starch granules. The purpose is to make it easier to extract the malt sugars. You will need a malt mill to do the crushing.

The mash is when you mix the crushed malt with hot water until it resembles a thick porridge. The hot water will trigger enzymes in the malt that turn the starch into malt sugars, simple ones or complex ones depending on the temperature. The mash will then typically be left alone for about an hour or so. This to ensure that all the starch have been converted.

To get a step further the sugars are then to be separated from the grain husks. This is done through a process called sparging or lautering. There are several ways to do this, but the easiest one is to just drain the liquid (called wort) through a filter and into the boil kettle.

Once the wort is collected in the kettle the next step is to actually boil it for an hour or so. Throughout the boil hops will be added in several steps to lend bitterness, flavour and aroma to the beer.

We're now almost ready to hand over the wort to the yeast so that it can turn all the sugars into esters, carbon dioxide and alcohol. To avoid killing the yeast the wort have to be cooled down to a lower temperature. The cooling process is typically done in a short period of time with the help of a wort chiller.

The wort is then transfered to a separate fermentation vessel where it can be fermented. The fermentation is typically done in a closed environment reducing the chances of infection. A carboy with an air-lock on it is quite common. The yeast is then added to the cool wort. It will now become beer as the yeast eat up the sugars. Once all the sugars and nutrients have been depleted the yeast will go dormant and settle out on the bottom of the fermentation vessel.

We now have beer that is ready to be packaged. The beer can be bottled or transferred to kegs. It will also have to be carbonated, either mechanically or naturally.

This posting gives a brief overview of the brewing process, but it has just scratched the surface. So I'll be posting [much] more detail about various aspects of the techniques, equipment and ingredients involved in future. If there is anything particular you'd like to have covered please let me know.