Homebrewing Process Control Through Simplicity

I was doing some thinking on my reasons for paring down my process to where it is now.  I have been brewing for nearly 10 years now, started doing extract batches, bottling, went to all-grain, built a chiller, grain mill, etc.  I've enjoyed aspects of incorporating all those sub-processes.  There is a lot of personal satisfaction in being able to execute every element of the brewing process.  Someday I'd even like to grow and malt my own barley.  But not now.

Now I have 3 kids, and I just can't focus on all those little processes.  And for as often as I brew, I can't perfect them.  Every additional element added to brewing is also source of error.  If you don't frequently brew, like many who evangelize for the hobby, the simplest tasks can ruin your day.

I don't think you can appreciate this simplification until you have brewed all-grain, ground the grain, chilled the wort and pitched the yeast, then hand washed all the bottles and bottled, and waited.  And some people are able to continue all these tasks regardless of other changes in their life.

But I'm not, and I know this is what keeps others from brewing or knocks them out of the hobby all together.  I'm now enjoying brewing beer in a way that flies in the face of the way I learned from Charlie Papazian.  I take pride in having learned enough about brewing science to tell me that it's ok, and I can still make great beer.

So think of your brewing process this way: every time you can simplify a process, you remove the chance for something to go wrong.  Your chiller can't clog if you hot-pack your wort.  And you won't take silly chances with kicking off your fermentation if you aren't starting it at the end of a 6 hour brewing session at 1am.

My Process - Outlined

Here is my outline for the current state of my brewing methods.  In the upcoming months I plan to put this all fully into practice and document a few brews to show how I vary the process for different recipes.

1.       Brew with extract

I currently brew with extract to simplify and shorten my brew day.  This adds a constraint to your brewing since you don’t have the same flexibility to choose grains.  It has the benefit though of tailoring your boil length to your hop schedule and eliminating a lot of worries.  You also minimize the amount of equipment to clean and store.

2.       Do a full-volume boil and hot-pack the wort

Hot-packing (search No-Chill method) is the best thing to happen to homebrewing since yeast.  Chilling wort is a time consuming PITA.  You are essentially canning your wort so that you can delay fermentation until you are good and ready for it.  For me, this means a shorter overall brew-day, which makes the entire hobby more practical.  The ideal container for this is 5+ gallons, so you really need to have that volume of boiling liquid to put into it.

This method also allows you to double batches and ferment 1 at a time.  Nice if you want to re-use yeast or save a ton of time on beer that you want to have on hand all the time.  Hot-packed wort has been proven to stay fresh for months on basic brewing radio.

3.       Use an anti-foaming agent (Fermcap-S)

I haven’t done this just yet but my first bottle of Fermcap_S is waiting in the fridge.  I’ve often worried about all the hop matter that gets foamed onto the sides of my kettle, and battled for minutes trying to keep the hot break from blowing out all over the driveway.  No more.

4.       Use dry yeast, re-hydrate in water bottle

I almost always use dry yeast, because I don’t want to make starters.  I’m tempted not to re-hydrate for convenience, but I discovered a simple method.  I use a cheap bottle of spring water, pour half out and warm it up in the microwave.  Dump the yeast in and re-cap.  Shake periodically.  Un-cap and pour into fermenter!  This saves me from needing to boil, cool, (contaminate?) my tap water.

5.       Shake to aerate

The process of pouring the wort, coupled with shaking, has always served me well.  I’d rather not add equipment to clean and sanitize.

6.       Ferment in a temp controlled fridge

I have a dorm fridge I bought off Craigslist coupled with an STC-1000 controller off of Amazon.  So now I can temp control my fermentations to the exact degree for less than $100.  This removes so much worry, you need it.

7.       Keg your beer

If I still had to bottle my homebrew I wouldn’t do it.  Bottling is from the devil.  Also, when your beer is in a keg you can have any size beer you want.  I like to come home and “check on the beer”.  It’s a nice way to put beer fest tasting glasses to work!

Star San Slime - Answer from Five Star Chemicals

If you store any of your brewing equipment in a Star-San solution you may have noticed a slimy film on them after they have sat for awhile. I was unable to find an answer on-line so I emailed 5-Star (the maker of Star-San) and here is the reply I got:

Hi Matt, It's the surfactants in starsan coming out of solution. 

Cheers, 
Daisha Barnett 
Five Star Chemicals & Supply, Inc. 

So logically I asked if they had anything else I could use to store brewing parts in, to keep them sanitary right until I need them, and here is the answer: 

How long do you keep them in solution? Saniclean has surfactants as well. 

 I would clean them immediately after use and then throw in a bucket of starsan just prior to use. PH should be 3.5 or below and only needs to come in contact with solution for 30 seconds and you do not need to wait until it dries to use. Over time the chemicals will damage parts if they are stored in it. 

Daisha Barnett 
Five Star Chemicals & Supply, Inc. 

The Simplest Manifesto

It's been a long time since I have used my brewing blog. Since I last wrote anything I've had 2 more kids and gotten a whole lot more busy. My brewing has taken on a new focus, using brewing knowledge to make my own beer by the simplest, worry free methods possible.

When I say worry free I mean fuss free, no longer moving fermenters around the house to control temperature or grinding my own grain. In some cases I am spending a little more money, with more equipment, and sometimes less. 

I'm now brewing exclusively extract beers, with a shortened boil, no-chill, dry yeast, temperature controlled fermentation, and kegging it. I would not still be brewing if not for kegging. Also, if I hadn't simplified other parts of my process this hobby would be similarly un-workable for my current life status. Now I'm putting together a series of posts to describe what I am doing, because I think it will help other brewers who want to brew but don't have time to work at their own brewery.

Mash Tun Coefficient

I've made lots of brewing mistakes lately. One of the biggest was thinking I had nailed the thermal coefficient of my mash tun. I did an experiment to determine this awhile ago and I believe it came out wrong because my dial thermometer was messed up.

If you use a dial thermometer, check it at boiling and make sure that water boils at 212F. If you use a glass thermometer, ensure that you are submerging it properly. It should be marked for the proper submerging depth.

If your not familiar, to calculate the final temperature of a system from the starting temperatures, you multiply the mass of each part times it's temperature and specific heat, add them all up, and divide by the total mass.

So when I say tun coefficient what I really mean is finding the equivalent amount of water that the tun is equivalent to. So in Excel:

Tun = 0.5
Tun Temp = 72F
Water = 2 Gallons
Water Temp = 160F

Final Temperature =((0.5*72F)+(2.0*160F))/(0.5*2)

As long as you reference your cells right, you will be able to modify the tun value until the final temperature you calculate equals what you measure experimentally.

I found a value of 0.26 for my tun, meaning it's thermal mass is equal to 0.26 gallons of water. I fully calculate my mash temps in Excel, and use 0.051 for my equivalent thermal mass of one pound of malt.

Prior to solving this problem I was thinking about building a RIMS mash tun. No need now! I can mash in and hit my temperature as closely as I am able to measure the temperature of my strike water.

Don't forget to check the accuracy of your thermometers!

A Simple Pale Ale

I wanted to put together a simple pale ale, bordering on a bitter blonde ale, and the recipe went something like this:

Ingredients for 3.1 gallons:

6.0lbs 2row pale
0.5lbs C80
0.25lbs Victory

0.25oz Summit 0min
0.3oz Centennial 0min
0.3oz Chinook 0min

Yeast: US-05

Since I don't actively chill my brews, all the 0 minute additions give me about 20 minutes worth of bitterness.

My goal with this beer was to assess the contribution of hops added only at 0 minutes and then left with the wort to chill overnight in the fermenter.

Now that this is fermented and bottled, here are the results. I got quite a bit of bitterness with this hop schedule, maybe a little too much for my preference and this recipe. While I enjoy some beers with really big bitterness, this has a bitterness that sits in the middle of your tounge and lasts. There is minimal hop aroma, and the flavor is definitely there, but it blends well with the malt and is not overdone. I was hoping for HUGE hop flavor, but didn't get it. The flavor is well balanced in this beer but it's not way out in front. Dry hopping might help to bring out the flavor and increase the perception of the hops.

I'm also suspicious of the chinook hops for their bittering qualities, since I have heard that they can be harsh. This beer would be much different if it had the same level of bitterness but it did not linger. I think it would be good to try a similar beer again but with a smoother bittering all-around hop, possible East Kent Goldings.

Ideally, I want to brew beers that have qualities that do not linger, which makes them more drinkable and more enjoyable over the coarse of a pint.

RISky Business

I'm catching up with all my recent brewing now... I brewed the Northern Brewer Russian Imperial Stout kit a few weeks back, enhanced with an extra half pound of victory malt and 2 more pounds of 2 row.

Everything was going pretty well with the brew session until I ran out of propane.

A tense 10 minutes went by while I pulled my stove out to allow my keggle to clear the microwave. It was really, really, dangerously heavy with 7 gallons of wort still in it. I also found out that the bottom edge gets and stays very very hot, hot enough to burn your welding gloves in fact. I got this monster on the stove by first lifting in onto a chair, then standing on another chair and lifting it to the stove. On the stove I had it straddling 2 burners and the boil still sucked.

So after all that, with a planned 90 minute boil I didn't get near the evaporation rate I usually do and ended up with an extra gallon of 1.080 beer rather than the 1.098 batch I was shooting for. So now I have a 1.080 stout with 75 IBU's aging in a carboy in my basement.

So far it tastes smooth, but bitter. I was worried about fusel alcohols with this one, but they weren't a problem.

Post boil, I added a drop of olive oil to my fermentation bucket to aid the yeast. Then I opened my keggle valve and drained the hot wort directly to the ferm. bucket. After a day or 2 of cooling I added US-05 that I harvested from a pale ale and shook the crap out of it, and it proceeded to blow off for several days.