SUBSEQUENT
YEARS Hops will die back to the permanent root stock (crown)
each fall. The crown is hearty, and relatively unaffected by
even the deepest winter freeze. Hop vines break ground at
about the same time the earliest spring flowers appear. Hops
grow back much stronger after they have developed a good
root system. Prune the earliest shoots back to the ground to
encourage heartier second growth.
HARVEST AND DRYING Hops should be harvested before
the first frost. The actual date will vary depending on your
location, but mid-August to mid-September is most common.
Hops are ready to harvest when the aroma is strongest. Test
the aroma by smelling a crushed hop cone. As you squeeze a
mature hop between your fingers, you should notice a yellow
powder from the lupulin glands. Ripe cones will feel dry and
papery. With some varieties the color will be lighter.
Slight browning of the lower bracts of the cone is normal,
and a good sign of maturity.
Lower the hop vine to the
ground to begin the harvest. Pick only the cones, not the
leaf material. Dry hops before usage or storage. In dry
weather, airdrying is preferable. Spread them shallowly onto
a window screen, and keep them out of direct sunlight. Every
day you should “fluff” the hops to bring moist hops to the
outside of the pile. The hops are dry when the inner stem of
the hops is brittle. It should break rather than bend. If
you must dry hops with a food dehydrator or in the oven,
keep the temperatures under 140 degrees.Store
hops away from oxygen.
Most home growers don’t have access to oxygen-barrier bags
and vacuum sealers, so the best compromise is to pack as
many hops as possible into a ziplock-style freezer bag.
Squeeze them tight to remove as much air as possible and
seal the bag. Store hops
frozen until used. USAGE
Homegrown hops are typically used for aroma, flavor or dry
hopping. Since precise alpha acids are not known, it is a
challenge to use them for bittering. A few test batches may
be necessary to get the feel for the potency of the hop. Use
homegrown hops in the same quantity (by weight) as
commercial hops. Leaf hop utilization is about 15% less than
pellets.
How to make
your first Home Brew Beer SimplifiedSee Video
This is as simple as I can make
it, other than my Freaked Out Hippie Recipe. I cannot stress enough to try to
make sure all your utensils are clean or sterile as possible.
Ingredients
◾5
pounds Concorde grapes
◾2
quarts water
◾2
pounds sugar
◾1
package wine yeast
Instructions
1.Lightly crush grapes in a
primary fermenting container.
2.Dissolve sugar in water and
add to crushed grapes (called must).
3.Pour one pack of yeast into
2-3 ounces of water heated to 104 – 109 degrees F. Do not stir
and let sit for 15
minutes only. Then stir to
suspend yeast and add to must.
4.Note that you can use bread
yeast, but your wine might taste like cider. Or you can also do
it the old fashioned way: take your chances and not add any
yeast and let it ferment naturally.
5.Stir well and cover fermentor
loosely.
6.Let ferment for 7 days,
stirring twice daily.
7.After seven days, remove the
pulp and siphon off the liquid through a course strainer into a
secondary fermentor (a 5 gallon glass jug or one gallon glass
containers) Leave some breathing room in these bottles. Any
extra liquid should be kept for topping off when racking.
8.Top with a rubber bung and
airlock. Or you can use the 70s way and put a balloon on top,
secured with a rubber band or good string. Put one pinhole in
the balloon if using this method.
9.Let ferment 3-4 weeks then
rack (siphon off, liquid leaving sediment behind) into clean
secondary fermentor. Repeat airlock or balloon method for
another 4 - 6 weeks or until fermentation has stopped.
10.Siphon off and bottle.
11.Age for one year.
How long should beer be left in the carboy before
bottling/kegging? While there may be much debate about
whether secondary fermentation is necessary or not, Midwest suggests trying it once and
judging for yourself. We think you’ll see, smell, and taste a noticeable difference in the quality
of your beer. As soon as you are seeing one bubble a minute or less coming out of the airlock of
your primary fermenter
(usually after 1-2 weeks for most ales, and about 2 months for most lagers),
it’s time to transfer (or “rack”) your brew to a glass carboy or
Better Bottle for secondary fermentation. Several styles of beer will benefit
from a longer secondary fermentation. This time gives the beer a chance to settle naturally and
for the flavors to blend
properly. Light Ales: 1 week primary/1-2 weeks
secondary For a style like Liberty Cream Ale,
Honey Bee Ale, Aussie Light Ale, etc., we would recommend one week in primary, and 1-2 weeks in
secondary. The lighter flavor of these beers allows the beer to be drinkable sooner because you
are not waiting for the alcohol bitterness to subside, or for
the beer to mellow out. After you
have transferred it to your secondary carboy add
1 U.S. fl. oz or 5 teaspoons
WilliamsWarn 1L
(34 U.S fl. Oz) Clarification Agent for Home Brewing and
stir gently repeat this process 24 hours later and that should
do the trick! williamswarn.com
You are just waiting for the beer to clear to your liking. So,
once it is clear enough, feel free to bottle or keg.
Reasons
for racking
There are
three main reasons for racking. Firstly, if you wish to ferment
your beer longer than say 10
days, moving the beer off the yeast cake will reduce the risk of
autolysis, a process whereby
yeast cells, having consumed all other available food, begin to
metabolise each other, creating a foul taste. Secondly, the time
spent in the secondary gives the beer time to clear, as solids
in the beer settle out. Thirdly, the time the beer spends in the
secondary fermenter is a period during which the beer matures
and the flavours smooth out. A period of time maturing in a
fermenter is more beneficial than maturation in a bottle, as
larger volumes make maturation easier and more effective.
Additionally,
racking is the most common ways to do bulk priming. Bulk priming
is where you dissolve a measured amount of sugar into your
fermented beer just prior to bottling in order to achieve
consistent and accurate carbonation in every bottle regardless
of bottle size. It has the additional bonus that you don't have
to stuff about priming every bottle individually. By racking
onto your sugar you avoid stirring up the trub,
as you would if you tried to stir the sugar into the primary (or
secondary) fermenter.
After
you have some experience with Extract Brewing, you will
inevitably find yourself wanting to make the move to All Grain.
While the all grain brewing process does take 1-2 hours longer
(for the Mashing and Sparging processes, it offers a much wider
range of ingredients and better control over the brewing
process. This article details some of the items you need to
consider when moving from extract brewing to all grain brewing.
Equipment
All grain brewing does involve
an added investment in equipment. Here I assume you already have
a 5 gallon fermenter, racking and bottling equipment but
probably lack some of the items below:
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to save thumbnail to destination
Mash
TunLarge Boil Pot - For all grain brewing you will need to boil
the full size of your brew (usually 5 gallons) plus a gallon or
so additional wort that will boil off during your 60-90 minute
boil. In addition you need some space at the top to avoid
boil-over. We recommend at least an 8 gallon pot for a 5 gallon
batch size, or 14 gallon pot for a 10 gallon batch. In addition
you will need a second pot equal to your batch size that you can
use to heat water for sparging.
Outdoor Propane Burner - While
it is possible to heat your huge pot over several burners on a
stove, it can be quite dangerous moving large amounts of wort
around and it also takes a very long time. A high BTU propane
burner is relatively cheap and will boil your wort quickly in
the driveway or on the back patio with less mess. Don't use it
in an enclosed area however!
Gott Style Cooler - A water
cooler makes the best Mash Tun for most homebrewers. A 5 gallon
cooler can easily be converted to serve as a mash tun and lauter
tun - and the insulation will make it very easy to do an
infusion Mash. See the Mash Tun link for details on how to add a
false bottom to your cooler.
An Immersion Chiller - While not
strictly needed, it does take a very long time to cool 5 gallons
of boiling wort without a chiller. Cooling your beer quickly
reduces the risk of infection and also helps many undesirable
proteins and tannins to fall out of the beer before
ferementation.
The All Grain Process
All grain brewing starts with
the Mashing process. All of your grains are crushed first, and
the crushed grains are placed in your Mash Tun. Hot water is
then added to the mash tun to raise the temperature of the
mixture to between 148F and 158F. Typically water is mixed with
grains at a rate of approximately 1.25-1.5 quarts per pound of
grain. The temperature and amount of water for the infusion can
be calculated using a tool such as BeerSmith. You then cover
your mash tun and leave the mash for 45-60 minutes. During this
time, complex sugars are broken down into simple sugars that
yeast can easily consume. One typically stirs the mash every
10-15 minutes to prevent hot spots from developing in the
cooler.
In the next step, called
Sparging, hot water is added to the top of your mash tun and
drained through the false bottom into your boiler. It takes time
to extract the sugars from the grains, so don't rush this
process. I usually allot at least 20-30 minutes to fully sparge
the mash tun and extract about 6 gallons of wort for a 5 gallon
batch.
Once you have the hot wort
extracted, the rest of the process of Boiling, Cooling and
Fermenting the wort is the same as it would be for an extract
brew. There are only two differences. First, you will use less
hops during the boil because your wort is not as concentrated -
meaning that more bitterness is extracted from the same amount
of hops. The best way to account for this is to use some brewing
software such as BeerSmith to calculate the bitterness of your
brew and adjust your hops accordingly. The second obvious change
is that you are boiling a much larger amount of wort, and need
to be cautious when handling large heavy pots and also need a
good cooling system to cool the wort as quickly as possible.
However, the rest of the brewing process is just as it was with
extract brewing.
The process can be a little
messy the first time, but remember it gets much easier after a
few
Adding liqueur at bottling time is one
way of adding flavors to your homebrew, especially when making a
fruit beer. Liqueurs are lower-alcohol spirits flavored with
fruit, herbs, spices, or nuts, and then sweetened.
These concoctions are normally used for
flavoring cocktails or coffee, but they Measure out a small
sample of beer and add the liqueur in .1 mL increments. Keep in
mind that most of the sweetness in the liqueur will ferment out.
Scale up when you find the right ratio.
For example, if .1 mL liqueur per 1
ounce beer is the magic number, multiply by 128 (ounces in a
gallon) then by 5 (gallons in a batch) to arrive at 64 mL of
liqueur. Plan for an increase in alcohol content –
Two cups
of a typical liqueur will add about 1% ABV to your five-gallon
batch of homebrew. to arrive at how much liqueur to use for
bottling. Just keep in mind that depending on the flavor of the
liqueur, you may or may not want to use that much. Let’s work
through an example: Say you’re brewing Captain Cogsworth Coffee
Stout, but instead of priming with coffee and sugar, you use
eight ounces (by weight) of a 40 proof coffee liqueur. Measuring
the specific gravity of the liqueur, you get 20˚ Plato. Multiply
the proof (40) by .106 = 4.24˚P 20 + 4.24 = 24.24˚P 8 (weight of
liqueur in ounces) * .2424 (percent sugar in liqueur) = 1.94 oz.
sugar In this example, the 8 ounces (by weight) of coffee
liqueur contributes the equivalent of 1.94 oz. of priming sugar.
Adjust
your priming sugar addition accordingly. Alternatively, if you
want to prime with just liqueur, take the total amount of
priming sugar and divide by the total sugar percentage from
above: 5 oz. priming sugar / .2424 = 20.63 oz. liqueur (by
weight) Add 20.63 ounces (by
weight, not volume) of the liqueur at bottling time. -
DIY Cherry Liqueur
IIngredients
6 cups
Bing cherries, pitted
1 cup
brandy
1/2 cup
vodka
1 cup
water
1 cup
sugar
1
cinnamon stick, broken (optional)
Directions
1.
Put the pitted cherries at the bottom of a sealable
glass jar and muddle them with a wooden spoon or
muddler to release some juice. Drain the juice into
a separate container and set aside. Then add the
brandy, vodka, and cinnamon stick to the muddled
cherries. Seal and shake the jar. Let steep for one
week at room temperature away from direct sun,
shaking every few days.
2 -
Combine the reserved cherry juice, sugar, and water
in a pan and bring to a boil, stirring frequently
until sugar dissolves. Remove from heat and let
cool. Once the syrup is cooled, add it to the
steeping jar, seal, and shake. Then let it steep for
an additional 2 to 5 days. Strain through fine-mesh
sieve lined with cheesecloth into glass jar or
bottle. Store in the refrigerator for up to 3 months.
Ace of Spades
Bobs On left
Day 1 " Beer on Right,
Dianne;s Beer
Will it get Lighter?
it's Dark now Just Brewed
Things have been quiet
around here for the last few months. A combination of insane
travel schedules and work responsibilities have left me very
little time to brew. In fact, I have just two things
happening at the moment: w00tstout in secondary (on
bourbon-soaked oak chips), and Pompey the Great on draft.
The Pompey The Great
(my name for Northern Brewer’s Plinian
Legacy)
I made is on tap in the game room, now, and it’s delicious.
I’m finding that I love double IPAs more than their
traditional counterparts because of the malt sweetness that
balances the bitterness. Don’t get me wrong — I still love a
good Ruination from time to time — but DIPAs like Pliny and
Firestone’s Double Jack (and the limited-release Double DBA,
if you can find it) are rapidly becoming my go-to choices.
So let’s talk a little bit
about the things we need to consider when we’re making a
double IPA, as opposed to a traditional IPA. These notes
primarily apply to all-grain, but there’s advice for
extracts in here, too:
Ace of Spades Right Bobs