New Beer-ginnings

Professional Series #2 Head Brewer

Hi folks! Today I’ve got something a little different, it’s something from my archives that it turns out I never posted because I was writing other things at the time for the Ingredients series.

I emailed a brewery here in Brisbane, Australia, called Green Beacon Brewing Co. and told them of my plan in my previous Professional Series Post to get some interviews and advice from people in the industry and get their perspective on brewing as a whole and what they do on a day to day basis.

Green Beacon Brewing Co.

I chose Green Beacon because they were, and still are incredibly popular and going through a big expansion at the time. They have always seemed to have a great balance of approachable and drinkable beers while still exploring new avenues and trialing some out-there and experimental beers, especially with their Fathom Series of barrel-aged beers which are just delicious.

Because of this great balance of business strategies they built for themselves they gained a fantastic reputation worthy of attracting the attention of bigger businesses. This led to a partnership with Asahi that allowed them to expand and grow like wildfire.

I gave Johann Van Der Walt, Green Beacon’s Head Brewer, a list of questions. It was probably a bit longer than he was expecting! But he was gracious enough to find time to go through them for us.

Green Beacon Staff after winning several AIBA awards, Johann front and centre with his arms around his team and brewery owner

Because this particular interview took place in the past there are many aspects here that we did not discuss, including their partnership with Asahi. I would very much like to have a beer and a chat with them about it so I can update our chat so Johann, if you’re reading this, please reach out! I’d love to shout you a beer and talk your ear off for a few minutes!

Sean: How long have you been brewing for?

Johann: About 10 years or so now.

S: Did you start out as a home brewer?

J: Yes I did, it all grew from there until I started down the professional path.

S: What’s your favourite thing about making beer?

J: Probably drinking it!

S: How did you get your start as a brewer professionally?

J: I started off at a homebrew shop doing all the work no one wanted to do, like cleaning and repacking hops. The owner bought a ‘brew for you’ premises and I started brewing “professionally” and moved into a job at a small brewery [Green Beacon] soon after.

S: What’s your day like? Run me through a day in the life of a brewer here.

J: There’s lots going on with large amounts of production over 2 sites so a big part of the day in my role is just making sure nothing gets missed.

S: What do you love about your job?

J: It can be very creative at times.

S: What’s one aspect of your job that you yourself didn’t, or a home brewer wouldn’t expect?

J: That yeast is one of the most important ingredients. It’s so easy to treat right and it will give you amazing results repeatedly. Unfortunately its easier treat it bad, but treat it bad and it will give you bad beer. Simple.

S: Are all breweries and brewing jobs created equal? That is to say, what’s the workplace like? Is an assistant brewer job in one brewery the same as an assistant brewer in another?

J: No, absolutely not! An “assistant brewer” could be anything from making wort to packaging of beer. The difference between roles can be vast.

S: How much experimentation do you get to do? Either tweaking current recipes or creating new ones for seasonal releases?

J: A lot. There is always some tweaking to be made, sometimes in the name of adjusting the taste of a beer but more often than not it’s small changes made to keep a beer tasting on brand because of differences in raw ingredients over time.

S: What does that process look like? Small scale vs scaling up to full production.

J: They are very similar. Equipment differences is the big one to know.

S: What considerations do you have to make when designing a recipe to make it work on a large system?

J: Once again, you have to know the differences between the big system and the pilot system. Boil off percentages, dead space etc. to ensure it’s repeatable on the bigger system. Once you know those differences it should translate well into the full scale production.

S: What is the beer industry like from the brewers aspect? From the home brewers aspect it is open, collaborative, enjoyable and sharing. Everyone loves each other’s beer because…it’s beer! Is that carried across to commercial brewers?

J: Sometimes, sometimes not. Some people love to share their knowledge about their role or experience, others are in fear that someone might be better than them!

S: What aspects of the industry or your role have you seen change over time? Is that good or bad?

J: I have seen an increase in quality, which I think is good. Something that has not changed is people relying on another person’s knowledge, not the knowledge in a good book but the kind shared at a BBQ, and not exploring themselves. I think to really gain as much knowledge as you can in this field it’s best to read and educate yourself then explore on your own terms. Advice is good, but one person’s opinion shouldn’t always be taken as read.

S: Where do you see it going next?

J: Who knows?!

S: With the rise in popularity of Brut IPA’s, NEIPA’s, Milkshake IPA’s, some barrel aged beers and the absolute explosion of sour beers recently, what is your prediction for the next popular beer?

J: I really hope we start seeing some good lagers!

S: Advice for home brewers joining the industry? What you tell them to focus on? Any qualifications? How to get a foot in the door?

J: Absolutely, focus on educating yourself. Go and get a qualification. Show initiative and the ability to work hard at any time. Be prepared to start a career on basic wages. Commitment and passion for the industry will be essential but I can’t recommend highly enough the value of going and getting qualified.

S: What’s the biggest difference between home and commercial brewing?

J: They are very similar…you get good/bad homebrewers, some that get a good thing and stick to it and some the never brew the same beer twice. It’s the same for commercial brewers.

S: How do the two industries influence each other? What can pro brewers learn from home brewers and vice versa?

J: I think that if you start your career as a professional brewer without the homebrewer background you can, sometimes, lack that creative aspect that home brewing helps you develop. Homebrewers also learn a lot about plumbing and making something from nothing from tinkering and just doing enough to get the job done with very little resources.

Big thanks to Johann for giving me these answers a long time ago and I’m glad I’ve finally gotten the opportunity to post them! Like I said above, I’d love to have another chat to Johann in the future and do a bit of a follow-up to see how things are going now they have been with Asahi for some time.

Thanks to you all, catch you in the next post!

Sean

If you have any feedback or edit suggestions for this post please contact us and let us know. We want to ensure the correct information is presented in the best possible way so that fellow brewers can stay well-informed.

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Building A Keezer

Whether you’re new to kegging and want to build something yourself or you’re already kegging with a smaller kegerator and want to expand to something more flexible you may want to consider building a keezer.

What exactly is a Keezer?

A keezer is a converted freezer with a temperature controller to allow the storage and dispensing of generally many more kegs than your typical kegerator. They can come in many different shapes and sizes, with taps coming out the front, top or even out of a piece of wood called a collar that’s built between the body of the freezer and the lid.

The range of possibilities are endless, you can keep it bare and minimalistic like the image on the left, have something more pleasant looking but still functional at minimal expense like the image on the top right or you can have a fully enclosed, backlit bar station for placement in a space that isn’t the rear of the garage!

In this post I’m going to tell you all the tools you need, equipment you need to buy and approximate costs (in Australia anyway!) you can expect to be able to make this kind of thing yourself at home.

I’m going to do this by walking you through my own process of updating my old kegerator to a keezer so I can expand with more taps and flexibility.

Keezer Build

Determine available resources

So I started with a freezer I already had and was using as a fermentation chamber. It wasn’t quite big enough anymore for the amount I was brewing but would be a perfect update to my serving capacity. I also had some old plywood laying around from a project a few years ago.

From here I knew that I would be making a keezer with a collar as I already had most of the stuff I needed. The only things I had to buy were:

More beer/gas line
Right-angle brackets to form the collar
Varnish to seal the plywood
Caulk/sealant to form an airtight seal between the collar and freezer body
The extra taps/shanks/hardware needed for the expansion

Begin by planning the design/layout

Once I knew the type of keezer I was making and had all the resources I needed it was time to actually plan the build carefully.

The plywood I had needed a bit of work first as all I had was a big long sheet of it so the task was to figure out the most efficient way of cutting it down. I had used this for a workbench with holes drilled in for a long time so thought the holes would be well-suited to filling in and drilling back out as needed to add even more taps.

The important thing to note about the wood is that it has to be reasonably thick. This is for two reasons, one because it needs to support the weight of a tap and shank without bending or buckling and two because it needs to keep the cold in and heat out. If the wood is too thin, there won’t be enough material to support the tap and shank very well but most importantly it will make your keezer very expensive to run due to poor heat insulation. I used 2.5cm or approximately 1 inch thick plywood that was very dense to help with a bit of thermal insulation. The other thing you could use is two thinner pieces of plywood with dense, closed-cell foam packed in between, even using a can of expanding foam would be better than nothing.

Once I had all this marked out, I cut it up. You could use a handsaw for this if you really wanted to work on your upper body strength, but me being a little lazier than that chose to use power tools! The best thing I had on hand was a handheld jigsaw but I’d highly recommend a circular saw if you have one as it will make much straighter cuts than a jigsaw would. As it happened My cuts were straight enough and only needed a bit of smoothing out with a handheld plane and some sanding.

Once the pieces were cut it was time to do a test fit of the brackets to find the best orientation of all the pieces.

So next was the sanding and smoothing of all corners as they were initially quite sharp. The rest was also sanded to give a nice smooth finish when varnished.

After that it was a matter of filling in any holes and starting the varnishing process. For this I took it all apart again and varnished all pieces separately with a spray-on varnish. I gave everything 2 coats of a stained varnish and 2 clear coats. You could realistically use whatever you like to achieve the colour you want.

My advice is to do this outside or in a room that is ok to be covered in a very very thin layer of varnish as it tends to get everywhere. I also wore latex gloves and a respirator to ensure my outsides and insides didn’t get the same thin coat!

After the varnishing it’s time for a final fit and seal of all the edges before finally sealing it onto the body of the freezer. That began by tilting the lid back, unscrewing it from the freezer (being VERY careful not to damage the internal springs of the lid!) and attaching it to the collar once it was fitted.

Excuse the terrible seals, I’ve never claimed to be a plumber and I’m not now! All I wanted was an airtight seal on the corners to prevent as much heat transfer as possible.

More Planning!

After the physical build of the collar was finished, it was time to plan the inside. For this I went to a fantastic website called Lucidchart that’s free to use and is perfect for making graphical plans of different elements and connecting them together.

This is the plan I drew up of the inside plumbing I needed. The keezer would have 5 taps but can possibly fit 2 more as well as a nitro gas setup if required down the road.

So then I looked at what I had that could be used:

5 Kegs
4-way gas manifold
Beer/gas line
3x gas and 3x liquid disconnects for the kegs
3x taps and shanks
1x door-mounted drip tray

and drew up a list of equipment I needed to buy:

2x gas and 2x liquid disconnects
2x taps and shanks
More beer/gas line
1x door mounted drip tray placed next to the old one
1x Tee bar splitter for the force carb line

Once I had all of this it was a matter of connecting it all up. I made the choice of going with MFL connectors instead of barbs for all new connections as they make for an easier time in future if things need to be reconfigured. See all the assembly pictures below.

After this it was all tidied up and beer lines neatly cable tied in loops to make them easier to manage. To calculate the length of beer line needed I used this website, although the units are all in US imperial, they are easy enough to convert with a quick google search. As a result of balancing lines correctly the beer pours perfectly from each tap.

The final touch I put on the keezer was a big space on top that I could write on to display what was on each tap. You can buy chalkboard paint at most hardware stores, craft shops or specialist paint stores.

Ok so what’s the damage?

Any keezer or kegerator build (many of the principles here could also be applied to a kegerator too) can be as expensive or cheap as you’d like. For me I wanted to get decent fittings that would last a long time but not spend big bucks as the freezer I’m using is quite old and will eventually need replacing. Everything I’ve done can be ripped out and added onto another freezer when the time comes.

I’ll do these costs as though I’m buying everything new:

Freezer: $0-$500 depending on how you get it, mine was off gumtree for $0!
Wood: $0-100, if you can use what’s laying around, great!
Brackets: <$10.
Varnish: Approx $50, I had to get an extra few cans so budget more if you’re getting the spray on stuff as it gets expensive.
Sealant: $10, just get a small squeeze tube.
Taps & Shanks: $50 and $35 each respectively, total $450 for 5x
Gas manifold: $40
Beer/Gas line: $2/metre, up to $50 for everything required
Disconnects: usually around $9/each, so $90 for all 10.
Drip trays: $65 each or $130 for 2 if you need extra length.
Kegs: $150 new, $50 used, free if you have nice friends. max if buying all new $750, more likely $250 if buying the pre-loved variety, just expect to spend a bit on new seals and lids.
Gas bottle: $100
Gas regulator: $70

So potential lowest price if buying everything new is just over $2k or if buying second hand kegs, $1,700. Because I had most of this stuff already I got all the stuff I needed to upgrade for around $350!

This just goes to show that if you can be resourceful and use what you already have then you can make BIG cost savings. the price difference compared to buying a whole kegerator system that only has 3 taps is around $1,000 or around $1,400 for 4 taps. At that rate it’s not that much more to build your own system that is both a fun project that teaches you a lot but also lets you customise your setup much more or even move it to another fridge/freezer when the time comes to upgrade later on.

Thanks for reading through this guide and please let me know if there’s any more detail you’d like on any parts of this process and I will be able to update it for you!

Happy building!

Sean

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Recipe Creation – Just the Basics

Phew! That last one was a long read! Since that previous post I’ve had plenty of people ask for a stripped back version of just the basics. Although it would be easier to amend the original post, there is still some good, detailed content there that I want to keep. So instead I’ll make a new one that’s a bit more stripped back and palatable.

Basically it’ll be a version covering the absolute basics of just 3 things:

Brewing to a style
Ingredients Selection
Process considerations

Just so you are aware, this is such a stripped back version of the last post it’s not funny. What follows is the best high level (I’m talking 30,000 feet up in the air) view of these 3 vital aspects of recipe creation. For more detail, drop me a line or look at the first Intro to Recipe Creation post.

So in the name of keeping things brief, lets jump right in!

Brewing To A Style

When you’re at the stage of wanting to make your own recipe, you generally have a grasp of at least one of the following:

What styles of beer there are.
Which ones you like.
A clone recipe found for a particular beer you like.
What ingredients give that recipe its flavour.
How different ingredients might alter that.

If you don’t have a grasp of any of these, that’s ok. What I’d do is take your favourite beer and just search for “what style of beer is xyz beer?” Then you can get to grips with that particular beer, read through its style guidelines, preferably while drinking said beer, and try to appreciate each element. Then look for beer recipes within that style to get an idea for what ingredients are the most common and you may have enough of an idea to create your own.

I will say this, expect the chase for the perfect recipe to be an iterative process. There’s plenty of experimentation to be done in all of this and only through experimentation will you really learn the effect of particular ingredients.

Ingredients Selection

With such a massive variety of ingredients available from everywhere in the world, how do you know which to choose? I started in a combination of a few ways:

Experimentation
Clone recipes
Tips and advice

With experimentation it’s common to start with a SMaSH beer, a beer made with a Single Malt and Single Hop. This allows you to hone in on the particular flavour profile of a certain ingredient or see how well a malt/hop play with one another in a beer. From this point you can then start adding more in to expand the character and complexity of the beer. Just be careful as sometimes this kind of method can lead to what’s affectionately called a ‘kitchen sink beer’ where you end up throwing so much in there in the name of complexity that it just becomes muddled and not that great.

What I did when starting to look at ingredient combinations is start back on my last point and think “What do I want to create? Where in the world is that from? What ingredients are typically common in beers from that region?” When I start from that point its quite rare that you get something that doesn’t work, even if it’s not what you originally intended.

Another solid way to go is looking at various clone recipes. Some breweries are kind enough to release their recipes on a regular basis, looking at you Black Hops you wonderful people! Some you might get if you ask nicely enough and some you might just find online from people winging it and getting something that tastes damn close. These have some merit because it gives you an idea for ingredient combinations and flavour profiles that work together really well. They often give me ideas of things I had never thought of that I can bring forward into an idea of my own.

The other thing to do is constantly ask for advice or feedback on a recipe. There’s PLENTY of online resources, forums, subreddits, Facebook groups to post a recipe and get some great feedback! Sure some people may respond with something unhelpful but the vast majority of responses will be greatly helpful I’m sure of it. If all else fails you can always drop me a line by email, or by my Facebook or Reddit profiles and I’d be happy to help you out.

Process Considerations

Ok so once you know what beer you want to brew and the ingredients you want to use to brew it you only have one thing left.

How am I actually going to brew it?

With what you now know about looking at other recipes and getting advice from fellow brewers on your ingredients selection it should be easy to also find a bit of information on things like Mash temperature, pH, boil times for hops, hop stand/whirlpool times, fermentation times and temperatures and packaging tips.

With that said, a brief dive into some of it isn’t going to hurt.

Mash Temperature/pH

A mash is a chemical reaction, it uses enzymes in the grain to convert starch to sugars. The most important ones are Alpha and Beta Amylase, they chop up the long chain starches into smaller pieces that are able to be fermented, the smallest being Beta Amylase.

As with any chemical reaction, it can only happen when certain conditions are met and happens most effectively within a very narrow range of those conditions. The temperature of and environment in which this reaction happens are critical to achieving what you need.

Typically, for a beer that finishes nice and dry but still has a bit of body you’re going to want to aim for around 65˚C (149-150˚F) and a pH of around 5.1-5.6.

Lower temperature will activate more Beta Amylase and you will end up with a very dry beer without much body, higher and it will end up rather sweet with a big body but could end up cloyingly sweet and unpleasant if it’s taken too far.

Lower pH tends to bring out some unpleasant astringent characteristics of the malt and too high tends to just lower the mash efficiency so you’re not getting as much conversion as you need for your beer.

Fortunately there’s a graphic from John Palmer’s book and website “How To Brew” that gives you an easy guide to follow.

Boil, Hop Stand & Whirlpool Times

Simply put, the boiling of hops produces bitterness through the isomerisation (fancy word for rearranging chemical form through heat) of Alpha Acids in the hop flower. How much bitterness is a function of the percentage of Alpha Acids in the hops and the temperature/length of time they are boiled for.

Traditionally, although its current relevancy and efficacy is up for debate, a boil is done for 60 minutes. This provides plenty of time for alpha acids to be isomerised, even in hop varieties that have a low AA content.

If you boil for a shorter time you tend to get more hop aroma and flavour. With the current trend of hop heavy beers like NEIPAs and other kinds of Hazy IPA its common practice, along with large dry hop additions, to use the vast majority of hops at the >10 minutes point in the boil so they retain most of their character.

To further this effect it has also become common practice to perform a hop stand or whirlpool where you add hops only when the boil has finished and in some cases cooled below the point where most isomerisation occurs (roughly 80˚C). They can be left for 10-30 most commonly as longer times do tend to start to introduce some bitterness.

Fermentation Time/Temperature

After the brew day is done, it’s time to add yeast and turn the wort into delicious beer! The biggest consideration for this is what kind of yeast are you using? Lager or Ale.

The reason for this large distinction is that Lager and Ale yeasts are totally different species (Saccharomyces Pastorianus and Saccharomyces Cerevisiae respectively) and have been bred over the years to tend to prefer very different conditions.

Lager yeasts are like a good pulled pork, best done low and slow. Typical temperature ranges and times for a lager fermentation are 8-15˚C and several weeks. Ale yeasts are more akin to cooking scallops, hotter for a short period of time. Typical temperature ranges and times for an ale fermentation are 18-23˚C and are usually done in a week or two.

There are of course several exceptions to these rules, Californian lager yeasts that are originally harvested from the same strain as Anchor brewing’s Steam Ale are technically a lager yeast but fermented at ale temperatures. In the world of Ales you have Saison or farmhouse strains that can be comfortable up to the high 20’s or in the case of Kveik strains, up to a dizzying height of over 36˚C in some cases!

The point is, check out the environment that your yeast is going to be most comfortable in and try your best to provide that. Your yeast will thank you for it and you’ll thank them for the delicious beer they will create.

Packaging Tips

There’s just two aspects to this really, are you Kegging or are you Bottling?

If you’re kegging then you can find several carbonation charts like the one below that will help you find the right pressure to carbonate your beer at for a given temperature. From here, just keep it at that temperature and pressure and enjoy some delicious and consistent beer.

Credit – Brülosophy, units ˚F (side), PSI (top), volumes of CO2 (values in middle of table)

NOTE ON ACTUAL PACKAGING PROCESS:

It’s vital when packaging to try and minimise oxygen pickup in the finished beer. Oxygen can turn a delicious beer into something that is the same thing dialled down to 50%, muting hop flavour and giving the malt profile a stale, papery taste. Imagine a beer that tastes how an old book smells, not great.

That’s done if you’re kegging by doing a closed transfer if possible. This is done by connecting the gas out post back to the airlock of your fermenter and just siting the keg underneath the fermenter to let gravity do its thing. When carbonating a keg you can either do what Brülosophy calls the “set and forget” method, the “crank and shake” or the “burst carbonation” method. Each provides different levels of risk and reward but it’s worth doing a read up on each. I use a modified crank and shake method where I will crank up the pressure to around 40 PSI (270 kPa), give the keg a little shake then turn the pressure of and shake it (while still connected to the regulator) until it moves down to as low as it will go, repeat until its lowest point gets close to your desired serving pressure. I do it this way to reduce the risk of overcarbonation.

If bottling I’d recommend making sure you either purge the top with CO2 or refermenting in the bottle with a small dose of sugar so the remaining yeast consumes the remaining oxygen as part of the process.

That’s all folks! Hopefully that satisfies the previous request for a version of that post that is a little bit more brief. The original post will stay up and I’ll be adding more content soon with the possibility of continuing some previous series’ of posts as well as some interesting collaborations from people on beer styles, reviews and proper tasting and sensory techniques.

Bye for now until next time.

Sean

Intro to Recipe Creation

Introduction

Hi all, this post is essentially the culmination of all previous posts on process and ingredients. It ties all of these things in together to form a recipe.

I’ll leave all the details for the main section of the post but I’ll at least tell you that I’ll be covering:

Deciding when to try your own recipe
Brewing to a style
Ingredients Selection
Process considerations
Documenting your recipes for adaptation later

For now I’ll get on with letting you know what else I’ve been up to…

Last Week(s) in New Beerginnings

Well this is a little awkward isn’t it? I’ve been gone for a bloody long time! I have had to take some time off for reasons I’ll explain in a different post (more on that later) but I’m back now and plan on updating and posting whenever time permits. One thing I would say is if anyone has a topic they’d like to share by all means please hit me up and we can write a post on it to keep more and more contribution happening and put out more regular content.

But for now, let’s get down to business.

Recipe Creation

Something that I find so appealing about this hobby is that it’s yours to make it what you want it to be. By this I mean that if you’re happy with a hopped extract kit like Coopers and fermenting in a plastic bucket with water from your garden hose, great! If you want to build a 3-Tier HERMS system, mill your own grain and use RO filtered water to build a water profile from the ground up, then that’s just as good.

No matter what you do, as long as you’re happy with the beer you produce, that’s all that matters!

At some point in the journey however, many if not most brewers toy with the idea of brewing something they can truly call their own. This often means making their own recipe.

It may sound simple but creating your own recipe from scratch can be incredibly daunting. How do you decide what to add, how much do you add, is the recipe in line with style and do I even care about that?

There has to be a starting point to this process or else it’s easy to get bogged down in questions. My advice is to just pick a point and go with it…

Starting Point

My own starting point that I typically use is what beer I feel like at that particular moment or something I’ve wanted to try. It’s important to decide on something that you already like and in the early days, even go for a clone of a commercial beer so you have a frame of reference for what the ingredients do.

For your first recipe you could decide to go simple and work on a SMaSH beer (Single Malt and Single Hop) for the sake of ease. This takes out of the equation the trouble of blending different ingredients and you can generally still get a tasty tasty beer. It also doubles as a great testing ground for ingredients allowing you to see what a certain grain or hop does without having other things getting in the way of its flavour, perfect for new brewers figuring out what they do and don’t like.

As your confidence grows you can start to add other ingredients to get more depth of flavour. SMaSH beers can tend to be very simple and one-dimensional and you’ll eventually want to get other things in there so you can increase flavour, colour, head retention etc.

Above all else, at some point you have to just commit and start brewing. Using software can help massively as you can compare your changes to a style guideline to reassure you in your decisions.

Style or No Style?

Speaking of style, this can be an important thing to consider when starting to design your own recipes. Some use it as a basis for the recipe and design the entire beer according to a style. Others design a recipe and fit it to a style afterwards.

For your first recipe, or even your first few, I would generally brew to a style.

For those of you thinking “I want to make my own beer! I don’t want to be constrained to a style!” I totally get it, it’s important to feel good about the beer you’re making and take ownership for it.

This said, the reason I recommend it is that it gives a very solid foundation for you to start building recipes from. Some styles even have ingredient recommendations for you.

Ingredients Selection

Obviously the first step in actual recipe design after deciding what you want to brew is beginning to add ingredients. Here is where you start to decide on the flavours, combinations and quantities that you would like to get your beer just right.

Malt

Malt in most recipes can be split into two sections, base malts and specialty malts.

The base malts are exactly that, your base. They form the majority of fermentable sugars in the beer as well as contributing other important components to aid head retention, mouthfeel etc. They also provide some colour although the amount may be somewhat limited if there are high amounts of specialty grain being added for colour adjustment.

Specialty grains are added to give beer an extra depth of flavour and colour. Although there are some that are added with specific goals in mind, like Carapils for body and head retention or acidulated malt to adjust mash pH, most specialty malts adjust colour and body/sweetness.

How much of what specialty malt you add is totally up to you but I would advise to keep it simple at first, very few recipes ever call for 10 different malts and in many cases you can get away with doing the same thing with only 3-4. Choosing the right malts in the right ratios is far more important in terms of complexity than chucking many different malts in together.

On the topic of what malt to add for a particular beer, I would remember that although many of the sugars will get fermented out, they are not the only thing that forms the taste component of malt (for a more in-depth look at this, check out the Malt post in our ingredients series).

The other things that add flavour are generally quite characteristic of a particular malt. So adding US 2-row barley in an English bitter will not be the same as using proper English grown, floor malted Maris Otter.

Whenever possible, always try to stick to a malt that is correct for the style/origin of the beer you are wanting to produce.

But as with anything, there can always be exceptions to the rule so I would suggest brewing the same beer using local ingredients vs that same ingredient from a maltster from that region.

For example a Vienna lager using either Gladfield (New Zealand) or Weyermann (German) malts. For me, if I can get the beer I want and I feel it’s true to style, I won’t care if I’m using a ‘traditional’ malt or not.

Hops

Hops are one of the biggest contributors to flavour and aroma in popular modern craft beers. They can contribute an incredible range of flavours as well as effects in the beer, some desired, some not.

Deciding on what hops to use can be a daunting task. What should I use, is it true to style, if I use more than one will they work together? All of these questions often plague the minds of brewers that have just started experimenting with recipe creation.

In this section I’m going to cover:

Bittering Hops
Flavour and Aroma Hops
Noble, American, New World and Pacific Hops
Hop Combinations
Hop effects in beer
Hop ageing and planning for longevity

For any more in depth content, feel free to head to the ingredients series post on Hops.

Bittering Hops:

This is the prime purpose of hops, something bitter to counteract the sweetness of the malt. It provides balance to the beer but along the way brewers discovered that certain hops did this better than others, these are commonly called bittering hops. They generally have a high alpha acid content and a neutral flavour profile. This is ideal for a few reasons:
– Firstly you use less material to get the same amount of bitterness. This saves money and saves on hop material being in your beer that you need to somehow remove so it doesn’t start to contribute vegetal flavours.
– Secondly no unwanted flavours are contributed to the beer and its left very clean tasting. For example a lager or cream ale where clean, easy drinkability is desired.
Due to their nature, intended use and given how hops achieve bitterness (via conversion of alpha acids into iso-alpha acids in the boil) these hops are generally added at the beginning, if not before any other hops used in the boil.

Some examples of classic Bittering Hops are:

Magnum
Columbus
Warrior
Simcoe

Flavour and Aroma Hops:

With the continued popularity of styles like pale ale and ipa (among others), this is now a major focus area of brewers in choosing their hops. Hops in this category are praised for having a high concentration of oils that produce a wide variety of flavours when present in beer. These hop oils can be fairly volatile so additions in the boil are generally later or even afterwards in a ‘whirlpool’ or ‘Hop stand’ addition so as not to remove most of the oils as well as liberally dry hopping with complex combinations of hops to help flavours develop.
Brewers are careful in choosing these hops as they can make or break a beer depending on how much is used, when they’re used and in what combinations.

Some examples of popular Flavour and Aroma Hops are:

“C” Hops (Cascade, Centennial, Citra, Chinook etc)
Mosaic
Galaxy
Simcoe (you’ll notice this is in the bittering section as well, it can be used for both very effectively)

From here we start to refer to groups of hops according to the region in which they are grown. Hops from certain regions are often grown their due to their suitability to that climate so can have a distinctive flavour or style. These hops are typically broken down into a few categories:

Noble, American, and New World Hops:

Noble Hops: From various places in Europe, noble hops are traditional styles of hops that often have flavours ranging from Earthy and Spicy to Floral and Fruity.

American Hops: Perhaps the widest range of hops in terms of flavour and aroma. Everything from earthy or fruity to pine/resin or spicy. Generally grown in large crops in the northwestern states (Washington, Oregon, Idaho). Pick carefully to ensure the hops you’re choosing will compliment each other since there’s such a wide variety.

New World Hops: Generally varieties that originated in The Oceanic region (Australia/New Zealand). A large proportion of these hops exhibit tropical fruit or citrus flavours and make for a wonderfully light and fruity beer.

Yeast

The biggest decisions with yeast are generally are you making a lager or an ale and what temperature are you fermenting at? From there you can separate yourself out into two main branches, ale and lager yeast.

Generally, with a few exceptions on each side, lager strains are fermented cooler (10-15˚C) and have a clean flavour profile while ale strains are fermented warmer (16-25˚C) and have a wider variety of flavours between strains.

The yeast strain you choose might follow a style guideline (Expressive German Ale strain for a Hefeweizen for example) or compliment a desired flavour in the beer (Fruity esters in a fruit-forward ale). It might be to achieve the cleanest flavour possible (Clean American ale or clean German lager strain) or even to achieve a process-related goal (such as a warm-fermented Kveik strain for a faster fermentation time).

The only other consideration is pitching rate, which should be around 6 million cells per ml or around 140 billion cells for your average 23l brew. IMPORTANT: if it has a high original gravity (above 1.050 or so) or is cold-fermented then use double or triple the amount of yeast as standard as it will respectively either physically need more yeast to metabolise the sugars or will just work slower so may stall.

Just make sure what you have is in date, stored cold until you use it and will exhibit the flavours you want. Bear in mind

Water

Honestly, until you’re familiar with the other aspects of the process and ingredients, this is the last thing to obsess over or worry about.

With that little disclaimer out of the way, getting water right can have a great impact on your beer if you’re looking to get a bit more flavour control in that last 5% of a recipe. It can make a good beer great or make it seem a bit flat (flavour-wise not carbonation) if it’s off. What it won’t do is make a bad beer good. Which is why I say to look at it once you’ve done everything else.

The most important thing to remember is to know your water profile as it currently stands, if you don’t know that then it’s like figuring out how to read a map without knowing your starting point. Chances are you won’t end up where you want to be no matter the map.

You can get your water profile usually from your local water authority, government body or government contracted company (e.g. Urban Utilities here if you’re in Brisbane)

Specialty Ingredients

These will really depend on what you want to achieve with your beer, I highly suggest checking out the Specialty ingredients post for this area as it is a very broad area that is really deserving of its own post. The one thing I’ll add in this section though is that specialty ingredients can be whatever you want them to be, from chocolate and fruit to chillies and spices. If it tastes good, you can put it in beer, season how you would a meal. A good suggestion for how long to leave things in or how much to put in is get one bottle of a similar base beer you plan to brew and add enough specialty ingredients for just that one bottle. Then you can scale up to the amount needed for a full scale batch.

Process Decisions

This can be a decision almost as important as ingredients. The variables you want to control that are purely process-related are usually:

Mash temperature
Mash pH
Mash steps/length
Boil length
Whirlpool
To cool or not to cool
Pitch and fermentation temperature
Cold crash
Packaging & serving

Mash temperature is a fairly simple one, it directly correlates with which enzymes are currently active within the grain to help convert starch into sugars. In the graphic below there are many different mash temperatures and rests, for the most part nowadays you are looking for Beta and Alpha Amylase enzymes which are directly responsible for breaking down the longer chain starches into simpler sugars. Before malting had advanced to the level of control we have in modern times the brewer had to use other mash temperatures in a series of steps to help break down different parts of the grain to allow a full conversion of starch to sugar. Generally 55-65˚C is your Beta Amylase which gives a lot of super fermentable sugars for a dryer beer with a thin body. Around 70˚C give or take a few degrees is your Alpha Amylase which gives some fermentable sugars but lots of unfermentable ones for a sweeter beer with a fuller mouthfeel. Most people aim somewhere in the middle or towards the upper end of the Beta Amylase range (65˚C) to try and get at the best of both worlds with some Beta Amylase working overtime just before it starts to get too hot and denature and some slower-working Alpha Amylase in the background for a bit of body.

Image Credit: John Palmer, How to Brew. Source: http://howtobrew.com/book/section-3/how-the-mash-works/mashing-defined

Because the mash is a chemical reaction, it depends not only on temperature but also pH or how acidic the solution is in which the enzymes are working. The graphic above shows two axes, temperature in the vertical axis and pH in the horizontal axis. The ideal pH range for the enzymes to work in is a pH of 5.1 to 5.5. This seems quite narrow but is easy to adjust with a pH meter and some lactic acid. Water calculators like the ones mentioned above often have a mash pH value and it’s important to remember that this is only predictive and depends on the values that you put into it.

Mash length is totally determined by how much starch is left to convert to sugars. There’s two methods of determining this, either leave it for a really long time (usual convention is an hour) or measure and see when it’s done to save time. You can test for this conversion using any form of iodine, iodine turns black in the presence of starch, take a teaspoon of liquid from your mash, drop some iodine into it, if it turns pitch black, there’s still starch left, leave it a little longer. If it stays the reddish-brown colour then you’re good to go!The boil length you choose is critical for three things, sterilising the wort, boiling off and getting rid of any compounds that can cause off-flavours and boiling hops to isomerise (fancy word for change the structure of) alpha acids to add bitterness to the beer.In terms of sterilising the wort that takes place in the first few minutes (general guidelines for sterilising a liquid for consumption is a vigorous boil for at least 10 minutes).Isomerisation of hop Alpha Acids begins almost immediately and will continue until no more remain. For the most part, it is a fairly inefficient process and the rate of extraction depends on many factors from wort composition, boil vigour, the hop you’re using, the particular year or crop of that hop etc so there really isn’t a good way to predict it for every beer. For this reason, you want to boil for a longer time that seems reasonable to isomerise the alpha acids, most people choose their Bittering addition of hops to be put in at the 1 hour mark.

The conversion of compounds that are precursors to off flavours is another important part of boiling, these include SMM (S-Methyl Methionine), a precursor to DMS (Dimethyl Sulphide) which gives nasty overcooked vegetables/corn flavours or precursors for Diacetyl. Again the length of the boil required to fully eject these compounds depends on the malt used and the vigour of the boil but the general rule is the lighter the base malt, the longer the boil. So if doing a single malt Pilsner with a traditional German or Czech Pilsner malt then you’d boil a little longer than the 1 hour (I do 75 minutes but some go as long as 90 minutes or even 2 hours!) whereas if you’re doing something from a simple American or British ale malt then you would likely be fine with the typical 60 minute boil.

After the boil typically comes cooling but just before we get there we’ll pass over whether or not to use any hops in the whirlpool phase. What is a whirlpool phase and why do we do it?

Whirlpooling, as do many habits/processes from home brewing, has its roots in commercial brewing. A strong current would be pumped through the wort (via a pump in the boil kettle) to help the hops collect in a cone in the middle. The wort would then be drawn off from the side, making for a clearer wort going into the fermenter.

Beyond this reason though, it presents another opportunity to add hops to get flavour and aroma with very little bitterness. Useful for hoppy beers like IPAs or NEIPAs that are typically made with lots of layered hop flavours and in the case of the NEIPA, even moreso while having less bitterness than their west coast counterparts. It is typically done for 20-30 minutes on the home-brew scale once the wort reaches about 80˚C so the heat is less likely to isomerise the Alpha Acids and increase bitterness.

Finally we’re onto cooling, from here on out we need to be very careful to ensure everything is cleaned and sanitised properly as we can’t rely on the heat of the wort sterilising anything. But the question is, do you cool or not? With the rise of popularity in the no-chill method, not cooling is now the…..coolest new way. The no chill method basically involves putting your hot wort (after the whirlpool if you’ve done one) into a plastic water storage container (a cube) filled right up to the brim and sealed. The hot wort serves to sterilise the cube and filling it right up to the brim reduces the risk of over-exposure to oxygen. Here’s a quick pros and cons list, I’ll try and make it so that the pros for cooling are a direct con for doing it the no chill way and vice versa for cons:

Cooling Pros

No unintentional isomerisation of Alpha Acids
Gets your wort into the fermenter and ready to pitch quicker
Allows any residual hot break time to cool and drop to the bottom, resulting in a clearer final beer (this one is just from my own experience of both methods)

Cooling Cons

Makes the brew day a little longer
More stuff to clean
Doesn’t allow for storage of wort for a later date (no chill cubes can generally be stored for weeks/months before using depending on the beer)

Pitching and fermentation temperature are other important factors to consider and will largely depend on what yeast you are using. Some want to be the whole temperature the whole way through whereas others like to be pitched warm and allowed to naturally cool to the final fermentation temperature or have a “diacetyl rest” at the end where the temperature is increased for the last few days or even hours of fermentation to ensure any fermentation byproducts have been cleaned up by the yeast. The best advice here is to research your yeast and experiment with it over time.

For example the general temperature people tend use for US-05 or other American ale strains is around 18-19˚C, I always had a flavour in there that I didn’t like when I used it so I read up on it and saw some people reporting a peach/stonefruit flavour being prominent when used at lower temperatures. I raised my temp to 21˚C to get away from that and the problem was gone. Researching your yeast will pay dividends in the end, trust me.

After fermentation it’s time to get your beer clear and ready for packaging. The first step in this is commonly to do what’s known as a cold crash by dropping the temperature rapidly (as quick as you can really) to as low as you dare to go and leave it there for 3 days or so. This reduces the amount of particles the beer can hold in suspension as cold liquids, you may remember from high school science class, aren’t as effective at holding particles in suspension or solution. But how low can you go? Remarkably, because of the alcohol content its freezing point is generally below 0˚C so for most standard strength beers or higher you can usually go to 0˚C pretty safely but if you don’t trust your system not to accidentally freeze it or you’re doing a brew that’s lower abv (I’d say 3.5% or lower) then you can play it safe and set it to 1-2˚C. I usually go 0.5-1˚C. The lower you go the quicker it will happen so it becomes a balance of getting a clear beer slowly and safely or quickly and running the risk of creating an accidental Eisbock!

The only thing to watch out for is that gasses expand and contract MUCH more than liquids so you will create negative pressure in your fermenter as it cools which will suck air in and possibly oxidise your beer. A good way to get around this is put a balloon in place of the airlock in the last couple of days of fermentation to capture some natural co2. This will then be sucked back in when you cool everything down instead of sucking in air.

Now that it’s nice and cold, it’s time to get your beer into a vessel it can be served out of. If bottling make sure you use a bottle priming calculator that factors in the bottling temperature as the gas will expand as it warms and you might create too much pressure and either over-carbonate your beer or create some bottle bombs! If you’re legging you’re fine, just transfer, attach your gas and you’re good to go!

Documentation

Something I’ve found SUPER useful is taking notes if I did something during the process that isn’t explicitly stated or is different from what’s written in the recipe.

I also inevitably change every recipe after I brew it to adjust it for the next time and constantly try to improve it. so having a total list of every change you’ve ever made and on what date should give you a running indication of what’s working and how a recipe has evolved over time. I brewed my Scottish Heavy recipe recently and noticed it was markedly different from last time and not in a great way, it was darker but didn’t have the malty richness that the first one had. I looked back over my notes and saw the changes had actually come from a friend suggesting changes, I removed those changes to revert back to my original recipe and it was right back where I wanted it to be. If I hadn’t kept a note of everything on the date a change was made I wouldn’t have been able to do that so accurately. It really adds an element of repeatability and extra control to your brews.

Conclusion

Wow that was a big one! I’ll keep this short and sweet now as if you’ve made it this far you’ve done well!

I’m looking at this post as both the big comeback of more regular posts as well as the kind of capstone to the ingredients series of posts and precursor to an upcoming series of posts where we dig into various aspects of the process and some techniques.

Next post however I’m going to be sharing a bit about the journey I’ve been on in the last however long it is since I last wrote a post. It reveals an exciting project as well as information you may be able to use if you ever wanted to go down the same road I’ll be travelling.

Bye for now, all the best,

Sean

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Professional Series #1 LHBS

Hi all,

I’m going to start a new series and update whenever I can. It will likely be a short series as it depends on the availability or willingness of others to be interviewed by yours truly! I am in contact with several people in various areas of the beer industry, both home and commercial and will update with a new post whenever I can.

Last Week in New Beerginnings

Last week I feel was fairly well documented in my previous post where I brewed a stout for Christmas with a little bit of a spacey twist.

Now onto this weeks content…

Professional Series #1 LHBS

In this series I’m going to be posting logs of some interviews I’ve done with various people in the beer industry. I hope to gain some insight to their role and how it relates to, or helps us home brewers.

First up, your friendly local home brew store or LHBS. These guys are the face of the industry that we would see most often, we go to them for ingredients, equipment and advice in times of joy and panic!

In this post I’m interviewing Steve, the owner of Hoppy Days Brewing Supplies, if you’ve read more than one of my posts you’ll know how much of a promoter I am of these guys. Wherever I can I use links to their website in hopes of supporting them because I think they’re the best home brew shop around. They not only service local brewers but, as you’ll see in a moment, a large online community of brewers as well. They are there for advice on equipment and ingredients as well as helping troubleshoot brews that may be going down the wrong path. Steve has got me out of hot water more than once! They’re not an official sponsor of this blog but they may as well be with the amount that I recommend them! I’m keen to work something out if you are Steve!

My advice is contact these guys, start a relationship and order through them. The lengths they’ll go to to help is truly outstanding. If this isn’t an option for you, I urge you to find a home brew store in your area and do the same thing, that’s what they’re there for.

Now onto the interview. For this one I sent Steve a list of questions and and pasting his responses in here, so thanks Steve for doing some of my writing for me! I’ll owe you a beer!

How long have you been running the store?

We just had our 4th birthday just over 3 years from my residential property & since in the Virginia store.

What made you start it up?

After starting all grain brewing we saw an opportunity in the market to bring quality ingredients at an affordable price to the Brisbane Northside.

What’s your favourite part about the business/industry?

Meeting people from all walks of life that enjoy the craft, especially when they drop a beer in for us to review & enjoy!

What’s the biggest change in the business you’ve had so far since starting?

The amount of products in the market, from ingredients to equipment there’s always something new around the corner.

Is there any aspect to the shop that you didn’t expect to encounter before starting up?

The amount of women now getting into brewing seems to have evolved over the past year. Really good to see.

What are your day to day tasks?

As a director I pretty much do everything. Mornings generally sending out online orders, attending to walk in customers, managing accounts, stock control/ordering, website input/updates along with social media, packaging of goods.

How much of your job is shop/product or sales related and how much is advice?

I’d say 75% Sales, 25% advice.

What questions are the most common?

We get a lot of questions about how to clone certain popular beers! Both recipe and process related questions are common.

Fermentation questions, how long, how to tell when it’s done, is this infected etc the same ones that are often posted online!

What do I need to do to make beer?

The range of questions can be vary broad.

What’s your top few bits of advice for brewers? The “get these few things right to really up your beer game” types of tips?

First thing is to sort out your fermentation – temp control, space, sanitation etc

Baby steps keep it simple with recipes to start, then build from there.

Once process is understood, then you can really start to look at your water quality/additions, reading mash pH etc. But get your process for fermentation and cleaning down pat first.

Who is your average home brewer? Is there a demographic that’s more prevalent than another?

Quite broad, our youngest brewer is 18 & our oldest 96. The biggest area of growth recently has been in the 20-40 age bracket of men in trades/miners. We get lots of guys with young families.

Have you seen this change over time?

Yes the demographic will keep changing as more people enjoy craft beer & want to dabble in making their own.

Would you say most of your business is local or online? Have seen or do you expect this to shift?

75/25 online/local. I think this will stay pretty similar as people are time poor so online shopping is increasing. Approx half of our online orders go outside Brisbane & a lot interstate.

Any changes in brewing trends you’ve seen? In terms of popular styles/techniques/equipment etc

Styles are always quite seasonal, with more fuller bodied beers / darker styles in winter, light easy drinking in the warmer months.

With the affordability of all grain equipment especially in the last 12 months people are more willing or keen on getting straight into it where previously they would do kit & kilo or partial mash for a while and upgrade over time. Fresh Wort Kits such as the ones from All In Brewing Co. have also become popular with new brewers & time poor people to knock out a quick brew.

There is a trend towards people wanting to always make better beer so the more knowledge they get & get process right this will improve across the board.

Have you ever considered going down the road of brewing classes/workshops as well as the shop?

Yes this is something we have definitely considered! At present we are concentrating on the growth of our business to support our customers. There is absolutely a market for it but there are varied levels of expertise available, if we decided to do something like this we would be involving industry professionals.

What advice would you give new brewers to go and learn as much as they can and get familiar with some resources?

Do lots of research. The net is your biggest asset (with wonderful blogs like that New Beerginnings guy! Edit definitely not made by Sean!) Work out how much time & funds you want to invest in crafting your own product.

Home brew clubs are a good resource for brewers of all levels.

Ask lots of questions, if you have mates that brew ask to come along & help out.

Always bring beers.

Cheers Steve

Thanks for joining us this week, I hope it was reasonably informative for you and hope that future posts in this series will feature a brewer to give you guys some tips as well!

Cheers for now,

Sean

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