Like yesterday, I’ve still got a lot of video left to render here — about 45 minutes left on this one section of video — so I thought I’d blog about the brewing process that I started yesterday evening and give kind of an overview of the process and pass along some of my thoughts (for what they’re worth).

The brewing of beer essentially can be boiled down to three stages: brewing, fermentation, and bottling. Four if you include the consumption of said beer.

If you’ve got a starter kit of some sorts and have never brewed before (like me), you’re going to want to set aside about five hours for the brewing stage — that includes your prep time, the actual brewing and clean-up. The last step is quite important if you want your significant other (and king/queen of the kitchen) to remain happy with you and allow you to brew again in the future.

Prepping for Brewing

Make sure you’ve got all the ingredients and equipment you’ll need for getting started. There’s nothing worse than realizing you’ve forgotten something — like yeast. For further information on what you need, go to your local brew supply store or visit a cool place like northernbrewer.com — they’re local here to the Twin Cities and have everything you need (and more) to get started.

Before you begin… you have to prep the yeast first. Remove your Wyeast “smack pack” from the refrigerator and lightly smack the pack — this breaks a little bubble inside the packet that releases nutrients and other goodies to help activate the yeast and get them ready to do their thing. When you’ve broken the INNER bubble (not the packet itself), kneed the mixture together and allow the bag to sit at room temperature (70 to 80 F) for 1 to three hours. You can do it up to 24 hours in advance, but who can wait that long??

After the packet has incubated it’s going to look like it’s ready to burst like in the photo. It expands and fills the packet with gas. Now you’re ready to begin.

Mixing & Boiling the Wort

Fill a stock pot (I suggest a 16 quart stainless steel pot — no LESS than 12 quarts though) with a gallon and a half of good drinking water and begin to heat it up on the stove — it’s just like coffee… your beer will only be as good as the water you use. Take the specialty grains that came in your packet (probably in a plastic ziplock-style bag) and place them in the muslin bag that came with your kit. Tie the muslin in a knot and steep the grains for 15 minutes or once the water reaches 170 degrees F. Do not boil the specialty grains.

Once the temperature of the stock has reached boiling, begin adding the malt extract syrup to the mixture. The instructions said to remove the pot to stop the boiling process and then add in the malt, but inherently the water will stop boiling when you add the malt anyway. So I just stirred the syrup in, leaving it on the stove. At this point you’ve got what’s called “wort”. It’s essentially unfermented beer. It sure isn’t going to taste good, as per my previous post about yeast — the yeast contributes quite a bit to the brewing process.

Now at this point you move to the hopping portion of brewing. Your kit will come with some specialty hops that have to be added to the boil at certain stages specified in the kit. They’re usually referenced by a minute marker (e.g. “60 minutes”, “30 minutes”, “1 minute” were the markers for mine). With my mixture, I put the first set of hops in right away (after dissolving the malt). 30 minutes later I then put in the next set of hops, and then at the last minute of the boiling stage I put in the final hops.

Be VERY careful not to let the mixture boil over or you’re going to have an absolute mess on your hands — trust me on this one. I thought it better to just leave the lid off the stock pot to let the steam escape. I had one boilover and let’s just say that there’s singed wort that will probably never come off the stove.

Chill the Wort

By the time I was done boiling the wort, I had been at this for about 2 and a half to three hours. When you’ve finished boiling the hops in, remove it from the stove carefully and chill the wort in an ice/water bath. Now if you’re a resourceful plugger of the Minnesotan variety, you say to yourself, “self… we need not prepare a cold water bath in the middle of winter”. So instead I brought the covered pot outside to cool in the snow. I left the cover open just enough to let some steam out and chill quicker. If you can get that temperature down to 100 degrees F within 20 minutes, you’re doing good.

While you’re chilling the wort, you need to sanitize the primary fermenting bucket, the fermenting lock (the s-shaped tube and cap), and anything else the wort is going to come in contact with from this point out. See the instructions for sanitation specifics. I used the One Step solution from Northern Brewer, a solution that doesn’t require rinsing and sanitizes an item in one to two minutes. Pretty cool stuff.

After you’ve sanitized the goods, put in a tablespoon of the drinking water in the fermentation lock so that it looks like this photo. Mine had two lines on there, which served as a great guide for how much you needed. The fermentation lock is basically a one-way valve that allows air to get out but not in. You’ll use this later on to help see activity in the fermentation process.

I checked on my wort from time to time and it took about 20 to 30 minutes to get it down to around 85 degrees — we’re ready to pour now. Before we pour the chilled wort mixture into our fermentation bucket (see photo below), pour in 2 and a half gallons of purified drinking water.

Mixing it all together

Once you’ve got the drinking water poured into the primary fermenter, carefully pour in the wort into the primary fermenter. I kept the lid on and slid it up just a little bit — enough to allow the wort to carefully pour into the bucket. This is expensive stuff, so you don’t want to lose any if you can help it.

This should bring your mixture to about 4 and a half gallons. You want to add a bit more of the water to bring it up to five gallons.

Before you pitch the yeast, sanitize both the yeast bag and the scissors you’re going to cut it open with. Personally, I did my sanitizing earlier when I sanitized the other items — so I was good to go. Hold the bag vertically and cut a small corner opening and carefully pour the yeast into the dilluted wort mixture. Now we’re ready for some magic!

Seal and Store

Bring the bucket to the floor and place the lid (with the fermentation lock affixed in the release hole of the lid) firmly onto the bucket. Mine took a lot of persuasion to get that thing to lock into place, so don’t be surprised if you have to put a little body weight into it.

Once the bucket is sealed and ready to go, store it someplace cool, but not too cold. Most ales ferment best from 60 to 70 degrees F while lagers do better at 46 to 58 degrees F. For the specific temperatures for your kit, refer to the Wyeast packet. Mine is being stored at a moderately cozy temperature of 68 degrees.

From this point it moves onto the fermentation process. Over the next 24 to 48 hours there is what’s called a lag phase, which is the amount of time before fermentation actually begins. This varies on the freshness of the yeast and the strength of the beer that you’re brewing. Lagers and stronger beers can take longer, but I think mine will be ready within the 48 hours. I’ll blog more about the fermentation process in the days to come.

December 29, 2005, 11:31 am

Filed under: Mmm...Beer

2 Comments »

1. Jamison said,

   December 29, 2005 @ 12:05 pm

   Wow…. That’s quite a process! I hope it comes out good in the end.

   Sure makes the multiple steps of brewing french press coffee seem pretty miniscule

2. Michael said,

   December 29, 2005 @ 12:43 pm

   Yeah, I just hope I didn’t screw it up. When I was chilling the wort, I got a little bit of tap water into the wort while it was about 150 - 160 degrees. I don’t think it’ll drastically ruin it, but tap water isn’t exactly a wort’s best friend either.

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