The Brewing Process: What Do I Want?

I'm going to delve a little deeper into homebrewing for a bunch of posts on this blog, and, in particular, my process of homebrewing from beginning to end.  This is going to involve some technical posts about the science of brewing, some philosophical posts about the art of brewing, and probably some posts about the stupidity of brewing.  These are all things I think about, sometimes in depth and sometimes very superficially, when I go through my brewing process.


So without further ado, Part One of The Brewing Process.


What kind of beer do I want?

At a bar, this is an easy question to answer.  (The answer is Surly Furious.)

However, in the context of brewing, that is not as trivial of a question as it may appear.

The question gets even more important if you are brewing commercially and having to take market saturation, differentiation, and seasonal consumer tastes into account.  (Ever try and sell a hefeweizen in late fall?)  However, this is a focus on homebrewing best practices with a particular emphasis on my process, so I will skip all that professional stuff other than to say it's really hard to figure out what to brew as a pro.  So props to them.

There are a few things you need to remember when deciding what to brew:  personal preference, volumes, and time.  Obviously the most important thing is personal preference.  If you don't like roasty beers, don't brew a roasty beer.  That is the beauty of being a homebrewer; you get to brew what YOU want, not what anyone else wants.

Think about what you have had recently at your local pub, or brought home from the liquor store.  Think about what traits you liked from those beers, and what you wanted more of.  Think about what you didn't get from those beers you had.  At this stage in my brewing process, I deliberately avoid thinking in terms of styles, and think instead of flavors and priorities.  Styles can come later when you are designing your recipe.  I come up with a few adjectives for what I want my beer to be, and roll them around in my head for a while.  For a little help with this, I sometimes take a peek at the BJCP checklist for judging homebrew.  Be warned though.  There are some adjectives that you do NOT want in your beer.  Thankfully, most of those are labeled Flaws on the sheet, but just be careful. 

Next is volume.  Remember, you are brewing 5 (10, or 20) gallons of the stuff.  That smoked beer you had a pint of at the local pub might be awesome, but do you really see yourself drinking 40 pints of the stuff? 

Finally, there is time.  The 13% ABV mega beer you are thinking about will take at least 6 months to mellow to the point where you can drink it.  And a normal beer still takes a few weeks to ferment, then time to clear and carbonate.  So if you have a taste for a big dark sipping beer to keep you warm in the cold winter but it will be March before you get a chance to brew it, it may be a good idea just to buy a 6 pack of a commercial example of that and brew something you are more likely to drink when the weather gets warmer by the time the beer is done.  Also, don't forget that it takes time to go through all 5 gallons of the beer.

Once you have an idea of what you want, it is time to put it on paper and start making a recipe.  Stay tuned for part two!

Cheers. Na zdrowie. Gun bae.

Hop Taste Testing

Ever drink a brew and go "Man...What is that hop? Is that Cascade? Centennial?"

I do, and it bugs the crap out of me sometimes. So I decided to brew some "single" hop beers (I'll explain the quotation marks in a sec...) with the same base recipe to help me determine the flavor profiles of a bunch of different hops.

The base recipe I started with is for a plain jane American Pale Ale:

10 lbs Pale 2 row (American)
1 lb Crystal 40
0.5 lbs Flaked Wheat

With my typical 69% efficiency, that brings me to a 1.052 OG.  Looking at the style guide for APAs (http://www.bjcp.org/2008styles/style10.php#1a), I am right in the middle for OG, and maybe a little light on color, but still well to style. The recipe is simple, and easy to duplicate. I mash at about 150 dF to keep the beer on the dry side. The lack of residual sweetness should help the hop flavors come out a bit more.

Now for the hops. 35 IBUs is near the middle of the range in the style guide.  I chose that number because it's a nice round number (The true middle of the IBU range would be 37.5), and should be easy to reproduce.  However, Centennial at 10% alpha acid and Cascade at 5% AA have very different bittering properties. In order to both cut down on the amount of vegetal matter in my kettle and fermentor and keep the flavor and aromas as consistent as possible, I decided to hold both the weights of my hops and the IBUs as constant as I can.

This is where the quotation marks at the beginning of the post come into play. I will make hop additions to the beer of 1 oz at 15 min, 5 min, and flameout regardless of the AA of the hop. From there, I will determine the IBUs that I need to add as bittering, and toss in some Magnum at 60 min to cover the difference. I use Magnum because a) I have a lot of it and b) it is a very unobtrusive bittering hop, and should stay out of the way to let the flavor and aroma hops shine through.

Use the same yeast for all the brews, and attempt to keep the temps the same and conditions the same. I use California Ale yeast (WLP001 from White Labs) because it's clean, and doesn't get a lot of esters in the way of the hop flavor.  I always use a starter for beers above 1.040, and using the Yeast Pitching Rate Calculator on MrMalty.com is your best bet.

So for my first test APA, I used the perennial favorite:  Cascade.
Here's what my BeerSmith printout looked like:

BeerSmith Recipe Printout - http://www.beersmith.com
Recipe: Base APA
Brewer: Andrew Goode
Asst Brewer:
Style: American Pale Ale
TYPE: All Grain
Taste: (35.0)  Great aroma.  Not sure if I like the flavor portion of the hop character coming from Cascades.  Great head retention.

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Batch Size: 5.50 gal    
Boil Size: 6.50 gal
Estimated OG: 1.052 SG
Estimated Color: 7.8 SRM
Estimated IBU: 35.1 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 69.00 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:

-----------

10.00 lb      Pale Malt (2 Row) US        (2.0 SRM)  86.96%
1.00 lb       Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (40.0 SRM)   8.70%
0.50 lb       Wheat, Flaked               (1.6 SRM)   4.35%

0.50 oz        Magnum [12.90 %]  (60 min)  26.3 IBU
1.00 oz        Cascade [5.00 %]  (15 min)   5.4 IBU
1.00 oz        Cascade [5.00 %]  (5 min)    3.4 IBU
1.00 oz        Cascade [5.00 %]  (0 min)    0.0 IBU

1.10 items     Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 min)      

1.6 L Starter  California Ale (White Labs #WLP001)


Mash Schedule: My Mash
Total Grain Weight: 11.50 lb
----------------------------
My Mash
Step Time     Name        Description                        Step Temp
60 min        Step        Add 20.00 qt of water at 158.2 F     150.0 F
10 min        Step        Add 13.00 qt of water at 204.0 F     170.0 F

Notes:
------
Mash in: 150  End of Mash:  149  Mash Out:  162?   Sparge:  165

3 gal first runnings.  3 gal 2nd runnings.  Only 6 gal collected.  Lots of evaporation?

Down to 70 dF in about 20-25 min.  Woo.

Pitched at 62 dF.  Good krausen at 7am the next day.  Must have been a 12-18 hour lag.  Go Go Gadget Starter.

1.012 final gravity
-------------------------------------------------------------

So as you can see by my tasting notes, I was a big fan of the aroma and not so much of a fan of the flavor component of the Cascades, which I have taken into account for when I plan other brews.  Next up in this series of beers will be a Columbus APA.

Cheers.  Na zdrowie.  Gun bae.