First Brew Retrospective

For those following this blog, you know that I brewed my first batch of beer a couple months ago. The process was lots of fun, and it was very interesting to see how everything works together to produce beer.

So how did it come out? Bitter. Too bitter. I actually don't particularly like it. (Luckily, my father in law loves it, which is encouraging.) But why is it bitter?

The Water

Initially, I blamed the water. I was using unfiltered tap water, and I know that our tap water is heavy in iron. Plus, from everything I'd read, tap water may have residual chlorine in it that can lead to off flavors and hurt the yeast.

But no, that can't be it... The water, despite being iron-rich, still tastes fine. And, the thing that nobody mentions about chlorinated water is that boiling it drives off the chlorine. The only time that residual chlorine matters is if you only do a partial boil and top off with tap water. (Which you should never do, since tap water may have microbes in it that can infect your beer; you should boil your top-off water or use bottled water.)

DMS (Dimethyl Sulfides)

Well, maybe it was DMS. DMS is produced by boiling the wort (raw beer, before adding the yeast), and is carried away by steam when you've got a good rolling boil. I didn't have a good rolling boil, so maybe there was some DMS still in solution.

But no, that couldn't be it either. DMS produces a flavor more like cooked vegetables, not bitterness.

Hot Sparge

Sparge water! It must have been the sparge water! You shouldn't sparge your grains (rinse them to extract more flavor) with water above 170*F. I used 170* sparge water, perhaps my thermometer is off a bit and it was even hotter! That could rinse tannins into the wort!

Hmm... no, that couldn't be it... Tannins lend astringency and dryness, but not this bitterness I was getting. Besides, a couple of degrees wouldn't have killed the whole batch.

Frustration

So what could it be? I was pretty frustrated at this point; what other mistake could I have made?

Now for a side-track to see how I figured it out. Two weeks ago, I was brewing another beer (this time a Brown Ale using the Cumbrian Double Brown Ale kit from Northern Brewer). While reading over the instructions, I noticed a bit describing the changes to the recipe that you should make if you are doing a full boil. (A full boil means that you are boiling the entire volume of wort that you are going to ferment, as opposed to a partial boil, where you only boil a portion of highly-concentrated wort and water it down to achieve the proper volume just before adding the yeast.)

Hops!

One of these changes was to reduce your bittering hops by 25-30%. Bitterness is more efficiently extracted from hops in a larger volume of water!

The Scotch Ale that I made was also a partial boil recipe where I had done a full boil... So I should have used 25% less bittering hops.

But wait... Isn't there something else that affects hop extraction? Oh yes! Late extract addition also increases bittering efficiency! (Late extract addition means that the malt extract is added close to the end of the boil; it is generally thought to improve the beer by not caramelizing the malt extract from a long boil, and also by better utilizing the hops. The other, more common method, is early extract addition.) I used the late extract addition method, so I got more bitterness out of my hops than I really needed. So I should have reduced my bittering hops by another 25%!

So, why was my Scotch Ale so bitter? I used almost twice as many hops as I needed!

"But wait!" you cry out, "25% + 25% = 50%! That is half!" Ahh yes, young padawan, that is true. However, I would have wanted to reduce my initial hop addition by 25%, and then reduce the remainder by 25%. So, with 1oz Chinook hops, that's 1oz * 75% = .75oz after adjusting for boil volume, and then .75oz * 75% = .5625oz, or just slightly more than half of what the recipe called for.

Oh, and there's one more source of bitterness: yeast. If you don't let your bottle-conditioned homebrew sit upright in the fridge for at least 48 hours, there are is so much yeast in solution that it will take on a bitter, moldy character which is really not very good. The last one I drank sat in the fridge for four days, and was quite good (except for the unnaturally high hop bitterness).

So, in the words of Charlie Papazian, "Relax. Don't worry. Have a homebrew." And don't overdo the hops.

Brew Day

Yesterday was my first Brew Day. I made a Scotch Ale, using an ingredient kit from my LHBS (Local HomeBrew Shop). I mostly ignored the recipe, since it didn't mention sanitation at all. Interestingly enough, though, the startup equipment kit included BTF (the link suggests that BTF is a chlorine-based sanitizer, but the bottle actually says that it is Iodophor-based; Iodophor is a very popular iodine-based sanitizer whose only real competition is Star-san).

Everything went pretty smoothly, except perhaps for the wort chilling. Need more practice with that, or perhaps a counterflow wort chiller... Xmas is coming up, I think I'll add the pieces for Bobby_M's counterflow chiller to my list.

The new pot I bought (from Walmart) specially for this and will never be used for anything else (at least until I get a really nice one):

Some of the ingredients (see the end of the post for the recipe). I didn't show the hops or the yeast, since pellet hops all look the same and I forgot to take a picture of the yeast:

The steeping grains:

Some more equipment (the red spray bottle is to keep curious cats from being too curious):

The second best way to enjoy homebrewing (best would be with another homebrew, this was a Saranac Vanilla Stout):

This is why I need a special spoon to go with the special pot:

Baby's first boilover, aww. Lesson learned: always turn the heat off for a few seconds before adding hops; the other two hop additions were uneventful.

Teh kitteh likes teh hops!

This one... not so much. Not sure where the bag came from, either:

And this one is trying to steal my recipe book!

Here is why you should always keep the cable for your digital thermometer dry. Even after 15 minutes in the fridge, it was still reading 194*F when the water felt like 75*F. Thanks to Bobby_M again, here's a trick I may use next time. Anyway, the pic:

Here's a video of how I aerated my wort (that's a whisk attached to the power drill). Thanks to Padstack31 for the idea. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a specific gravity reading until afterwards. Oh well, brew and learn:

And finally, about nine hours into fermentation:

Recipe:

Ingredients (Note: links are only to see details about products; I purchased everything from the LHBS in an ingredient kit):

• 2 lbs Caramel Malt, 120*L (go down to the Briess Caramel Malts section)
• 6.6 lbs Northwestern Amber Liquid Malt Extract
• 1 oz Chinook Pellet Hops, 12% Alpha Acid @ 1 hour
• .5 oz Aurora Pellet Hops (unable to find an online source), 7% Alpha Acid @ 10 minutes
• 1 oz Fuggle Pellet Hops, 4.1% Alpha Acid @ 5 minutes
• 1 tsp Irish Moss @ 15 minutes
• 11 grams Dry Windsor Yeast by Danstar

Procedure:

• Steep the Caramel Malt in a grainbag in 2 gallons of 155*F to 160*F water for 30-45 minutes with the lid on and the heat off (unless the temperature drops too much, then turn it on low for a bit).
• Pour 2 quarts of 170*F water over the grains into the pot. Allow the grains to drip for a bit, then place in a collander over a bowl to collect anything else that might drain out; pour that into the pot also.
• Turn heat to high and add 9 quarts of water. Assuming 1 quart was lost to the grains, this makes 20 quarts or 5 gallons. Wait for it to boil (putting the lid on will help).
• Once boiling, TURN OFF THE HEAT and add the Chinook hops, then turn the heat back on. Set a timer for 1 hour. Leave the lid off.
• Half an hour in, turn off the heat and the timer and add the malt extract. Make sure it is completely disolved (no thick feeling on the bottom of the pot), then turn the heat back to high and wait for it to boil again. Once it is boiling again, allow the timer to continue.
• At 15 minutes remaining, add the Irish moss.
• At 10 minutes remaining, turn off the heat and add the Aurora hops, then turn the heat back on.
• At 5 minutes remaining, turn off the heat and add the Fuggle hops, then turn the heat back on.
• When the hour is up, move the pot to a series of cold water baths. It helps to have a double-sided sink, so you can be filling up one side while the pot is giving up its heat to the other side. Ice is very helpful. (I actually froze a couple of two-liter soda bottles, sanitized the outsides of them, and used them to stir the cooling wort.)
• When the wort has chilled to 70*F to 80*F, take a specific gravity reading. (I forgot to do this until after aeration, unfortunately.) The recipe provided by the LHBS did not mention the target gravity; mine was 1.054 after aeration and at an indeterminate temperature. I am assuming that, corrected, it would be 1.055 at the hydrometer's calibrated temperature, and 1.058-1.059 without the aeration. I will be using 1.058 when I calculate alcohol content.
• Rehydrate the yeast (I did this too early, it was sitting in the water for at least 30 minutes instead of the target 15 minutes).
• Get the wort into the fermentation vessel, add the yeast, and relax.

Here's the rest of the album, in case you want to see more pictures of beer and kitties.

Beer

Homebrew beer has facinated me for probably about three years now, but I have not actually brewed any myself. In fact, I don't even know anybody else who has, so I haven't had a chance to try any. But that hasn't stopped me from wanting to experiment.

Unfortunately, my wife is less enthusiastic about the concept as I am. Perhaps because she doesn't like beer... I know, it should be a crime, right? Everybody should like beer! But anyway, she told me that I wasn't allowed to homebrew until we had a house, so I could let it ferment in the basement.

Well, guess what? We have a house now!

So as soon as there's a free minute (lots of redecorating going on right now), I'll be stopping by a homebrew shop (found one here) to get all the supplies.

In the meantime, though, I've been reading as much as I can about the process, so I'll be able to get it right on my first try. Here are a few sites that I've found that seem to have excellent information:

• How to Brew, by John Palmer, is an online book covering all of the steps in great detail
• Home Brew Forums is a message board for home brewers of various sorts, and includes an active set of forums about brewing beer
• Beer Calculus is a calculator for helping create new recipes
• Paul's Brewing Page is just some guy who does homebrew, but he has a much more complete link listing than this

As for what I will brew for my first batch... Well, I'm torn. Everybody seems to do their first-batch tutorials for pale ales, but I'm not particularly fond of those. I much prefer the darker ales, like Stouts and Porters. Lagers are pretty much out of the question, since they require so much extra care and time. So I still need to read more to discover whether brewing a stout is any more difficult than brewing a pale ale.