In preparation for a brew day, homebrewer Brian Haslip has a slightly different routine than most homebrewers. After gathering the malt, hops and yeast he’ll need for his all-grain recipe, he drives a few miles outside Troutdale, Oregon, where along the roadside at the bottom of a hill, a pipe emerges from a leafy bank. A steady stream of cool, clear spring water flows from the pipe. While many people collect drinking water from the spring, Haslip has other plans. He fills a half-dozen food-grade plastic buckets with the water that he’ll use to brew two 5-gallon batches. Haslip learned of the spring more than a year ago from a member of his homebrew club. He’s been using the water for his beer-making ever since. “Once I tried it,” says Haslip, “I didn’t look back.”

The practice of collecting spring water for homebrewing may not be widespread, but it’s hardly new. Just as naturally occurring springs have long been used as a source of drinking water, so too have they attracted homebrewers who prefer to brew with untreated spring water over tap water for a variety of reasons. For some, there’s a satisfaction, or even romanticism, to creating something consumable made with ingredients gathered from the wild.

For others, using spring water for brewing is a practical consideration. In some locations, tap water has unpleasant flavors that are either inherent in the water source or derived from disinfectants at a treatment plant. While some undesirable flavors may boil off, others may not. The disinfectant chloramine, for example, may trigger reactions in brewing that can harm beer flavor. Since beer is predominantly water, brewing with aesthetically inferior water is likely to produce less-than-stellar beer.

Before you gather a collection of plastic jugs to fill at a local spring for your next homebrewing session, consider several issues. It will be helpful to take a quick look at water as an ingredient in beer before discussing spring water specifically. Although beer consists mostly of water, water tends to be the least understood and most ignored brewing ingredient for homebrewers. Many take the attitude that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” This laissez–faire approach isn’t necessarily a problem. “In general, a fresh-tasting, potable water source will produce good beer,” says John Palmer, co-author of Water: A Comprehensive Guide for Brewers and author of numerous articles on the subject.

That doesn’t mean, from a brewer’s perspective, that all water is created equal. Without getting into a technical discussion of brewing water chemistry—there’s a wealth of literature available on the subject—it’s important to understand that the concentration and proportion of certain minerals in brewing water, as well as variables such as pH, hardness and alkalinity, can impact beer flavor and accentuate different flavor attributes. “Chloride accentuates the malt character of the beer. It makes the malt character a little sweeter, rounder, fuller,” Palmer explains. “Sulfate accentuates the hop character of the beer. It accentuates the bitterness. It makes the beer seem a little drier. A water with high alkalinity is most appropriate for dark beers because the natural acidity of the dark malts will balance that alkalinity in the water. For pale beers, you want low-alkalinity water because the pale malts are only weakly acidic.” While this is an overly simplified explanation of a complex topic, it illustrates the point that the water you brew with is not a neutral entity. It’s also worth noting that, since components of brewing water produce interactions in the mash, water chemistry is of much greater concern to all-grain brewers than to extract brewers.

With the addition of various salts, brewers can modify their water profile to increase its suitability for different beer styles. The more you know about your water, the more you know about its favorability for brewing specific types of beers. By extension, familiarity with your water profile provides a basis for adjusting it for brewing a particular
beer style.

This brings us to spring water. For our purposes, let’s simply define a spring as a location where groundwater flows to the surface. This frequently occurs on a slope where an impermeable layer that sits below a permeable layer is exposed. In some places where springs have convenient access, pipes have been placed, or more elaborate structures have been constructed to make it easier to collect the spring water.

The biggest concern with using spring water for homebrewing is that you really don’t know what you’re dealing with unless you get the water tested. With untested spring water, there may be a risk of contamination. The presence of disease-causing organisms is a greater concern for those collecting spring water for drinking than for homebrewing since these organisms are likely to be killed off during the boil of a brewing session. Of more concern for homebrewers are contaminants such as nitrates, arsenic and other pollutants that pose health risks. Nitrates can enter groundwater from fertilizer runoff, animal feedlots, industrial waste and other sources. Nitrates don’t boil off and can’t be detected by smell or taste. Be especially leery of springs located near farms and gardens, golf courses or industrial facilities. It should also be noted that the composition of groundwater can change, with concentrations of impurities fluctuating over time. While there are risks, many springs are safe. People collect and consume untreated spring  water regularly without ill effects.

As was mentioned previously, theconcentration and proportion of certain minerals in brewing water can impact beer flavor and accentuate different flavor attributes. “Groundwater is typically high in dissolved minerals,” Palmer says. “If you have a groundwater source, the chances are these minerals are already there, but one or more of them may be at a less-than-ideal level for the style of beer you want to brew. For somebody who wants to brew with a local spring water source, step one is to get the water tested for mineral content. Then you can make the decisions on, ‘Is this water appropriate for malty beers? Is it appropriate for hoppy beers? Is its alkalinity high?’”

Haslip, who brews mostly pale ales and IPAs, has been pleased with the results of the beers he’s brewed using water from the local spring. Even so, he’d like to get the water tested. “The reason I want to do the testing is I want to get an idea of the mineral levels in it so I can start making some modifications to really amp up the [hop] aroma and flavor.”

Simple water-testing kits, such as Taylor Technologies pool and spa water chemistry kits, are useful for obtaining water properties such as pH, total alkalinity and calcium hardness. Ward Laboratories offers more in-depth water testing services specifically for brewers at a very reasonable cost. Other private labs, as well as some local municipalities or colleges, may offer water testing services including tests for contaminants.

To be fair, many homebrewers who use municipal tap water exclusively for their beers never bother to seek out information about the profile of their brewing water, even if that information is readily available. Many of them make perfectly good beer. However, they lack the information required to fine-tune their brewing water for a particular beer style or know what styles are best suited to their brewing water. To many homebrewers, these are nonissues, no matter what their water source.

Natural springs are widely dispersed throughout North America, with the largest concentrations in Pennsylvania, New York and California. The website findaspring.com provides information on hundreds of springs and includes valuable input from people who have visited each spring. For homebrewers with access to good-tasting, potable spring water, using this water for brewing can be both an interesting experiment and a gratifying experience.

Sugarfoot Belgian Table Beer

The following recipe was generously provided by Denver’s Spangalang Brewery. The beer was the 2016 World Beer Cup bronze medal winner in the Other Belgian-Style Ale category. This low-ABV Belgian ale will provide plenty of interest without masking the qualities of your brewing water.

Batch size: 5 gallons

OG: 1.032
FG: 1.005
ABV: 3.5%
IBU: 15
SRM: 3.5

Malts:

Standard 2 Row Malt: 68%
Rye Malt: 9%
Spelt Malt: 9%
Carafoam: 2%

Hops:

German Magnum: 12 IBU (75 minutes)
East Kent Golding: 3 IBU (end of boil)

Other:

Belgian Candi Sugar, Soft, Blond: 11% (added to the boil)

Spices:

Sweet Orange Peel: 1/8 ounce
Coriander: 1/3 ounce
Dried Lemon Peel: 1/3 ounce

Yeast: Spangalang uses a blend from a local source. Comparable yeasts available to homebrewers are Wyeast Belgian Ardennes 3522/White Labs Belgian Bastogne 510 and Wyeast French Saison 3711.

Mash: 148 degrees F (64 degrees C) for 1 hour
Boil time: 75 minutes

Allow to ferment to completion, transfer to secondary, then steep the spices for about 5 days (a hop sack is recommended).

The post Homebrewing with Natural Spring Water first appeared on All About Beer.

German beers often get lost in the shuffle among the craft crowd. They are neither flashy nor overdone, just solid brews made from simple recipes with distinctive German ingredients. But there are three that break that mold: gose, Münster altbier and dampfbier. They are obscure outliers, stylistic survivors of the dozens of regional styles that have largely been lost to history (although gose is back in fashion with brewers and drinkers alike).

Unusual and easy to brew in authentic fashion, they can be made as all-grain, partial-mash or extract beers, with a starting gravity of 1.050-1.055. These quirky beers present an opportunity to shuffle the ingredients a bit, brew something historical and unconventional, and expand your horizons.

Dampfbier

Dampfbier (meaning “steam beer”) was largely brewed in the rural Bavarian Forest region, where Germany and the modern Czech Republic share a border. It is a vestige of farmhouse, home and village breweries that resourcefully made basic utilitarian beer. Dampfbier was a fairly common brew into the early 20th century, when the influx of pale lagers, supplanted the local rustic brews of the day.

Dampfbier brewers used malted barley from Bavaria and fermented with weizenbier yeast. That’s right: an all-barley brew of Bavarian malts and estery, spicy weizen yeast. Weizen yeast would have been easy to obtain and easily propagated, and being top-fermented, no special conditions were necessary. Dampfbier was born of necessity and frugality, an example of a regional specialty that became popular and evolved into a style. Today, a few commercial German dampfbiers remain, none of which are exported, to my knowledge, and American brewers take a stab at the style on rare occasion.

The modern commercial template consists of pilsner and Munich malts, the ratio favoring pilsner malt, about 20 IBUs and traditional Bavarian weizenbier yeast. It is brewed to OG 1.050, give or take, making it a versatile, characterful beer—relatively light, malty, rich and aromatic. Historical recipes would have varied some from locale to locale.

Dampfbier is light amber to copper in color, allowing a bit of leeway and creativity with the grain bill, depending on your preferences. Munich malt can be replaced with Vienna, a flavorful base malt. Vienna would make an excellent lighter single-malt dampfbier. Otherwise, blends of pilsner, Vienna and Munich malt in whatever ratio you prefer would fit the style well. Munich malt comes in at least two Lovibond ratings; the darker toast, used for dunkels and bocks, would craft a superb, malty dampfbier.

The weizen yeast is the no-compromise aspect of dampfbier, but you can control the aromatic and flavor influence of the yeast nonetheless. Fermenting at the lower end of the temperature range will greatly reduce banana esters, while the higher end will enhance those same qualities. Wyeast 3056 is a blend of neutral ale and weizen yeast, and is an excellent option for tempering the influence of the weizen portion. It is my preference for this style. Use only traditional German noble hops.

My favorite homebrew recipe consists of 1/3 dark Munich and 2/3 pilsner malt, 20 IBUs with a dose of aromatic hops (Tetnanger or Hallertauer) and Wyeast 3056.

Gose

Gose has gotten some attention from American brewers in recent years (with great artistic liberty), and a few brands are imported from Germany (including Gosebrauerei Bayerischer Bahnhof’s, Döllnitzer/Ritterguts and Freigeist). It is the indigenous beer of Goslar, named for the River Gose.

The water from the Gose was used to brew the original gose beers, and is said to have had a salty flavor from the local mines. When the mining industry faltered in the 15th century, gose brewing shifted 100 miles east to Leipzig, where it was copiously brewed until the early 20th century.

Briefly, gose is made of roughly half wheat and pale barley malt with salted water, has a low hop rate (10 IBUs) and noticeable lactic sourness, and is laced with coriander. Fermented with North German top-cropping yeast, it lacks the intense aromatics of Bavarian wheat beer. Primed conditioning will retain and enhance its natural texture and profile.

The basic recipe is wheat malt (60 percent) and pilsner malt (40 percent), German noble hops (10 to 15 IBUs) and altbier or Kölsch yeast. But it is the three other components—coriander, salt and lactic acid in combination—that make this beer unique.

Coriander should be added during the final minutes of the boil, in keeping with brewing aromatic rules of thumb, at a rate of ¾ to 1 ounce per 5 gallons of wort. Salt can be added to the boil or mash, ¾ to 1 ounce per 5 gallons. Avoid iodized salt, as the iodine may interfere with fermentation. Plain sea, varietal or kosher salt is appropriate.

Achieving proper background lactic sourness is tricky, and there are three ways to approach it: sour mashing or acidulated malt, Lactobacillus inoculation and an addition of lactic acid. If a sour mash is part of the equation, seek an extensive explanation, as it is an involved undertaking. Only a portion of the grain bill, up to 15 percent, will include sour mash.

The alternative is acidulated malt, available at any homebrew shop. Acid malt is used to lower mash pH for brewers who have to contend with alkaline brewing liquor, but is also handy in lending mild lactic character. Use it at no more than 10 percent of the total grain bill, and add after the mash has fully converted, after the first 30 minutes, to prevent the low pH from stalling conversion. If used as suggested, residual starch will be essentially unnoticeable.

The best and most authentic method is to inoculate the wort or finished beer with a Lactobacillus culture. White Labs WLP677 (L. delbrueckii) and Wyeast 5335 (L. buchneri) are perfect candidates, offering moderate sourness that develops slowly over time. This will allow sampling periodically for sourness until the preferred level is reached and give a range throughout the life of the beer. Pitch with regular brewing yeast or add during secondary fermentation or bottling. The first strategy will result in more intense sourness. Wyeast 5335 is stunted somewhat by hop rates higher than 10 IBUs, so keep that in mind.

Liquid 88 percent lactic acid can be purchased at any homebrew shop and is added directly to the beer during bottling or kegging. It will give a more one-dimensional flavor than the other methods, but is a good shortcut. Use up to 2 ounces per 5 gallons.

Münster Altbier

This beer is a representative of the old Münster style: top-fermented, cold-conditioned beer made of pilsner (60 percent) and wheat malt (40 percent). It is fermented with Düsseldorf altbier or Kölsch yeast.

Münster altbier is hopped with German noble hops at a rate of 25 IBUs, giving it a fresh and moderately hoppy character. It also has lactic acid background at a subdued level, enough to add complexity without competing with the malts and hops. Use the same strategy as gose for the lactic component. Pinkus Organic Alt is imported by Merchant du Vin and worth trying to get an idea of what this beer is about. American wheat beers are similar but usually lack the lactic highlight.

Münster altbier is sometimes consumed with a dash of fresh fruit syrup stirred into the beer in the manner of Berliner weisse, making this an excellent option for summer refreshment.   

Dampfbier

Extract, OG 1.055, 5 gallons

Dissolve 3 pounds light DME and 4 pounds Munich LME in brewing water

Bring to a boil and add 20 AAUs Tetnanger or Hallertauer hops

Boil for 50 minutes and add 1 ounce Tetnanger or Hallertauer hops

Boil for 10 minutes and turn off the heat

Chill the wort and pitch Wyeast 3056

Gose

All-grain, OG 1.050, 5 gallons

Mash 5 pounds malted wheat and 5 pounds pilsner malt at 150 degrees F for 60 minutes

Collect wort, bring to a boil and add 1 ounce salt and 1 ounce Tetnanger or Hallertauer hops

Boil for 55 minutes and add 1 ounce freshly ground coriander

Boil for 5 minutes and turn off the heat

Chill wort and ferment with Wyeast 1007 or 2565 or White Labs WLP003 or WLP029

For lactic sourness, pitch White Labs WLP677 or Wyeast 5335 before primary, secondary or packaging, or add 1 pound acidulated malt 30 minutes before the end of the mash

For extract brewers, substitute 4 pounds wheat DME and 2 pounds light DME for the malted grains and sour with Lactobacillus culture as described (don’t use acidulated malt)

Münster Altbier

All-grain, OG 1.050, 5 gallons

Mash 6 pounds pilsner and 4 pounds wheat malt at 150 degrees F for 60 minutes

Collect wort, bring to a boil and 6 AAUs Tetnanger or Hallertauer hops

Boil for 55 minutes and add 1 ounce Tetnanger or Hallertauer hops

Boil for 5 minutes and turn off the heat

Chill the wort and ferment with Wyeast 1010 (alternatively Wyeast 1007 or 2565 or White Labs WLP003 or WLP029)

Use the same lactic strategy as that used for Gose above

Extract brewers can substitute 4 pounds wheat DME and 2 pounds light DME for the malted barley and wheat

The post Brewing German Rarities first appeared on All About Beer.

T.S. Eliot once said, “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” Homebrewers are doing just that in their exploration of open fermentation.

Case in point is Johnnie Leroy Compton III, a homebrewer who goes the distance for his wild beers. After moving into a spacious 19th-century house in Liverpool, PA, he converted one of the rooms into a brewery and began using improvised coolships—open fermentation systems that collect ambient yeast and bacteria to ferment wort. Then, he experimented by adding dregs from his favorite sour ales alongside open fermentation.

Next, Compton expanded his experiments in wild yeast and bacteria fermentation by inoculating the whole brew room with these tiny beasts. After brewing several batches of beer with single cultures of Lactobacillus and Brettanomyces, Compton racked them into a pump-style garden sprayer and sprayed down the wood floor and moldings of his brewing space. He also likes to place fruit in his brewing room, further embellishing the natural flora of the space. Compton enjoys the layering of flavors he achieves with open fermentations and likens the process to becoming an artist, creating something unique for the palate.

Generally, homebrewers are meticulous about cleanliness, sanitation and fermentation conditions so that only their carefully selected variety of yeast will ferment the wort into a delicious beer with the expected aromas, flavors, clarity and alcohol level. Yet with the vast array of quality and predictable yeast available, some homebrewers are choosing to return to a simpler era—a time before microscopes, “smack packs” and stir plates. These throwback brewers are using open fermentation systems to collect ambient yeast and bacteria to ferment their wort. A coolship was the traditional way to cool beer before modern refrigeration. It typically consists of a large open shallow tray where the wort is transferred post-boil to cool naturally. Coolships (or koelschip, as they are known in Belgium) are still used in traditional Belgian sour breweries, such as Cantillon, and in a handful of American breweries as well.

Brian Hall, a homebrewer in Portland, Maine, purchased a decommissioned keg from a defunct brewery and cut it in half to create a custom home coolship. He and others agree that using open coolships can be a risky business, especially in regions where they haven’t been in place for hundreds of years. The wort is being exposed to a profusion of local yeast and bacteria, which can behave in unpredictable ways. Yet Hall says the risk is worth it. He loves the romance of capturing the feel of a place through open fermentation.

“There is never going to be another beer like that,” he says of his successful coolship beers, which incidentally outnumber the failures. Hall only uses his coolship during the autumn and spring, when ambient bacteria and yeast are plentiful. And he’s not tied to only what he captures in the coolship—he occasionally will add dregs from his favorite bottles when he transfers to his fermenters.

“I like to give myself that advantage as well,” he says, noting that adding an established mixed culture can add additional depth to the finished beer. Hall uses glass carboys and wood barrels to finish fermenting his beers, often waiting over a year before his wild-fermented beers are ready to bottle. Hall says he’s “bringing back something that used to happen all the time” when he uses coolships and barrels, and that’s a very satisfying feeling.

Brooklyn resident Simon Tepas was inspired by the traditional Belgian brewing techniques described in Jeff Sparrow’s book, Wild Brews: Beer Beyond the Influence of Brewer’s Yeast (Brewers Publications). He uses small-batch open-bucket fermentations to get closer to nature. Tepas says he is interested in capturing the terroir of a place with his homebrew, explaining that “the sanitary environment necessary for producing clean beers is one technique, but this is another. Open fermentation brings geographical location and environment into your beer.” He’s particularly interested in exploring different brewing regions and is planning an open fermentation project to capture the terroir of new locations.

Noah Pearce of Ossining, NY, has a 200-gallon stainless-steel coolship currently in storage in New Hampshire. The coolship was passed down to him from his grandfather, who used it in his factory in Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood. Pearce is planning on putting the coolship to use this spring with a group brew that will be run through the coolship before fermenting in a 54-gallon oak barrel. In the meantime, he is using a 5-gallon stainless-steel cat litter pan as an improvised coolship for smaller batches.

Pearce’s goal is “to make a beer that tastes like something I’ve never tasted before … and then share it.”

The post Worth the Risk: Homebrewers Playing with Coolships first appeared on All About Beer.

In a funny sort of way, homebrewing has come full circle. Thirty-four years ago, our country’s 39th President, Jimmy Carter, signed H.R. 1337 which effectively legalized homebrewing nationwide. And now, shortly after another presidential election, our 44th President, Barack Obama, has released to the public his recipe for the first beer ever brewed on the White House grounds. The fact that this presidential beer—a honey ale—was made with honey gathered from the White House’s own hives is emblematic of what homebrewing has become today, a craft, like cooking (or beekeeping), that empowers people to do for themselves and rely less on packaged, processed, mass-produced food and beverages.

Were it not for Prohibition early in the 20th century, homebrewing may well have been the kind of basic home skill passed on from generation to generation like baking, pickling or hunting. But as we know, that dark period for imbibers had a lasting hangover that affected both the making and consumption of alcoholic beverages for decades. The craft beer revolution, which not coincidentally was kick-started by Carter’s pro-homebrewing legislation, put the artisanal craft of making beer back into the peoples’ hands (basically the definition of craft beer) and opened adventurous beer drinkers’ eyes to the flavor possibilities out there in the many different styles of beer that were increasingly becoming available.

Back in 1980 there were only eight craft breweries in the U.S., but after three decades of strong, steady growth, there are more than 2,000. While macrobrew sales are flat, craft beer continues to grow, even in a terrible economy. The rise in popularity of homebrewing has not only mirrored this growth, it has been further invigorated by the do-it-yourself, locavore foodie movement where people have discovered the satisfaction and challenge of making things from scratch. We don’t know if Martha Stewart has ever homebrewed, but it’s the kind of skill she’d surely approve of. If we can make bread from scratch, how much different or more difficult is it to brew our own beer?

A handful of homebrewers from around North America—of varying different skill levels and expertise—shared their experience and knowledge to encourage others to follow their lead.

From Drinker to Homebrewer

It’s not a given that just because we love to drink craft beer, it will inevitably lead us down the path to homebrewing. However, for an increasing number of people that is indeed the case. Their motivations and inspirations may differ, but their gateway generally started with wanting to peer behind the curtain, as it were. “I had been working in beer-centric places and having been a [craft beer] aficionado, I eventually wanted to know, ‘How do you make this?’,” Tim Fukushima, a 36-year-old homebrewer and lead brewer for Driftwood Brewery in Victoria, British Columbia, says. “I wanted to know more.”

For some that interest and curiosity follows a natural progression. “I started by drinking craft brew up here in the Pacific Northwest,” Troy Robinson, a 38-year-old stay-at-home dad who works part-time as a brewer at Mill Creek Brewpub in Walla Walla, WA, explains. “Friends who had family members who were homebrewing said it’s not that hard to do, you should check it out. I was super-excited to be able to make the same sort of beers I like to drink.”

Jeremy Tofte, whose Thai Me Up restaurant in Jackson Hole, WY, features a modest three-barrel nano-brewing set-up in the back, had a similar motivation, though it was one specific beer that set his homebrewing adventure in motion. “When I was 21 I lived in Bend, OR, and every Wednesday Deschutes brewery would have Obsidian Stout on tap. We could only get it every Wednesday because they didn’t bottle it yet and they didn’t have it on tap anywhere else. So my roommates and me started making beer because we wanted to have an Obsidian Stout every single night.”

Sometimes, though, it’s actually a killer homebrew that provides the inspiration. “I had a friend at Western Washington University that was a homebrewer,” Jonathan Perman, the 2012 Homebrewer of the Year at the National Homebrewing Competition says. “He let me try some of his beers and I was blown away by the quality of what you can make in your kitchen. I decided to try my hand at it.”

Start-Up Operation

The proliferation of cooking shows on cable has certainly helped inspire people to eschew processed, store-bought foods for homemade. It’s also demystified basic skills like baking, pickling and organic gardening that, for generations raised on the idea of convenience over quality, were lost arts. While the idea of whipping up a Thai curry at home 10 or 15 years ago may have seemed “out-there,” today it’s no more unreasonable than, say, brewing a batch of pale ale. Homebrewing is just another activity—that, granted, requires some precision—we can do in our kitchens. “Cooking is a pretty good analogy for brewing,” Robinson says. “It’s a little more than just putting on some water and making mac and cheese, but if you’re able to follow a few steps in a recipe and just pay attention to what’s going on, it’s just like cooking.”

There are actually a lot of similarities between baking bread and brewing beer. They share three common ingredients—grains, yeast and water—and require precision in the execution of the multiple steps in order to achieve the best results. Sure, you’ll be able to enjoy a slice of warm bread after just a few hours, while the fermentation of homebrewed beer takes at least a couple weeks, but both are solely dependent on the proper functioning of the yeast in order to produce something that’s edible or drinkable. Or as Perman puts it, “The yeast make the beer.”

Despite the similarities between the two, baking bread initially seems like a less difficult activity. Mustering the nerve to dip your toes into the homebrewing water may, in fact, be the biggest challenge you’ll face. And sometimes a little help from friends can provide the necessary nudge that will get you started. “My husband and I received a homebrew kit as a wedding gift in May 2010,” Jessica Murphy, a 31-year-old human resources specialist for the federal government explains. “We kind of stared at it for a few months not really knowing what to do and then one day we decided to just brew it. The experience afforded me this extra knowledge about beer and I was hooked.”

There is, of course, a learning curve when you undertake any new hobby or endeavor. But it need not to be too intimidating. “If you buy a homebrew starter kit, it’s not hard at all,” Perman assures us. “As long as you’re diligent with your sanitizing and you know how to follow basic instructions, it’s very straight forward.”

“For beginners, you can start out with a regular pasta pot, some malt extract, some water and some hops and you’re pretty much on your way to making beer,” Robinson says. “There are ways to make it more complicated, but to start off it’s really simple.”

For those who become enchanted by the magic of the homebrewing process—from so few ingredients comes such a wonderful product—“making it more complicated” offers the opportunity to expand your skills and experiment. “We started learning from [malt] extracts,” Tofte says, “and the next thing you know, someone taught me all-grain brewing. We started brewing once a week, making a mess, ruining the carpet, learning our lessons. It slowly turned into a passion, as it does for most people.”

Creative Drinking

Once the basic steps of homebrewing are understood and eventually mastered, a whole world of creativity opens up. This may be one of the most attractive things about it, in fact. Stodgy style definitions are becoming of less interest to brewers and drinkers alike, so the ability to create your own style-defying beer is a big draw. You can play with hop and malt varieties, dry-hopping, adjuncts and different gravity levels to make something truly original.

For Tofte, that creative freedom is one of the most satisfying (and rewarding) aspects of it. A last-minute shake-up of a tried and true recipe recently had an exciting result: the beer won a gold medal for the best IPA in North America at the North American Brewers Association in 2012. “We changed the hops, the strike temp, the mass temp, the gallons of water per pounds of grain. We changed everything. The dry-hopping time. We did it just to experiment. And, sure enough, whatever we did, won the gold medal. It just shows that it’s always so much fun to experiment and try something new. The last thing in the world I want to do is make a [standard] German or English beer.”

Even small tweaks can produce dramatic results, however. “I sometimes like putting in a pound or two of malt that isn’t typically found in the style I’m brewing,” Murphy says. “I made a Doppelschticke Alt for a homebrew competition and I added rye malt, which isn’t typically found in the style, for a little added spiciness. It was a great beer, and I won Best in Show.”

Homebrewers who start out following other people’s recipes inevitably find themselves writing their own recipes. You not only get the satisfaction of doing something original, you can brew to suit your own palate. “Frequently I’ll think of a beer that I like to drink and try to make something like that,” Robinson says. “Or, more frequently,I’ll try to change it and make it a new type of beer using maybe less traditional ingredients or maybe some different brewing techniques to make something that you can’t necessarily buy at the store. I like to do something that’s unique.”

From Homebrewer to Professional Brewer

There’s a lot of satisfaction to be gained from sharing what you’ve made by hand with people you care about—whether it’s a loaf of bread, a bowl of organic tomatoes, or a well-hopped IPA. What may begin as a hobby for perhaps self-interested reasons can grow into something larger as one’s skills and interest level increase. For Homebrewer of the Year Perman, the next step was entering his beers in competitions, so their quality could be assessed by Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) judges. “I enter them in competitions more for the feedback, just to sort of see how I’m doing and what people think of my beers,” he says. “I don’t really think that I have the greatest palate, so I like to have some feedback on what I’m doing right and what I’m doing wrong.”

Though it obviously doesn’t always lead to this, with the growing number of craft breweries, many homebrewers find themselves gainfully employed doing what may have started out as a hobby. The modern craft brewing industry was, in fact, founded by enthusiastic homebrewers who basically just transferred their skill to larger brewing and fermenting vessels. For decades, homebrewers have been like minor league ball players in professional sports perfecting their craft before they move up to the big leagues.

Though a passionate homebrewer in his early twenties, Tofte actually became a restaurateur when he had the opportunity to buy a defunct business at age 25. He kept a 20-gallon homebrewing system going in the back of the restaurant, so he and friends could brew on it. But it wasn’t long before he figured out that with the proper licensing, he could realize his dream of also being a brewer, albeit on a nano scale. “One of my friends’ brothers was like, ‘If you want a brewery so bad, why don’t you just use what you [currently] have as a brewery?’,” he says. “At first I thought that was silly, and then the following year I applied for all the licensing. The next thing you know, what we were doing for fun all those years—my passion—became my job, which is great. It made me accountable for making really good beer. It was a great growing opportunity and experience to go from making it for fun to then making it for fun when you actually had consequences.”

Driftwood lead brewer Fukushima actually started homebrewing with the idea that it would, in fact, help him in his efforts to get a job. After befriending Driftwood’s owners and sharing his homebrews with them that he had been perfecting for a year and a half, they approached him when they were ready to hire their first employee. “I had already developed a relationship by going in there and getting yeast from them and asking questions about brewing,” he says. “I brought in some samples that may have been a bit basic but I think they could see that I had an understanding of balance and why a beer’s drinkable.”

For Murphy, who’s actually a beer writer in her spare time, brewing will happily remain in her kitchen at home. Nonetheless it’s something that she heartily recommends for others. “While I don’t necessarily want to be a professional brewer,” she notes, “I think anyone who has an interest in beer and would like to know more about beer should at least brew an extract batch.”

Hail to the Chief

It’s inspiring as a craft beer drinker that President Obama—who could presumably have any beer in the world, if he wanted it—decided to try his hand at homebrewing. There probably isn’t a better time, in fact, to follow his lead. “I think it’s easier now more than ever,” Tofte says, “with the Internet and so many other resources and opportunities, like magazines and Youtube. The [brewing] technology is better and the products are better. It’s like anyone can make good beer now.”

And how can you beat the satisfaction of sharing something that you’ve made by hand with friends or family? Enjoying the fruits of your labor yourself is one thing, but making that shared experience of drinking a beer together more personal is something special. “When someone really enjoys a beer that you brewed,” Murphy says, “and you have an in-depth conversation about how it’s made and how you came up with the idea, that’s a great feeling.”

The post Power to the People first appeared on All About Beer.

In a funny sort of way, homebrewing has come full circle. Thirty-four years ago, our country’s 39th President, Jimmy Carter, signed H.R. 1337 which effectively legalized homebrewing nationwide. And now, shortly after another presidential election, our 44th President, Barack Obama, has released to the public his recipe for the first beer ever brewed on the White House grounds. The fact that this presidential beer—a honey ale—was made with honey gathered from the White House’s own hives is emblematic of what homebrewing has become today, a craft, like cooking (or beekeeping), that empowers people to do for themselves and rely less on packaged, processed, mass-produced food and beverages.

Were it not for Prohibition early in the 20th century, homebrewing may well have been the kind of basic home skill passed on from generation to generation like baking, pickling or hunting. But as we know, that dark period for imbibers had a lasting hangover that affected both the making and consumption of alcoholic beverages for decades. The craft beer revolution, which not coincidentally was kick-started by Carter’s pro-homebrewing legislation, put the artisanal craft of making beer back into the peoples’ hands (basically the definition of craft beer) and opened adventurous beer drinkers’ eyes to the flavor possibilities out there in the many different styles of beer that were increasingly becoming available. 

Back in 1980 there were only eight craft breweries in the U.S., but after three decades of strong, steady growth, there are more than 2,000. While macrobrew sales are flat, craft beer continues to grow, even in a terrible economy. The rise in popularity of homebrewing has not only mirrored this growth, it has been further invigorated by the do-it-yourself, locavore foodie movement where people have discovered the satisfaction and challenge of making things from scratch. We don’t know if Martha Stewart has ever homebrewed, but it’s the kind of skill she’d surely approve of. If we can make bread from scratch, how much different or more difficult is it to brew our own beer?

A handful of homebrewers from around North America—of varying different skill levels and expertise—shared their experience and knowledge to encourage others to follow their lead. 

From Drinker to Homebrewer 

It’s not a given that just because we love to drink craft beer, it will inevitably lead us down the path to homebrewing. However, for an increasing number of people that is indeed the case. Their motivations and inspirations may differ, but their gateway generally started with wanting to peer behind the curtain, as it were. “I had been working in beer-centric places and having been a [craft beer] aficionado, I eventually wanted to know, ‘How do you make this?’,” Tim Fukushima, a 36-year-old homebrewer and lead brewer for Driftwood Brewery in Victoria, British Columbia, says. “I wanted to know more.”

For some that interest and curiosity follows a natural progression. “I started by drinking craft brew up here in the Pacific Northwest,” Troy Robinson, a 38-year-old stay-at-home dad who works part-time as a brewer at Mill Creek Brewpub in Walla Walla, WA, explains. “Friends who had family members who were homebrewing said it’s not that hard to do, you should check it out. I was super-excited to be able to make the same sort of beers I like to drink.”

Jeremy Tofte, whose Thai Me Up restaurant in Jackson Hole, WY, features a modest three-barrel nano-brewing set-up in the back, had a similar motivation, though it was one specific beer that set his homebrewing adventure in motion. “When I was 21 I lived in Bend, OR, and every Wednesday Deschutes brewery would have Obsidian Stout on tap. We could only get it every Wednesday because they didn’t bottle it yet and they didn’t have it on tap anywhere else. So my roommates and me started making beer because we wanted to have an Obsidian Stout every single night.” 

Sometimes, though, it’s actually a killer homebrew that provides the inspiration. “I had a friend at Western Washington University that was a homebrewer,” Jonathan Perman, the 2012 Homebrewer of the Year at the National Homebrewing Competition says. “He let me try some of his beers and I was blown away by the quality of what you can make in your kitchen. I decided to try my hand at it.”

Start-Up Operation 

The proliferation of cooking shows on cable has certainly helped inspire people to eschew processed, store-bought foods for homemade. It’s also demystified basic skills like baking, pickling and organic gardening that, for generations raised on the idea of convenience over quality, were lost arts. While the idea of whipping up a Thai curry at home 10 or 15 years ago may have seemed “out-there,” today it’s no more unreasonable than, say, brewing a batch of pale ale. Homebrewing is just another activity—that, granted, requires some precision—we can do in our kitchens. “Cooking is a pretty good analogy for brewing,” Robinson says. “It’s a little more than just putting on some water and making mac and cheese, but if you’re able to follow a few steps in a recipe and just pay attention to what’s going on, it’s just like cooking.”

There are actually a lot of similarities between baking bread and brewing beer. They share three common ingredients—grains, yeast and water—and require precision in the execution of the multiple steps in order to achieve the best results. Sure, you’ll be able to enjoy a slice of warm bread after just a few hours, while the fermentation of homebrewed beer takes at least a couple weeks, but both are solely dependent on the proper functioning of the yeast in order to produce something that’s edible or drinkable. Or as Perman puts it, “The yeast make the beer.”

Despite the similarities between the two, baking bread initially seems like a less difficult activity. Mustering the nerve to dip your toes into the homebrewing water may, in fact, be the biggest challenge you’ll face. And sometimes a little help from friends can provide the necessary nudge that will get you started. “My husband and I received a homebrew kit as a wedding gift in May 2010,” Jessica Murphy, a 31-year-old human resources specialist for the federal government explains. “We kind of stared at it for a few months not really knowing what to do and then one day we decided to just brew it. The experience afforded me this extra knowledge about beer and I was hooked.”

There is, of course, a learning curve when you undertake any new hobby or endeavor. But it need not to be too intimidating. “If you buy a homebrew starter kit, it’s not hard at all,” Perman assures us. “As long as you’re diligent with your sanitizing and you know how to follow basic instructions, it’s very straight forward.”

“For beginners, you can start out with a regular pasta pot, some malt extract, some water and some hops and you’re pretty much on your way to making beer,” Robinson says. “There are ways to make it more complicated, but to start off it’s really simple.”

For those who become enchanted by the magic of the homebrewing process—from so few ingredients comes such a wonderful product—“making it more complicated” offers the opportunity to expand your skills and experiment. “We started learning from [malt] extracts,” Tofte says, “and the next thing you know, someone taught me all-grain brewing. We started brewing once a week, making a mess, ruining the carpet, learning our lessons. It slowly turned into a passion, as it does for most people.”

Creative Drinking 

Once the basic steps of homebrewing are understood and eventually mastered, a whole world of creativity opens up. This may be one of the most attractive things about it, in fact. Stodgy style definitions are becoming of less interest to brewers and drinkers alike, so the ability to create your own style-defying beer is a big draw. You can play with hop and malt varieties, dry-hopping, adjuncts and different gravity levels to make something truly original.

For Tofte, that creative freedom is one of the most satisfying (and rewarding) aspects of it. A last-minute shake-up of a tried and true recipe recently had an exciting result: the beer won a gold medal for the best IPA in North America at the North American Brewers Association in 2012. “We changed the hops, the strike temp, the mass temp, the gallons of water per pounds of grain. We changed everything. The dry-hopping time. We did it just to experiment. And, sure enough, whatever we did, won the gold medal. It just shows that it’s always so much fun to experiment and try something new. The last thing in the world I want to do is make a [standard] German or English beer.”

Even small tweaks can produce dramatic results, however. “I sometimes like putting in a pound or two of malt that isn’t typically found in the style I’m brewing,” Murphy says. “I made a Doppelschticke Alt for a homebrew competition and I added rye malt, which isn’t typically found in the style, for a little added spiciness. It was a great beer, and I won Best in Show.”

Homebrewers who start out following other people’s recipes inevitably find themselves writing their own recipes. You not only get the satisfaction of doing something original, you can brew to suit your own palate. “Frequently I’ll think of a beer that I like to drink and try to make something like that,” Robinson says. “Or, more frequently,I’ll try to change it and make it a new type of beer using maybe less traditional ingredients or maybe some different brewing techniques to make something that you can’t necessarily buy at the store. I like to do something that’s unique.”

From Homebrewer to Professional Brewer 

There’s a lot of satisfaction to be gained from sharing what you’ve made by hand with people you care about—whether it’s a loaf of bread, a bowl of organic tomatoes, or a well-hopped IPA. What may begin as a hobby for perhaps self-interested reasons can grow into something larger as one’s skills and interest level increase. For Homebrewer of the Year Perman, the next step was entering his beers in competitions, so their quality could be assessed by Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) judges. “I enter them in competitions more for the feedback, just to sort of see how I’m doing and what people think of my beers,” he says. “I don’t really think that I have the greatest palate, so I like to have some feedback on what I’m doing right and what I’m doing wrong.”

Though it obviously doesn’t always lead to this, with the growing number of craft breweries, many homebrewers find themselves gainfully employed doing what may have started out as a hobby. The modern craft brewing industry was, in fact, founded by enthusiastic homebrewers who basically just transferred their skill to larger brewing and fermenting vessels. For decades, homebrewers have been like minor league ball players in professional sports perfecting their craft before they move up to the big leagues. 

Though a passionate homebrewer in his early twenties, Tofte actually became a restaurateur when he had the opportunity to buy a defunct business at age 25. He kept a 20-gallon homebrewing system going in the back of the restaurant, so he and friends could brew on it. But it wasn’t long before he figured out that with the proper licensing, he could realize his dream of also being a brewer, albeit on a nano scale. “One of my friends’ brothers was like, ‘If you want a brewery so bad, why don’t you just use what you [currently] have as a brewery?’,” he says. “At first I thought that was silly, and then the following year I applied for all the licensing. The next thing you know, what we were doing for fun all those years—my passion—became my job, which is great. It made me accountable for making really good beer. It was a great growing opportunity and experience to go from making it for fun to then making it for fun when you actually had consequences.”

Driftwood lead brewer Fukushima actually started homebrewing with the idea that it would, in fact, help him in his efforts to get a job. After befriending Driftwood’s owners and sharing his homebrews with them that he had been perfecting for a year and a half, they approached him when they were ready to hire their first employee. “I had already developed a relationship by going in there and getting yeast from them and asking questions about brewing,” he says. “I brought in some samples that may have been a bit basic but I think they could see that I had an understanding of balance and why a beer’s drinkable.”

For Murphy, who’s actually a beer writer in her spare time, brewing will happily remain in her kitchen at home. Nonetheless it’s something that she heartily recommends for others. “While I don’t necessarily want to be a professional brewer,” she notes, “I think anyone who has an interest in beer and would like to know more about beer should at least brew an extract batch.”

Hail to the Chief 

It’s inspiring as a craft beer drinker that President Obama—who could presumably have any beer in the world, if he wanted it—decided to try his hand at homebrewing. There probably isn’t a better time, in fact, to follow his lead. “I think it’s easier now more than ever,” Tofte says, “with the Internet and so many other resources and opportunities, like magazines and Youtube. The [brewing] technology is better and the products are better. It’s like anyone can make good beer now.”

And how can you beat the satisfaction of sharing something that you’ve made by hand with friends or family? Enjoying the fruits of your labor yourself is one thing, but making that shared experience of drinking a beer together more personal is something special. “When someone really enjoys a beer that you brewed,” Murphy says, “and you have an in-depth conversation about how it’s made and how you came up with the idea, that’s a great feeling.” 

The post Power to the People first appeared on All About Beer.

However, as with all hobbyists, homebrewers get restless and start looking for ways to improve our game. Eventually, we may become relaxed enough about brewing to start cooking up our own recipes, or bold enough to enter a competition. Then there’s the step to all grain, for those who have the time and the inclination. Maybe jump up to bigger batches, as one guy in our club said, “…to keep the band together.”

One important milestone is when you knuckle down and learn the vocabulary of beer flavor and styles. This helps with everything: quality control, recipe formulation and your odds of taking home a big ugly trophy in a homebrew competition. As a brewer and beer fan, you have some of this knowledge already, but getting a full grip on styles and the myriad sensory pleasures of beer usually requires additional study.

Successful brewing is equal parts concept and execution. If you’re working within the framework of existing styles, the need for detailed knowledge is obvious. And, even with the most freewheeling approach, it is helpful to know the rules in order to break them. Plus, why reinvent the wheel completely? Those old guys knew what they were doing. Historical styles are a treasure trove of wisdom about ingredients, process and social context—conceptual gold for the straight and warped alike.

On the execution side, it’s useful to cultivate a deep sense of how ingredient choices affect flavor. The best brewers I know can reverse-engineer a beer just by tasting it. In quality control, what’s not in your beer is often as important as what is. Brewhouse practice, sanitation and yeast wrangling affect your beers in ways that are not always obvious to the novice, but stand out like a hammer-bashed thumb to a practiced judge.

Which is why you should become one. A syllabus for the judge exam preparation covers all of the above and more. The practice you get tasting, evaluating and discussing will improve your own beers, but will also improve your understanding and appreciation of all beer: so much so that I recommend that anyone really serious about beer go for the beer judge title.

The Bar Exam

The most direct path to enlightenment is through the Beer Judge Certification Program. This volunteer-run organization sanctions competitions (jointly with the American Homebrewers Association), and tests, ranks and awards points to judges for participation in competitions and other activities. In addition, BJCP provides the score sheets and maintains a very detailed set of style guidelines. All of this and more can be found at BJCP.org.

It works like this: You study brewing and beer styles, and do some practice judging, then take the test, a combination of written and judging sections. Pass, and you become a “Certified” judge. Higher ranks such as National and Master are achieved with higher test scores in combination with judging, organizing and education points.

Competitions are everywhere. It’s a rare club that doesn’t have one of some sort. Since the number of entries is proportionate to membership, even the smallest clubs can manage. And, as a way of testing the water, the AHA has a Club-Only Competition (www.beertown.org) several times a year. It does not require a lot of experience or infrastructure to get involved with this.

If you want to ease into it and see what the judging thing is all about, volunteer to help steward at the next nearby competition. Stewarding is the important job of presenting the judges with beers in the proper order and condition, collecting score sheets and generally running all aspects besides the actual judging. In many cases, stewards can find time to taste along with the judges, so can get some close-up sense of what the judges are seeing, smelling and tasting.

It is not always necessary to be certified in order to judge, especially in smaller competitions, but credentialed judges are always welcome.

The Judging Process

Judging is just a highly structured form of tasting. First, judges are expected to describe the beer accurately—what’s actually in the glass. BJCP score sheets provide a roadmap for the judging: aroma, appearance, taste, body and a catchall called “overall.” Each section is allocated a certain number of points, fifty in total. The score sheet really does force you to consider each aspect of the beer and its style. In competitions, the beers are judged against a detailed description of the category. Perfectly fine beers that don’t fit the category don’t score well.

Usually two or three judges form a panel, which is presented with eight to twelve beers identified only by numbers. About ten minutes is spent on each beer. Judging is done without discussion until the scores are written down, then a discussion, and if necessary, reconciliation is done. Judges should be within seven points of each other. I once judged with homebrew legend Fred Eckhardt and we were never closer than 14 points on any beer in the flight. We just laughed, discussed and changed our scores. If there are a large number of beers in a category, several tables might split the judging, and then the results of all the tables in the category must be re-tasted and ranked by the most senior judges to pick the winners.

Best of show is usually a panel of three or four of the most experienced judges. Winning beers from each category are poured and lined up all at once. Judges go through quickly and start knocking out flawed, out-of-style or otherwise non-champion beers. At a certain point, maybe half a dozen beers are left on the table. At this level, all are perfectly within the style guidelines. This is when the “wonderfulness” of a beer—the particular subtleties of a recipe and its execution—comes to the fore. Getting down to a consensus on the last three is hard. Sometimes very hard. Aspects like subtlety, uniqueness, difficulty of the style and, yes, even personal preference can all come into play, and if judges feel passionately, this can drag on for a while.

Because it’s a collaborative activity, judges really get the benefit of each other’s skill and experience. Being at a table with much more experienced judges is intimidating at first, but most people are very eager to help the less experienced along, and new judges are usually better than they think they are. It’s also a great way to get to know people in the homebrewing community.

And those, it you haven’t already figured it out, are the best people in the world.

The post Passing Judgment first appeared on All About Beer.

Immersion wort chiller ($48.95, morebeer.com) Simple and most practical wort chiller.

Swing-top bottles ($19.95, morebeer.com) Sixteen-ounce Grolsch-type bottles that eliminate the need for caps and a capper.

Diffusion stone ($13.50, morebeer.com) Can be used to efficiently carbonate a keg and flood your wort with critical oxygen.

Auto siphon ($9.95, www.midwestsupplies.com) Starts your racking siphon with a simple piston action.

6.5-gallon carboy ($23.00, www.midwestsupplies.com) Scratch-resistant glass is useful for primary and large batch secondary fermentation.

15-gallon demi-john ($49.95, www.midwestsupplies.com) Massive glass fermenter that’s just the right size for a full kettle of wort.

16.5-gallon plastic fermenter ($38.95, www.midwestsupplies.com) Economical, transportable fermentor for a kettle full o’ wort.

Aeration wand ($33.90, www.williamsbrewing.com) Solid metal tube for aerating and carbonating, that can be boiled to sanitize.

24-inch plastic stirring paddle ($3.50, www.midwestsupplies.com) An inexpensive, handy paddle that’s indispensable around the brew house.

Double-tap jockey box ($310.00, www.micromatic.com) The breweries use ‘em, why not you? No need to chill your kegs of homebrew with a jockey box.

1-litre Erlenmeyer flask ($12.90, www.williamsbrewing.com) A key piece of equipment for making yeast starters: boil, sterilize and grow yeast in one vessel.

Brew British Real Ale ($16.75, www.amazon.com) From ale expert Graham Wheeler, English brewing art at its finest.

Classic Style Series books ($11.95-$14.95, www.breworganic.com) For the exacting brewer and history buff, these are a must.

Brew Your Own Magazine ($24.95, www.byo.com) Get a year’s worth of homebrewing suggestions and expert advice delivered to your mailbox.

Brew Like A Monk ($21.29, www.thegrape.net) Love Trappist beer? Make your own easily with this book by noted beer aficionado Stan Hieronymus.

Designing Great Beers ($19.95, www.beerbooks.com) The most comprehensive stylistic brewing book on the market, hands down. By Ray Daniels

Farmhouse Ales ($18.39, www.thegrape.net) If the secular, earthy, farmhouse Belgian brews are your thing, then this book is too. By Phil Markowski.

Radical Brewing ($19.95, www.thegrape.net) Take your homebrew to another level with help from the mad scientist/artist himself, Randy Mosher.

The Complete Joy of Homebrewing ($13.45, www.beerbooks.com) The original guide from the guru himself, Charlie Papazian, it is still an ultra-practical but whimsical classic.

The Homebrewer’s Garden ($14.95, www.thegrape.net) Grow hops, use herbs and spices, and otherwise make your brew even more personal with this treatise.

Wine thief ($8.09, www.thegrape.net) Swipe beer from your fermenter for gravity reading and samples to monitor its progress.

Bulk pellet hops (www.hopsdirect.com) Hops by the pound, save $$$ on your favorite varieties.

Dual gauge CO2 regulator ($59.95, www.midwestsupplies.com) A necessity for draft systems.

Dial thermometer ($9.95, www.midwestsupplies.com) Instantaneous readings for wort or mash. Has a handy clamp, too.

Dip tube brush ($4.50, www.williamsbrewing.com) Clean those siphon and dip tubes, where the bugs hide.

Ferrari floor corker ($109.90, www.williamsbrewing.com) Universal corker for both elegant cork-and-cage Belgian beers and wine.

Floating thermometer ($5.95, www.midwestsupplies.com) The standard dairy thermometer with a C and F scale.

Winemaker Magazine ($22.00, www.winemakermag.com) Excellent source of information for the home winemaker.

Basic bottle capper ($14.29, www.homebrewadventures.com) Simple, economical capper that stores easily and lasts forever.

Counter pressure bottle filler ($49.95, www.homebrewadventures.com) Bottle beer directly from your keg for crystal clear beer. Handy for take-out or competitions.

Full must wine kits: pinot grigio, riesling, merlot ($89.69-$103.09, www.ebrew.com) Wine fixin’ ready to use, no diluting necessary.

Flip top growler ($12.95, www.breworganic.com) Handsome 2-litre growler that brings elegance to your brew.

Fermometer strip thermometer ($2.35, www.homebrewadventures.com) Just stick it on the side of your fermenter to monitor your fermentation temperature.

Triple scale hydrometer ($5.95, www.midwestsupplies.com) No matter what your level, this is perhaps your most important gadget.

Brewing calculator ($7.95, morebeer.com) Simple slide rule device to help balance and formulate your recipes.

Budget refractometer ($42.95, www.midwestsupplies.com) Make quick gravity readings without the hefty price.

Four-gallon stainless steel pot ($32.95, www.midwestsupplies.com) Every mini-mash and extract brewer must have at least one of these.

Beer gun bottle filler ($69.95, www.williamsbrewing.com) Bottle crystal clear beer without the hassle of counter-pressure.

The Carbonator ($15.65, www.homebrewadventures.com) Use to pressurize standard soda bottles after filling with beer. Simply screw on and gas up.

The Compleat Meadmaker ($18.90, www.williamsbrewing.com) Ready to move on to mead? This book tells it all.

Winemaking starter kit ($69.95, www.homebrewery.com) Inexpensive, complete kit to turn you into a winemaker.

Bargain wine kits ($60.00, www.homebrewery.com) Each kit makes 30 high-quality bottles of wine at about 2 bucks a bottle.

The New Brewing Lager Beer ($16.95, www.midwestsupplies.com) From the lagermeister himself, Greg Noonan, to help you make those wunderbar German brews you love.

The Therminator wort chiller ($189.95, www.midwestsupplies.com) Chill your entire batch in 5 minutes with this bad boy.

Real cask ale supplier (variable, www.ukbrewing.com) How groovy is real ale? UK Brewing has everything you need to cask your own.

Fruit puree for beer and wine ($15.2-17.50, www.beer-wine.com) Make fruited lambic-style beers, fruit beers and wine with these ready-to-use all-natural purees.

American Homebrewers Association ($38.00, www.beertown.org)Join the most venerable of all the homebrewers organizations and get Zymurgy magazine plus other perks.

Complete ingredient kits ($26.00-$50.00, www.homebrewadventures.com) Dozens of kits that have everything you need to make an outta sight beer from scratch.

Extreme Brewing ($19.99, www.beerbooks.com) The Pied Piper of extreme brewing himself, Sam Calagione, shares his wisdom.

Safale US-56 brewing yeast ($1.90, www.breworganic.com) The most popular American ale yeast is now in dry form. No need to worry about yeast starters anymore

The post Directory for Supplies first appeared on All About Beer.

Top-notch homebrewing depends most critically on skill and knowledge, but a few well-designed and über-functional toys can’t hurt either. Next to making the best beer possible, homebrewing is also about tinkering, gadgetry and fun.

Convoluted Counter-flow Wort Chiller

One of the most critical variables in brewing is the lag time between boil knockout and yeast pitching. This unit cools hot wort in minutes, giving your yeast the decisive upper hand in the fermentation vessel. This might be the most important upgrade that a homebrew can make to take the worry out of fermentation. Compact, easy to clean and sturdy enough to last forever. $135. www.midwestsupplies.com

More Beer Brewing Sculpture

If you’re one of those hobbyists who needs to go whole hog and you have money to burn, then take a gander at this brewing sculpture. Of the many designs that exist, this one is the most ergonomic and makes up to 20 gallons at a time. All liquids are transferred via pump, it is fueled by a single propane tank, and the entire unit is designed with safety in mind. You’ll be able to concentrate more on the details of brewing rather than worrying about the mechanics. $2,550. morebeer.com

14.5 Gallon Conical Fermenter

Maximum utility for big batch brewers. Lots of great features, including a flawless inner surface to discourage uninvited bugs, two drains and a multipurpose, clamped lid. Add flavorings or hops, take samples, transfer only wort above the yeast cake, or harvest yeast, all done in a snap. It’s easy to flush and sanitize, and the large diameter lid facilitates scrubbing. $545. www.williamsbrewing.com

Brew Like a Pro—Sabco Universal Kettle

Sabco makes it almost too easy. This brand-new stainless steel kettle not only has an external and internal tri-clamp coupler to make it the most-easily adaptable unit on the market, but it also has a ‘no-thread’, thermometer well besides. The elimination of all coupling threads creates an easy-to-clean, sanitary environment. The use of modern, brewer-preferred tri-clamps makes it cutting-edge smart. It can be used as a mashtun, hot liquor tank, or boiling kettle. Use as a stand-alone device, or build your own brewing sculpture to use them in series. Tap into your own ingenuity to modify it yourself, or comb the site for the whole accessory package: adaptors for thermometers, drains, false bottoms and more are available. This is homebrew utility at its zenith. $500.

High-performance propane burner

Propane burners are a dime a dozen, but this one was made with the homebrewer in mind: 70,000 BTU where it’s needed, precision regulator and height allows easier gravity-flow transfer to the fermenter. $90. morebeer.com

Forty-quart brew pot with valve and thermometer

This versatile brew pot—40 quarts, offset drain, ready for adaptation with the included ball valve—will keep you brewing for years. $249. www.williamsbrewing.com

Oxygenation kit

Flood your wort with oxygen to kick-start your fermentation and help insure that it works to completion. The stone is easy to sanitize and the entire system is a breeze to use. $45. www.midwestsupplies.com

Refractometer

Refractometers allow brewers to take instantaneous specific gravity readings. Hit your target gravity and assess your mash efficiency in a jiffy without compensating for temperature. $45. www.williamsbrewing.com

Refrigerator thermostat control

Turn that spare refrigerator into a lagering unit with this thermostat control. The control goes up to 80 degrees, so fermenting ales in summer is an option also. $55. www.midwestsupplies.com

Schmidling malt mill

A precise crush of malted barley is essential. The preset gap of the Schmidling malt mill provides the perfect crush. Motorize or mount to make milling even simpler. $130. www.midwestsupplies.com

Serve Like a Pro—Cornelius Keg System

If bottling is the bane of your hobby, kegging puts that ordeal in the rearview mirror. Rack to the keg, no priming necessary, and with a little more investment you can even turn your fridge into a kegerator with your own beer on draft. You can still bottle for competitions with a counter-pressure bottle filler or prepare fresh beer to go with a carbonator. Pick up a $30 Sankey coupler, and you’re ready to serve commercial products without one of those silly hand pumps. It’s portable enough to drag the whole works—plus a keg—to a party, where you will be the talk of the event. $165. www.midwestsupplies.com

Auto-adjust bottle capper

Take the fuss out of bottling with this self-adjusting capper. $37 www.williamsbrewing.com

How To Brew by John Palmer

The new darling among the homebrewing bibles, this book by John Palmer deserved its accolades.  An all-encompassing digest; your most indispensable brewing partner. $17 www.howtobrew.com

Promash Brewing Software

The most comprehensive brewing software available, and an excellent educational vehicle. $24  www.williamsbrewing.com

Start as an Amateur—Complete Homebrew Kit

To get started in homebrewing, you’ve got to have a basic kit. This one is a simple, one-step fermentation and bottling kit, complete with a basic brewing book and the ingredients for your first beer. All you need is a pot. If you make the decision to go to all-grain, you’ve already got the equipment. Even supplemental equipment won’t diminish the usefulness, sensibility, or exhilaration of your first kit. (You can tailor your beers to your tastes by downloading the free “Hop Data Book” from Hop Union. www.hopunion.com) $80 www.williamsbrewing.com

The post Beer Essentials—Homebrewing first appeared on All About Beer.

For at least a couple of millennia, wooden barrels served to ferment, transport and serve beer, as well as other beverages. One could even argue that without wooden barrels, beer might not be the omnipresent beverage of European history. The barrel’s a clever invention: oak or chestnut logs transformed into complex curved staves, which, when bound by willow or metal hoops, could hold liquid and even a bit of pressure. This must have been a dramatic, even magical breakthrough. No wonder songs were written about it.

The invention of the barrel is variously attributed to Bronze Age Celts, Vikings, or similar hairy-cloaked tribes. By Roman times, barrels were in use across a wide area of northern Europe. Barrels served admirably in a pre-industrial world, but the difficulty of cleaning and maintaining the ornery beasts led to their near-total demise by about 1950. Stainless steel perfectly suits the squeaky-clean nature of international lager, but for those of us who love the funky depths of a truly handmade beer, wood can offer that extra dimension.

Woody Characteristics

There are a number of reasons for this. First, wood is not flavorless. Wood contains chemicals that dissolve in the beer over time, adding woody, oaky or even musty flavors in some cases. Temperature swings cause the liquid to pump in and out of the wood, accelerating the process. Over a period of months or years, one of these substances—lignin—actually transforms chemically into vanillin, which is why vanilla notes are often found in whisky and other barrel-aged spirits.

Barrel wood is porous, which means the contents are exposed to air, creating the potential for oxidized flavors. These are generally regarded as defects in beer, but oxidized compounds give sherry and similar wines their wonderfully distinctive aromas. Porosity also means that there are lots of little nooks and crannies for microorganisms to hide, a fact that may be used to the brewer’s advantage or mitigated if necessary. Lambic and other sour beer brewers have developed a finely tuned method for shepherding the little critters to make beer for them, but there is such inconsistency that blending becomes a major part of the system. These sour beers are a complex subject that deserves a whole book, and, indeed, one is forthcoming from Brewers Publications. For the present, we are simply considering beers finished off in whisky barrels.

We Owe It All to Bourbon

The bourbon industry is America’s gift to the spirits world. The expensive charred-oak barrels may only be used once for aging bourbon, so when emptied, they are knocked down and shipped by the container load to places where Scotch, rum and tequila are aged. So cheap are they that they are often suffer the indignity of being cut in half and used for garden planters. They can also be used intact to age beer.

The first bourbon-aged beer I ever heard of was made by a group of suburban Chicago-area brewers who brought five 10-gallon batches of a strong imperial stout together to fill a fresh bourbon barrel. Six months later, they reconvened to bottle the beer. It was wonderful, although in their zeal to have enough whisky character, they added a bottle of the strong stuff, which definitely put the brew over the top. Shortly thereafter, Goose Island Beer Co. started experimenting with the style, one of the first commercial breweries to do so.

Aging Methods

This group method works fine, although it can be logistically challenging. A fresh barrel is best, as they get leaky when they dry out. A cool, dark place with some kind of sturdy stand or chocking is needed—the barrel will weigh about 450 pounds when full. And full it should be. Evaporation will occur, and you should have some beer handy for topping up or risk the dreaded vinegar-causing acetobacteria.

One to six months ought to do it, depending on how much whisky character you want. You could also run this as a solera system, meaning the barrel is never drained, but as a portion of beer is removed to be served, fresh beer is added. This can go on indefinitely with stronger beers, and the product can become incredibly complex.

You don’t need a barrel to get barrel-aged character. With just a little patience, you can create some sticks of bourbon-soaked wood suitable for aging beer, and end up with a bottle of custom-aged bourbon for your trouble.

Simply get hold of some American white oak and cut it up into a handful of finger-sized sticks or slats small enough to fit into the neck of a whisky bottle. With a propane torch or your brew stove, char them within an inch of their life. They should have a nice layer of char at least 1/16 of an inch deep. Remove about half the bourbon from a bottle of an inexpensive but reliable brand. Pull the sticks off the fire and drop them right into the bourbon. Top up the bottle and put it away for six months or so.

You might taste the whisky as it ages. I found it to be quite disgusting after a few weeks, but by six months, it acquires a smooth vanilla/oaky character. As soon as the bourbon gets to this delicious state and you also have beer ready to age, drain out the whisky and strain it through a coffee filter. Whisky aficionados will recognize this as “the good stuff,” and you should feel free to enjoy it. The sticks can then be dropped into a carboy of aging beer and left to do their thing.

What kind of beer is best for this treatment? As you might have guessed, this is not the best treatment for a pilsner; strong and dark is the rule. Imperial stout is the classic, and barley wine may also benefit. A super strong weizenbock, blonde barley wine or triple-bock might all be fun with a dab of whisky barrel flavor. Substitute Scotch for the bourbon in your aging experiment and you might create a deliciously inauthentic wee heavy. Irish whisky might do the same thing for a foreign export stout.

The possibilities really are endless and should amply illustrate the origin of the term, “barrel of fun.”

The post Roll Out the Barrel first appeared on All About Beer.

I’m not knocking brewpubs. They have to work under certain physical and economic realities that keep their treatment on the light and easy side, for the most part. As a homebrewer, you have no such limitations. Time, space, cost, and technical issues like filtration aren’t likely to be significant roadblocks to making seriously monstrous fruit beers in the home brewery.

A handful of commercial breweries seem to be able to manage this as well. Most of the Belgian lambic breweries do, although with varying degrees of authentic funkiness. The same goes for the sour red and brown beers of Flanders. Wisconsin’s New Glarus Brewery has put Door County cherries to good use in a big fruit bomb described as a “Belgian Style Red.” They brew a raspberry offering as well. Not coincidentally, these two beers won gold and silver medals in the fruit beer category at last year’s Great American Beer Festival. Elsewhere, Kalamazoo Brewing has long made a cherry stout that delivers the goods, and Delaware’s Dogfish Head offers beers made from currants, apricots and peaches.

A proper fruit beer should offer an explosion of complex fruit mingled with the rich, round flavors of malt, balanced into a compelling and memorable package.

So what does it take to get there?

Balance Is Key

Intensely fruity beers are really half wine, so some winemaking principles apply. As with any beverage, balance is a key element. Brewers think mostly of hops versus malt when considering a beer’s balance, although it’s often more complex than this.

In fruit beers, acidity plays a huge role, as it sharpens fruit flavor considerably. In wine, a lack of acidity is a grave flaw—a condition described as “flabby.” In fruit, acidity is inversely related to ripeness, and wine makers often go to considerable lengths to snag the grapes at exactly the right moment. Unless you’re growing your own fruit, you won’t have this luxury. Fortunately, it’s easy enough to add acidity, either in the form of lactic, malic or other acids, or by introducing a souring microbe as in the traditional Belgian fruit beer styles. Tannins also play a counterbalancing role, providing a texture that wine makers describe as “structure.”

Large quantities of ripe, flavorful fruit are essential. We’re talking a minimum of a pound per gallon of raspberries, or twice that for cherries—and this is just a starting point. I have used double that amount without really hitting the ceiling.

Selecting and PreparingYour Fruits

A hundred years ago, there were many more varieties of fruits grown than today. Commerce has favored the select few that suit the distribution system, and these are not necessarily the ones with the best flavors. If you have the land, the time, and the inclination, many heirloom varieties are available. There is even a society called the North American Fruit Explorers that encourages this sort of historic preservation. Go to nafex.com to see what they’re all about.

Most of us have to be content with the common cultivars. Blending different varieties together can deepen flavors. Mixing sour cherries with black sweet ones, for example, provides a blend of color, depth and acidity resulting in a much better beer. Black and red raspberries can be mixed with synergistic results. One could even add an altogether different fruit—blackberries added to cherries, for example—to a similar end.

Fresh juice may be used, although simply pressing out the juice loses a great deal of flavor and tannin in the skin. Macerating whole or puréed fruit for a few weeks in the secondary will extract some of this skin character. Sometimes a combination of whole fruit and juice can be used.

Cherry pits provide a layer of complex almondy aromatics that really adds to a beer. Raspberry seeds will also add flavor, although they may be a little bitter. Limiting maceration to two weeks for raspberries will keep the pitty bitterness low.

I prefer to work with frozen fruit, as the cellular structure has been disrupted, allowing the flavors and sugars to work their way into the beer quicker than with fresh fruit. I believe freezing lightens the microbial load a bit, although it is by no means a pasteurizing process.

The secondary is the best time to add fruit, as the beer is less vulnerable to spoilage at this point, and the level of out-gassing is lower than in the primary, which means less scrubbing away of aromatics.

Fruit will add a little fermentable sugar to the brew. Cherry juice is between 12 and 22 degrees Brix (which is a percentage measurement like degrees Plato). Raspberries offer just a fraction of that. So the amount of fermentables contributed by fruit to beer is relatively low.

The Beer Basis

Don’t forget the beer underneath it all. You want a brew with flavors and aromas that will harmonize with the fruit, as well as stand up to the strong flavors that may come with it. As always, the highest quality malt should be used. Medium-colored malts from Munich to dark crystal seem to go best with fruits, but dark beers such as stouts and porters are also possible. For these, I would recommend German Carafa malt, as it is processed for a soft, smooth taste.

Hopping is usually present only for balance, as high hop levels often interfere with fruit flavor. By all means, break this rule if you think you have reason to do so. Spices may be used to deepen flavors—cassia or cinnamon added to bring out the cinnamon-like aroma of Montmorency sour cherries, for example.

There is no preferred way to go with yeast. Ale or lager yeast can be used with equal success. At the end of primary fermentation, you can add “wild” Belgian lambic or sour brown cultures which will slowly but surely add their magic to the brew.

These beers will take time. A couple of years for aging is not unusual—again, think wine. Be aware that some of these fruit sugars tend to ferment very slowly, so delay bottling for several months to avoid over carbonation. I assure you, it will be worth the wait.

The post Attack of the Killer Fruit Beers first appeared on All About Beer.