Atomic Nerds

…and you’ll get rid of him for the weekend. Teach a man to make beer, and he’ll start annoying the hell out of you until you start doing it too. So in honor of the 10th annual Teach a Friend to Homebrew Day, I decided to expand my skillset - and of course pass along what I learned to you folks.

Since I needed to go to Santa Fe for some various supplies*, it seemed a good time to stop in at the Brew Shop and pick up more ingredients. Doubly so since the proprietor does demos on the first Saturday of the month, and said he’d be doing an all-grain batch today, an area I had not yet explored due to the apparently exponential increase in complexity and equipment requirements. John Palmer’s awesomely non-hippy book, How to Brew has a section on all-grain brewing, and it looked only slightly less complicated than the Apollo program, what with all the manifolds, false bottoms, precision temperature maintenance of the water, mash, etc, and a host of new procedures to accompany it all, and of course the omnipresent emphasis on sanitization. Chemistry was never my strong suit, and when it came to the parts about stopping enzymes at 168F and such, my eyes were thoroughly glazed.

As it turns out, the extra equipment for all-grain brewing does not necessarily compare to the list of equipment for a moon landing. In fact, all it takes is a 5 gallon insulated water jug, some stainless steel braid, a valve, and a bigger pot to boil your wort.

Up and breakfasted earlier than I’d prefer for a Saturday, I set off aiming to catch the part of the demo I was most interested in, collecting the sugar-rich wort after the grain had steeped, more formally known as the sparging process. I figure mashing the grain at a specific temperature in a specific amount of water is more or less idiot proof, seeing as I had accomplished the step before in some partial-grain beers. I mean, if I can do it then it’s a safe bet that anyone with a pulse and the ability to read a thermometer can pull it off. I arrived, however, to find Jamie happily stirring in the last of a few pounds of malt extract.

“So, the all-grain demo isn’t today?”
“Shoot! I forgot you said you were interested in that. And I was flip-flopping all week on whether to do extract or grain today, too. Man, sorry about that.”
“Ah well, no huge problem. I’ve still got plenty of extract recipes to work through, and another one to pick stuff up for today. I’ll catch next month or something.”
“I’ve got a better idea. How much time have you got today?”

This is commonly known as a good sign.

After a few moments debate, we concluded that I did indeed have enough time.

“What do you want to brew?”
“Buh? I … uh… erm…” I started flipping through the recipe book I’d brought along. It seemed the last time I flipped through it that a good two out of three listings were for all-grain. I commented as much.
“Ah, don’t worry about recipes. What are you in the mood for? We’ll just whip it up as we go.”

So not only a special 2nd batch of beer done all-grain just for my benefit, but also a quick primer on recipe building to boot. Have I mentioned I like Jamie, and his kick-ass business, Santa Fe Homebrew Supply? I like Jamie and his kick-ass business.

We fairly quickly settled on a nice nut-brown, more or less like Newcastle, and came up with an 8.5lb grain bill. I’d share this bill with you now, but by the time all was said and done I was too busy being caught up in “Holy crap this is easy!” to remember to get a copy. The good news is that not only is Jamie going to split the batch with us when it’s done fermenting, but that I can pick up the recipe then too.

Anyway, the process and equipment from here is pretty damn simple. Take a nice 5 gallon (or bigger, if you’re so inclined) igloo water jug, and knock the spigot off. Replace that with a stop-cock valve and slap a gasket or two on to keep it from leaking. Take some stainless steel braided hose and work it around until it sort of loosens up and looks more like a loosely woven cylindrical net rather than a hose. Attach this to your valve, and now you have an easy way to drain the malt-rich goodness out after you mash your grains. I wish I could offer a picture, but I didn’t bring a camera along since I figured the trip wouldn’t be half as interesting as it turned out to be. I’ll be sure to take a few shots when I build my own version here soon.

Anyway, moving on, the grain gets milled, just as it would for a partial-grain beer. Heat one gallon of water for every two pounds of grain (and this is more of a guideline than a rule) to 160F. If you’re feeling detail-oriented, bring some extra water to a boil and slosh that around in the cooler first to warm it up so you don’t lose heat off your mash water. We didn’t bother. Pour the main bolus of water in first, then add the grain. Jamie explained that this would make sure that there wasn’t any chance for hidden dry pockets to sneak in. Put the lid on, and walk away. Go talk about beers. Talk about the Albuquerque police taking the department chopper to Krispy Kreme. Laugh about the ATF. Perhaps most refreshingly of all, do not discuss politics. Damn it was nice to just enjoy a warm fall day in the production of beer without Barry This or Johnny That. Stir your grain every now and then for good measure, but basically just let it sit for an hour or so.

Towards the end, heat up a few more gallons of water to 170F. When the next step is done, for most recipes you’ll want to have roughly 6.5 gallons of wort collected. Heat more water than you’ll need. It beats the hell out of hustling to heat more when you run out early. This next part is the bit that worried me. It seemed like taking huge gobs of wet grain in a small container of any sort and then attempting to drain the stuff would be an exercise in glacier-watching. As it turns out, not so much. With a pot and hose to collect, crack open that stop-cock just a wee bit. Surprisingly, going too fast is more of a problem than glacial slowness. If you rinse the grains too quickly, you’ll leave a lot of sugars in there. That sugar could’ve been alcohol. Wasting that sugar is therefore alcohol abuse, and you know that’s bad. Anyway, take your nice pre-heated water and sprinkle that over the top of the big ‘ol clump of wet (and delicious smelling) grain in your water cooler. Aim to keep roughly 1/2″ of water over the top of the grain, and just for good measure, use a spoon (or jury-rig something with a shower head and siphon as we discussed doing) to sprinkle the hot water more or less evenly across the top, to ensure that all areas of the mash were well rinsed of delicious yeast-fuel.

When I first read the descriptions, I envisioned this process taking at least an hour, probably two or three, as the dense wet grain clogged the bejesus out of any possible system. Our total time, including heating more water when the first pot wasn’t enough, was right around half an hour, and Jamie commented that that might have been a hair on the quick side. Also included during all this was instruction on how to tell if there’s more recoverable sugar in the wort, and options for doing two batches of beer out of one mash, but since I’m already besting 1400 words for a supposedly light weekend post, I’ll spare you the grisly details (hint: Ph strips and flavor testing).

From this point, it’s just plain ‘ol wort. Boil it. Toss in some hops. Boil some more. Cool it down, pour it into a fermenter of some sort, and toss in some yeast so it can begin the caterpiller to butterfly transformation of alcohol-lacking wort to delicious intoxicating beer (except the wort tastes pretty good to start with, whereas caterpillers don’t really bring anything to the table).

The only thing left to do now is thumb your nose at the tax man since you’re not paying sin tax on pre-made stuff, and to flip the bird to the advertising departments of all the various big-name breweries as you enjoy the satisfaction of exactly the beer you wanted to make.

*New hiking boots, specifically, and apparently I’m the only person in all of northern New Mexico that takes a wide size, since three shops (four if you count our local place last week) all told me “Sorry, best of luck elsewhere” when I inquired as to the availability of anything wider than average.

Posted Booze and Fine Hooch |