I wanted to start writing about my real passion, and that's brewing. I first started brewing about 20 years ago after looking for something to do one summer between college terms.
I'd stumbled across a tiny display in 'Boots the chemist', featuring beer kits & thought 1) I'm bored 2) I like beer 3) I like making stuff 4) It was cheap. I found an old brewing bin in my dads garage he had used for making wine and made my first brew.
It was so long ago I can't remember much about it except that is wasn't that great, but none the less my friends and I drank it ( well we were students and if it was alcoholic, we consumed it ! ).
I think I brewed about 3 or 4 times then gave it up......fast forward twenty years, financial issues and a divorce later I end up back living at my parents until I got sorted. So again bored, liking beer and making stuff, but 20 years wiser and armed now with the internet, my interest in brewing was rekindled.
I was initially amazed at how much home brewing had advanced, and with literately thousands of websites dedicated to brewing techniques, supplies, recipes & discussion groups I was hooked even before I'd even started.
Anyone who knows me well, will know the saying 'RTFM' , and this applies to anything new I'm doing. So with my new found interest I ordered Graham Wheeler's 'Brew Your Own British Ale'
I read this book before I even got started, and initially I didn't fully understand extract or full grain brewing, but it did give a good general overview of all the processes, equipment and terminology. The 100 recipes in the book looked interesting and made it even more exciting; I couldn't wait to make some of these beers..........to date I have never bothered doing any of these recipes ! I'd found a new beer hero...John J Palmer
I took the sensible option having read many forums, and decided to start with a few kits. The advantage of this, is its the cheapest way to start and you can re-use all the equipment when scaling up to extract or all-grain. Its a good idea to start at this level so you get used to some of the more general techniques like cleaning, sterilising, syphoning, hydrometer reading, temperature control & bottling.
I started with the Woodfordes Wherry Micro Brewery , which 3 years later is roughly about the same price I paid but now comes with a 40 pint pressure barrel included.
I followed the instructions to the word using spring water from the supermarket and then after fermentation, bottled into 500ml glass bottles. I had bought about a dozen of these from Wilkinsons ( another great find as they have a store 10 minutes walk from me) , plus I also used some 1 litre PET bottles I had collected.
After two weeks of bottle conditioning I must say I wasn't impressed. It was better than the stuff I'd brewed some 20 years ago, but was bland and uninspiring. It did have a slight off taste which at the time I put down to the mysterious and much quoted 'Home Brew Twang'.....I will do a separate post on this as it turns out this so called 'twang' can be a multitude of things and is a rather generalised description.
So after my first attempt and pouring over even more blogs and forums I decided to try another kit, but this time ignore the kit instructions and try racking the wort to a secondary after 7 days and attempt some dry hopping, with 7 days in the secondary. For this bought a 'Better Bottle Carboy' and used a Muntons 'Nut Brown Ale' kit with 1kg of Light Spraymalt.
The result was a slight improvement. The dry hopping didn't seem to produce the lovely fresh hoppy smell I wanted, more like a rubber tyre. But taste wise was ok, it was at least drinkable but not at the quality level I would have wanted before sharing it out with friends and family.
It still had that twaaaannggg taste as well..now I was getting annoyed.
For weeks I mulled over my process and equipment, was I missing something obvious. People were raving about how good their beers were with the same kits, what was I doing wrong, was I just expecting too much or was there something I was doing that was ruining the beer.
So I decided to look into extract and partial-mash brewing in more detail and found 'How To Brew' by John Palmer. Well this book was a revelation, daunting at first but is now my beer bible even 3 years later. I have read this book more times than I can recall, even more than my 1998 copy of Reader Wives !
At this point I'd had no idea of the importance of temperature, water, fermentation process let alone the array of different yeasts at a brewers disposal. At this point I had already decided to give kits one more chance and this time I went for a 'Russian Imperial Stout' from Muntons premium Gold range. I'd realised that I was leaving the fermenter in the garage, and the temp fluctuated between 10-20° C, so using a spare aquarium heater I had, drilled a hole in the fermentation bucket so I could dangle the heater in the wort, using a rubber bung to feed the cable through to seal it. This time compared to before the fermentation was much more rigorous and I had to skim the top of the wort several times.
After seven days I racked to 5 Gal King Keg pressure barrel and after 2 weeks gave it a taste. Well it was duly poured down the drain, it was a disaster. Looking back know I'd wrongly assumed the thermostat on the heater was correct ( I didn't have a temp strip on the fermenter) & at that point hadn't grasped the concept that fermentation itself can raise the wort temp by a number of degrees.
Due to this failure I wanted yet one more try, this time with the 'Docklands Porter' from the same Munton Gold range. This time I used my Better Bottle fermenter as my primary and moved it to a room in the house which had a constant 20° C. Also, I left it for 14 days then moved it to a fridge for a further 5 days before racking to the keg.
Success at last ! It still had a slight twang and some slight estery banana flavours but was very drinkable.
Up to this point I was about to chuck it all in and give up. But I had learn't a lot of good lessons, and several years on since stepping up to extract, then partial-mashing to full mash those lessons still resonate.
1. Keep it consistent - Good record keeping helps. Record things in detail so that next time you can make minor adjustments. Initially I made the mistake of changing my process by too many factors and didn't approach it methodically. Even more so when you start creating recipes and you brew that perfect pint, and then next time you can't re-create it !
2. Control your fermentation temperature - Different yeasts work better at different temperatures. Also remember the same yeast can produce different flavours at different temp ranges as well. Understand the yeast profile in detail, most companies provide detailed information on their products. Keep temps constant, invest in an LCD Stick On Thermometer.
Ale is typically fermented at temperatures between 15 and 24 °C (60 and 75°F), aim for 20°C .
Lager fermentation temperatures from 7 to 13 °C ( 45 to 55 °F ) 10°C seems to work for me.
Again the above depends on the yeast strain and style of beer your fermenting.
3. Let the yeast do its job - As with above, different styles and strengths of beer require different fermentation schedules. Part of the fun of home brewing is experimenting, so don't just take peoples word for it. You can scour forums as much as you want, you will get a whole range of answers and leave you still not knowing what to do. I would suggest you experiment for yourself with the pros and cons of racking to secondary fermenter. I personally leave all my beers in the primary for 14 days, letting the beer condition and mature as the yeast continues to clean up the wort. I laugh in the face of Autolysis, and this is only likely to happen if left for longer than say one month.
The only exception to this, and the only time I would rack to a secondary is 1) Brewing a Larger 2) A High OG beer ( > 1.060 ) 3) Dry hopping
4. Don't Panic - Things will go wrong, don't stress over it, often enough it will turn out fine.
As long as you clean and sterilize everything that touches the wort, I wouldn't worry to much about long lag times, stuck fermentation or yeast krausen exploding out the fermenter.
Keep a spare packet of yeast at hand for emergencies, be patient and use a blow off tube in the first few days.
I've had plenty of disasters, all but one turned out fine in the end.
5. Be well prepared on Brew day - Make sure all your equipment is clean and sterile. Prepare your water the night before if doing all-grain. Ensure you have measured all your ingredients and use a brew sheet to organize your brew day. I'd recommend using brewing software like Beersmith ( my software of choice ) , Promash or BeerEngine
6. Experiment and have fun - Crack open a beer and enjoy... though keep it to one beer !
Especially when doing a full mash. Once or twice I've forgotten some late boil additions or done something dumb which isn't a good idea when you have 5 gallons of wort at 100 °C.
To date I have brewed over 20 different recipes and brewed about 175 Gallons of beer, my house is starting to resemble a brewery !
So now I've started this beer blog I'm going start adding all the interesting techniques, issues, equipment and brew days I have experienced to date, and hopefully help and inspire other brewers to brew great beer.
Ian
- Head Brewer - Dark Steam Brewery Company
