Brew Day!
One of my favorite hobbies is crafting my own personal blends of craft brews, whether its beer, wine, or mead. Today I'm pulling out my brew pot for science's sake and experiment with something different in beer, natural and sustainable hops alternatives.
Beer, or something similar to beer, has been make as far back as we have history. The hops that are found in beer provide an important role, they act as a preservative to the precious liquid and stave of mold and other contaminants.
Prior to the 13th century, though, hops were rarely seen in ale recipes. Instead, gruit was used to help preserve and flavor ales and beers of the time. Gruit is a generic term for one or more of a combination of plants and herbs including mugwort, yarrow, and sweet gale when used for brewing.
By the 15th century hops had made its way into brew pots thanks in part to taxes levied against gruit crops. By the 16th century, hops had become the staple in brewing, almost eradicating gruit from modern brews.
One noted difference between gruit and hops brews is the sedative effect. According to old literature, gruit brews were more flavorful and did not lead to the sleepiness many have after a few pints. A good gruit brew would keep revelers quite awake late into the night. Going back to medieval practices allows us to bypass modern conventions and taste ale as it was many years ago.
One of my favorite hobbies is crafting my own personal blends of craft brews, whether its beer, wine, or mead. Today I'm pulling out my brew pot for science's sake and experiment with something different in beer, natural and sustainable hops alternatives.
Beer, or something similar to beer, has been make as far back as we have history. The hops that are found in beer provide an important role, they act as a preservative to the precious liquid and stave of mold and other contaminants.
Prior to the 13th century, though, hops were rarely seen in ale recipes. Instead, gruit was used to help preserve and flavor ales and beers of the time. Gruit is a generic term for one or more of a combination of plants and herbs including mugwort, yarrow, and sweet gale when used for brewing.
By the 15th century hops had made its way into brew pots thanks in part to taxes levied against gruit crops. By the 16th century, hops had become the staple in brewing, almost eradicating gruit from modern brews.
One noted difference between gruit and hops brews is the sedative effect. According to old literature, gruit brews were more flavorful and did not lead to the sleepiness many have after a few pints. A good gruit brew would keep revelers quite awake late into the night. Going back to medieval practices allows us to bypass modern conventions and taste ale as it was many years ago.
What's in the pot today?
For today's experiment in brewing I used two identical kits, Hank's Hefeweisen purchased through Midwest Supplies, and the yeast strain WB-06 by Safbrew. I wanted these kits because the style of beer is not heavily hopped and kits will generally deliver the same product reliably. For one kit I will be replacing the hops addition with some wild yarrow leaves and flowers collected off of my farm. I really want to taste the yarrow so I will be adding much more of it to my experimental batch. I was torn between using my newly acquired wild yeast but, since I haven't tested it in a brew yet, I went with the commercial yeast strain for this experiment.
Science and Gear
This experiment in brewing will be used with a control and a single variable, the bitterant.
Each kit of Hank's Hefeweisen contains:
1 6lb container of wheat liquid malt extract (LME)
1 1lb bag of golden light dry malt extract (DME)
1 12oz bag of specialty grains
1 mesh bag for steeping grains
1 1oz packet of Tettnang hops
Each kit will have one packet of WB-06 yeast pitched into the finished wort at about 78F.
For the hardware I use:
x2
bucket lid with an airlock port x2
x2
long spatula
55,000+ BTU propane burner with stand
For the variable, the 1oz packet of Tettnang hops will be replaced with 2oz of fresh yarrow leaves and 4oz of fresh yarrow flowers, both harvested fresh that day. You can watch my beautiful wife prepare the yarrow in Part 1 of the videos below.
Light the Fire!
Enough science, time to make some beer! Well, not yet. Cleanliness is a big must and every pot, spoon, and tool that will even look at our beer needs to be cleaned and sanitized
. Wash everything with warm water and dish soap. If you are brewing outdoors like I do clean your hose and nozzle, too! After cleaning everything must be sanitized. Follow the directions on the bottle for proper sanitation!
. Wash everything with warm water and dish soap. If you are brewing outdoors like I do clean your hose and nozzle, too! After cleaning everything must be sanitized. Follow the directions on the bottle for proper sanitation!
Now we're all squeaky clean lets brewing!
1.) Fill your brew pot with 3 gallons of water. Light your burner and adjust the flame/oxygen until you have a transparent blue jet all the way around. Bring your pot to 150F, confirming with your thermometer.
2.) While waiting for your water to hit 150F, load your specialty grains into the mesh bag. Once you reach target temperature turn off the burner, full flame out, and tie off and toss in the grain bag. Tie the open end to your pot's handle if possible for easier removal. No burnt fingers! Let the grains steep for 20 minutes. The water should remain above 145F, relight the burner if it starts to cool but don't take it above 160F!
3.) After 20 minutes of steeping the grains are done and the resulting grain tea is now called wort. Remove the bag and let it drain into the pot. One or two light squeezes help get all the good stuff where it belongs. Set the bag aside to cool.
4.) Relight the burner and open it up almost all the way, adjusting oxygen to keep a hot, blue flame. We're taking the wort up to a rolling boil so keep the area clear of anything not heat resistant like plastic bits, the dog, etc. While the pot is coming up to boiling, add both the liquid and dry malt extracts to the wort, stirring constantly until its all incorporated.
5.) We're getting hot now! Be careful as the wort may boil over as it approaches "hot break", or the point where it stops producing foam. Stir constantly as you near boil to break up the bubbles until the foam dies down.
6.) Add hops directly into boiling wort and start a 60 minute timer. The long boil time causes the hops to provide the best bittering and preservation without changing the flavor or aroma of the final product.
7.) When the timer is up, turn off the burner and chill your wort. This can be done with an immersion bath or a wort chiller. I use a wort chiller because it is super fast at cooling the wort down versus cooling with an immersion bath. When the timer gets to 10 minutes place your wort chiller into the boil. This helps sanitize the chiller.
8.) Once the wort gets to around 100F, transfer it into its fermenting vessel, in my case a 6 gallon food grade bucket. Add cold water to the wort to bring its total volume up to 5 gallons. Check that the temperature is below 80F and record the specific gravity using a refractometer (or a floating hydrometer found in most brew equipment kits). Stir the wort like crazy for about a minute to get as much air into the liquid as possible. Add the yeast and stir again to incorporate. Cap the bucket with a lid and put an airlock into the port. You did fill the airlock with sanitizer, right? You can use vodka instead if you dumped your sanitizer out before this step.
9.) Set in a dark place out of the way of major traffic. Label the bucket with the date, specific gravity, and type. This is our control beer.
10.) Clean everything, sanitize everything and start over. Time to make more beer! Repeat steps 1-5 with the second beer kit. In step six, instead of adding hops I added 2oz of fresh yarrow leaves and started the 60 minute timer. At one minute left I also added 4oz fresh yarrow flowers. The flowers at the end should give the final beer a pleasant aroma of the yarrow. Finish the beer by following steps 7 and 8. Label this beer with the same information like the first batch. This is our experimental brew.
By the next day both brews should be bubbling vigorously out of the airlocks. That's our yeastie buddies converting all the malt sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide. In about a week the fermentation process should have stopped and I'll transfer both brews into a new bucket to clarify and let the yeast finish converting any loose sugars. I'll have more pictures of that process once it happens. In six weeks we'll have about 4 cases of beer ready for bottling!
Happy brewing!
4.) Relight the burner and open it up almost all the way, adjusting oxygen to keep a hot, blue flame. We're taking the wort up to a rolling boil so keep the area clear of anything not heat resistant like plastic bits, the dog, etc. While the pot is coming up to boiling, add both the liquid and dry malt extracts to the wort, stirring constantly until its all incorporated.
5.) We're getting hot now! Be careful as the wort may boil over as it approaches "hot break", or the point where it stops producing foam. Stir constantly as you near boil to break up the bubbles until the foam dies down.
6.) Add hops directly into boiling wort and start a 60 minute timer. The long boil time causes the hops to provide the best bittering and preservation without changing the flavor or aroma of the final product.
7.) When the timer is up, turn off the burner and chill your wort. This can be done with an immersion bath or a wort chiller. I use a wort chiller because it is super fast at cooling the wort down versus cooling with an immersion bath. When the timer gets to 10 minutes place your wort chiller into the boil. This helps sanitize the chiller.
8.) Once the wort gets to around 100F, transfer it into its fermenting vessel, in my case a 6 gallon food grade bucket. Add cold water to the wort to bring its total volume up to 5 gallons. Check that the temperature is below 80F and record the specific gravity using a refractometer (or a floating hydrometer found in most brew equipment kits). Stir the wort like crazy for about a minute to get as much air into the liquid as possible. Add the yeast and stir again to incorporate. Cap the bucket with a lid and put an airlock into the port. You did fill the airlock with sanitizer, right? You can use vodka instead if you dumped your sanitizer out before this step.
9.) Set in a dark place out of the way of major traffic. Label the bucket with the date, specific gravity, and type. This is our control beer.
10.) Clean everything, sanitize everything and start over. Time to make more beer! Repeat steps 1-5 with the second beer kit. In step six, instead of adding hops I added 2oz of fresh yarrow leaves and started the 60 minute timer. At one minute left I also added 4oz fresh yarrow flowers. The flowers at the end should give the final beer a pleasant aroma of the yarrow. Finish the beer by following steps 7 and 8. Label this beer with the same information like the first batch. This is our experimental brew.
By the next day both brews should be bubbling vigorously out of the airlocks. That's our yeastie buddies converting all the malt sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide. In about a week the fermentation process should have stopped and I'll transfer both brews into a new bucket to clarify and let the yeast finish converting any loose sugars. I'll have more pictures of that process once it happens. In six weeks we'll have about 4 cases of beer ready for bottling!
Happy brewing!
How did the yarrow beer turn out?
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