Archives for August 2013

Five Years of Legality in Utah

August 7, 2013 by Leave a Comment

This past weekend, Steve Wilkes and I traveled to Salt Lake City to take part in the fifth annual Beehive Brewoff homebrew competition. It took place at the Bayou restaurant, where every table was occupied with judges poring over samples of 599 beers submitted by 254 brewers. It’s serious work, as the judges did their best to pick the best of each category and fill out score sheets giving valuable feedback to the entrants. A scene like this could be taken for granted across the country, but in Utah it was nonexistent just five years ago. At that time, homebrewing was illegal.

Judges are busy at the Bayou

Judges are busy at the Bayou

Among the judges gathered at the competition is the man responsible for initiating the Utah homebrew legalization movement. In 2008, Douglas Wawrzynski was a law student and a home brewer. Douglas wasn’t comfortable with the thought of being certified to uphold the law at the same time he broke it by brewing beer. It was either quit homebrewing or change the law forbidding it. He chose the latter.

Working with Christine Johnson, his Utah state representative, Douglas championed a bill legalizing his favorite hobby. It took two sessions of the legislature, the support of other Utah homebrewers, and the help of the American Homebrewers Association, but in 2009 homebrewing was legalized across the state. The first Beehive Brewoff soon followed.

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Filed Under: Beer, Beer News, Homebrewing

American Hoppy Ales: Hopping Beyond the Boil

August 7, 2013 by 1 Comment

This is part seven in our series on American hoppy ales — American-style pale ale, American IPA and dIPA. The series began on July 28.

 

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These beers have all been dry hopped.

The core of a beer’s bitterness comes from hops added in the boil. However, there are other times that hops can be added, although not all of them have much effect.

 

Before the Boil

There are three possibilities for adding hops prior to the boil — mash hopping, sparge water hopping and first wort hopping.

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Filed Under: Beer Styles, Brewing Ingredients, Brewing Techniques

The Globalization of Beer Styles

August 7, 2013 by Leave a Comment
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This planet brews beer.

In the not-too-distant past, some types of beer were only available in a given country, region or town. Even today, most homebrewers are aware of the association between many beer styles and a place. The styles Vienna lager, Munich helles and Dortmunder export even include their place of origin in their name. We know the mineral content of the water from some locations influenced the character of the beers produced there, from the dry stouts of Ireland to the IPAs from Burton-on-Trent. We know that laws affected the beers brewed in many regions, from the taxes that kept English brewers brewing mostly low-alcohol session ales to the Reinheitsgebot that prevented German brewers from using wheat or brewing an ale (unless it was a wheat ale).

We know how unusual circumstances led to some interesting beers styles, from the lambics that could be only produced with the microflora in the air of the Senne Valley of Belgium to the lightly salty gose brewed from the brackish waters near Leipzig, Germany. To this day, some regions protect regional styles of beer with appellations. For example, you can’t label a beer in Germany a Kölsch unless it was brewed in Cologne.

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Filed Under: Brewed For Thought

American Hoppy Ales: Hops Added In The Boil

August 6, 2013 by Leave a Comment

This is part six in our series on American hoppy ales. The first part was posted on July 28.

American hoppy ales — American pale ales, American IPAs and double IPAS (dIPAs) — are a showcase for hops, and there are many ways to get hop bitterness, flavor and aroma into your beer. Since hopping is so important to these styles, here is a quick primer on ways to add hops to beer, starting with kettle additions.

 

Boiling Your Hops

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A hard boiling wort will isomerize alpha acids.

The core of your beer’s hop character is going to come from hops added during the boil.  As hops are boiled, resins called alpha acids are isomerized and made soluble. It’s the isomerized alpha acids (or iso-alpha acids) that gives beer most of it’s bitterness. (Other resins, called beta-acids also contribute slightly to a beer’s bitterness.) The longer you boil hops, the more alpha acids are isomerized, up to a point. And incidentally, it’s a common myth that non-isomerized alpha acids are not bitter. They are. Pop a hop pellet in your mouth sometime and discover for yourself.

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Filed Under: Brewing Ingredients, Brewing Techniques, Uncategorized

American Hoppy Ales: Common Hop Varieties

August 5, 2013 by 8 Comments

 

This is the fifth installment in our series on American hoppy ales that began on July 28. 

 

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These hoppy ales are dominated by American hop varieties.

American pale ales, American IPAs and dIPAs are a showcase for American hops. (There are, of course, pale ales, IPAs, etc that are brewed in the US that use British or other hops, but for this series we’re sticking to discussing “classic” American-style hoppy ales.) There are many hop varieties to choose from, but several merit discussion as they are used frequently in these beers. See also the chart at the end of this article for the statistics on a variety of hop strains that work well in APAs, IPAs and dIPAs.

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Filed Under: Beer Styles

Big Texas Blonde Clone

August 5, 2013 by Leave a Comment
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Big Texas Blonde, by Texas Big Beer Brewery

The Texas Big Beer Brewery, of Buna, Texas, was founded by John McKissack and his wife, Tammy. You may remember John as Johnny Max from his BrewCrAzY homebrew podcast. (It’s back, BTW, as BrewCrAzY Pro.)

The Texas Big Beer Brewery specializes in . . . wait for it . . . big beers. Their Big Texas Blonde is their “light” beer — light in color, but weighing in at 10.5% ABV. Inspired by Belgian blonde ales, the body of this beer is lightened by adding roughly 10% of the fermentables as candi sugar. The clean American ale yeast, however, doesn’t give off the esters and peppery spiciness found in many Belgian beers.

McKissack plans for his brewery to be an integral part of of his homestead. The spent grains will be fed to animals and he’s even thinking of venting the CO2 from his fermenters into his greenhouse (to be used by plants for photosynthesis). Currently, Texas Big Beers are available in and around Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin and Beaumont, Texas.

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Filed Under: Brewing Recipes, Uncategorized

First Racking of Fruit Wine

August 4, 2013 by 3 Comments
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A wine aging in a secondary fermenter. (Photo courtesy Rich Weaver.)

My cherry berry wine has been in the primary fermenter for 11 days. It’s been 4 days since any significant activity was seen in the airlock and I think it’s time to rack it to secondary. Most country wines don’t benefit from spending much time on the lees — the winemaking term for the yeast sediment at the bottom of the fermenter. In beer, we’d call it trub.

The day I made the wine, I added 1 Campden tablet per gallon (3.8 L) to the must (the unfermented wine). This should have added 66 ppm sulfur dioxide (SO2) to the must, initially. When you add potassium metabisulfite (the active ingredient in Campden tablets), it releases some sulfur dioxide SO2 gas, the so-called free SO2. The rest of it remains dissolved, in one form or another, in the must. The percentage of the metabisulfite you add that ends up being released as free SO2 depends on the pH of the wine. The lower the pH, the less metabisulfite is needed to protect the wine. I didn’t take my initial must pH, so I don’t know what percentage of the 66 ppm SO2 existed as free SO2.

Sulfur dioxide at around my initial concentration serves two purposes — it kills microorganisms in the must (because wine musts are not boiled as beer worts are) and it protects the wine from oxidation. The next day, the level of SO2 is supposed to drop low enough that you can safely pitch your wine yeast. This must have happened because I added the yeast that next day and fermentation was in full swing within 24 hours. (I wasn’t watching it like a hawk, so I don’t know exactly when the airlock started gurgling.)

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Filed Under: Winemaking Techniques

Quickly Maturing Ale Recipe: Have Beer Ready in 7 Days

August 3, 2013 by 5 Comments
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In just 7 days, you could be drinking your next homebrew. British bitters are low-gravity session ales that mature quickly.

Pressed for time, but your beer supply is running low? Need to get a beer ready quickly, perhaps for an upcoming party? Here’s the recipe for a beer that you can be drinking just 7 days after you brew it (14 days if you don’t keg your beer).

This beer matures quickly because it starts at a low original gravity (although well within BJCP guidelines for the style, ordinary bitter) and the yeast strain chosen ferments quickly, then flocculates. Pitching an adequate amount of yeast, aerating throughly and maintaining the fermentation temperature in the top part of the yeast’s recommended fermentation range makes this fermentation proceed very quickly. Also, one fresh package of liquid yeast should have nearly the optimal number of cells to ferment this wort, so you don’t need to make a yeast starter.

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Filed Under: Brewing Recipes, Brewing Techniques

American Hoppy Ales: Wort Production

August 2, 2013 by Leave a Comment
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A range of American hoppy ales. Making a fermentable wort is key to producing these hop-forward beers.

This is the fourth installment in a series on American hoppy ales. The first article was posted on July 28.

When brewing an American pale ale, IPA or double IPA (dIPA), fermentability is very important. All three of these American hoppy ales are showcases for hops and the beer should be sufficiently dry so as not to obscure them. In sweeter beers, and beers with fuller mouthfeels, the hop character is dulled and so this is avoided in American hoppy ales. Wort fermentability is achieved through two means — recipe formulation and wort production.

In the article on grists for hoppy beers, we saw that as you moved up the “ladder” from American pale ale to IPA to dIPA, less crystal malt was used. Wort made with higher percentages of crystal malt shows a lower degree of fermentability, all other things being equal, so it’s use is kept in check in American hoppy ales.

In addition, the fermentability of some dIPA worts is increased by swapping sugar for a percentage (5–10%) of the pale malt. So, in general — although it is easy to find exceptions — as you move up in original gravity (OG), the final gravity (FG) does not increase at a proportional pace, because wort fermentability increases.

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Filed Under: Beer Styles, Brewing Techniques

American Hoppy Ales: Extract Wort Production

August 2, 2013 by Leave a Comment
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The tips in this article can help improve your extract IPAs and dIPAs. (And here’s an added tip — don’t use an old, dented can of wheat malt extract. You’re welcome.)

American hoppy ales — and especially IPA and dIPA — are one type of beer that can benefit from better homebrew recipes. Most recipes involve adding all the pale malt as light malt extract, and steeping the crystal malts. In IPAs or dIPA, this leads to only steeping a small amount of grain, or — worse yet — the brewer deciding he should include more steeped grains and loading his recipe up with light crystal or CaraPils.

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Filed Under: Brewing Ingredients, Brewing Techniques
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