Archives for June 2016

Easy Water Treatment Guide

June 29, 2016 by 11 Comments

Screen Shot 2016-05-24 at 3.51.03 PMRecently, I posted four simple water guides. They described a simple way to make up your brewing water (brewing liquor) for pale, amber, brown, and black beers. Each gave a recipe for adding minerals to 5.0 gallons (19 L) of distilled water to make water suitable for beers in the appropriate color range. Three of the four guides were based on starting with 100 ppm calcium ions (Ca2+) in your water; the fourth started with a base of 75 ppm.

There’s nothing magical about 100 ppm Ca2+, however. It is a middle value in the range of useful calcium levels in beer, often given as 50–200 ppm. Calcium has a variety of benefits in the mash, and brewing liquor in this range should supply a sufficient amount. If you are making your brewing liquor from distilled water, the more calcium you add, the more carbonates you need to add. Calcium causes a reaction in the mash that releases acids and lowers pH. Carbonates neutralize acid and oppose mash acidification. So, to hit your proper mash pH, you need these two to be (at least somewhat) in balance. With that in mind, I’ve made a five-step guide to making your brewing liquor that allows you to start with 50, 75, 100, or 150 ppm calcium ions. Beers brewed from water containing more overall minerals may taste “minerally” while beers brewed with water containing lower levels of minerals may taste “softer” or “more rounded.”  [Read more…]

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Thoughts on Cleaning and Sanitation (II. Other Variables Including the Pitching Rate)

June 28, 2016 by Leave a Comment

DSCN0716In the previous installment of this article, I advocated that brewers keep their wort or beer covered whenever it is not in a sealed vessel and to minimize the amount of time that it is exposed to the open air. Both of these things should reduce— although not eliminate — the amount of airborne contamination in your beer. It’s my contention that, even when you normally produce beer that does not taste overtly contaminated, further reducing the level of contaminants further benefits your beer. In this post, I’ll cover a couple of minor details, and one important — but frequently overlooked — aspect of sanitation. [Read more…]

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Beer and Wine Journal Turns Three

June 27, 2016 by 5 Comments
BWJlogo

Grapes?

Beer and Wine Journal is now 3 years old. James Spencer — host of Basic Brewing Radio and Video — and I (Chris Colby) launched this site in late June 2013 and since then, we’ve posted over 540 articles on beer, mead, and wine. (If you read our site, you know it’s like 99% beer, 1% mead and there was a wine article once. Plus, there’s the occasional food article.) In 2016, we’ve been hovering around 20,000 readers a month and this number continues to trend upwards.  [Read more…]

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Thoughts on Cleaning and Sanitation (I: Airborne Contamination) 

June 24, 2016 by 5 Comments
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Wort being chilled with an immersion chiller. The kettle is covered loosely with a lid. Steam from the boil sanitized the lid. I also drape clean T-shirts over the kettle while chilling to prevent airborne microorganisms moving vertically through the crack in the kettle lid.

Recently, I posted an article advocating that brewers think about cleaning and sanitation as a matter of degree rather than a “good enough”/“not good enough” dichoctomy. In this article, I’ll share some ideas to move your cleaning and sanitation practices from “good enough” to just a bit better than that. For the sake of completeness, I’ll cover some familiar ground, but I think there are a couple ideas in here that are not well appreciated in the homebrewing community.  [Read more…]

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Rockville Gordon Biersch Collaborative Flemish Red

June 23, 2016 by 3 Comments

Mike Tonsmeire, The Mad Fermentationist, is collaborating with the Gordon Biersch Rockville, Maryland, location to produce a blended, barrel-aged Flemish Red, and we got the chance to get a preview sampling.

Mike Tonsmeire and Christian Layke with their barrels

Mike Tonsmeire and Christian Layke with their barrels

One of the best parts of being the producer of Basic Brewing Radio is attending the National Homebrew Conference (Homebrew Con) every year. We typically arrive a day early to take in some of the local beer culture wherever the conference takes us. This year, the get-together landed in Baltimore, and we were thrilled to have Mike show us around his neck of the woods, as he lives in the D.C. area.

Our first stop was a visit to the Gordon Biersch Rockville restaurant and its head brewer, Christian Layke. Christian is a former homebrewer and has been with Gordon Biersch for around eight years. He left a job with a non-profit environmental think tank to work with stainless steel tanks instead. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Beer, Beer Styles, Brewing Techniques

Brewing Liquor For Pale Beers (0–10 SRM)

June 9, 2016 by 3 Comments

Screen Shot 2016-05-24 at 3.51.03 PMFor brewers who want to start treating their water appropriately, but don’t want to wade through the requisite chemistry, here’s the final installment in my series of simple water guides. Today’s post is a straightforward guide to generating brewing liquor for pale beers from 0 to 10 SRM. In practice, of course, it would hard to brew an all-malt beer below 3 SRM. But, I’ll cover the whole range. This includes some pale ales, most wheat ales, Kölsch, Pilsners and other light lagers. You begin with 5.0 gallons (19 L) of distilled water and add minerals to create your brewing liquor. [Read more…]

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Brewing Liquor For Brown Beers (20–30 SRM)

June 2, 2016 by 2 Comments

Screen Shot 2016-05-24 at 3.51.03 PMFor brewers who want to start treating their water appropriately, but don’t want to wade through the requisite chemistry, here’s the third in my series of simple water guides. Today’s post is a quick guide to generating brewing liquor for brown beers, from 20 to 30 SRM. This includes brown ales, some porters, many dark lagers, etc. You begin with 5.0 gallons (19 L) of distilled water and add minerals to create your brewing liquor.

I will post the remaining guide — for pale beers (0–10 SRM) — soon. [Read more…]

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Brewing Liquor For Dark Beers (30–40 SRM) 

June 1, 2016 by 5 Comments

Screen Shot 2016-05-24 at 3.51.03 PMFor brewers who want to start treating their water appropriately, but don’t want to wade through the requisite chemistry, here’s the second in my series of simple water guides. Today’s post is a quick guide to generating brewing liquor for dark beers, starting with distilled water as the base. I’ll discuss beers ranging in color from 30 to 40 SRM — porters, stouts, and the like.

I will post the remaining two water guides — for brown beers (20–30 SRM) and pale beers (0–10 SRM) — soon. I’ve skipped to dark beers because of an interesting quirk to making brewing liquor for dark beers. [Read more…]

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