David W. Nellans

American Cream Ale

Description

Amount 5 Gallons | Approximate Alcohol 4% | HBU 4.8

This ale is light bodied, low in alchohol and has a nice malty feel to it. Low in both bitterness and hops it is a great summertime beer because its so smooth and refreshing.

California Steam

Description

Volume 5 Gallons | Approximate Alcohol 4% | HBU 7.7

A steam lager typical of those found on the west coast. These are lager yeasts which are especially tolerant of higher brewing temperature. The yeast used in this recipe works best around 65 F.

Ingredients

Special Instructions

None

British Bitter

Description

Volume 5 Gallons | Approximate Alcohol 3% | HBU 5.7

A slightly malty, low alchohol and overall very agreeable beer. Low alchohol makes this a great sessioning beer!

Ingredients

Special Instructions

None

Bavarian Hefe-Weizen

Description

5 Gallons Recipie | Approximate Alcohol 4% | HBU 11.4

A recipe in progress trying to develop a high quality Belgin Wit

Ingredients

Special Instructions

Use large wart volume to reduce carmelization which keeps color light.

Bavarian Hefe-Weizen

Description

5 Gallons Recipie | Approximate Alcohol 4% | HBU 5.7

This is a moderate alcohol, lightly bittered and hopped beer. Brewed from wheat in southern german tradition, this beer has a tart, slightly sour taste. A slight bananna and clove taste is imparted by the yeast strain. Bittering and hopping is kept to a minimum so the tart flavor of the beer can come through. A very light and refreshing beer, great in the summertime. Served chilled with much of the yeast still in the beer producing a cloudy appearance.

Yeast Starter

Description

A yeast starter allows the yeast colony to grow before pitching which decreases latency for yeast to begin fermentation and increases completeness of fermentation.

Equipment

½ Gallon glass jug and S-style airlock with stopper

¼ Cup Light Spray Malt



¼ Teaspoon Yeast Nutrient

Instructions

Sanitize glass jug and airlock and funnel with your prefered sanitizer.

Bring to a boil: 1 quart (¼ gallon) water, ¼ cup malt, ¼ teaspoon nutrient. Watch out here this will try and boil over on you if you don't watch carefully!

Yeasts that are commonly used for brewing are generally of two species, Saccharomyces Carlsbergensis and Saccharomyces Cerevisiae. These two species roughly translate into lager and ale yeast. Within each species however there are hundreds of different strains maintained and used by brewers throughout the world. I was once thought that you could catagorize an ale yeast if it top fermented and a lager if it bottom fermented (flocculated to form a cake on the bottom of the vessel) however this is not and never was true. While it works as a rule of thumb it is not an accurate way to determine yeast types.

For the homebrewer there are two viable options for yeast; The first is to use a dry yeast similar to yeast you would buy in packets for baking, or to use liquid yeast starter cultures. Yeast that is used for brewing is NOT the same as yeast used for bread, this is very important. Using a bread yeast will most likely yeild a beer you are not interested in drinking. I think there is a time in every homebrewers life they will start experimenting with silly things like using rapid-rise yeast in a batch just to "see what will happen", but be forewarned!

I will concentrate mainly on liquid yeast because most brewers move quickly to liquid yeast because of the great number of available strains from Wyeast and White Labs. Both these companies provide some form of yeast culture which can be either pitched directly into your wort or used to create a larger culture. I typically use Wyeast 50ml smack packs and then create a starter culture because they are a little less expensive than White Labs and I have found their descriptions of the yeast strains to be more accurate.

When choosing a yeast you an examine the description available for their yeast types at Wyeast's website before you purchase. Choose a yeast that matches the desired flavor profile for your beer and take note of two things, fermentation temperature and flocculation. Fermentation temperature, which is usually a range, is the temperature at which you should maintain your primary fermentation vessel while the yeast do their work. If you get outside this temperature range the yeast may produce off flavors which are considered undesireable. Usually being below the fermentation temperature will result in just a longer fermentation time with high temperatures resulting in a variety of flavors including citrus, butterscotch or others.

Once you have chosen your yeast to use and followed the directions on the package I suggest making a yeast starter culture still. Making a starter allows the yeast population to grow in a small vessel to a much larger number before you pitch it into your wort.  The advantage of this is that wort is most vulnerable to bacterial infection when it is cooled but fermentation has not begun. If you pitch a yeast population that is not large enough it is possible for bacteria to grow at the same time as the yeast and to produce off flavors if not spoil your batch of beer. Thus pitching a large active colony of yeast will result in a strong quick fermentation which will kill all other bacteria if any are present even after sanitation before they have any chance at spoiling your beer.

These are the directions for making a 1/4 gallon yeast starter which is sufficient for almost any ale. If you are making a lager I would suggest doubling this recipe because at lower temperatures it takes even longer for a yeast colony to grow to sufficient size for vigerous fermentation.

Making a Yeast Starter

Description

Wort production is a 2-3 hour process which involves boiling all your ingredients together to form a fermentable mixture with the desired properties of a great beer.

Equipment

3-5 Gallon Pot

Thermometer

Specialty Grains

Malt Extract

Hops

Instructions

Fill your pot 3/4 full of water making sure that this is no less than 2 gallons or so, a larger pot makes it easier to make light colored beers but if it is a dark beer feel free to reduce the amount of water used.


Heat the water up to 170 degrees (as a rule of thumb this is just after it starts steaming) and turn off the heat.

Wort

Wort is the name for the mixture of unfermented sugars and hops oils that every beer starts out as before it becomes beer. Wort production can be an increadably complex process if you are an all grain brewer or very simple if you are an extract only brewer. Many brewers reside somewhere in the middle and do partial mashes as required to get certain characteristics out of their beers. I occupy the space between a extract brewer and an all grain brewer so I will approach the subject from the stand point of an extract brewer because that is the easiest method and you can get fancier as you desire.



Wort is produced by using the natural enzymes in grains to convert their starch to sugar. It is a natural process that happens as a seed germinates as well, we just take advantage of the sugar before the seed germinates. There is a laborous process all grain brewers perform which effectively results in the liquid or dry malt extract brewers use. The end result though is relatively the same which is why extract brewers can produce beers which are just as fine as all grain brewers in most cases.



Aside from your yeast's flavor profile wort provides the majority of the characteristics of your final product. The first thing to consider in wort is the percent alchohol you want your finished beer to be. The most accurate way to do this is by taking specific gravity readings of your unfermented wort and fermented wort and the difference is the is the amount of sugar that has been converted into alcohol. For a beginning brewer however a good rule of thumb to follow is to take the total pounds of malt extract or sugar that you use, subtract two and that will be the approximate alcohol content. For example a recipie that uses 6 lb. of malt will yield a beer with around 4% alcohol content. There are other factors such as yeast attenuation which will influence your final yeild, but that rule of thumb works pretty well if you aren't picky.

The second consideration is how much body you want your beer to have.  Body is what makes your beer heavy versus light. Body is NOT color, but they often go hand in hand. Typically the lighter the malt extract, which usually comes in three colors: light, amber, and dark, the less body the beer will have. If you wish to make a light beer that is full bodied we can use another method to help, but it will never have as much body as a dark extract based beer without significant work. It is not a problem to make a very dark light bodied beer however, so don't choose a dark extract just for the coloration. Choose your malt extract based on desired body with consideration for final coloration if that is an issue.



Once you have chosen the type and amount of malt extract, which is the vast majority of the sugar you are using, you can also choose to use a specialty grain to give your beer special qualities. Almost every beer you will make you will want to tweak with grains so it is good to learn about them now. Grains you use for your wort production can be malted or unmalted, enzymatic or not (though almost all are not), and highly differentiated in color. Grains are steeped like a tea bag in your wort water before you add the malt extract and give the wort both coloration and specific taste. You will select your grains based on the recipie you are using and you should take a look at my recipie section to get an idea of what kinds and amounts of grains are used for a particular style of beer.



Finally, once you have chosen your malt and grains you need to choose your hops for the beer. This section will eventually become its own because it is so important in brewing but for now you will have to make due with the short version. Hops provide both bittering, flavoring, and aroma to beer. Typically hops are added at three stages in brewing which corispond to its intended use.

In your secondary the remaining yeast in the beer continues to convert the remaining sugars, usually more complex sugars, to alcohol. They also will continue converting other by products of primary fermentation into complex molecules which provide beer with distinctive styles. Lagers are the most common example of this. During your secondary fermentation the majority of yeast will coagulate and drop of of suspension as well leaving you with a much more clear beer. For ales, this clarifying process is often the only reason for doing a secondary fermentation. After your secondary fermentation you could do a 3rd fermentation to clarify more, but almost no brewers I know use tertiary fermentation except in specialty cases, yet virtually 100$ do secondary ferementations.