The Brew Day at DDB
Eventually on this page I will have photos and descriptions of all of my equipment as well as my process. For now, it is only text.
Back to the homebrew page.
Before I brew, I decide upon a beer that I would like to craft. Often I base my decision upon the season and what Jodi feels like drinking. Once I have decided upon a style, I need to find or formulate a recipe. Usually I do this by using a recipe I already have for that style, going to one of the online recipe databases (at the brewery) or refer to my library of books. Once I have a recipe, I use Promash to adjust the amounts for my current setup and adjust volumes and ingredients to match what I have available or can acquire easily. For each batch, I make sure I record the planned recipe so that when I shop for ingredients I know exactly what I need. Usually, I end up changing the recipe slightly (1.8 lbs. of grain is almost always rounded up to 2, and things like that).
Once I have my recipe all ready, I take an inventory of what I have, and make a list of what I need. At this point, I sanitize the equipment I need for a starter if I am doing one -- a 22 oz. bottle, a rubber stopper, and an airlock. While these soak in sanitizer (usually iodophor these days) I head to the homebrew shop. I usually shop at a local store called Merchant of Vino (a Whole Foods Market store) in Ann Arbor, and can get most everything I need there. Sometimes, if I need large quantities or specialty items, I head to the Wine Barrel in Livonia -- about 40 minutes from home. At the homebrew shop, I select my grains and mill them. I then head to the refridgerator and select my whole leaf hops and my yeast. For an idea of what grains, hops, and yeasts I use, refer to the Batch Index. With everything I need, I pay and head back to Dusty Dog Brewing headquarters. A 5-gallon batch usually costs about $20-30 depending on the ingredients -- that comes out to about 50 cents a bottle for ingredients (of course, when we roll the cost of all the equipment I've accumulated, the cost is much higher!).
When I arrive home, the first thing I do is put the hops in the freezer and get the yeast ready. If I am using a WYeast "Smack Pack" I smack it, and let it expand. Recently, I have begun trying out White Labs "Pitchable Vial"s of yeast, and like the short lag time better, but they have a smaller selection of varieties. While waiting for the yeast to "wake up," I prepare the starter by boiling 3-4 tablespoons malt extract in 2 cups of water for 15 minutes. After it is done boiling, I cool it down using an ice bath in the sink, and finally I pour it into the sanitized 22 oz. bottle. I "pitch" the yeast into the bottle, and seal it with the airlock and stopper. With the starter going, I can then prepare for brewing. Sometimes I do this all in one day, usually, I prepare the starter ahead of time, and brew when it is ready.
The first step in the actual brewing process is the mash. As part of the recipe formulation, I calculate the amounts of water needed and the temperature necessary for the mash, and keep a handy printout with me on the brewday to record any differences between the planned and actual steps. The first thing I do is get my strike water up to temp in my big brewpot. I make sure the strike water is in the pH 5.0-6.0 range by using an acid blend to bring the pH down to that level (my tap water is around pH 7.0). I then pour that water into my 48 quart cooler "mash tun" to heat the cooler. When the temp has stabilized, I start adding my grains to the mash, stirring as I go (a process known as "doughing in"). If all works correctly, when the grain is all added, I will have a "grist" which is resting at my target temperature. If I am doing a multiple-step mash, I add heated water at given intervals to raise the temperature of the mash in accordance with a schedule. After about an hour, I test for starch conversion using iodine. When the mash is fully converted, I mash out by adding heated water to bring the temp of the mash up to 170°F.
Some photos: |
| This is my homemade lautering tool. I mash in the cooler, then drain the wort out through this device which allows the liquid to escape, but keeps the chunks in the cooler. It works very well, and was only 8$ to make (and that is mostly in the cost of the braided hose I bought, which I paid too much for!) |
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| Here are the grains, all weighed out and milled, waiting for dough-in. You can see one of my more expensive brewing toys in the middle of the photo, my Pelouze 25lb. portion scale. It is sensitive enough to measure 2 ounce increments, and sturdy enough for weighing out grains. Overkill? Perhaps, but I dig it. |
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| Here you can see my 80 quart pot heating up mash water on my 185,000 Bayou Classic propane burner. That burner sounds literally like a jet when it is turned up -- but I can brew in the garage in the dead of winter with that thing. Well worth the money. (boilovers don't cause marital problems anymore!) |
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| Here is the grist after dough-in. I try to keep the cover closed as much as possible during the mash, but that would have been a pretty boring picture, so I opened it up and took a temperature reading while I was snapping the photo. |
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| Here is a shot I snapped of my conversion test. The light in the picture is bad, so it looks like the iodine is really dark. In fact, this liquid is converted and that splotch being brown is how you know. It would turn bluish-purplish-black if there were still complex starches present. Bad photography, but you can get the idea. For a better look at starch conversion testing, look here |
Once the mash is complete, I need to collect the sweet wort from the mash tun. To do this, I open the ball valve on the mash tun slightly to begin the run-off. I pour the first quart or two back into the mash tun to promote clearing of the wort (as the grain compacts slightly, it forms an excellent filter bed -- keeping larger particles out of the run-off). Once the wort is running clear, I adjust the flow so that it is barely a flow (more like a fast trickle), and set up a sparge arm. I siphon 170°F water from a pot above the mash tun through a copper pipe with holes in it, allowing the hot water to trickle through the grain bed and out the ball valve. Using this method, I try to collect my pre-boil volume in the brewpot without allowing the run-off to go too fast, it usually takes about 60-90 minutes.
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| Well, here is the full setup in operation -- that is, sparging. I have my 40 quart pot filled with 175°F water, sitting on two inverted milk crates to get it high enough for a gravity siphon to my makeshift sparge sprinkler. The sparge water drips into the cooler, and as is flows down to the lauter manifold, it picks up all the sugars in the grain. From the cooler I have a ball-valve that I use to adjust the flow of the wort out of the cooler and down into the brewpot. For me, a proper lauter/sparge takes about an hour. |
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| Here is a close-up of the sparge sprinkler. The copper pipes were originally my lauter manifold, but when I switched to braided hose, they became part of the sparge sprinkler. I could just set the siphon line on top of the grain, but that seems to dig a hole and I lose extraction. So this is a fair compromise. I probably introduce a little air into the liquid this way, but my beers seem to taste pretty good, so I'm not worrying about it. |
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| Why do I have a picture of spent grain on this page? This is a really boring picture... |
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| Nectar of the Elysium Fields. That is about 15 gallons of sweet wort collected from the lauter/sparge. I stop the runnings earlier if the specific gravity of the runoff is getting too low, but as long as I am getting sweet wort I sparge to about 16 gallons. Sounds like way too much, but after boiling, chilling, and fermenting, I'll have less than 12 gallons. |
Note that this is "roughly" where an extract brew starts -- skipping the mash and sparge steps and using liquid or powder malt extract instead doing grain from scratch. Great beer is made that way, I just chose to do it the hard way!
Once the sparge is complete, I need to boil the sweet wort and add the hops. I usually boil for about 80 minutes doing hop additions at 60, 20 and 5 minutes remaining. Depending on the style there may be more or less hops, and additions at different times. The boil is pretty simple, and merely requires a watchful eye to prevent boil-over (which a hose with a mist attachment is great for stopping). While the wort is bubbling away, I sanitize all of the equipment I am going to need for transfer and fermentation -- hoses, racking canes, funnels, filters, and carboys. After about a 2-3 minute soak in iodophor, I drain everything, and cap the carboy with a bit of sanitized aluminum foil. With about 15 minutes left in the boil, I put the immersion chiller into the brewpot in order to sanitize it. When the boil is finished I cut the heat, and hook up the hose to the immersion chiller, turn on the water, and wait for the wort to cool to about 70°F. Once the wort is cooled, I either rack the wort to a carboy or I pour it through a filter funnel, depending on my mood and how big of a pot I am using (12 gallon batches are kind of heavy). Once the wort is in the carboy, I shake the living $#@% out of it to aerate, and I move it to the basement.
Now that the wort is in the carboy, I am ready to pitch my yeast, so I remove the airlock from the starter (and toss it in the sanitizer) and dump the yeast in to the carboy. I once again shake the carboy, to make sure the yeast doesn't settle directly to the bottom, and then I cap the carboy with a sanitized stopper and airlock. Now comes the hard part -- waiting. Usually 7-10 days in the primary fermenter, and if I do a secondary, an additional 2-4 weeks in secondary.
I used to bottle all of my beers and it was beginning to really wear on my nerves. Now I keg everything in cornelius kegs, and am enjoying having draft beer available anytime I want it! Kegging is simple, sanitize the keg, rack from the carboy to the keg, and put it under pressure to carbonate it! Some people prime in the keg, but so far, I haven't tried it.
Finally, after about 3 weeks of patiently waiting, I can pull a pint of beer. That's all there is to it! Simple, right?