Getting Down and Dirty with Beer Brewing

I know, I know. You’re going to roll your eyes and say — does this nut actually brew his own beer ? Yes I do when I have the time.

Beer is one of the oldest human made drinks in the world. Ancient Egyptian and Sumerian texts shows a 3,900 year old recipe for beer. Ancient pottery from China shows traces of beer from 5,000 years ago. Originally beer production was done by the women in the tribe or family….. all the way down to the alewives of Medieval Europe whose job was to brew and sell beer.

I’m pretty sure I’d look awful in a chemise or bodice, and would make for a pretty danged ugly alewife. My face is too damned hairy, and I don’t wear any makeup. But I’m always willing to take a crack at brewing my own beer.

Some brewing equipment

For a proper introduction to brewing equipment, I recommend Homebrewing for Dummies from Amazon. This paperback book can describe the process in much more detail than I can in these few short pages.

Box of brewing grains

A combination of cracked grains and dry malt extract (DME sugars) is premeasured and readied for the brewing.

Brew sock

The pre measured hops and yeast are placed in a brew sock, and readied for the pot. This keeps most of the solids from floating loose in the boil and making a mess to be strained out.

Boiling the wort

The brew sock is boiled for the prescribed amount of time and the resulting “tea” for lack of a better description is called the wort. This is where the sugars in the form of dry malt extract is dissolved in the water, along with the hops and the steeped grains. All that awesome flavor is now in the water - but it ain’t beer yet.

Pitching the yeast

Once the wort has cooled, it gets transferred to a large bucket for the primary fermentation. I can’t possibly stress it enough that cleanliness is THE only thing that really matters right now. I use C- Brite to disinfect and scrub anything that comes into contact with the beer. Any form of bacteria at this point can “skunk” the beer and give it an off putting flavor.

There’s a couple ways to prep the wort for the yeast. You can run it through a chiller coil, but this adds an extra step and several extra parts. I generally allow it to sit and cool towards room temperature. Then I pitch the yeast. Ales and stouts utilize a top fermenting yeast at warmer temperatures, while lagers use a bottom fermenting yeast at cooler temperatures. I choose a top fermenting yeast for my stouts and porters.

Racking off to secondary fermentation

I install an airlock and wait for the yeast to eat the sugars. The result is alcohol. Using a hydrometer to measure specific gravity will tell me roughly how much alcohol content the beer will have. Drier stouts will produce an average ABV of about 4 - 8%, while an Imperial stout can produce up to 12%. Much more alcohol than that produces a barely wine. Once the fermentation is done, I rack it off the primary fermenter into a secondary glass carboy and leave the solids behind as trub. Trub is mostly spent yeast, proteins, and hops solids. Adding Irish moss during the last 30 minutes of the wort boil causes the solids floating in the beer to settle to the bottom of the fermenter. In larger brewing operations, this trub can be collected and used to feed cattle and other farm animals, or can be used to bake a type of bread. It’s full of nutrients.

Cornelius kegs

Once the secondary fermentation and clarification of the beer is done, I rack it again into 5 gallon Cornelius kegs and stick them in my kegerator. This is a mini fridge that has been specifically designed to chill the beer and it contains one or two taps to pour the beer.

kegerator bottle

My particular kegerator has been set up with a CO2 / nitrogen mix. I don’t have the special attachments for just nitrogen only, so the local gas company does a mix for me specifically. Nitrogen pours have the creamiest head on the home brew.

Two tap kegerator

On my kegerator set up, I run one corny keg as a stout, and the other one as an ale for lighter beers. I cut up some antler butts to use as tap handles. Moose for stouts and porters, deer for ales and lighter beers.

A stout with a nice creamy head.

The first pour has a lot of foam and too thick of a head. But subsequent pours the beer settles down and pours nicely. I generally like to allow the kegs to chill overnight — it seems as though the beers settles down and pours better. Besides, I’m not British and I like my beers cold instead of room temperature. They just seem to go down the gullet smoother.

If I’m pan searing my steaks instead of grilling them, I like to pour just a hint of my stout into the pan. The alcohol burns off and the sugars in the beer carmelizes and makes a nice thick and tasty skim coating along with the finishing salt on the meat.