How to Brew from Grain

Posted on October 18, 2012 by ray kodiak

Cleanliness is Godliness!  Memorize that, seriously!

I said, ROAR! ~ Cleanliness is Godliness!  not so much during the brewing process, but after the brew process has been completed, everything the beer comes in contact with (un-fermented or fermented) needs to be clean and sanitized!  Otherwise the beer can go bad.  We have yet to have a single batch go wrong!

Is brewing beer legal ?  Hell ya!

http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/pages/government-affairs/statutes/washington

Check your states from the drop-down in the link above!

If you live in a different country other than US of A, check your local laws; hopefully it is legal too, if not move or don’t tell anyone!

For cleaning various products exists!  For sanitation, we like Star San, it has never let us down!  So you clean first and then sanitize!  That includes the fermentor, everything, the transfer lines, later when you bottles, the actual bottles need to also be sanitized and or Kegs, the rubber seals, EVERYTHING ROAR!

did I scare you yet! ? I hope so!  :- )

Beer is usually made from extracting sugars from grain like barley or wheat, its that simple!  Beginners brew beer from extracts.  Extracts already went through the process of extracting the sugars from the grain(s) and leaving it in extract form of various sources…

Most people when they start to brew, start with extracts, because the entire stage of going through various methods and steps to extract the sugars has already been done, so you can go straight to brewing beer.  The steps are as follows:

A) extract sugars from grain (you can skip if you are using extracts)

B) start to brew beer by mixing water with extracts (sugars), hops, other additives

C) after brewing beer is done, this is called wort (un-fermented beer), you cool, transfer the beer into a fermentor and pitch the yeast (various methods exist from beginner to more advanced)…

Let’s Begin…

If you want to really learn about beer brewing, you have to learn how to brew from grain, there is no escaping that!  There are also major economical reasons for doing this because brewing from grain is much cheaper $$$ than brewing from extracts and also a level of control is gained that is only available to you when you brew from grain.

A beer recipe will have various types of grains mixed into the recipe, some of the grain is base grain and some of it will be more fancier grain types.  The grain needs to go through a malting process (without this you are wasting your time), the malting process un-locks and makes available the various sugar types in the grain available to the beer extraction process.

There is already a great Wiki on the subject of malting so here you go: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malt

So brew stores sell the grain that is already malted, so there is nothing to worry there, but if you were to grow say 2-row barley, after harvesting it and all that you would have to malt it (another layer of work) that mostly is not talked about in the beer brewing process.

Malting Houses do this work and then breweries buy the grain from them and also brew stores.  Also after the grain has been malted, it needs to be crushed, this is another crucial step (so make sure that if you buy a brew kit, the grained has been already crushed), if not you have to do that and also correctly.  The grain has to crush just so so….  You can buy a manual mill too, those are usually preset for the correct crush settings.

When you brew beer from extracts and skip this stage, you really only need 1 brew kettle, but when you go through the extraction process, you will need additional equipment.

In addition to the kettle, you will need another kettle with a built in thermometer, and this is called a mash tun; because you will literally be mashing the grain with some big spoon.

You will also need another 3rd container that will hold the strike water, that is water that has been heated to the proper temperature that you will introduce to the start of the extraction process, later steps also.. so 3 total kettles of some sort.

All of this is covered here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lautering

Here is an example of a product picture to show:

A lot of people buy kegs and cut holes in the top and install values in order to turn them into brew keggles.  These are 15.5 gallons so you can brew smaller batches or bigger ones, all the way to up to 12 gallons, leaving some head room for the brewing process.

How to make a keggle without killing your self (that’s another article left for another frosty day), just know that brew pots, especially the bigger ones are not cheap, you are talking about $250 and up, sometimes even $500; but a used keg can by bought for $50 +/- (craig list) and converted with little effort, and people swear by those, including us here at Kodiak Brewing!  they are made like a tank and will last you a life-time and after you die, someone else can continue to brew in them, enough said….

Also most kegs are made from stainless steel, this is the preferred metal, but also aluminum pots are used, this metal is cheaper/lighter metal and will stain black when used, stainless steel stays nice and clean and does not get discoloration, but is heavier.  We have brewed in aluminum pots and this is as far as we know, only a visual thing, it does not affect the quality of the beer or change its color.

If you are not good making things, just buy a converted keggle, people make them!  :- )  check your local craig-list.   < picture coming up >…

So when you buy an all-grain kit, it will come with instructions, how much strike water to start out with, and the mash temperatures and durations, sparge (a hot shower), etc… I recommend getting a kit and following the instructions.

Once you have successfully brewed a few times, then you can assembly your own ingredients and make your own instructions and mix and match your grains.  Never be afraid to experiment, because that is in fact how the craft brew industry got to the point where it is now.

The basics of a grain brew from start to finish is (but varies of recipe and instructions)…

  •  pre-heat the right volume of starting water (strike water) and transfer that into the mash tun
  • add all our grains into the mash tun and mix it (mashing begins)
  • after the right time, transfer the hot sweet liquid from the mash tun to the brew kettle
  • for efficiency reasons, you want to re-mash or sparge the grain a 2nd time (various techniques exists), batch sparging is popular and attains about 85% extraction efficiency+  batch sparging is an older method that is undergoing a revival – Google…
  • you also maybe want to employ a re-circulation technique, this turns the grain into a filter and allows clean liquid to exit from the mash tun
  • once the mashing phase is done, that’s when the brewing actually start, you will again follow the recipe and adds other ingredients (spices, various different types of hops) at different times into the brew time
  • Once the brew time is over, you want to cool the wort (unfermented beer) as quickly as possible (again various equipment and style exists)
  • Don’t forget to take a OG water gravity reading, write that down (later you have to take a FG reading, to find out how much alcohol will end up in the beer) – read the other article here in the Blog
  • then you want to transfer the wort to a fermentor and pitch the yeast (again various different methods exist for pitching the yeast, some yeast is dry and some is wet, sometimes you make starters and sometimes you don’t), different people swear by different techniques.  We here at Kodiak have made lots of great beer simply by pitching dry yeast, but if you were a commercial brewer and you wanted consistency, you would cultivate your own yeast and maintain the strains :- )  Many books exists just on the subject of yeast and it is just as important as any ingredient

After the fermentation is over, you might want to consider secondary fermentation.  You can naturally corbonate the beer with priming sugar or transfer to kegs and use co2 gas.

Some people bottle, some don’t, some use kegs, some use growlers, its up to you!

At Kodiak Brewing we don’t bottle (because that just takes way too much time), we keg all our beer, unless we are going to give our the beer as gifts for other people to try, then we would bottle into 1 pint bottles.

From our experience, aging the beer is very important, good beer only comes with age.  Different styles of beer require different aging times, some 2 months, some 3, 6 and some even a year.

Commercial breweries also use filters to speed up the aging process, but there is a Pros and Cons to everything in life, including using filters.

If this sounds like an overwhelming article, it’s not.  You just have to go through to process a few times and the stars will slowly start to align, you will fall deeper and deeper into brewing.

There is no better way to learn than through experience, so go out there and don’t be afraid.

This article does not cover everything, or other fancy terms; that you will learn once you decide to roll up your sleeves and take the plunge; but it covers almost all the basics that you will need.

Also a good read is this Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashing

You also want to learn about enzymes, Alphas and Betas and why temperatures are important during the mashing phase.  Also look into pH, learn that and the fact that proper pH matters for the extraction efficiency, so that also leads to water quality.

Is your water soft or hard ?  Are you on city water or well water like we are ?  Should you have your water analyzed or not ?  What about trace elements, do you have the right amount or not ?

Duration and pH variances also affect the sugar composition of the resulting wort!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brewing

Fin.

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Paint Stencil on Your Beer Keg

Posted on October 14, 2012 by ray kodiak

So this is actually my first ever stencil, I am not a Pro at all, I have never done this before until this article 30 minutes prior.

I started by viewing a few HowTo videos on YouTube, and then decided to try it using a basic method first.

Steps:

#1 Print the image

#2 Cut out the inside of the image with household scissors

#3 transfer the cut out to harder paper (pizza box card-board used)

#4 cut out the pizza box card-board using scissors again

#5 tape the template to keg (after carefully choosing its final location)

#6 using a paint can, shake it well first and using steady uniform strokes paint

Tip: move the paint can using horizontal uniform strokes, don’t spray in one spot for too long (pain will run)

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2nd fermentation stage BEER brewing

Posted on April 17, 2011 by ray kodiak

It’s time that I write another short blob/blog/whatever 🙂 about making your home brewing experience better with minimal extra steps and effort.

This the 2nd fermentation stage.  So after a week or so, maybe even sooner, ( as most fermentation activity will stop in 3-4 days ), you will gently transfer the beer from the Primary container to the Secondary container (the container can be a glass carboy/plastic [food grade] fermentation bucket, or whatever you have to work with.  The 2nd fermentation tank will also have a co2 cap, so that nothing bad can get into the container…

I would use some kind of a tube to transfer the beer, and not disturb the primary fermentation tank, this will leave all that nasty brewers yeast at the bottom, where you want it.  While there are some benefits of consuming the brewers yeast (vitamins), most people don’t like to see that in their beer and you will almost never see that in the store.

Commercial brewers use in addition filters too and additives as well!

Most of the fermentation takes place in the Primary container, so this is a bit miss-leading, about further fermentation, but there will be a bit of that going on, mostly you won’t notice it.

Most beers can be done with a single-fermentation stage, but once you do the 2nd stage and see all the benefits from that, you will never go back to the single-stage again, trust me!

Here are some of the benefits as I observed it:

  • most of the brewers yeast is left over in the primary vessel (left behind)
  • whatever does make it into the 2nd stage, will settle at the bottom over time and cake into a harder layer
  • the beer will be much clearer, cleaner and crisper!
  • you can leave the beer in the 2nd stage for months, if you are not ready for whatever reason to bottle/keg just yet
  • fermentation becomes more complete
  • much fewer off-flavors
  • dry hopping – http://www.beersmith.com/blog/2008/05/21/dry-hopping-enhanced-hops-aroma/
  • including additional ingredients to enhance flavors, aroma, smell, etc….

there are other benefits, if you brew lager beer, the word lager literally means” to lay down”, and other stronger beers also need the extra time to age and become more mellow for the flavoring.

When you transfer the beer into the 2nd fermentation stage, it is best not to leave any head-room, (empty-space in the vessel), because air is there and oxygen degrades beer.  If you do end up with a little bit off extra space, put a table-spoon of priming sugar into the container, that will react with the yeast and produce a little-bit more alcohol and co2, and the co2 will force out any stale air out of the container, while preventing anything from the outside getting into the vessel.

You can also force in some co2 gas if you keg to force out the oxygen out and cap it.

I also recommend that you do a search on youtube and spend a little-bit more time watching over some videos that other people have made, I would watch a few to get the better idea of what you have to do, sometimes it is better to view a video (when you are just starting out)…

Keep on brewing! :- )

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How to Brew Good Beer Your First Time! Recipe: California Pale Ale

Posted on August 26, 2009 by ray kodiak

There are two ways to brew beer and this article is meant for beginner using Extracts and using pre-assembled Kits with all the ingredients and instructions ready to go with the kit.  You can choose your own kit from whatever company you want, this is what we had at the time for this article.

From Extracts (less work, and less equipment), and from grain (more time, and more equipment and more knowledge and more money is needed initially at least).  I explain how to brew from extracts.  Extracts are all things (sugars) that were extracted from the barley grain (so this step is skipped by the brewer), and is a good starting point.  You can brew fantastic beer here as well.  Later once you get more advanced you can start to upgrade your equipment and knowledge and get more fine control and brew from grain.

Also all commercial breweries pretty much brew from grain (malted barley), because its makes more economical sense.  Extracts costs more because the process of extracting and creating these products costs energy and money.   There are things you can get away with when you brew from extracts, that you won’t be able to get away when brewing from grain.  But that’s another article one day.

When I first started to brew, I used pretty much my wife’s cooking things, I used a regular 3 gallon cooking pot to cook my wort in (un-fermented beer), but if you really want the beer to get better, you need to get the proper equipment.  You can save money if you are handy with tools and know how to cut metal, weld and etc… if not, either you can learn or buy it from someone who does.  People also convert Kegs into brew pot/tuns as well, and you can buy those on craig_list or ebay or your local brew store, etc….

UPDATE: since writing this article, I’ve upgrade my brew container (from wife’s 3 gallon soup pot, to a 25 gallon more professional brew pot and it can be used as either a brew pot or tun, both)…  if you don’t know what a tun is, one day you’ll learn when you start to brew from all grain, don’t worry about this for now.

you can look in the photo-gallery to see the rest of the pictures:

http://www.kodiaktechnical.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=5945

The ingredients for: California Pale Ale were purchased from the Brühaus – look for them on ebay, a great company!!!

ingredients

The ingredient kit includes: ( read my instructions if you want it to come out good instead )

1- Munton’s Hopped Light Malt Extract, 3.3lb
2- Munton’s Light Dried Malt Extract, 1lb
1- Munton’s Crushed Crystal Malt, .38lb
1- Hop Pellets, 1oz
1- Priming Sugar (Dextrose), 5oz
1- Fermentis Ale Yeast, 11.5g
1- Steeping Bag
55- Bottle Caps
1- Complete Instructions

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

BEER can be broken down into 4 basic parts:

1) WATER

2) YEAST

3) MALT

4) HOPS

For a beginner (even me), “malt extracts” will form the basis of your brewing activity for a while.  Malt extract is the sweet liquid (like honey) derived from the malt grain that has been processed into a concentrated syrup or into powder form.  This make the brewing process much easier and faster, you can be done within hours.  Otherwise, using all-grain process, you will spend hours mashing.  The malt extracts come in different types, from dark malt to light malt.

The brew of even the first beer will generate VERY GOOD BEER, better than what you will be able to buy in the store and much cheaper, so don’t think that somehow you will be brewing something sub-standard.

Another thing to remember is that as you start to investigate into beer by looking into books, online forums, discussion boards, message boards, local brew store, you will notice the availability of all kinds of fancy equipment to further expand on the home brewing process, keep one thing in mind.  To make good beer, you don’t really need any of that so don’t stress about it, stick to the basics and get that down first.  Once you made a good 5-10 batches, then investigating into further methods is of course smart and keeps you learning more.

Different BEER recipes will come with different combination of ingredients and different way to mix it when you boil it with water, but the basics are always:

Malted barley (sugars) and Hops (used to add bitterness) so you can balance out the sweetness.

I am thinking of writing an extensive investigative research report into Hops, but for now the Wikipedia link is more than enough. This link is also filled with great information about Hops all around.

Of course the other given ingredients are water and then you will need to ferment the brew with yeast when you finish the brew process, this is VERY IMPORTANT STEP!!!  Don’t mess up here…

Now, I have read several different long published books about the process of beer making and I noticed some inconsistencies with how they were written, no one seems to be doing anything the same way, but for a novice, if you follow the following instructions, you will get GREAT BEER!!!! But don’t skip anything.

Don’t worry, be happy, let’s start.

All the ingredients for making the brew (you can get that at a local brew store or over the internet, ebay – where I actually got it from – a company called – the Brühaus, check them out, they are great and they ship fast!!! – no I don’t work for them ).

  1. Glass Carboy [What is a Carboy ?] with the rubber stopper and CO2 lock
  2. 3+ gallon stainless steel pot
  3. accurate thermometer
  4. long wooden spoon and a funnel
  5. the brew ingredients (whatever flavor you are making, this varies) – the stuff you put into the pot.  Includes also yeast (a crucial ingredient and priming sugar – will explain later!)
  6. water gravity meter (this will determine how much alcohol will be in the final beer)
  7. a long flask so you can pour some beer into it and take the measurements with the gravity instrument
  8. a pouring/botteling bucket for after the fermentation is over
  9. containers to hold the beer (bottles take lots of time, go and buy 10 1/2 gallon growlers), don’t bottle unless you are going to give the beer to friends and you don’t expect the bottles back – PLEASE RECYCLE and think of the environment, there is only 1 Earth, not 2.

Alright then lets Brew… THIS IS A Brew FOR 5 GALLONS….

STEP #1 – BOILING WORT

If you have bought a quality stainless steel pot, on the inside it will have marking, 4 quarts, 8 quarts (4 quarts = 1 gallon).  Fill it to the 8 quarts water mark with water and BOIL it.  The pot doesn’t need to be stainless steel, thick aluminum pots are also a good alternative – so don’t think that only stainless steel is the only way.   I’ve upgraded to a bigger 25 gallon pot (so that I have upgrade capacity, I can still brew 5 gallon batches in this), and that one is made from thick aluminum and it works great!!! as well I also have a few stainless steel Kegs that been converted to pot/tuns.

Keep also in mind that, if you brew 2 gallon of wort, you will top of with 3 gallons of water inside the fermentor for 5 gallon total.  The less you top-off with, the thicker the beer will be, the more, the thinner the beer will be.  And there are other things to learn about later.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium – to learn about what aluminum is.  Keep in mind that when you get a new aluminum pot/kettle/tun, you have to season it, by boiling water, this will turn the inside of the wall almost black, that’s how you know you did it correctly.  The color might vary depending on the water quality of where you live (city pipes, well water, soft/hard water).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stainless_steel – to learn what stainless steel is

also, useful to know about the temperature of boiling water: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_point

STEP #2

Once water is fully BOILING, turn heat off (if you have electric range, move it off of it), put the crushed grain into the Steeping Bag, tie the top of the steeping bag and put that into the water and let it seep like a tea bag for 30 minutes.

STEP #3

sockin_water

Remove the steeping bag and discard it (if you have compost pile, dump it there). The Can of Light Malt Extract is like syrup, like hard honey, put that into a pot of hot water and let it sit there for 20 minutes prior to using it, so that it all melts inside the can and is like a running syrup. Turn HEAT ON and bring the mixture back to a BOIL, once it is boiling, ADD the Light Malt Extract (open the can), while pouring it in, stir with the wooden spoon.  Then add Dried Malt Extract (again stir with wooden spoon) wait for it all to dissolve and then last add the Hops and continue to stir.

Now watch out for FOAM, if you did everything right, the FOAMING should be minimal, just stir with the spoon, the foam should collapse on it’s own soon and then go away, with only traces of foam visible.  If the foam is a problem and it looks like it is about to come out of the pot, TURN OFF HEAT and wait for it to die down and put back on HEAT, REPEAT this step, until all the FOAM is gone.

Once all the FOAM is gone, then boil it for 30 minutes.   TURN HEAT OFF after 30 minutes, and now let it sit there and go prepare your CARBOY.  The CARBOY and anything that comes in contact with the beer, which at this point is called WORT needs to be super clean and fully 100% sanitized, get special chemicals for that at the brew store or online through the internet, you can also use a little bleach, but of course, rinse it out and make sure it is fully clean!!!

This includes the rubber stopper that the gas (CO2) lock – will explain below.

STEP #4

cleaner

Pour 3 gallons of fresh water into the Carboy, then while using a funnel, pour slowly the beer wort into the carboy and top it off with more clean water.  DO NOT POUR IT ALL THE WAY to the TOP, because once the fermentation starts, about 1-2 days later, there will be some foaming and if you top it to the top of the Carboy, all that foam will come out and end up on the Floor.  Great, now take the wort to it’s final sitting destination.  You should pick a dark place, one that is cool too!!!  Ales like 65-75 temp ranges.  Now WAIT until the temperature of your carboy drop below 90 F, I would wait until it is around 75-80 F – this will take 5-6 hours, so go take a hike.  I usually start to brew around Noon, otherwise you have to wait until 10PM or 11PM to put in the yeast and if you like to go to sleep early, this might be a problem, lol.

STEP #5 – Starting the Fermentation Process

Once the right temps are achieved, pour out a little of the beer into a long flask and then use the water gravity meter to take a reading, write that down somewhere and don’t really worry what that reading is at this point.  After the beer is fermented, you will take another reading, do some math and then you’ll know the alcohol level.

hops

Get a piece of dry paper and make a funnel out of it, and then pour in all the YEAST into the carboy, let it fall where it falls and wait 10 minutes.  Then with the long handle of the wooden spoon, give the top of the surface 2-3 pokes, but DO NOT STIR it evenly, bad idea.

malt_frontcan

Ok, at this point you are almost finished, with majority of all the hard work done (the yeast does all the hard work), insert the rubber stopper into the carboy and fill the water to the right level into the gas (CO2) lock and insert that into the rubber stopper.  Now, leave it to ferment for about a week.  At first nothing will happen, but the next day you might notice some foaming and a lot more activity, so that’s a good sign!!!!

The yeast eats the sugars and it produces ALCOHOL and CO2.  You want to keep the ALCOHOL in the carboy of course :- ) and let all the CO2 gas out, while not letting anything into the carboy, that’s what the gas lock is designed to do.  You will notice that once this process starts to happen, the gas lock will move up and down, like a cylinder in a car engine, that’s a good sign!!!

Now all you have to do is monitor that gas lock, there will be lots of activity in the first 1-3 days and then it will slowly die down.  When the gas lock almost stop moving, your fermentation process is over.  This is called SINGLE step fermentation.

hydro_meter

STEP #6 – A week later or so, look at the gas lock

Ok, now that the wort has actually become BEER, you are ready to start the bottling process!!!  Unless you are going to be giving the beer away, don’t waste your time collecting bottles, get 10 1/2 gallon growlers or some other bigger bottles with a top that don’t use a cap and can be re-used over and over, just clean it, remember about our Mother Earth – the mother of all mothers.

Get a 5-6 gallon plastic bucket and siphon all the beer out of the carboy (using special gravity tubes, so that all the beer is sucked out and any material is left on the bottom of the carboy stays there!!!, there will always be stuff at the bottom left) and into the plastic bucket that has a spout installed (this all should come with your BEER kit!)…

Pour a little of the beer into the control flask and take another reading with the water gravity meter, read the instructions on how to use that, comes with the equipment, after you do the math, the final answer is your alcohol level.

grain_in_sock

Now go find your Priming Sugar packet, and mix that in a little bit of water and boil that away!!! and then once it boils, add that into the plastic bucket or whatever bucket you will be using.  Mix that up and you are ready to pour.

The priming sugar will react with a little of yeast left in the beer mix, and that will carbonate your bottles!!!

Make sure that all the bottles are sanitized and clean too! and anything that comes in contact with the beer making process!!!

Pour away, cap it tight, put it away for 4 weeks ( I know the wait time sucks, but the beer needs to age properly ), nothing will stop you from drinking it sooner, I have tried it even after a week and it was good and even at this stage you can do a sample taste, there is no law against that!

That’s it!!!!

FIN.




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