Water Treatment. As the majority of even the best beer is water it’s important that your brewing water doesn’t contain anything that will spoil the flavour of your beer. Water companies add chlorine or chloramines to the tap water to keep in a drinkable condition on its journey through an aging pipe network from treatment station to tap. Unfortunately these additions react with the malt and can produce an unpleasant medicinal/TCP taste so it’s advisable to get rid of them. This can be done in several ways.
Boil and cool the water (removes chlorine but not chloramines), Allow the water to stand over night (removes chlorine but not chloramines), Add ½ a crushed campden tablet to every 25L of water (neutralises chlorine and chloramines immediately) or use a GAC (granulated activated charcoal) point of use water filter. Once treated this water becomes ‘brewing liquer’.
Step 1. The Brewing liquer. Treat around 6-7 gallons of water, fill your boiler with 5 gallons* and store the rest in a liquer tank. This will be used to top up the boiler as the wort evaporates.
Step 2. Steep the Grains; Bring the water up to 60-70 deg c. Put the grains in the grain bag and carefully lower into the hot water. Maintain this temperature for 30 mins, a thermostatic boiler contol is handy for this but its almost as easy to switch the boiler on and off periodically to keep the temperature within the temperature range. Move the grain bag around to get all the sugars out of the grains. When the 30 mins is up, remove the grain bag, allow it to drip and give it a gentle squeeze with your paddle against the side of the boiler. This can now be discarded.
Step 3. Add the Malt Extract. With the boiler still on, add the malt extract. If using LME, refill the empty tin/s from the boiler tap and rinse out the residue and return this to the boiler.
Step 4. Add the Hops. As the wort comes to the boil add the hops, if they are of the compressed block type its advisable to break them up a little, although they will soon expand and break down as they soak up the wort. Shortly after the hops are added the hot break will occur. The wort will foam and rise up rather like a pan of milk boiling over. At this point the foam should be stirred back in as briskly and gently as possible. If this isn’t enough to contain it, add a drop of cold brewing liquer, not too much though. The hot break is the proteins coming out of solution, as they are bounced about by the boiling wort they collide, stick together and become so big that they can no longer go back into solution.
A good hot break is important for clarity in a beer, the heat should be left on through the hot break as much as possible. Only remove it or add brewing liquer to cool if it is in danger of boiling over and then only remove the heat briefly or add a small amount of liquer.
Step 5. Further Additions and Irish Moss Add any sugars or syrups called for about halfway through the boil. Add late copper hops around 20 mins before the end of the boil. Add Irish Moss ( a dried seaweed), about a teaspoon full, about 10 mins before the end of the boil. This helps further coagulate the proteins preventing them from going back into solution. At this point, if using an immersion chiller place it into the wort to sanitise it. After 1hr 30 mins switch off boiler. At this point some recipes call for a further addition of hops. Place them in the boiler and allow to steep for 30 mins.
Step 6. Cooling the Wort Once the boil is complete, turn on the water to the coils, this serves to cool the wort, usually in around 40 mins. The reason to cool the wort is firstly to bring it down to yeast pitching temperature (<30 deg c) as quickly as possible. The sooner the yeast is pitched the sooner fermentation can begin meaning the lower the risk of bacterial infection. Secondly, cooling quickly will cause more proteins to come out of solution. If these proteins remain in solution they are liable to cause a ‘chill haze’, a haze usually only apparent when the beer is chilled. It will clear again once it warms up and is purely cosmetic, it won’t affect the flavour of the beer.
Step 7. Fermenting. From here on in the process is exactly the same as brewing with kits or grains. http://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk/fermentation.htm
Step 8. Finishing. http://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk/fermentation.htm
* Most manufactured homebrew boilers will only hold just over 5 gallons, this isn’t enough to boil 5 gallons of wort as it will foam up like boiling milk, its perfectly ok to hold back a little water (½ a gallon or so) to allow for this and add it to the boiler for the last 20 mins when it will have settled down.
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