Intermediate Homebrewing - Part 1

So, you’ve got your first batch (or perhaps several batches) of homebrew under your belt. Pretty good stuff huh?

Well, like the Carpenters once sang “We’ve only just begun.”

Don’t worry if you have never heard of the Carpenters. I’m a tad old so I remember such things, but I digress. We are here to talk about homebrewing beer, not 1970’s pop groups.

Let’s remember our basic homebrewing basics, and start looking in to what is commonly called “intermediate” brewing.

In this tutorial, we will learn more about extracts, hops, the importance of water, the use of herbs and spices, specialty grains and many other uses.

“The beer I made is so good, why do I need to learn all this” you might ask. Well, you don’t need to. But you may want to. Many homebrewers never go past basic homebrewing. They continue brewing with extract kits and never move to more detailed methods. There is not a thing wrong with that.

But, if you want to have much more control over your beer, be able to develop your own recipes, fine tune your flavors, etc., you will want to try to learn the things taught in this tutorial.

So, where do we start?

WATER:

Since beer is about 95% water, what better place to begin our discussion. The first, most important thing about the water you use is its flavor. Have you ever taken a drink of tap water and though “Yuch?” Most of us have. So, how do you think beer would taste if made from that water?

On the other hand, have you ever drew a glass of water that you just loved the taste of? What about bottled water, like Deer Park or Aquafina? They taste pretty good, huh? Perhaps that would make better beer?

So, first and foremost, start with water that you like the flavor of.

Personally, I have found that my refrigerator’s filter does a fine job of making my tap water taste good.

The next concern with water is the chemical makeup. Most of the interaction of water chemistry in the brewing process occurs during the Mash phase. Mashing is a more advanced topic that we won’t discuss in this tutorial. In Beginner and Intermediate homebrewing, we use malt extract. The starches in the Barley have already been converted to sugar. So, there are only a couple of things to be concerned about in your water other than taste. Primarily, these are the salt, and chlorine. If you use a filter on your water before brewing, or you buy bottled water, you won’t have a problem with either of these.
Equipment

The equipment that you purchased for your first batches of beer are fine for Intermediate brewing. There are, however, a few more items that you are going to want to pick up. I list the items here, tell you about how much to expect to pay, and I’ll link to where you can buy the items online. Yah, I’ll get a percent or two of the sale if you use my links, so, if you don’t mind .

Secondary fermenter

Buying a secondary fermenter, either a 5 gallon or greater FOOD GRADE plastic bucket, or a 5+ gallon glass is, in my opinion, the first thing you should buy after the basic equipment found in the Beginner Tutorial.

While brewing at the beginner level, you probably simply put the freshly made wort in a fermenter, added yeast, and let it go to town until you were ready to bottle. As you know by now, this works fine. However, getting your new batch of homebrew out of the primary and in to a secondary fermenter will help improve it’s quality. Read on in this chapter to learn more more about secondary fermentation.

Thermometer

In the Beginners tutorial, we only needed to make sure that the wort was cool enough for our yeast, so any thermometer would work. As we begin to start using specialty grains and other cool ingredients, we need a better thermometer. There are really only a couple requirements. First, the thermometer should be able to read temperatures from freezing, up to boiling. In Centigrade, that is 0 to 100. In Fahrenheit, that’s 32 to 212 degrees. Many thermometers have both scales.

The other important factor is the speed at which the thermometer measures. The brewing process requires very precise temperature measurement, so a slow thermometer, that takes a minute or two to measure is going to be worthless. Ideally, we want a thermometer that can read the temperature in no more than 10 seconds.

The best solution is an electronic thermometer. They are usually very fast, and easy to read. One I can recommend, is $18.95, and can be found here.

Hydrometer and hydrometer test jar

A hydrometer is a simple device that measures the density of liquid. It is used in the brewing process to both determine the state of fermentation, and to calculate alcohol content.

Hydrometer’s can be purchased form your local homebrew store, or from here.

Other than these items, you shouldn’t need anything beyond what you used for basic homebrewing. Just remember that every batch needs bottles, and caps, as well as the brewing ingredients.

Ingredients

Malt extract

As you learned about in the Beginner’s tutorial, malted barley is one of the primary ingredients in beer. Along with the hops, it’s what makes beer taste like, well, beer. But what is this sticky gooey stuff? It will help you in your homebrewing endeavours to learn what it is and how it’s made.

Barley is a cereal grain, in the same family of Corn, Rice, Wheat, etc. In fact, beer has been made from, or with all of these grains and many more. It just turns out that Barley grain is the best to use to make the wonderful concoction that we call Beer. Barley has been grown for thousands of years, and used for many many purposes.

There are basically two kinds of barley available today. 6-row barley and 2-row barley. At the top of a barley stalk, the kernels grow in rows. So, of course, 2-row barley generally grows in two rows where 6-row grows in six. It has nothing to do with the number or orientation a farmer might use to plant the barley, which is a very common fallacy. Generally speaking, 2-row barley is used to make ales, and 6-row barley is used to make lagers.

At the intermediate level, we will not be too concerned about 2 vs. 6 row barley, as we are still using extracts. But it’s good to know anyway.

Now, before we can brew with barley, it must go through a process called malting. Malting is basically the process of allowing the barley kernels to germinate under controlled conditions. The barley is wetted, and allowed to sprout. This allows the starch inside the kernel (called endosperm) to break down in to sugars (maltose) which are needed in our beer. Also created as part of this process are carbohydrates (which are eventually converted into sugar), enzymes (which are what does the conversion of the carbs), and proteins.

After malting, before the barley can be used for beer, it then goes through another process, known as the “mash”. You may have heard the terms used to describe advanced homebrewing, Partial Mash and All-Mash. At this level of brewing, the homebrewer performs the complete process of mashing. At the intermediate level, we will not be doing our own, but again, it’s good to know what it is.

To make beer, the starches in the barley must be made to dissolve in water, or in other words, made “soluble”. This is done by using water, at very closely controlled temperatures. The water allows the enzymes to break down the starches and convert them to sugar. The water used for this process becomes a sticky sweet syrup like malt tea, called wort. Wort, as you know, is the base for our beer.

So, we started this discussion by asking what Malt Extract is. Essentially, malt extract is wort, that has had most of the water dehydrated out of it. How much water is removed determines whether the product is liquid malt extract syrup (LME), which is pretty much the consistency of maple syrup or dried malt extract (DME), an extremely sticky powder like substance.

Whether you use DME or LME is a matter of preference. Most homebrewers prefer one or the other. I personally like DME, but the choice is up to you.

Color

So, what makes a beer golden in color, or brown, or red, or black? It’s the color of the malt extract that you use. We won’t go in to great detail in this tutorial on how the different colors of malt extract are made. It has to do with baking malted barley in a kiln to create specific colors. But, for our discussion, we will focus on the 5 most common types of malt extract.

The four major colors of extract are:
Extra-Light
Light
Amber
Dark

The other commonly used extract is called Wheat extract. It is used to make wheat beers, such as the popular german “Hefeweizen”.

There is a lot to learn about the different colors, such as the Lovibond scale by which beer color is measured, but for the sake of this tutorial, we’ll simply focus on one point. Use the right color for the style of beer you are making. More on styles later, but as an example, you wouldn’t want to use Dark extract to make an American Pale Ale. As the name implies, that style should be pale in color.

You will find that homebrew stores generally carry two sizes of LME, 3.3 lbs. and 6 lb. cans. The DME generally comes in 1 lb. and 3 lb. bags.

Most extract homebrew recipes use somewhere between 4 and 8 lbs of extract.

The last thing to be concerned about with regard to extract is that some of it, especially LME, is commonly offered as “hopped” extract. This means that it already has hops added. While this may seem convenient, it will greatly limit your variety and control over your homebrew. We recommend using only unhopped extracts.

Hops

Hops are used for several purposes in beer. The primary of these being that of bittering. The barley malt extract is incredibly sweet. Sweeter than the richest of chocolate cakes. Hops are very bitter when tasted alone. The bitterness of the hops offsets the sweetness of the malt.

Hops are also used for flavouring, helping to create various flavors in beer

Another use is called aroma hops, or finishing hops, and generally provide the “smell” of beer, which is critically important to the various styles.

You will find that there are dozens of different “kinds” of hops. Typically, the different hops varieties are named from the geographic region in which they are grown. A couple examples are East Kent Goldings, from Kent County, England, or Mount Hood, from the Pacific Northwest region of the US (where you will also find Mount Hood).

Hops are most often used when we are boiling our wort (just like in the basic tutorial). The amount of time we boil the hops determines what effect it will have on beer. Various different recipes call for different hops and different boiling times. Common boiling times are as follows:

Bittering: 45 – 75 minutes
Flavoring 10 - 20 minutes
Aroma: 2-5 minutes

Each variety of hops imparts a different amount of bitterness. In fact, different batches of the same variety will often provide different levels of bitterness. However, different batches of the same variety will be close enough to ignore the minor different in all but the most precise brewing environments.

The amount of bitterness is usually measured on one of two common scales. The first is called AAU, or Alpha Acid Units. It’s important to understand the basic idea of AAU as you will need to use it in your homebrew, based on the recipe you are using.

For example, if your homebrew recipe calls for 3 ounces of cascade hops, at 7 AAU, but your homebrew supply store only has cascade rated at 5 AAU, you’ll have to convert. So, 3 ounces at 7 AAU would total 21 AAU. If only 5AAU cascade is available, you will need just over 4 ounces. Simple huh?

The other common scale was devised specifically for homebrewers and is thusly called, the HBU, or homebrew bitterness unit. It’s really just another name for the calculation we did above. An HBU is the value of AAU * weight in ounces. The recipe above called for 21 HBUs.

We mentioned earlier that there are many different varieties of hops. Any variety can be used in any recipe. However, if you are trying to brew a particular style of beer, which inevitably every homebrewer will do, you will want to pay close attention to the type of hops that you use.

To learn more about hops, visit our Primer on Hops.

Yeast

What a cool little creature. That’s right, I said creature. Yeast is actually a single celled organism in the Fungus family. It procreates by splitting it’s single celled self into two yeast cells.

So why do we use fungus to make beer? Well, simply put, yeast converts the sugars in our wort to alcohol. What would beer be without that? Well, you might say O’douls. But I’m of the belief that non-alcholic beer is like decaffeinated coffee, what’s the point?

There are thousands, if not millions of different strains and forms of yeast on our planet. A hundred or so of these are especially good for brewing beer. Others make great bread, wine, etc. But please don’t try to make beer with Grandma’s baking yeast. It will make an alcoholic drink, but I assure you that the flavor will not be something you will enjoy.

There are two primary styles of brewers yeast. Lager yeast and Ale yeast. The main difference in these two styles are the temperatures at which they ferment wort most efficiently. Lager yeasts prefer cool temperatures, usually between 45 and 55 degrees Fahrenheit. Ale yeasts on the other hand 60 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit. This is the main reason most homebrewers, at least at first, stick with brewing ales.

Yeast to has many many varieties of the two different styles. There are yeasts specifically made to make the best Irish Ales, English Ales, IPAs, etc.

In addition, you will find both dry and liquid yeasts. Generally speaking, liquid yeasts start the fermentation process faster, and more vigorously than dry. However, dry yeast is significantly less expensive.

Believe it or not, though yeast is not actually part of the finished product (though residual yeast is found in most homebrewed beer), it has as much or more impact on the final taste and quality of your than Hops or Barley Malt. Choose your yeast wisely.

Water

Most books about homebrewing will suggest that the intermediate phase of your brewing career is the time to start worrying about all the nuances of water. The acidity, alkalinity, salts, and many other issues are presented as concern.

I however simply use a good quality spring water, run it through a Brita™ filter and call it a day. Never use tap water as it contains chlorines and fluorides which are by design, harmful to any life form in your water, such as yeast.