You Need to be at The Wheaty on Friday
From 1600 this Friday at The Wheaty there are a bunch of new beers available. In bottles are a bunch of Rogue’s including the not before seen locally Jon Jon and Double Mocha Porter. Also never before seen locally are beers from Anderson Valley. I have had Anderson Valley beers in the USA and can assure you they are awesome. I know they have at least two IPAs from Anderson Valley so I will be happy.
There are also a bunch of Rogue’s available on tap. For the first time we see Captain Sig’s Northwestern ale on tap. Was a great beer from a bottle so I can only imagine it will be great from the tap. Also on tap on Friday in Chocolate Stout. There are bunch of other kegs but as usual it’s two at a time. I know I’m going to be there. If you like beer you should be too. Get There!
Renaissance Beer on tap at The Wheaty
This Friday from 1600 Renaissance beers will be going on tap at The Wheaty. I have had a couple of their beers in bottle in the past but this will be the first time on tap. I’m looking forward to getting them off tap and trying some we haven’t seen here before. I hear nothing but good things about the New Zealand beer scene and about Renaissance beers.
They are going to have Elemental Porter, Stonecutter Scotch Ale, Perfection Pale Ale and Paradox Blonde. I doubt they will all be on tap the first night. Normally they put two on at a time. It’s disappointing they didn’t get the APA or the MPA but I guess that gives us something to look forward to.
You can find more details on the calendar. I will be trying to get the for the 1600 kick off. Get There!
Beer/Brewing 101 – Malt and Mashing
Previous posts in this series:
The Brewing Process
Ingredients
Other than water this ingredient is the major part of beer. I decided not to do an individual post on water for now. Although water is very important, unless you are really into it it can be pretty dense and if you are starting to brew yourself there are probably a lot of other things you want to know about and study before you get to water chemistry.
Malt, most commonly malted barley is where we get the sugar for the yeast to ferment. Before it gets to the brewer it malted by a maltster. Malting involves taking the barley grains dampening them and keep them at a constant temperature until they just start to sprout. Once the malt starts to sprout it is kilned to stop the growing but leave the starchy sugars available to the brewer once the grain is cracked open. The kilning temperatures and time will vary depending on the type of malt being made. A Munich malt for example would be kilned at a higher temperature and for longer than a pilsener malt. I will go into more detail on malt and it’s production in another post but if you want something to read now check out this article.
The malt, usually a combination of malts for colour and flavour, are cracked open in a mill. Usually not crushed to flour but cracked open so the starchy sugars inside can contact with hot water in the mash. Some breweries, Coopers is an example, do crush to flour and have a mash filter rather than a lauter tun but this is not common. Once the grain has been cracked it is fed into the mash tun. This is a large insulated vessel that can hold it’s temperature. On the commercial scale this is often a large steam jacketed stainless steal vessel. On the home brewing scale some form of esky/drink cooler is common. Hot water is now added to the grain at a typical ratio of around 2.5l of water per kg of grain. Once again this can vary significantly. On a typical single infusion mash once the water and grain have been added and stirred it will be held at a temperature of around 66C. If you wanted to make a more fermentable wort you would aim for a lower temp and if you wanted to make a less fermentable and thicker finished beer you would aim for a higher temperature. Different enzymes work more effectively at different temperatures resulting in a different mouthfeel of the finished beer. You can find a good reference for further detail here.
Some brewers also employ multi temperature mashes. The mash will be held at a range of temperatures for varying lengths of time and slowly warmed. This can be done by direct heating the mash, adding more and hotter water or by a technique known as decoction mashing. In decoction mashing a calculated portion of the mash is removed from the main mash and brought to boiling then added back to the main mash to raise the overall temperature. These techniques were originally employed when maltsters couldn’t do as good a of a job modifying malt. Now days with heavily modified malts they are generally not required. However, they are traditional and some would argue vital to reproducing flavours of certain beer styles. I don’t have enough experience with these techniques to comment authoritatively so will leave you to decide this for yourself.
Grain Bed
The mash normally lasts for between 30 and 90 minutes. During this time a range of enzymes go to work chopping up the long chain starchy sugars from the grain into simpler sugars the yeast will be able to digest. The enzymes are already present on the malt and different enzymes will perform better and produce different results depending on the temperature of the mash. The liquid is then drained via a false bottom, manifold or similar device to prevent the grain from getting out of the mash vessel. This can happen in the mash tun it’s self or the whole mash can be transferred to a lauter vessel. While draining the wort the brewer would normally sparge to get all the sugars from the grain. The most common way in commercial brewing is to add water to the top at the same rate you are taking wort from the bottom. On home brewing scales it is also common to drain the whole mash then dump more water on top and drain again.
This liquid will be drained into a kettle and we now have our wort, malty sugary liquid, ready to boil. In the next installment we will cover the boil, why we do it and what happens there. Please leave a comment if you have any thoughts or questions.
Wurst Day at Brewboys Saturday 24 July
Another event at Brewboys. Saturday July 24 will be Wurst Day. On hand will be an array of smallgoods and sausages from South Australia smallgoods producers. Of course there will also be plenty of the Brewboys hand crafted ales and lagers to wash it all down with. During the afternoon there will even be a Wurst Off where you can vote for your favourite smallgoods. I’m not sure of what the prize may be but it should be fun.
Live music will be playing though they haven’t announced what variety it will be yet. They normally have some pretty good music there so I think it is likely to be good. Sounds like a fun day to me anyway and I’m going to attend. Get There!
Quick Stop at the Lobethal Bierhaus
I helped some friends move house up to Bridgewater. We were done and had some pizza provided for dinner. However, due to a massive oversight on our hosts behalf there was no beer in the house. I needed to get my growler filled anyway so figured it was time for a quick trip to the Lobethal Bierhaus before heading back to town.
I decided to trust the gps to take me the back way rather than heading up the freeway and cutting in. That was a bad move. It may have been fun in good light and on a dry road. In rapidly descending darkness on a wet road with strong winds it wasn’t so much fun. We got there after 20 minutes or so and were ready to settle down for a couple of points. However, luck wasn’t with us this day and they were closing early for a private function. We had just twenty five minutes until we would be locked out. So we raced in to order a couple of double hooped IPAs and to get the growler refilled with same. They finished the last of it last weekend though. Could this day get any worse? Just kidding. So I had a pale and Claire had a stout. It was very nice standing by the fire. Unfortunately we only had time for one so I got the growler filled and we hit the road.
I wish I could have hung around for the dinner though. Whatever they were cooking smelt amazing. We only had time for one beer but it was still worth the detour. The beer is great and it’s a top spot with super friendly staff. If you haven’t been yet you really should Get There!
Beer/Brewing 101 – The Brewing Process
In this instalment of brewing 101 I am going to go over the entire brewing process. You can see the previous post here. We will go from water, malt, hops and yeast and make some beer. This will, once again, be an overview of each process. Once I get through the broad overviews the plan is to go back and cover the parts in more detail. This may be in specific posts or as part of covering a style.
The first step is to make the wort. The wort is the base of the beer before fermentation. To do this we first take the malted barley and crush it in a mill. We are just cracking open the grains and not pounding them into flour. This allows us access to the starchy sugars in the grain but leaves the husk intact to act as a filter. The grain is then mixed in the mash tun with hot water at a ratio of around 2-3l per kg of grain. A basic single step mash will be held at around 66C for around an hour. More complicated mashes with multiple temperature rests at different temperatures can be done to achieve particular results but are not as common as single infusions. The mash allows enzymes to break up the starches in the grain and convert them into more simple sugars the yeast can consume.
At the end of the mash the liquid, now called wort is transferred to the kettle. A kettle is a large pot/vat that the wort will be boiled in. While emptying the liquid from the mash tun more hot water will be added to rinse the grain and get all available sugars, this process is called sparging.
Once in the kettle the wort is brought to a boil. The boil has two main purposes in brewing. One reason is to sanitise the wort and kill of anything that may infect and spoil the beer. The next reason is where the hops come in. The wort will be boiled for normally 60-90minutes. During the boil hops will be added at different times. Additions of hops in the 45-90 minute are, primarily, to provide bittering. The alpha acids from the hops are dissolved into the solution and this provides the bitterness. Hops added in the time from will add little to aroma or flavour as the oils that come from the hops will be boiled off. Additions of hops in the 0-30 minute range are the flavour and aroma additions. The closer to the end of the boil the more aroma you will get but the less bittering character. This is why there is normally a range of additions across the length of the boil depending on the style.
Once the boil is completed the wort need to be cooled. It needs to be cooled as quickly as possible to avoid reactions that can cause off flavours in the beer. This is not always the case but is the normal process in brewing. A typical way of doing this is to run the hot wort through pipes that are jacketed by another larger pipe. In the outside pipe you run refrigerated water in the opposite direction. This is called a counterflow chiller. There are also plate chillers that work on a similar principle and immersion chillers that involve submerging cool pipes into hot wort. Whilst not the only method of chilling these are the most common.
After or normally during the cooling phase the wort is transferred to the fermenter. At this point the wort may be oxygenated or aerated to assist the yeast. The yeast which can be in a dry powder like or liquid for is now added to the fermenter and the fermenter sealed to prevent wild yeast or bacteria getting in. However, carbon dioxide will need to escape so we need a air lock. Commonly this is a hose from the top of a fermenter into a bucket of sanitised liquid. This can take many forms but the hose and bucket is common.
Now the yeast goes to work eating all the sugar and producing alcohol and C02. This process can take anywhere from three days to weeks depending on how high in alcohol the beer and the style of beer. Typically lagers and high alcohol beers take longer. Fermentation of ales is normally at 18-22C and lagers at 8-12C. For some styles of beer, like IPA, hops can also be added into the fermenter to add extra aroma to the beer, this is called dry hopping. Once fermentation is complete and the yeast have eaten all the sugar the beer may be cold conditioned or lagered. This means keeping the beer at a very low temperature, as close to freezing as possible, for an extended period. This can help drop yeast and other compounds that can cause off flavours out of the beer. Almost all lagers will be, unsurprisingly, lagered but some ales will be also. Beer may be filtered also at this time.
Once there process are complete it will be packaged into kegs, bottles or cans. Most commonly the beer will be force carbonated at this time by taking C02 and forcing it into the beer. However, some brewers like Coopers and Little Creatures will add a little fermentable material and a little extra yeast and allow it to ferment again the bottle/keg. This produces the carbonation naturally but takes a little longer. There are other carbonation methods but these are the most common.
That is how beer is made. This is a basic description that does skip over a lot of detail and uses some language that isn’t technically accurate so as to make it’s point simply. I will go into further detail over the course of this series. If you want something else to read now you should check out “How to Brew” by John Palmer. It’s a great book and a really good starting point to learn about how beer is made.
Please let me know in the comments if you have any questions. I would love to hear what people think and use it to guide the series.