Brewing Beer

The following is from The BeerStack , a HyperCard file created by Robert Bush for recording brewing recipes. Note that this version of the document only provides background information. Robert originally wrote:

The BeerStack was first intended as a kind of base for me, because I almost lost track of all brewing ＆ beer notes lying around. Please give copies of TBS to friends, post it on BBS’s, send it to magazines, spread it!

Written by Robert Bush, Eskilstuna, Sweden

Beer is one of the most complex beverages that you can drink. It is, among other things, good-tasting, social, and in too high a quantity intoxicating. To me, beer is more than a glass of light brown liquid with alcohol and a foam head; it is the ultimate topic to discuss among friends or enemies and a very peculiar fluid indeed.

Many people I know are not as enthusiastic. I have tried to convince them to try something other than the regular golden coloured brew that they always have when we’re down the pub, but talking about it doesn’t seem to be enough.

Water, of course, is the main ingredient of beer. Without water we would have to chew our brew, wouldn’t we? Then we have malted barley in different forms, hops of several varieties, yeast, and sometimes sugar or cereals known as adjuncts.

Ingredients

Water

The most famous brewing water is the water of Burton-upon-Trent. It has perfect water for some types of beer but is not necessarily the best water for all beer. Burton’s fame has more to do with the fact that a couple of Benedictine monks who knew how to brew happened to live there long ago.

Water can be hard or soft and without me being to technical about it, let’s say that some waters are suitable for some beers while others are not as suitable.

Because of that, most breweries treat their water to suit their beer best. They add minerals like Calcium sulphate, Sodium chloride, Magnesium sulphate or reduce the contents of other undesirable chemicals. Sulphates are considered to produce a dry flavour, which suits pale ales best; a darker beer with a fuller flavour is helped by chlorides and milds or dark ales benefit from a higher quantity of (common) salt. A lot of breweries ‘copy’ the Burton water for their ales. Commercial breweries talk about ‘water’ as something you use to clean the equipment or cool the wort with, while the treated water used in beer is called ‘liquor’.

Malted Barley

Barley is what you get the fermentable sugar from. Most of the barley used in brewing is malted. That means it has been soaked in water for a time, until it has absorbed enough water to begin germination. After that it is kilned (dried in an oven) and sometimes roasted in order to reach the desired colour. From now on, it is called malt.

In days long past, all breweries malted their own barley. This is no longer common practice; most breweries get their malted barley from independent malteries. In Sweden, Pripps and Vivungs are the only breweries that still malt themselves.

The colour can range from very light (pilsner malt, lager malt, pale malt) to dark brown or black (chocolate malt, black malt). Between those extremes there are several more grades. A special scale, known as EBC (European Brewing Convention) is used to indicate colour in malts (and beers). The lower the EBC is, the lighter is the malt (thus kilned for a shorter time).

Some beer styles need roasted barley (1000-1550 EBC) for their colouring. That is unmalted but roasted barley that gives a very black, often opaque beer.

Adjuncts

Rice, flaked maize, raw barley, wheat and oats are all examples of adjuncts. They have a similar amount of fermentable extracts to malt and some of them also contribute to head formation and retention. In some cases the brewer wants to achieve a special taste or a certain colour for his beer; then adjuncts might be the answer.

The use of adjuncts partly comes from the U.S.A., where they used maize and rice for economic reasons. Today it is not only because of economy brewers put adjuncts in their mash. Maize and rice gives a lighter, more easily-drinkable beer for the mainstream consumer. Many American (mainstream) beers have up to 50 per cent of adjuncts in them, and anyone can understand that this ‘dilutes’ the taste. Adjuncts are not all bad, though. Some beers actually benefits from them.

In Germany, in 1516, a law called ‘Reinheitsgebot’ was passed. This law implied that nothing but malt, water, hops and yeast could be used when brewing (i.e. no adjuncts). However, an EU-rule from 1987 says that beer with adjuncts can be sold within the Community and therefore Germany had to allow brewing as well (for Law students: 178/84 Commission v. Germany).

Nowadays the Reinheitsgebot is used as a sales trick. ‘Pure’ beer is supposed to be better according to the advertisers.

Sugar is another kind of adjunct. It is common practise to use sugar in Czech Pilsners and a Sweet Stout wouldn’t be sweet enough without it.

Hops

A very fast growing plant, hops is. It can reach 8 - 9 metres in a couple of months. Of course, it would be a bit inconvenient to climb that high in order to be able to harvest the cones so the plants are cut down to ‘man-height’.

It is only the cones that are needed in brewing. Furthermore, it is only the female plant that is used. The hop cones contain a lot of certain aromatic oils, resins and bittering and aroma acids known as lupulins. These things affect our final product - the beer - to a great extent.

The hop cones (or in the form of pellets) are boiled with the wort and a series of reactions take place that contribute to the flavour and aroma of the beer, assist in the precipitation of trub (sludge, wort sediment). The oils and the acids also provide some nutrients for the yeast.

Virtually all beer styles contain hops - some more than others. It is the hops that help in preserving the beer, it is the hops that gives it its bitterness, flavour and aroma.

Different hops have different properties and therefore brewers classify their hops into three categories; namely bittering hops, aroma hops and dry hops.

Before we take a look at those categories I have to mention something about the system used to classify the bitterness of beer. It is known as EBU (European Bittering Units). This is another one of those scales, only this one tells you the alpha acid contents of beer. More alpha acid in the hops gives more bitterness and a higher EBU of the final beer.

Yeast

Yeast is the most exciting ingredient of beer. It is also very important; I dare say that it is the most important, most character-and aroma-providing ingredient in all fermented beverages. Yeast is what turns sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide. It also helps head formation and head retention and produces a lot of other things that are responsible for a great part of the taste.

Most beers are filtered and pasteurised but sometimes yeast is added to the finished beer, to create a second fermentation in the bottle. Most wheat beers, some ales and many Belgian beers have yeast in the bottle. Look for the words “Bier op gist” or “Biere sur lie” on labels. It means “Beer with yeast” in Flemish and French. On a beer-bottle from Germany it might say “Mit hefe”, indicating that it contains yeast.

This is very useful to home-brewers, since it is possible to revive the yeast with some sweet wort and then use it in your own beer. It is of much help when you want to duplicate a particular beer.

When talking about yeast and brewing one might think that it is possible to go down to the grocer’s and buy regular baking yeast. That is not the case. It has to be real brewers’ yeast. Either in dried form or in liquid form. I use the latter because it is absolutely sterile, which ensures a clean, germ-free brew provided that your stirring equipment, siphons, funnels etc. are properly cleaned.

There are yeasts and there are yeasts. Ale yeast, Lager yeast and Wild yeast.

Characteristics

I think it is necessary to know some ‘rules’ of classification that I use. Before you continue, read this:

Colour of Beer

I’ve mentioned the colour system for malt under the button "What’s in beer?". The same system is used for the colour of finished beer, only the figures are not in the same range.

Bitterness of Beer

A higher EBU gives a higher bitterness in the finished beer. Most brewers follow the alcohol content of the beer. A stronger beer often has more bitterness and vice versa. They seem to ‘disguise’ each other. A beer with good body or mouth-feel can be highly hopped too, without the high bitterness spoiling it.

It is fairly easy to calculate how bitter your beer will be if you know the alpha acid content of the hops used. The formula is available under the button "About Hops" on the main menu. There is also more information on the EBU system used to describe the bitterness of beer.

Alcohol Content

In Sweden (where I’m from) it is mandatory to put the alcohol percentage on the labels of beer bottles or cans. Until some years ago, Great Britain did not have that; they used another system (see below). Some countries don’t use any system, so you have to guess how strong the beer is. For a beer-lover like myself, sometimes that’s fine; it is the taste that matters to me. But what do you do when you have to drive a car? How do you know when you can drive? This creates a problem and I think that it should be mandatory everywhere to display the alcohol percentage.

There are two ways you can measure this. Either by % of the weight or by volume. The latter is more common internationally. With two simple formulas it is easy to convert from one method to the other. If it is displayed by volume, just take that figure times 0.8 and you get the percentage by weight (e.g. 5.5% by vol. × 0.8 = 4.4% by weight). The other way around you cannot use the same formula. Instead, if it is displayed by weight, take that figure times 1.25 and you get the alcohol content expressed in % by volume (e.g. 4.4% by weight × 1.25 = 5.5% by vol.).

I will use the % by volume system, abbreviated ABV.

Finally

There is, and always will be, brewers that misunderstand things and brew a beer they think will fit into a specific category without it having anything to do with the style. So chances are that you sooner or later will encounter a bottle of beer that, for instance, says Märzen on it when it’s just another plain lager. Or an IPA, which is supposed to be high in both alcohol and bitterness, that tastes like an ordinary bitter.

Another thing that is weird, is that I’ve seen beer bottles with the word ‘draught’! But all this doesn’t matter unless you’re really picky, as long as it tastes good.

Beer Types

Pilsner

The ideal pilsner would be a yellow, malty, flowery-hoppy lager with a dry finish and approximately 5%ABV and 12° Plato.

A lot of breweries call their beer pilsner even if it is not. An exception is Germany where most breweries follow the original quite good. So what is the original then? Well, the name Pilsner means ‘from Pilsen’ which is a town in Bohemia in the Czech Republic and this certainly tells us a lot about the origin of the style. The most famous pilsner is Pilsner Urquell, and I think I can say that it is also the best pilsner in the world. I blind-tested that brew along with four other Czech brews (Bohemia Regent, Kozel, Staropramen and Budweiser Budvar) and the result was devastating for the ‘challengers’!

Pilsner is the number one beer of the Czech Republic and the Czechs really know how to brew it. In Plzen they made their first batch of this type of beer in 1842, and in the 1870s it became famous throughout Europe. The Germans brew similar beer but variations are rather great so in my opinion a pilsner is a Czech beer. The barley grown in Bohemia is special; it contributes to the softness of the beer, and the hops used in a true pilsner is almost always the Saaz variety, which is grown in the Czech Republic as well.

Pale Ale / Bitter

Bitter and Pale Ale are very similar but it is not the same. You could say that the Bitter is what you get on tap while the Pale Ale is bottled, but that is not all true. The Bitter is less carbonated and slightly more bitter than the Pale Ale but the Pale Ale is said to have a higher original gravity.

The name suggests that it is bitter. This type of beer is among the most bitter ones but there are breweries that call their beer Bitter even when the bitterness is lower than it is supposed to be for the type.

The Bitter can be divided into Ordinary Bitter, Best Bitter or Special Bitter with ascending strength and complexity. The colour varies between bronze and dark copper.

Although it is becoming more and more accepted in other countries, it is most common in Britain. But there are Belgian ales that are interesting as well. They are more aromatic and spicy in both malt- and yeast character than their British counterparts.

IPA is short for India Pale Ale, which is a bottled beer. It was originally intended to be shipped to the British army in India at the turn of the nineteenth century. In order to keep, the beer was very strong and hoppy. It is not very common these days; only a few breweries have it. Instead, IPA is used as a name for ‘super premium’ ale and I get very disappointed when I have an IPA on tap and find that it’s just another ale.

Lager (or ‘Beer’ to some)

This is silly, really, because lager does not represent a style of its own although many people think so.Lager is the name of a beverage that has been fermented with a yeast strain that works on the bottom ofthe vessel.

Under this heading falls the BIG mass-produced, internationally famous brands like Carlsberg, Stella,Heineken etc. These brands don’t have anything to make them stand out; they’re all light in colour,have a clean and neutral flavour and often a short after-taste.

The "International Lager" is often brewed with adjuncts as maize, rice or sugar. They are so similar intaste and appearance that I won’t bother to mention them again.A beer-style that comes very close is Dortmunder. It is stronger in alcohol and has a more appearingmaltiness as it is not brewed with adjuncts.

Märzen / Oktoberfest

Märzen is the German name for the month March. It is also a type of beer. (In Belgium they used to brew a beer in March, called Mars but that style is now extinct.) The name stems from the fact that it was brewed in March and stored in cool caves during the summer, and by October it was just enough left to have a great ‘fest’. Today we have fridges to store our beer in so this style still lives because people want traditions. Every October, or rather September/October, there is a beer-drinking party in Munich (Oktoberfest). This tradition is now spread to the whole world and thousands of people swing their 1.2 litre beer-jugs, around this time, every year.

What about the beer then? It is almost the same as Vienna-beer, which often is amber in colour and is brewed with so-called Vienna-malt (a lightly roasted type of malt). The difference is that the Märzen / Oktoberfestbier is brewed to a higher gravity, which in turn gives a beer stronger in alcohol.

Bock

Another famous type of beer with its roots in Germany, first produced in a little town called Einbeck in the 14th century. The word ‘Bock’ is often misused on any lager with a high strength in alcohol but a true Bock is also an all-malt beer with a very long lagering time. It can be either golden or dark brown. It is mostly a seasonal beer, but the season it is served varies from country to country. A Maibock is a bock that is brewed for the first of May, to celebrate the arrival of spring. A Doppelbock is an even stronger brew. It reaches 7.5%ABV or more and is always leather coloured or dark brown. Many Doppelbocks have names with the ending ‘-ator’, because Paulaner of Munich, made a Doppelbock called Salvator and the other breweries wanted similar names. The EKU brewery in Kulmbach has its Kulminator, Ayinger in Munich has its Fortunator and Hacker-Pschorr brew a Doppelbock named Animator. Delicator, Celebrator and Optimator are other examples, while my own home-brewed Doppelbock is called Liquidator. (Please, let me know if that name is taken by a professional brewery!) As if the Doppelbock wasn’t strong enough, somebody had to invent a method to make it stronger. Since water turns to ice before alcohol does, they freeze the beer, remove the ice and voilà, the beer is stronger. That type of Bock is called Eisbock.

Münchner Helles / Dunkel

In German ‘hell’ means ‘light’ and ‘dunkel’ means ‘dark’. A Dunkel is a Münchner that is amber or dark, while a Münchner Hell is lighter in both colour and often also in alcohol.

Münchener is one of the earliest bottom-fermenting beer styles. It was developed by a brewmaster at the Spaten brewery in the beginning of the 19th century and a hundred years later, the first light variety (Helles) was brewed (in 1928); it is now the most common in Bavaria. The Dunkels are full in body with a noticeable malt-aroma and often a taste of roasted malt. The Helles are thinner, with a modest bitterness.

Mild

Being very low in alcohol, this type of beer is perfect if you intend to consume a lot of it. It cannot be kept for too long so it must also be consumed quickly. It is certainly not as hoppy as Pale Ale or Bitter, but more on the toasty, sweet side. The colour could be copper but more often it is dark brown. The Scots have a similar beer that goes under the name Light Ale and in Wales they refer to it as Dark.

Old Ale

Also known as Stock Ale because it was stored for quite a few months, or even years, in the old days. Before refrigeration, it was difficult to brew ale during high summer due to problems with infection. Instead, the brewers made their beer in January or February and stored it for the summer. It was usually a very strong beer.

Old Ale is still brewed today. It is often dark and sweet. The sweetness comes from the very high OG which means a lot of sugar in the wort and sometimes sugar is added by the brewer. Sugar gives alcohol, but that is only true if you let the beer ferment out properly. That is not often the case with Old Ale; the brewers want their Old Ale sweet.

Modern Old Ale (What a contradiction!) is not as strong as Barley Wine but stronger than the average brew. It often contains crystal malt and black malt and is given a long period of maturation in cask and an extra six to twelve months in the bottle.

The Brewing Process

Beer has been brewed in virtually the same way since man first discovered that it was possible to brew. The equipment used is more modern these days but the main principle is the same: Barley is malted, steeped in water which becomes wort. The wort is boiled with hops, yeast is added and fermentation takes place. After that, the beer is matured and bottled.

Since this is a very rough description I better explain the steps more thoroughly, but only on a homebrewing level; commercial brewing is more complicated, with a lot of extra steps involved.

Malting

Fortunately, this is something you don’t have to do yourself, as a home-brewer, but it is important so I include it anyway.

Finest barley is germinated for a certain time and then dried. This drying-process is called kilning. During the kilning phase the malt gets its colour (depending on the time its kilned). Sometimes it is roasted or almost burnt but the main part of the malt is simply dried; meaning it is turned into pale- or lager-malt.

After it is dried (and/or roasted), the malt is crushed in a mill. It is important that it is not ground to a flour; nor should the grinding be too coarse. A perfect malt should have its shell cracked open just enough to let the water in. If it is too finely ground it creates a set mash, which means that the water won’t run through the mash tun. On the other hand, if it is to roughly ground, the water doesn’t reach the sugar (in the form of starch) inside the barley.

Mashing

It is through mashing the starch in the barley is converted to sugar. At different temperatures different enzymes start to work, and it is those enzymes that sort-of ‘suck out’ the sugar (the starch actually). It is not that simple but I will try to explain.

There are more than one method of mashing:

Sparging

This is part of the mashing procedure. It simply means rinsing the spent grains in order to get most out of it. The grains are gently sprayed with water (77-80°C) until the gravity of the wort collected is around 1005. If you continue sparging after that, you get almost only water (which has a gravity of 1000). It is important that the sparging is carefully done. If you pour too much water in the mash tun at a time, you will crack up the ‘filter bed’ (the grains filter the wort) and a very cloudy wort will be the result.

The spent grain is called draff; commercial breweries sell it to farmers as cattle-feed.

Boiling

You now have wort, ready to be boiled, and that is done because you have to:

• vaporise it to the right concentration
• extract bittering substances from the hops
• coagulate the proteins
• destroy enzymes and bacteria
• caramelise sugar (gives colour)
• sterilise the wort

As soon as the wort boils, it is time to add the first (bittering) hops. The wort is then boiled for about an hour-and-a-half and the aroma hops is added during the last 1-15 minutes. It is very important that the boil is vigorous, to allow volatile products to escape. A mere simmer is not sufficient. When the wort has been boiling for some time it gets hazy. This is the hot break; the protein particles that begins to stick to each other, creating little ‘sausages’ which will sink to the bottom when the heat is turned off. This undesirable sludge is called trub; it is left behind in the boiler when you transfer the wort to the next bucket.

Cooling

It is important to cool the wort as soon as possible. You don’t want any bacteria in it, and the sooner you can pitch the yeast, the sooner the wort can start fermenting (the yeast ‘protects’ the wort). Furthermore, a quick cooling to around 17-20°C will cause even more trub to drop out of solution. This is called the cold break.

An easy way of cooling the wort is to put a piece of hose on each end of a copper coil, put the coil in the bucket with hot wort, connect the hose to the water-tap and run cold water through the coil. The other end of the hose must, of course, be put in the sink so that the water doesn’t get into the wort. I use this method, and 25 litres of hot wort is cooled down to 20°C in just over 20 minutes. A friend of mine runs the wort through the coil instead; keeping the coil in cold water. This takes about the same time but I find it a bit risky, since the inside of the coil is more difficult to clean and thereby keep sterile.

Fermenting / Maturation

If you think that your beer has the perfect balance in hop aroma, fine, but if you want a hoppier-tasting brew it is now time to add the dry-hops. As with ingredients only the finest hop varieties are used for dry-hopping and the hops are put in the fermenter at this stage. This is also when you pitch the yeast. It could be an ale yeast or a lager yeast and the fermenting-bin should be placed with what yeast you’re using in mind. Ale yeast - 18-22°C, lager yeast - 10-15°C to start with.

About half-way through fermentation the beer is transferred to another bucket (known as dropping), leaving excess yeast and sludge behind. The hydrometer is needed to determine when that is done. (For instance, a beer with an OG of 1040 and a calculated FG of 1010 would be dropped at around 1025, which would leave enough active yeast cells to ferment the rest of the sugar.) When the gravity has gone down to close to the calculated FG the beer is transferred again, this time leaving as much as possible of the yeast behind. The beer is then matured for some time (depending on what type of beer is being brewed). A lager needs longer maturation than an ale.

Kegging

A day or so before it is time to bottle the beer, it is usually primed. That means sugar or dry malt extract is stirred into the beer. This will give the remaining yeast enough ‘food’ to build up carbonation. I usually put my beer in kegs, so I put the priming sugar into the keg, siphon the beer into it and seal it. A couple of weeks (sometimes months) later the beer is carbonated and ready to drink. When bottling, I wait 24 hours after I have put the sugar into the fermenting-bucket, siphon the beer into bottles and cap them.

Note: Corneliuskeg = 19 litres

The only time I bottle beer is when I brew an extra-strong or ‘expensive’ batch. These batches often need a prolonged maturation period; sometimes years.Bottle sizes:

Home Brewing Equipment

Commercial breweries have a lot of equipment that would take too much time and space to explain here, so I will just tell you what is needed for home brewing. Almost every type of beer is possible to brew at home with domestic utensils; without the use of the expensive stuff they have at breweries. Here is what you need:

Brewing in Detail

The best part about home brewing is creating your own recipes. Check other recipes that are known to work and see what is needed for the beer style you want to brew. Roll up your sleeves and start writing ＆ calculating. I usually create a recipe, write it down, think about it for a week and then go back and change it or approve of it. I then gather the ingredients and brew!

You will need a pocket calculator when you are using the following formula:-

Example: You want a beer with an original gravity (OG) of 1050. Take away 1000. You want the grist to consist of 70% lager malt. That’s 0.7. You want to brew 25 litres. You check the table where you can see that with a mash efficiency of 80% the extract contribution is 237, i.e. the figure to divide by. If your mash efficiency is lower or higher you simply take the laboratory figure times your efficiency (e.g. ME of 70%: 296 × 0.7= 207).

Thus:

Repeat procedure with the rest of the ingredients (e.g. 25% Munich malt and 5% Black malt).

Colour

The list shown below gives the colour of some well-known beers, expressed in EBC-units. This is short for European Brewing Convention and it is the special scale that is used to indicate the colour of beer in Europe. In America the SRM method is more common (I think) but I’m not too familiar with that so I won’t mention it any further. A very light pilsner would be approx. 7 EBC units, an English bitter maybe 25, whereas a stout can be as dark as 350 EBC. The latter would mean that the beer is opaque.

The ingredients shown below can be used to obtain the required colour. Some of the ingredients are only available in some countries (I have never found Amber malt here in Sweden for instance) and might be named differently in different places (Crystal malt is also known as Caramel malt).

The figures under “Extract” are the highest possible extract (expressed in °kg/litre) one can expect out of an ingredient, and that’s in a laboratory.

“80% ME” stands for 80 percent mash efficiency. I usually achieve 80-85% when I brew at home. Some people might reach a higher value, some a lower value; it all depends on your equipment and/or processing methods. Experiment until you know what figure to use in the formula. Start with 70% if you’re a beginner and go up 5-10% when brewing your next batch. Click "Formula"-button to see the formula I use.

“Colour” is expressed in EBC units. Sorry, but it wasn’t available for all ingredients.

Bitterness

Bitterness of beer is expressed as European Bitterness Units (EBU). The higher the alpha-acid content in a hop variety, the higher the EBU in the finished product (your beer)!

The EBU varies between different beer styles. A Bavarian wheat-beer might have as little as 10 EBU, whereas an Irish stout might be very bitter, 45-55 EBU.

"Utilisation" in the formula below depends on how long you boil the hops, how high gravity the wort has and the vigour of the boil. Normally, with a good rolling boil, it would be approximately 25% and if you use pellet hops instead of whole cones you get maybe 35% out of it.

I don’t think beer is beer unless it has hops in it! So use this formula to add the correct bitterness to your brew. Be careful in the beginning. A beer that is 95 EBU’s is not pleasant! You need a pocket calculator to figure it out, at least I do.

Formula:

Example: You want a beer with a bitterness of 30 EBU. Take that times 10. Take that figure times the number of litres you want to brew (in this example: 25 litres).

Check the alpha-acid content of your hops (in this example: Fuggle with 4.2%). Your utilisation is 25%. Take that times 4.2. Divide, and see how much Fuggle hops you need in order to brew a beer with a bitterness of 30 EBU.

Thus:

The table below shows the difference between some of the most commonly used hops. The longer the grey bar is, the more bitterness it will give to the final beer. Note: These figures are by no means exact. The alpha acidity varies from region to region, from year to year. The figures are approximate.

Low alpha-acid varieties, mostly for aroma:

Medium alpha-acid varieties, all-purpose use:

High alpha-acid varieties, mostly for bitterness:

This list is not complete, there are several more varieties but it gives you something to start with. This list is also very subjective; it is my opinion, what I have detected with nose and mouth.

Converted to HTML by Ray White, August, 2003.