I kicked of a brew a couple of days ago and used just malt instead of brewing sugar. the guy at the store said that i could just add the malt straight to the mix, just like you do with brewing sugar. although the fermentation took about 36 hours to start, and has seemed to stop after about 12 hours. the original gravity was 1040 and now it is at 1018, the brew is a Burton Ale.
QUESTION Every recipe i see on the web says to boil the dry malt extract. does this boiling have something to do with the fermentation process or is it just some flavour thing?
i have use malt before but useally i use a 50/50 mix with dextrose, and i just add the whole lot to the fermentor.
Recipe (if this helps)
1 tin Bacchus & Barley Burton Ale
200g dry dark malt extract
800g dry light malt extract
23 ltr water
No. It is just to dissolve the DME and will kill any wild yeast that may be present. Most of us are adding hops during the boil for bitter, flavor and aroma, as well as finings, flavorings etc.. You are doing what is called "no boil?" Typically mix a couple of cans of hopped malt with warm/hot water and add to fermeter and then pitch the yeast.
All malt beer is better, in my opinion than, using some malt for flavor and trying to make up the alcohol with some less expensive sugar.
36 hours to start fermentation is a little on the long side. Faster is better. Did you pitch a dry yeast onto an 18 degree unmixed un aerated wort?
Read up on the care and treatment of yeast. You can pitch the yeast at temperatures higher than 20, particularly if the ambient temperature is low. Ale yeast likes higher temps, lagers lower. The yeast will raise the temperature of the wort when it starts reproducing.
You can pitch dry yeast or just dump a vial of liquid yeast in the wort - but the yeast will be much happier if you start them off rehydrating and reproducing several hours before pitching.
The choices are minimum effort or best beer. You determine your goals in that respect.
You don't mention mixing the remaining water with the concentrated wort. The wort has a higher specific gravity and (even if much warmer than the water) will sink to the bottom of the fermenter. It needs to be mixed very thoroughly.
Pitch a dry yeast on unmixed wort and water and you will have slow fermentation - the water at the top will rehydrate the yeast but won't provide any nutrients, the wort at the bottom may be too sweet for the yeast. Eventually, the yeast will start working and mix it for you . . .
The baby yeastlets have a voracious appetite for oxygen and the wort and water must be well aerated for the yeast to take off. That is the only time you want oxygen in your wort - but it very important to the yeast. You don't mention any effort at aeration.
Yeast should be coddled and nurtured; give it a good head start and it will give you great beer. The idea is to get the yeast you pitch to take off before bacteria or wild yeast can get established in the wort. From final mixing and pitching to vigorous fermentation - 5 hours is very good 12 hours OK.
Brewing day (for me) begins with the yeast. Liquid or dry. I prepare a starter solution of weak wort (~20 ounces water, heaping tablespoon of DME or yeast starter, boiled in a small covered saucepan). I usually end up letting it boil over - but no matter. I move the sauce pan to a cold surface and let it cool, covered, to ~25-30 C .
I pitch the yeast in that (scatter the dry yeast on the surface and don't mix, add the liquid and do mix). Then I forget its there for a few hours - washing bottles steeping grains etc.. I check it for froth (tells me its active). The yeast is the last thing to go into the fermenter and only when the wort is well aerated and mixed; then I pitch my starter solution to the carboy and rock it to mix the starter in. I pitch 8-12 hours total after first starting the yeast.
It isn't necessary to give it this much care - but it isn't really a lot of effort and great beer is my only goal.
You can also tell a lot about the yeast by sniffing it after it is started. Really bad yeast may have a slight rotten meat odor, mistreated yeast (too hot a starter is one way, too old, etc.) a sour odor - happy yeast has a rich yeasty odor.
The starting temp was 24 degrees, i do have a big spoon to mix the contents, but it doesn't aerated much. i saw a smilular posting on this subject and a guy said to use a nice big whisk, so i'll give that a wearl.
i'm glad you mentioned this i'm about to kick of a larger
let me make sure i got this right, you make a mini brew which you put your yeast in when the temp is right, then once the yeast is active you add the mini brew to the big brew. Have i got the concept right?
On Thu, 3 Mar 2005 15:17:09 +1100, "Someone" said in alt.beer.home-brewing:
If you don't have some kind of cooler (converted fridge with temp controller, etc.), don't even think of doing a lager. You have to lower the temp slowly, day by day, to get a lager right. There are so many ale styles, you can keep busy for years just learning ales.
Yep. It can sit in the mini brew for a couple of hours, though. It should get nice and foamy, and it should smell yeasty - like fresh bread. (Boil whatever you're going to grow it in, though. Sanitizing is everything.)
Ditto that, cooling the wort quickly is the thing to do.
I guess I've been reading too many of these "no boil" instructions. I want to try it myself just to see if the beer is any good. They don't say much about cooling and I figured they mix the concentrated wort at lower temps then dilute to volume with cold water, and that dilution provides the cold break.
As Al Klein mentioned, you want to get the temp of the concentrated wort down quickly (after it is mixed). One method is to put the kettle in a sink full of cold water and mix the contents of the kettle periodically and the contents of the sink to improve the heat transfer and avoid stratification.
If you have a convenient snow bank or bucket of ice or ice water so much the better.
The reason you're trying for the quick temperature drop (cold break) is to avoid "cold/chill haze" or just plain cloudy beer. The quick temperature change causes proteins to drop out of suspension among other things.
avoid getting air into the hot wort - mix don't splash
It is important to avoid getting air into the hot wort. The wort, while hot, is subject to oxidation. Aeration dissolves oxygen into the wort, oxidation is when oxygen binds with the molecules of starches and proteins and changes them chemically - and alters the flavor in a disagreeable way. Most of the instructions I've read say the likelihood of oxidation drops when the temperature is below 80F (26-27C?)
A wire wisk is one way to incorporate air in the cooled wort. I like to cook and do use a wisk, but that seems like doing it the hard way. I use carboys as fermenters and fill them with cold water from a garden hose. The high pressure spray from the hose adds a lot of air to the wort/water and helps mix it. Some brewers use an aquarium air stone and pump (which can add contaminants if one isn't careful). Shaking it is another option (although I don't know if I'd to that to a plastic bucket).
Boiling water or heating it drives out the dissolved gases.
Yeah, the yeast starter is just a mini batch of weak un hopped wort that is prepared before pitching to get the yeast alive and happy. That whole thing gets dumped into the wort (or some folks claim to use just the top liquid portion - not the solids in the bottom of the pot
- I use it all) The top portion contains fewer dead yeast cells - to their way of thinking, but some folks keep a starter going for months or years, I just do it for ~7-12 hours as a rule, and figure that tiny quantity of dead yeast won't matter in the scheme of things.
The dry yeast packets contain a lot of active yeast cells as a rule, but they are dormant and require time to get started. Liquid yeast generally contains fewer active cells and requires a starter so they can reproduce and up the cell count to take over the wort when pitched. With liquid yeast it is a good practice to get the starter going 24 hours in advance of pitching to increase the number of active cells.
Yeast is a living microorganism. It has DNA, Cells with nuclei, and requires food (sugar and some protein) and favorable living conditions to reproduce. Treat it with care.
You are working with billions of yeast cells - Each cell can bud off ~4 daughter cells in a several hours and those cells will bud off their own daughter cells. After a few hours the cell count is rising exponentially.
Yeast contributes greatly to the taste of beer. Liquid yeast is more fussy to start, and more costly, but makes for better tasting beer in my opinion.
You can keep a starter alive and working for months at a time and just farm what you need from that (read up on the processes). You can also just put fresh aerated wort onto the yeast at the bottom of the fermenter (works better with carboys) and kick the new batch off with the leftover yeast (or just a portion of it). Talk about fast fermentation . . .
If you keep making beer, you'll develop your own processes and styles of beer. In time, brewing becomes second nature. You can save some money - but I doubt many people do it for that reason.
I enjoy the heck out of brewing. It isn't work to me. I like to brew and bottle on the same day - keeps me busy doing something I like.
On Thu, 03 Mar 2005 08:25:38 -0500, default said in alt.beer.home-brewing:
Lessee ...
2-1/2 gallons at boiling added to 2-1/2 gallons at, say 40F. (Or any
50% boil.) The resultant temp would be around 125F. It would probably take a few hours to come down to 68F by itself. Anyone for bubble gum?
I'd still run a chiller on that. They're not that expensive to make that one should ruin a brew that costs at least as much.
I agree. Some of the instructions, on line, call for mixing some very concentrated wort at temperatures of 140-160.
Someone indicated that he was only boiling 2 liters of water for a 23 liter batch. By the time he gets the cans in and dissolves the DME (assuming it will go into solution at that concentration) he probably doesn't require a lot of cooling.
Using DME and no boil, I think I'd get the DME dissolved first then add the LME, and heat the LME cans so they will pour.
As I understand it the technique is to start with hot water simply to get the LME out of the cans and mixed into solution with a little water, from there, it is right into the fermenter and add cold water to volume and pitch.
No boil is a "quick and dirty" - or quick and easy way to make beer. Instant beer.
Agreed. There are those folks who think a week old gallon size starter is the way to beer . . . in that situation they may be right about using only the top liquid.
I froze some a long time ago, sans glycerine, and it still worked, but from the sluggish start it was obvious the viability suffered. Haven't tried glycerine.
Right on.
I can't buy it for less - but then you have to define "beer." I can get Bud etc. for some pretty low prices, but that ain't beer. That's just some stuff you drink when very thirsty, and the water is unsafe to drink, or maybe to avoid insulting an ignorant host.
Budweiser is still preferable to typhoid, giardia, shistomiosis, sea water, dog piss, etc.
Corona, Heinekin, and other light beers are a bit more than some of my homebrews. 80 cents to $1 a bottle for commercial, 50 cents to $1 for homebrew. Real imported porter is still $2.50 a pint bottle.
On Thu, 03 Mar 2005 14:23:56 -0500, default said in alt.beer.home-brewing:
I've used the entire yeast cake from one brew to start another one - just poured the new wort onto the old yeast. Granted I'm a hophead, but it didn't seem to make any difference.
A day in weak wort and it starts up normally. At least S04 does for me, but then S04 starts like Vesuvius.
It may be stuff YOU drink. It's not stuff I drink. :)
I think I'd rather be thirsty.
Anyone who 'hosts' me knows my taste. If there's nothing else, they can always grab a 6 pack of SNPA in the supermarket. It's not that great, but it's not yellow water.
Oh, I thought Bud *was* dog piss - just degraded dog piss.
On Thu, 03 Mar 2005 14:03:13 -0500, default said in alt.beer.home-brewing:
Only if the LME was boiled before it was concentrated. If it wasn't, there's no hop flavor. Hops added without boiling don't add much flavor or bitterness.
Well I donno. The companies, John Bull among others, claim that the no boil kits are hopped. How well, or if that only means bittering hops, I wouldn't know.
Seems to me the tricky part would be to keep the hop flavor and aroma intact and canned. Or they may just be ignoring the hops aroma altogether.
Surely if we can put a man on the moon . . . Oh, JB is the UK . . .
Well, if they can make an SST . . . Oh, the French helped.
OK, I've got it, the Brits invented radar and as a consequence the semiconductor diode, which made computers possible. They can probably figure out a way to get the hops flavor and aroma in the cans.
Maybe this is an attempt to keep selling the branded canned LME in the face of competition from generic DME based kits, or perhaps it is aimed at the first time brewers.
There's a lot to learn to make outstanding beer - the "no boil" may be just the ticket to get someone into the hobby with a minimal outlay in cost and only rudimentary knowledge. Then too it may just be clever marketing - a way to give bud drinkers bragging rights, and make lots of money.
I wanted to try it myself, then form an opinion.
Unless empty glass bottles fall out of the sky, or I go on a record breaking bender, it'll have to wait until next year - this year is booked.
Been there too. I once kept it up through three batches using the secondary fermentation to start the next new batch. I didn't see any of the disadvantages they say can happen. (but them that say that sell yeast - go figure) Humans have been making beer from c.4000 BC, I don't imagine it was great beer, but how tricky can it be? Beer happens.
I'm sorry. I didn't mean to question your taste or judgement. I should have written. "That's just some stuff one might drink, etc.."
Think: "Life threatening thirsty," (bloodshot eyes, severe dehydration, sunburn, clawing at the burning Saharan sand, moments to live) makes more sense that way.
There may be some folks in a socially sensitive situation where a PC (politically convenient) response like drinking bud and acting appreciative is expected. (that's some good acting) I couldn't pull it off.
I thought weasel piss.
Someone needs too put together a chart similar to the "electromagnetic spectrum" charts in schools with beers on them. Weasel Piss to Ambrosia scale.
Yep, i soak the can for 15 minutes in hot water, in the meantime i add the sugar/malt to the boiled water and mix it througly. then i add the can to the mix, there is still some hops stuck to the side of the can, i just fill the can with boiled water (1lt) let it soak for a couple of minutes and then add that. so 3 lt of boiling water all up. Then i add 20 lt of cold tap water (uaually)
if i were to boil as much water as you guys i'd never get the fermentator to cool down fast enough, even with this method the wort is at 30 - 34 degrees C after mixing. The last brew i kicked of yesturday i used 20 lt of fridge water, that got the wort down to 24 degrees C (much to the discuss of the wife using the whole fridge to chill water, beer is food in my opinion), then i sat the fermentator in a tub of ice, it took about 3 hours to cool to 18 degreec C when i pitched the yeast.
next time i'll try adding some nice big ice blocks to the mix and just back the water off a little
So i'll need to stick to this method untill i get my cooling technique right. But i do think you guys are right you would get a better beer from boiling more water, just the fact that it would mix better with a greater volume of the wort.
Any more ideas on colling the wort would be greatly appriciated.
possibaly, but no matter what brand i go for that all have the same instructions, Coopers, Brewiser, Baccus & Barley doesn't matter. but the store i goto also has a web site
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and their recipies involve boiling the same hops that i'm using.
due to my cooling problem how little water do you think i could boild the hops in?
you need an Aussie mate, then you'll have more empty bottles then you'll know what to do with :-)
Hops are used for bittering, flavor and aroma. Some types are preferred for one use over another - but the technique for extracting that character is the same: 20 or more minutes of boil for bitterness, 10 minutes for flavor, zero (cold hopping or dry hopping) to 5 minutes for aroma. So you will use three bags of hops at different stages if you want to maximize all the hops' character.
I found that bringing one quart of water to a boil and just adding hops and boiling for 20 minutes gave reasonable bitterness to the entire 5 gallon batch. These days I throw a fine mesh nylon bag with the pellet hops into the wort and boil them with the wort for 20 minutes. For whole hop flowers I use a cotton bag and do the same thing then rinse some cold water through the bagged hops to wash the wort out into the fermenter. If you're boiling water for the DME just add the hops and boil.
The flavor hops are the same procedure and for just the last ten minutes of boil.
The aroma hops are for the last 3-5 minutes of boil. Or just put the aroma hops into the secondary fermenter - no boiling ("cold hopping")
To extract bitterness the hops have to boil, for aroma they don't - boiling destroys the aroma. Some brewers use just the bittering hops, most probably use bittering and aroma, a few use flavor or try to split the time for bitter and flavor - extra hops for ~15 minutes to cover both bitter and flavor.
Providing my mate didn't drink the homebrew . . . Then I'd have lots of empty bottles and no beer.
About the cooling: One very effective cooler is a "counterflow wort cooler" The hot wort flows through ~50 feet of 3/8" copper tubing that is jacketed with 50 feet of larger plastic tubing carrying cold water from the outlet of the wort to the inlet (flowing in the opposite direction - so the outlet wort is just about the same temperature as the cooling water and the outlet of the cooling water is just as hot as the wort going into the cooler. Easy enough to build it.
A less effective wort chiller is just a coil of copper tubing carrying cold water that gets immersed into the hot wort. There the cold water flows into the top of the coil and spirals down to the bottom of the wort kettle then out to the drain - convection currents in the wort keep the wort moving and cooling. They frequently space more turns of copper at the top of the helix to encourage the convection currents.
What temperature is your cold water? Would something like a "root cellar" (underground bunker) give you a place to run a fermenter?
Some people do make lager chillers out of old refrigerators or freezers and just modify the controls to maintain fermentation temperature.
With using ice - it works but take extra care that it is clean ice, it wouldn't do to expose the wort to bacteria (if putting a chunk of ice in the wort is the idea).
Install a permanent coil of copper in the freezer and use it for wort chilling on brew day?
Beer is indeed food. Nutritious and high in vitamins.
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