Homebrew

Welcome to the OCAU Homebrew Wiki, your guide to the wonderful world of homebrewing.

Introduction

You are new to brewing beer, we are not. Heed our advice well for your benefit and you will soon be making premium quality beer for a fraction of retail cost.

Black Lips Pilsner by anc001

Essential equipment

• Fermenter (with thermometer sticker on side)
• Airlock
• Hydrometer
• Bottles
  • Glass - Traditional, very good for longer-term storage (your beer WILL get better with age up to ~1 year), but these require capping equipment.
  • PET Plastic - Simple, have screw-top lids (no need for bench capper), they never explode like glass can. However, while they hold CO2 pressure for well over 2 years, the plastic is known to be porous and will leech certain gasses in and out. So be careful storing your beer bottles near strongly odored substances (such as moth balls). Some gas exchanges are known to sometimes impart a "cidery" flavour if left too long before drinking, and the poor unfortunate soul who left his brew next to moth balls was reportedly drinking mothball flavoured beer (this is a slow process though, and can take up to 1 year to occur).
• Bottle capper - Invest in a proper bench-capper for capping glass bottles, where possible.
• Keg Gear
  This saves all the hassle of bottling, and there is nothing more impressive to show off to your friends! You can also (if desired) skip secondary fermentation, and use the CO2 gas to force carbonate your beer. However, kegs are flexible enough to handle a big secondary ferment in the keg also!
  • 18 Litre post-mix kegs are suitable
  • Carbon Dioxide gas bottle - available from BOC, Air Liquide or MyKegOnLegs (http://www.mykegonlegs.com.au) through most homebrew shops around the country
  • Regulator to control the amount of CO2 gas going into your keg
  • Gas/Beer hose to get gas to your keg, and beer out.
    • Clamps to make sure the hoses are on tight.
  • Tap/Beer Gun to dispense the beautiful liquid.

Remember though, to get your keg beer cold, you need to chill down a 60cm high by 30cm diameter keg (for 18 Litre soft drink style). This may require a dedicated fridge, or if you don't want to chill the keg, you can use a fancy in-line cooling system to chill your beer between a room-temp keg and your stein.

The process

1. Thoroughly sterilise all of your equipment.
2. Optional: Mashing/Steeping (soaking grain in hot water) and Sparging (rinsing sugars from mashed grain)
3. Optional: Boiling hops (in liquid extracted from mashing)
4. Mix fermentables (e.g. Tin of malt extract, mash liquid, etc.) with water in your fermenter. This mixture is known as wort (pronounced to rhyme with 'Bert').
5. Optional: Rehydrate the dry yeast in a glass of sterile water, or create a starter in advance from your favourite bottle-conditioned commercial beer (e.g. Cooper's Pale Ale).
6. Pitch (add) yeast into the wort.
7. Stir vigorously for several minutes (dissolving oxygen from the air helps the yeast).
8. Secure the lid and 'airlock' to your fermenter and maintain appropriate temperature.
9. The wort will now be fermented by the yeast which produces alcohol and carbon dioxide.
   1. Fermentation time is dependent on many factors such as temperature, the amount of sugar available in the wort, the amount and strain of yeast used, and so on. Therefore, brewing can be done in as little as 3 days to as long as 2 weeks. We recomend allowing the wort to finish fermentation then Rack the beer as described in the next step and bottle 2 weeks after this.
   2. Fermentation activity can be most accurately determined by measuring the Specific Gravity (S.G.) with a hydrometer. When you have taken 3 identical S.G. readings, each 24 hours apart, the wort is finished fermenting.
10. Optional: Rack (transfer) wort to another container 2 days after fermentation has finished and allow to settle for 2 weeks. (highly recomended as first step to making better beer, requires 2nd container).
11. Bottle or Keg the beer.
12. Preferably wait at least 2 to 4 weeks before drinking. (note: bottles need to be warm enough for yeast to carbonate the beer).
13. Enjoy your homebrew (the most important part).

Sterilisation

Sterilisation is one of the most important parts of brewing. Even the best recipes using the best ingredients will taste horrible if you do not sterilise your equipment properly. Clean everything that will come into contact with your brew and then sterilise it with a sanitiser. Do not cut corners.

Recommended sanitisers

• Sodium Metabisulfite realistically has no place as a sanitiser in brewing. The only reason homebrew shops still sell it is either through lack of owner knowledge, or the fact that stubborn customers demand it also through lack of knowledge.
• Malt Shovel "No Rinse" Steriliser - oxygen-based sterilising agent, with the advantage that it won't affect your brew's taste if you don't rinse it out, as it degrades rapidly to little more than oxygen and CO2. Not the cheapest option (~$1.50 per sachet), but highly recommended nontheless.
• Iodophor (iodine and phosphoric acid) - highly recommended, can be purchased from any good homebrew supplier.
• Milton Chlorine tablets - As good for sterilising brewing gear as for baby's bottles. Any chemist has these, just be sure to rinse after use.
• Hydrogen Peroxide and silver ion-based sanitisers.
• 'Pink' Steriliser/Cleaner - be sure to rinse this out, as it leaves an aroma.
• 'One Shot' (Ortho-phosphoric Acid). A no rinse sanitiser. Effective as a mild cleaner when warm, or to sanitise at any temperature. Can be reused frequently.
• Bleach - cheap, very effective but must be rinsed VERY thoroughly. Completely toxic to both humans and brewing yeast, so be careful when handling this.

Fermentables

Fermentables are sugar based liquids (or powders dissolved into liquids) and are the source of energy for your yeast, which will provide both alcohol and carbonation (gas) in your beer. Since they are the primary energy source for the yeast in brewing, fermentables are extremely important in the brewing process. They come in many forms, and either are pure sugars, or contain sugars.

Malt Extract

The best fermentable to use in homebrewed beer, malt extracts come in dried form (Dried Malt Extract/DME) or as a syrup (Liquid Malt Extract/LME). The usual 1.5 kg canned 'homebrew kit' contains a LME. Generally, these cans ask for an additional 500-1000g of fermentable material, such as powdered malt or sugar.

There are any number of prepackaged varieties of malt that you can use to give your beer flavour, character, and alcohol content. You might see them packaged as "Brew-blends" or "Brew Enhancers".

Sugar

Also know as Glucose, Dextrose, and Corn Sugar. Virtually identical, these sugars vary only in name and production method, not in extant attributes. Glucose is highly fermentable and will result in higher alcohol content but almost no flavour. Avoid using glucose as a primary source of fermentables for your beer.

Using glucose as an adjunct to boost a beer is fine, try around 20% and experiment from there. If you use mostly sugar, your "beer" will have no flavour, no head, and will be "yeasty alcohol water stuff".

Honey

Honey can be used to produce some interesting flavours, but is not as reliable as using a malt extract. Due to its water content, 340 grams of sugar would need to be replaced with 450 grams of honey. To retain traditional beer characteristics honey should only make up about 30% of the fermentables added. Honey contains fermentable sucrose, fructose, maltose, glucose and undesirable enzymes, wild yeast spores, pollen insect parts and more. Use shop-bought pasteurized honeys reduce the chance of infection.

Fermentation removes much of the sweetness of honey and retains unfermentable constituants, this can lead to undesirable results with some honeys. For example, those made by bees foraging on Eucalyptus flowers may add an undesirable Eucalyptus flavour to your beer. For brewing purposes honey made from clover or alfalfa is recomended. Potential exists to use these idiosyncracities to your benefit, for example the subtle citris characteristics of honey from orange blossom make it coveted by producers of mead (an alcoholic drink made like wine with honey instead of grape concentrate).

Molasses

Molasses syrup is made from impurities and uncrystalised sugars removed during the refinement of white sugar. Its fermentability is variable. Molasses can significantly contribute to the colour and flavour of beer, for example the buttery flavour of 'Old Peculiar'.

Brown Sugar

This is merely white sugar with small amounts of mollases added.

Temperature

Temperature is a very important part of making homebrew. As a rule of thumb, ales should be brewed at between 18 - 20 degrees and lagers should be brewed a between 9 - 12 degrees celcius. The majority of yeasts that come with homebrew tins are ale yeasts, even for lager tins (a notable exception is Coopers Bavarian Lager), due to their ability to cope with the higher temperatures that are common in warmer climates like Australia.

Bottling

As with your equipment, ensure that all of your bottes have been cleaned and sanitised. The most common type of bottles used are longneck bottles (750-800mL) and stubbies (330-375mL). When bottling homebrew you will need to "prime" you beer by adding a small ammount of fermentables in order to carbonate the beer (a.k.a. make it fizzy). A rule of thumb is to add 6g (or a teaspoon) of sugar per longneck bottle. 'Brewing drops' are a convenient method of priming bottles with a measured amount of sugar. Homebrew shops may also sell scoops for priming bottles, which deliver an accurate dose of sugar for each size bottle.

Cap your glass bottles with a crown seal using either a hammer and hand capper or preferably a bench capper. New caps are available for plastic homebrew bottles also and are inexpensive enough to not need to reuse old ones.

Tips and Tricks

Dry Yeast Rehydration and Proofing

You should rehydrate your packet of dried yeast before pitching it in with the wort. Rehydration and Proofing is simple and confirms that your yeast is in working order, otherwise you might wait a few days to find out that no fermentation has occurred. The yeast in kits might be old and possibly inactive.

The basic rule of thumb is, ten times as much sterile water by weight as the yeast, e.g. 70ml for 7g kit yeast and 120ml for 12g sachet of yeast. Place as much water as you need into a sterile glass or jug, ensure the water is an appropriate temperature about (35-40c) and sprinkle the yeast over the water. Add a small amount of sterile fermentables (like sugar added to boiling water then cooled). Place some plastic wrap over the container and place out of the light for 30 minutes. Bubbling or churning is a sign that the yeast has come to life and started to ferment the sugars you added. Such yeast is ready to make your beer.

Racking

Racking is a brewing term that means 'transfering the wort from one container to another'. This is commonly done after the busy fermentation period eases. This helps rid your beer of the unappealing "home brew" taste. Racking is an ancient decanting method used to leave most of the brewing yeast in the primary fermenter, while moving most of the brewed beer to a secondary fermenter. Moving the brew from your primary fermenter to the second "racking" fermenter should be done gently so as to avoid allowing oxygen into suspention, which can oxidise the beer. Use food-grade plastic tubing to gently siphon the beer from the primary fermenter to the secondary creating as little disturbance as possible (i.e. not splashing or making bubbles). The racking fermenter needs to be extremely clean, just like all homebrew steps, and the racking fermenter should also have an airlock on it.

Often, the movement of the beer from the primary fermenter to the rack will "rouse" the yeast, and you may get a small amount of fermentation of remaining sugars happening. This is fine, but after that has stopped (and it should quite quickly), let your beer sit still in the racking fermenter for a few days to let the yeast settle out and sediment on the bottom of the fermenter. At this stage, bulk prime, or bottle the beer as normal - there will always be enough yeast left over still in the beer solution to carbonate your beer in secondary fermentation. This process will rid your beer of excess yeast and any dead matter and will consequently rid your beautiful creation of that yucky "homebrew" yeasty taste!

Bulk Priming

Come bottling time rather than adding individual measures of sugar to each bottle, which can be time-consuming and give inconsistent results, why not try 'bulk priming'?

Weigh out the amount of sugar necessary for the entire batch, using ~8g per litre of dextrose (or ~11g/L malt)*, then place in a sterile container and dissolve in a minimum amount of water. Open the top of your fermenter, and using a sterile spoon, gently stir in the sugar solution being careful not to splash. If you have a second fermenter handy, or a dedicated 'bottling bucket', an alternative is to put the sugar solution in this and 'rack' your beer on to it.

Now you can bottle your beer, as per usual, confident in the knowledge every single one will have a equal measure of sugar.

* You can use down to 4-5g/L dextrose (6-7g/L malt) if you desire less carbonation, such as for a Stout/Guinness styled beer.

Santised Air-Lock Water

Consider putting a little of your sanitser of choice in the air-lock water, that way you know fore sure nasties can't grow in it and make their way in to the fermenter, it certainly doesn't hurt (Unless of course while you're shifting the keg, some of that water sucks through the lock into the brew).

Sterilise the Bottle Caps

Easily overlooked in the bottling process, don't just make sure your bottles are clean but your caps too, just because they came in sealed bag doesn't make them sterile.

Cheap & Simple Methods to Maintain Correct Temps

Warming up your Brew

Your brew getting too cold? Try these ideas.

• Wrap your fermenter in a towel, the fermentation process itself produces heat, by insulating it better you'll keep your temps up.
• If a towel alone isn't doing the job, try boiling the kettle and wrapping it in the towel with the fermenter, creating a nice hot water bottle for your brew!

Cooling down your Brew

Your brew getting too warm? Try these ideas.

• Most plastic 'bucket' type fermenters has a reasonably sized dish in the lid, try filling this with ice to drop temps, remember a splash tray underneath is always a good idea.
• As with keeping it warm, you can try wrapping your brew in a towel or retired T-shirt, make it wet and direct a fan at it producing a simple yet effect evaporative cooler. This can be combined with the first method to keep the T-shirt wet and cool.

Recipes

There is a Homebrew Recipes page, but it's currently very much a work in progress.

Ales

For a decent imitation of "Little Creatures Pale Ale", try the following ingredients:

• Black Rock Pilsner Blonde (or other pilsner/blonde premixed LME)
• Brewcraft Brewblend #15 (500g Dextrose, 250g Maltodextrine, 250g Malt Extract)
• 150g light malt
• 10g Willamette hops (1 sachet)
• 20g Cascade hops (2 sachets)
• US-56 Safale yeast

Make your final volume 20-21 litres only for this brew. A nice, strong, flavoursome ale.

Procedure Guide

Days leading up to brewing

• Plan your brew and purchase appropriate ingredients and required apparatus.
• Remember to store yeast in your refrigerator, and hops in fridge or freezer in oxygen barrier bags to keep it fresh.
• If using a yeast starter or recultured yeast from the residue of a bottle-conditioned beer (e.g. Cooper’s Sparkling Ale) remember to time the production of your yeast to be ready on your planned brewing day.
• Several steps in brewing require hygienic water, i.e. water that has been boiled then cooled, consider boiling a pot of water the previous day for this purpose.
• If you are concerned about the health of your water supply boil the water before using it or source different water before brew day.

Brew day

• Consider inviting a mate around to have a few brews and assist, an extra set of hands and eyes are valuable and you might be able to convert your friend into a brewer and make it an enjoyable regular event.
• Brewing is a rewarding pastime, so do everything you can to not make brewing day a chore, send the Mrs out to the salon, put on some Pink Floyd, have a couple of brews and enjoy your hobby!
• I will mention this only once: dedicate yourself completely to hygiene-. Every piece of apparatus should be sterilised and even the outside of containers, cans and bottles.

DO NOT CUT CORNERS IN SANITATION, CLEANLINESS OR HYGIENE!

The following is a simple and general guide based on the steps I take in brewing and those I have read elsewhere for my own use, it is not designed as a recipe or instruction guide, but more of a reminder so new brewers don’t forget any steps that they intend to make. Many steps will not be needed for your brew, I have tried to include everything I could think of for a “Kit plus” brew for people who are not entirely satisfied with the “kit and a kilo of sugar” method of beer production and want to adopt simple extra methods to improve the quality of their home-brewed beer.

Input is warmly welcomed and corrections desired for any step that is erroneous.

Mashing procedure (using grain in brewing)

• Purchase 1 KG Pale Malted Barley and crush it or have it crushed for you, or use grains specific to the recipe you are using.
• Place grains into a 'picnic cooler' (e.g. Esky).
• Add 2-3 litres of hot water for each kilo of grain. 75degree water should bring the temp of the mixture to the ideal 65 degrees. Grains that are not fully modified (ask your supplier) may require “protein rest”, which involves heating the mash to 45 degrees before it is brought to 65 degrees. Base malts skip this step.
• The cooler should maintain the temperature at this level for the 90 minutes required. At 70 degrees enzyme activity favours body, at 60 degrees it favours alcohol production.
• Ladle the grain into a colander or a lauter-tun and pour hot but not boiling water slowly through to extract the sugars. Use twice as much water as you included in the mash. (this is called 'sparging'
• Recycle the early liquid back through the grain bed to ensure good filration.
• Avoid stiring the grainbed while sparging.
• All the extracted liquid is then added to a pot and boiled with hops to prepare the wort in the next section.

Preparing the Wort

• In a large pot boil several litres of water or the liquid derived from the mash.
• Add your fermentable materials, (eg Can of hopped extract: light dry malt: liquid malt extract: honey)
• To add hoppy bitterness, add some ‘bittering’ hops and heat to create a rolling boil for 60 minutes, for variety add a different type of hop at 30 minutes.
• To add hop flavour and bouquet, add ‘finishing’ hops and boil for 1-15 minutes.
• Whack the pot in a sink of ice and water and stir to cool it down, or use an immersion chiller if you have boiled the entire wort (ie. about 20L).
• Empty the mixture into the fermenter (strain it if it contains grains)
• Add water to your recipe’s specifics (19-22 L is a nice rule of thumb)
• Mix and splash the water as much as possible to facilitate oxygenation to help yeast. S stirring with a paddle or electric mixer is ideal.

Rehydrating, proofing and pitching the yeast

• Ensure wort is at temperature appropriate to pitch yeast.
• Test the specific gravity of the wort, this is the Original gravity.
• If using dry yeast rehydrate it in sterile water of about 30 degrees.
• When the yeast has expanded add a pinch of malt
• Frothing or bubbling indicates the yeast is alive and started activity.
• If you plan to prime your beer with the Geil method remove the required amount of wort now prior to yeast pitching.
• Pitch your rehydrated yeast or previously prepared starter to the wort
• Place to container lid in the fermenter with the airlock securely fitted.
• Ensure temperature is retained at appropriate level, i.e. 18-20 for Ales 10-13 for Lagers

Fermentation

• Allow fermentation at desired temperatures, when airlock activity decreases markedly start taking specific gravity readings each 24 hours.
• When a Lager’s SG reaches 1.015ish raise the temperature to 20 degrees.
• 3 consecutive identical readings indicate fermentation has stopped, (ensure final gravity is as expected and that fermentation is finished rather than stopped partway).
• Rack the beer about 48 hours after final gravity has been reached into a secondary carboy which has some ‘bouquet’ hops (prepared like making a cup of tea with the hops) and any finings to be used.
• Allow to sit for 2 weeks for yeast to flocculate. Lagers should be lagered at 0 degrees for 2 to 4 weeks.

Bottling

• If wort was removed prior to yeast pitching to be used as geil add it to the finished wort and do not add any other fermentables.
• If bottles to be used are all 375mL or 750mL carbonation drops can be used, 1 per 375mL bottle, 2 per 750mL bottle.
• If irregular bottles are to be used (e.g. 330mL. 500mL) calculate desired carbonation level and bulk prime the entire wort with the calculated amount of sugar.
• Gently mix in the geil or bulk prime sugar avoiding oxygenation.
• Fill bottles.
• Store in cool dark location for 2 weeks.
• Try beer after this 2 weeks or more a month is recommended.

Useful Links

• OCAU Homebrew Thread Discussion thread about everything homebrew.
• Aussie Home Brewer Dedicated Australian homebrew forums.
• How To Brew Brilliant resource for all levels of brewer.
• Grumpy's Brewhaus Contains recipes and lots of other information!
• Brewiki Australian Brewing Wiki (for the more advanced brewer).
• Home Brew Talk Forums with plenty of info about brewing beer, wine and cider.
• Jovial Monk Homebrew Shop Contains indepth information about homebrew, also a forum. Adelaide based to boot!
• Oliver and Geoffs homebrew and beer Contains lots of information about homebrew and a popular homebrew forum. Australian Site.
• pint.com.au A newish Australian homebrew site that already contains lots of useful information. Also has a breweries directory and home brew shop directory that both use google maps.