If you ever find yourself near Williamsport, PA, you have to stop by Bullfrog Brewery and try the Edgar IPA. It’s one of our favorites.
Beer Itself Might Have Led to Civilization
Brew Your Own: The How-To Homebrew Beer Magazine – Story Index – Brewing History – Archaeobeer:
The key ingredient that seems to anchor the switch from hunting and gathering to gardening, herding and farming, is the domestication of starchy staple foods. The first of these were grains — particularly wheat and barley — domesticated in the Near East and Asia Minor beginning around 12,000–10,000 years ago…
Domesticated starchy staples revolutionized life because they provided huge amounts of energy and, especially, because they could be stored to feed folks even through lean seasons. As I noted, wheat and barley were among the very first domesticated plant foods. And what do we do with wheat and barley? Well, we make beer, of course, and for that reason some archaeologists have argued that beer was the reason that people settled down and began to farm in the first place. In this view, beer itself might have led to civilization.
(18) Tuesday, June 1, 2010 Brew Day
It’s the last day of my vacation and I’m going to brew my Best Bitter. There’s an 80% chance of rain today. AccuWeather says the morning rain should be past by 8:00 a.m. and the afternoon rain shouldn’t start until after 1:00 p.m.
7:38 Collecting ingredients, removed yeast from fridge and smacked, finishing mash and sparge calculations. I’m going to try adding a half-teaspoon of gypsum to the mash.
8:03 It’s raining. Haven’t started to set up yet. Still gathering equipment and ingredients. Printed out recipe and placed in a sheet protector. Finishing my coffee.
9:02 Brewery set up (in the garage). Weighing grains.
Maris Otter is nicely tasty. Like a good breakfast cereal. Nice plump blonde kernels.
Malted wheat tastes about the same. Maybe slightly sweeter or saltier. Crunchier too.
Medium crystal is much crunchier. Sweeter with subtle toasty flavors. A hint of dried cherry.
Pale chocolate is mild with hints of sweetened coffee.
9:14 Grains weighed and crushed.
9:34 Heating mash water.
9:56 Mash water heated. Doughing in.
10:01 Mashing.
10:18 Ran into town to get a replacement propane tank for my empty spare. Got the last one. Remembered I hadn’t added the gypsum to the mash. Added and stirred. Temperature holding steady.
10:29 Collected sparge water.
10:37 Chewing on malted wheat. An oriole just flew by and there’s a pileated squawking nearby. Gretchen thinks they may have a young one this year. Still getting occasional showers.
10:47 Lighter gave out. Had to find matches. Heating sparge water.
10:58 Sanitizing carboy.
11:05 Vorlauf and lautering. First runnings taste like chocolate milk. 15.1 Brix (1.060 SG).
11:15 Forgot to close the drain valve on the kettle. Lost more than half a gallon before I realized what was happening. Just over three gallons of first wort remaining. Floor is wet and sticky. Sparging.
11:22 Second runnings 4.7 Brix (1.019 SG). Total is just shy of 7 gallons at 9.4 Brix (1.037 SG). Don’t know whether to do a 60 minute boil because of the reduced volume or stay with the 90 minutes for the sugar concentration.
11:40 Checked ingredient stash. No DME. Note for future: keep a few pounds of DME on hand. Poured myself a homebrew. Hosed down garage floor.
11:44 I just checked the recipe and the expected boil gravity is 1.033. Even with the loss mine is 1.037. Maybe I’ll go for a 60 minute boil after all. Perhaps my efficiency was higher than expected. Rechecked gravity. Around 10 Brix looks right.
11:52 Checking hops. They’re actually 9.2% AA. Expected 8.5% AA. Should actually use 0.92 oz.
11:59 Boiling… and there goes the alarm test at the VFD.
12:10 Okay. All is not lost. Sky is not falling. I learned a lesson today. There are two valves to remember to close. One on the mash tun, which I remembered. One on the boil kettle, which I did not. Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want. Today I gained experience.
12:30 Bittering hops are in. 0.92 oz of bagged 9.2% AA Centennial pellet hops.
12:50 Lunch is black beans and rice and another homebrew.
1:10 Connected hoses to immersion chiller.
1:12 It’s raining again.
1:15 Immersion chiller in to sanitize. Added Whirlfloc™ tablet.
1:20 Flavor hops added. It’s raining again.
1:30 Aroma hops in. Flame off. Cooling water on. Stirring.
1:51 Chilled. Whirlpooled. Rinsed chiller.
2:00 Draining to carboy.
2:31 Drained. Aerated. In fermentation chamber. Cleaning up.
2:49 12.2 Brix OG (1.048 OG, target was 1.042). Pitched. Currently 69 °F. Set point is 68 °F. Attached heat belt to carboy. Inserted thermowell and temperature probe. Attached airlock.
Note for next time: Save some of the spent grain for bread!
Update: It’s Thursday morning (6/3) and it appears the fermentation is finished. The kreusen is starting to fall and the airlock is slowing down. I guess it makes sense it would be quick. It was a low gravity beer to start with, so there was not much sugar to convert to begin with. I’ll check the gravity later. If it’s done, I’ll add the dry hops.
Update: It’s Thursday evening (6/3) and just checked the gravity. It’s 9 Brix (1.027). The target is 1.012 FG, so it still has a ways to go. I swirled the carboy to rouse the yeast.
Update: It’s Friday evening (6/4) and just checked the gravity again. It’s 6.5 Brix (1.012) which was the target. 4.8% ABV. 158.2 calories per 12 oz. serving. Now to add the dry hops.
Update: It’s Saturday morning (6/5) and I’ve been doing some thinking about this brew. The OG is freaking me out. Recall that I lost about three quarts of the first runnings — the best stuff with the most sugar — onto the floor of my garage. If I had not, and had ended up with an OG of 1.048 instead of my 1.042 target, that would have meant that I would have gotten 80% efficiency. Since I did lose that wort, it means my efficiency would have had to have been even better than 80%. I batch sparge and the last two batches I did were just about 70% efficient. Except for remembering to close the valves I followed the same procedures, so I have no reason to believe this batch should be much more efficient. The only conclusion I can come to is that I measured the weight of the grains wrong. Since the Maris Otter is the biggest contributor, I have to assume I used too much of that.
Update: It’s the following Saturday morning (6/12) and I’m going to bottle today. First I’m going to make up the priming solution so it has a chance to cool by the time I’m otherwise ready. In theory, this is a Best Bitter and Charlie Papazian says¹ that the carbonation level should be between 0.75 and 1.3 volumes of CO₂. I’m going to shoot for the middle and say one volume is my target. It has been fermenting at 68 °F, so I should be starting with around 0.86 volumes already, which means I’m going to need to generate another 0.14 volumes with my priming solution. I’m going to eyeball the volume and say I’ll get 5 gallons and I’m using corn sugar, so I’ll need about 0.37 oz (10.5 g) to get that much.² As a sanity check, that is less than a tablespoon.
I’m going to be using flip-top pint bottles, and if I’ve really got 5 gallons, I’ll need 40 of them.
I checked the gravity again and it came out to 6.2 Brix (1.010 FG). 5.0% ABV. 198.4 calories per pint.
I ended up with 35.5 pints. Given the sugar I added, the actual carbonation will be 1.02 volumes of CO₂, which is close enough to make no difference.
The initial reaction is “nice hoppy aroma, tastes like hop juice.” Maybe the flavor addition is too much or even unnecessary. We’ll evaluate again when the carbonation is done and the serving temperature is appropriate.
¹ Charlie Papazian, The Home Brewer’s Companion <http://www.beertools.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=11625&sid=bc62db82f5350363b0e70498a78a314b#11625> [accessed Sunday, May 2, 2010]
² Michael L. Hall, Ph.D., ‘Brew by the Numbers – Add Up What’s in Your Beer’, Zymurgy (Summer 1995) <http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/attachments/0000/2497/Math_in_Mash_SummerZym95.pdf> [accessed Sunday, February 7, 2010]