Homebrewing
Homebrewing typically refers to the brewing of beer on a very small scale, as a hobby for personal consumption or small scale distribution at parties or picnics. It can also refer to the home production of alcohol fuel, such as producing homebrew E85, and by analogy, can also refer to producing biodiesel at home. The expression is also used for manufacturing anabolic injection solutions in bodybuilding and related sports.
The Process
A typical batch of homebrewed beer is five US gallons (19 l) in volume, which is roughly enough for two cases — or 48 12-ounce (355 mL) bottles — of beer. In Britain homebrew is typically produced in 5 Imperial gallon (23 l) batches. It is produced by boiling water, malt extract and hops together in a large kettle and then cooling the resulting wort and adding yeast for fermenting. Advanced homebrewers make malt by extracting the fermentable sugars from malted barley by mashing the crushed grain in hot water. Either way, the wort is cooled down to pitching temperature (70-75 °F or 21-24 °C). Often, cooling is aided by a variety of wort chillers consisting of copper tubing through which cold water flows. Because a chiller can cool the wort quickly, it is the preferred method. This quick cooling prevents the potential for early bacterial contamination or oxidation of the wort.
Primary fermentation takes place in a bucket or carboy, sometimes left open but often stoppered with the carbon dioxide gas produced venting through a fermentation lock. During this time, temperatures should be kept at optimum temperature for the fermentation process. For ale this temperature is usually 65-75°F / 18-24°C, and for lager it is usually much colder, around 50°F / 10°C. Starting within 12 hours and continuing over the next few days a vigorous fermentation takes place. During this stage the simple sugar maltose in the wort is consumed by the yeast. A layer of sediment, the trub, appears at the bottom of the fermenter, composed of heavy fats, proteins and inactive yeast. A sure sign that primary fermentation has finished is that the head of foam (krausen), built by bubbling of CO2, falls.
Often, the beer is then siphoned into another container, usually a carboy, for aging or secondary fermentation. The siphoning is done to separate the batch from the afore-mentioned layer of sediment so that it is not used as food, as this can give the beer a off-flavor. During secondary fermentation the heavier, more complex sugars and impurities are digested. Secondary fermentation can take from 2 to 4 weeks, sometimes longer, depending on the type of beer. Some homebrewers will keep the batch in the primary fermenter (called single stage fermentation) for secondary fermentation and simply put up with any off flavors. This eliminates the need for a second container, reduces labor, and reduces the likelihood of contaminating the batch with bacteria, or oxidizing it, during transfer to the second container. This is a good beginner strategy, especially for those not skilled with siphoning liquids.
Once this secondary fermentation is finished, the beer is ready for carbonation. There are two methods of carbonation. The first method does not require much capital expenditure per batch but is more time consuming. About 3/4 cup of corn sugar (dextrose) or other fermentable sugar is added to the beer, which is then transferred to bottles and then capped, or placed in a keg. The fermentation of the priming sugar with left-over yeast suspended in the beer causes the carbon dioxide to be forced into solution in the beer. This takes 1-2 weeks. The second method involves pressurizing carbon dioxide into the beer into a special type of keg - either a soda pop keg, the kind used in restaurants, or a pressure barrel. Canisters of carbon dioxide, soda chargers, can be released into the pressure barrel directly. The carbonation process then occurs almost instantaneously.
There are homebrewing kits available that eliminate the need of the first stage – boiling. These kits, sometimes known as "beer in a bag", contain wort (sometimes concentrated) and yeast, so all the homebrewer has to do is the fermentation. Generally, the quality of beer from these kits is not on par with beer made from all-grain or even malt extracts. Sediment remains at the base of the bottle, even after secondary fermentation. Some wheat beers, however, demand the sediment be rotated through the beer before it is served.
There are several instruction books available. Some are more detailed than others, but homebrewing can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be. The basic process does not require a great deal of technical knowledge, but attention to cleanliness is essential.
Brewing culture
Patience is required in homebrewing. The whole brewing process can take from two weeks to several months or even years, depending on the style of beer. Some enthusiasts brew beer in far larger quantities than the typical 5 gallon batch, sometimes as a prelude to commercial production. It is not unusual for a homebrewer to have several batches in different stages of completion to permit the dispensing of quality homebrew at short notice.
Advanced homebrewers often prefer to brew "all-grain" batches of beer, by mashing the grain themselves to reduce starch into sugars needed by the yeast. Such techniques allow a greater control over the final quality of the beer than malt extract brewing. A large vessel called a mash tun holds the water at various temperatures to break the starch in malt into fermentable sugars which become alcohol and dextrines (unfermentable carbohydrates) which give the beer body. The spent grain is removed in a perforated container called a lauter tun and brewing proceeds as normal. Often, homebrewers use one vessel with a perforated false bottom for both mashing and lautering. A hybrid called grain extract, or partial mash uses both home-mashed malt and malt extract. This method is preferable to those who do not want to invest in larger equipment required for all-grain brewing, but would like to experiment with mashing grain.
People homebrew for a variety of reasons. Homebrewed beer can be cheaper than commercially equivalent brews, however most homebrewers customize their recipes to their own tastes, which tends to be more expensive. For instance, hopheads, or fans of bitter beer, can hop their beer far beyond what would normally be considered excessive. Dark beer enthusiasts can create beers that are the antithesis of the commercially dominant paler style. Some homebrewers strive for perfection of specific styles of beer and enter their products in competitions. Others simply brew to have styles of beer on hand to drink and share that are otherwise commercially unavailable, or in an unacceptably poor state when they are available. Others, with access to extremely large quantities of bio-materials (grains, rice, beets, potatoes, etc.), produce their own alcohol fuel for powering farm equipment, as well as cars and trucks, at a considerable cost-savings relative to paying for fuel at the pump.
Legality
In 1978, US President Jimmy Carter signed into law a bill explicitly allowing home beer and winemaking in the US. However, this only applies at the Federal level as the individual States are still free to set their own laws concerning beer and wine making. Note that home distillation of alcohol is still illegal in the United States for human consumption — a situation representing the majority of other countries. However, with the appropriate BATF permit, it is nonetheless legal in the United States to own a still and to produce high proof ethanol for making alcohol fuel at home. Any such home-produced alcohol fuel that is sold must be denatured, i.e., poisoned, to prevent human consumption of untaxed alcohol. The most common denaturing agent used for homebrew alcohol fuel is gasoline, which is typically added until the percentage of gasoline contained in the denatured alcohol and gasoline mixture is 5% of the total combined volume. Taxation of homebrew alcohol fuel that is sold varies from state to state, and even from county to county within states.
Most states in the U.S. permit brewing 100 gallons of beer per person over the age of 21 per household, up to a maximum of 200 gallons per year. Because alcohol is taxed by the federal governments via excise taxes, it is illegal for homebrewers to sell any beer they brew.
See also
External links
- American Homebrewers Association
- How to Brew - Online book on how to homebrew beer, By John J. Palmer.
- byo.com Home Brewer Magazine
- Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP)