Homestead mailing list

[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

On Dec 17, 2008, at 6:53 AM, Lisa K.V. Perry wrote:

> I found James' archived post about the origin of p's and q's (very
> interesting), forgot about that and it was just written on the 8th  
> (!) which
> seems like at least a month ago, but it didn't discuss beer making  
> per se or
> share a favorite recipe. I'll defer to the book unless you have any  
> pointers
> or your favorite recipe to share (an ale, perhaps?).

Thus far, I don't make it, I drink it. I have superior tasting  
equipment but no making equipment or knowledge.

This is the James' post I referred to:

From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
Date: November 5, 2008 9:32:20 AM GMT-07:00
To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [Homestead] Home brew book
Reply-To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org

Papazian's is a very good book.

Based on his book and a description by the late (and very great) John  
Seymour
("The Fat of the Land") I determined a few years ago to taste real,  
right off
the homestead, brew.

You can begin with brewing kits which are basically hopped malt  
syrup.  You
really can't go far wrong with them and even if they do go wrong they  
are
infinitely better than the piss-water pilsners in the Marts.

You can also go a step farther back and buy malt sugar and compressed  
hops.

Or you can go farther back still and buy malted barley.

OR ... you can go lunatic fringe and grow the only two ingredients you  
need,
barley and hops, and make beer entirely off the homestead.

I have done this, and here is the outline:

Don't get balled up and lost in the types of barley or types of hops.   
Those
are subtle  aspects of brewing and do not make or break a feasible  
beer.  It's
like obsessing over some rare breed of livestock or the other before  
you've
raised even one common garden variety.

Soak the barley in cold water over night.  The next day drain it and  
keep it
damp in a collander or such by rinisng it once or twice a day with  
cold water.
I detest the metric system but this works out too close to not mention  
it.
You need about one kilo (2.2 lbs) of barley for a gallon of beer.

In six days or so the barley will sprout.  Look at the spire, the  
stalk of
the plant that grows from one end of the seed under the husk and would
eventually emerge from the other end.  I say 'eventually' because you  
only want to let
the barley sprout until the spire is 1/3 the length of the  
barleycorn.  At
this point the roots of the sprouting corns will be 1/2 to 3/4" long.

Dry the barley to check any further sprouting.  If you just dry it,  
say in a
warm oven or dehydrator, you will have crystal malt.  You can heat the  
barley
to caramelize some of the sugars giving you amber, brown or black malt  
for
darker beers.  The enzymes needed for conversion are not harmed up to  
the brown
stage, but are killed if the malt turns black.  That's why you only  
add a
little black malt to the wort and do not make beer out of all black  
malt.

When the malt is very dry, break it into pieces by running it through  
the
likes of a Corona mill set on vary coarse or else use a dough roller  
or bottom of
a skillet to break up the corns.

The dried malt will weigh just about the same as the original barley.   
Put
the 2 1/4 or so pounds of malt into a gallon (or little less) of  
water.  Here it
is good to realize that you are going to activate the enzymes Alpha- 
amylase
and Beta-amylase.  Alpha-amylase breaks up the long chains of starches  
in the
middle of the chain resulting in shorter chains.  Beta-amylase works  
on the
ends of the chains to break off indivisual glucose molecules.  Alpha- 
amylase is
most active at about 150 degrees and Beta-amylase at abut 130  
degrees.  So to
get the best starch to sugar conversion, heat the wort up to 150  
degrees for a
few minutes and then let it cool a bit to around 140 degrees and keep  
it at
that temp for at least an hour.  This process is "mashing".

A great deal of the starch will have been converted to sugar.  Drain  
the wort
from the bottom or siphon it (draining from a spigot or bung-hole at the
bottom of the vessel works much better).  Check your volume which will  
be
considerably less than a gallon since the mash has soaked up and  
retained a lot of the
water.  Pour cold water through the spent mash and drain it just as  
you did
the wort.  This water dissolves more sugars.  Keep doing this until  
you have
your gallon.

Feed the spent mash to the chickens.

Tie up about an ounce and a half of hops in a cloth and put it in the  
wort.
Bring to a boil and  let it continue for at a low boil for a few  
minutes.
Remove the hops.  Let the wort cool to a simmer and tie up an  
additional half
ounce of hops in a cloth and let it simmer in the hot wort for a few  
minutes.
Hops contains resins that are released when it is boiled, these resins  
are
bitter, and so the first hops are the 'bittering hops'.  Alas, that  
wonderful hops
aroma and much of the hops taste is destroyed or boils off when the  
wort is
boiled.  So the second hops brews in the wort and is the 'flavoring'  
hops.
Much is made about using this or that hops for the one or the other.   
But any
hops makes a decent beer and flowers from the same plant can be used  
for both.

Take out a pint of the wort, seal it tightly, and put it in the  
refrigerator.

Cool the wort to blood temperature.  In the ongoing brewing process  
you will
add the slightly soured dregs from a previous bottle of beer for the  
yeast,
but the first time use some sort of ale yeast.  Bread yeast is no good  
and wine
yeast isn't much better.   Pitch the yeast and put an airlock on the  
jug (or
whatever).  On a small batch, a balloon works fine.  Even stuffing the  
neck
with cloth or cotton works OK.  An airlock of some type is best though.

In about six days or so the fermentation will cease and the brew will
clarify, all the solids percipitating out and settling to the bottom.   
Rack the brew
off the lees by siphoning.  Then add the pint of wort you refrigerated  
to the
brew, this is to carbonate the beer.

Decant the beer into bottles, eight old Grolsch bottles are ideal for  
this.
Leave the bottles at room temp for at least three weeks, six is better.

Then refrigerate the beer very cold.  This natural home beer has no  
chemical
anti-gushing agents and such so if you open a warm bottle, it is  
likely to all
come flying out of the bottle ... a tragedy, that.

Pour the beer out of the bottle into a glass.  Do this slowly and
deliberately, there are dreggs in the bottom of the bottle and you  
want to sac the last
half ounce of so of beer to avoid them.

Real beer is NOT the same thing you buy in the store.  The closest you  
came
to it are craft beers, but even at that, a real, living, active
(non-pasturized), all barley beer is even better.

This outline works for any quantity of beer, the gallon proportion is  
just a
convenient place to start for math's sake.

James
_______________________________________________

And this was a follow-up:

From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
Date: November 5, 2008 10:37:59 AM GMT-07:00
To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [Homestead] Home brew book
Reply-To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org


Let's go completely berserk and try to make a really superb beer. I
mean, if I am going to take the time and make the effort, I want a
fine reward.


I didn't mean to initmate that this was an inferior bathtub beer  
because the
subsistence brewer could do no better.  This is top of the line.  Now,  
the
first time you try it, the reaction is bound to be "Eh ... this is ....
different."  It is.  It tastes, what are the odds, of barley.  By the  
second bottle it
grows on you.  Then even the best of the best craft beers, as good as   
they
are and no mistake, somehow fall short.  It's like really good  
homemade icecream
compared to HagenDaz or Ben&Jerry's.  They are good, but real Jersey  
cream
just skimmed and sun ripened strawberries just from the patch ..... nolo
contendre!


I presume that is dry barley weight?


Yes, dry weight.


So this is a measure that must be learned through experience. Start
with 50-50 brown to black?


Much less of the black.  The black is powerful stuff flavor-wise.  15%  
black
malt will give beer darker than Guiness.


Do you use distilled water?


No, use spring water.  The water needs to be very 'hard'.  If it is  
not, add
minerals.  Those are available at the brewing store or you can add a  
little
'terra alba' (food grade gypsum) or epsom salts.  Spring water is by  
far the
best.


What is the effect as the warmth time is extended?

Almost all the convertable starches will extracted within 20 mintues.   
Loger
mashing times produce dextrins and other longer chain starches.  This is
desireable as it gives the beer a very fine body, but you don't want  
to over do it.


Do you sterilize your various vessels and utensils?

Yes, but I don't obsess over it.  The very best beers in the world have
bacteria in them.  It's what makes the unique flavor to many of them.   
If I were
going to lager the beer for a long time, I'd be meticulous as the beer  
will
spoil if it is not nearly sterile at the time of pitching.  Boiling  
water and a
little chlorine bleach is used on all and sundry and then some care  
taken to
avoid touching anything in the process.



What means "pitch the yeast?"


A brewer jargon for "throw".  Sometimes the yeast needs to bloom in a  
vessel
before being pitched.  Most of the time it needs to be pitched dry and  
allowed
to waterlog and sink of its own accord. And of course the wort cannot be
above about 85 degrees or it bids fair to kill the yeast.  "Pitch"  
basically means
take all these things into consideration and thow the yeast onto the  
wort.