Note: This recipe assumes 6 U.S. gallons of wort remain after the boil is complete.
Single infusion mash at 153° F (67° C) for 60 minutes. Ferment at 67° F (19° C) for two weeks, and dry hop for 6 days before packaging.
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The Brewers Association (BA) is pleased to announce the formation of the new engineering subcommittee. It will join the five other technical subcommittees working to fulfill the mission, priorities and goals of the technical committee. The engineering subcommittee seeks to leverage the engineering skills and knowledge of its contributing members to benefit the craft brewing […]
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Exciting news: We completely overhauled our online store and added several cool new items to help you show your brew colors.
What kind of cool new items?
We’re talking new t-shirts, new hats and even a cheeky six-pack carrier for your homebrew. Have a look-see.
In addition to the new stuff, you’ll also find our perennially popular items, like AHA pins, Carhartt shirts and hoodies, AHA wall tackers, posters, growlers and more.
If you ever bought gear from our old online store, you might’ve had a—how to put this—less than positive shopping experience.
Our new store puts the old store to shame. It’s faster, it’s better looking and it has some new gear waiting for you.
Here’s to cool beer-y gear!
Check out the new store and the new merch!
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Single infusion mash at 154° F (68° C). Ferment at 68°-70° F (20°-22° C) for five to seven days. Rack into clean fermenter and dry hop. Allow to settle and sit on dry hops for one week. Rack again and package.
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In the U.S. there has never been a more dynamic period of time in the hop industry than the past 9 years. In 2010, U.S. aroma hop acreage stood at 8100, or around 26% of the total (31,289), with alpha acres accounting for the majority. Today’s aroma hop acreage is five times higher than it […]
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What’s your current position at your brewery, and how did you get started in the craft brewing industry? I’m the president and owner of Octopi Brewing [in Waunakee, Wis.]. I have been involved in the beer industry for almost 12 years. I started consulting for large breweries, then opened my first brewery in Chicago in […]
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It’s time again for Savannah Craft Beer Week and its week long celebration of beer. With events held throughout the city, including tap take overs, beer dinners, and even a 5k group run, there’s sure to be something for everyone. Savannah Craft Beer Week will take place August 28th - September 4th, giving you plenty of time to take in some great beer and enjoy all the festivities.
Show your support for Savannah Craft Beer Week by earning a brand new badge. Check-in any beer within a 14 mile radius of Savannah, GA between 8/28/16 - 9/4/16 to unlock this year’s “Savannah Craft Beer Week (2016)” badge!
To learn more about Savannah Craft Beer Week and get a full list of events, head over to http://savcraftbeer.com.
With Fall approaching, it’s time for the return of the darker and richer flavors we’re all excitedly anticipating. For our friends at Bell’s Brewery, this is one of their favorite times of year - cooler weather, the yearly harvest, and of course the release of their Octoberfest. Together with Bell’s Best Brown, these two beers perfectly compliment Autumn.
Celebrate the flavors of Fall with Bell’s and you’ll be rewarded well. Check-in to one (1) Best Brown and one (1) Octoberfest Beer from Bell’s Brewery between 8/26/16 and 9/26/16 to unlock the “Cheers to Fall!” badge.
Learn more about Bell’s and their full line up of beers over at bellsbeer.com/ and for the latest follow along on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Access the digital edition of the September/October 2016 Zymurgy magazine, including the 2016 National Homebrew Competition winning recipes.
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The Pennsylvania state brewers guild, Brewers of Pennsylvania (BOP), recently secured a major victory for the state’s breweries and their consumers. Since 2013, the top legislative priority for BOP, as voted on by the BOP membership at each annual meeting, was to re-establish a malt beverage tax credit. There was previously an excise tax credit for […]
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As the saying goes, fresh is best. When it comes to beer, fresh ingredients are important for flavor and quality and hops are no exception.
The hop harvest is the brewer’s Christmas, or at least it smells like Christmas because the harvest actually happens sometime in late summer to early fall. However, that doesn’t stop hop growers and hop heads from celebrating.
I certainly was not the first person to add freshly picked hops to a batch of homebrew – I must concede that title to many before me hundreds or thousands of years ago. However, adding wet hops or fresh hops into beer has created hundreds of beers described with the two phrases across the United States.
The two phrases aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. While brewers and beer drinkers tend to mean the same thing when they interchange the words, fresh hops can mean hops used right out of drying, while wet hops are never dried (well, duh). The difference between the two matters just as much in the kettle as it does when you drink the beer. For this article, we’ll be focusing on wet hops.
Vinnie Cilurzo at Russian River Brewing described the difference in For the Love of Hops by Stan Hieronymus: “They both do a great job, but you get more fresh aromas and flavors when the product is wet, and it takes more, as you have to compensate for the water that i still in the hops… I find more melon and grassy notes in wet hops, grassy almost like a Sauvignon Blanc.”
The late Michael Jackson described one of the most influential commercial wet hop beers in the United States circa 1996, Sierra Nevada’s Northern Hemisphere Harvest Ale as having “the lightest touch of malty sweetness to start; then a surge of cleansing, refreshing, resiny, almost orange-zest flavors; and finally, an astonishingly late, long finish of fresh, appetite-arousing bitterness.”
My point here is not only do wet hops impart different flavors and aromas, but they are delicious when used correctly. There are a few keys to brewing great wet hopped beers and a few more things you should understand about hops to keep that wet hopped goodness in your homebrew.
Wet hops contain about 80 percent water, so you’ll need to use more than you would when using dry hops. In general, wet hops require four to six times more than the dry hop rate. For example, one ounce of pelleted dry hops would be the equivalent of four to six ounces of wet hops. You get the idea.
The wet hops will take up more room in the kettle, enough to consider reducing batch size depending on overall hop amount. They’ll also add water that needs to be considered with calculating final gravities.
When Ken Grossman, Founder and CEO of Sierra Nevada Brewing, first started homebrewing he had difficulty finding quality hops because “the homebrew trade consumed an insignificant amount of hops and, apparently, in the eyes of hop growers and merchants, wasn’t wort pursuing.” Oh, how the times have changed.
There’s been a resurgence in hop growing since the “2008 Hop Crisis,” making it easier for commercial brewers and homebrewers to source locally grown hops or simply supply their own.
Once harvested, wet hops literally begin to rot shortly afterwards because the cones contain such a high percentage of water, which is why farmers transport them directly from the field to breweries – or in your case from your backyard to your brew setup. It’s very important to use wet hops within a matter of days, preferably one day, after they are picked otherwise you risk spoiling and ruining your hops.
Like all enjoyable things, wet hops should be used in moderation. You can quickly reach a breaking point at which the desirable “grassy” aroma and flavor feels like your chewing on a salad or other undesirable flavors—tobacco and chlorophyll to name a few.
Remember you’re putting in a huge amount of green matter in your homebrew and the result is green flavors, which are acceptable in wet hop beers to an extent. Brewing requires a balance and awareness of the style. It’s a good reason to use dried hops for the bittering portion of your boil and wet hops for the aroma and flavor. If you try to drive up bitterness with wet hops, you risk losing the nuances of wet hops.
Using dry hops will also reduce the hops in the kettle and give you known alpha acids. Another reason is that you don’t really know how much bitterness the hops from your backyard may hold.
The desire of hops lies in the essential oils they produce, which constitute up to 4 percent of the hop cone. These oils increase during the weeks before harvest and continue to change after the hops are dried and stored.
In Stan Hieronymus’s book For the Love of Hops, he points to recent research tracking how dramatically essential oils change in the days before hops are picked and imply that wet hops may produce different odor compounds than those that are dried. However, there hasn’t been any similar studies about wet hops. “This is not a scientific exploration of brewing,” said Ninkasi Brewing co-found Jamie Floyd. “where’s the economic benefit of analyzing a beer made once a year?”
Hops are used during the boil because the boiling temperatures activate many components, but a side effect is this removes some of those essential oils we crave. As previously stated, brewers wanting to know how much bitterness they’re adding to their beer may choose to use dried hops with measured alpha acids. Those concerned with preserving oils, such as linalool and gernanoil, should add wet hops towards the end of boil, at flameout, or whirlpooling.
Hops during fermentation is somewhat inconclusive. However, we know something happens because we’ve tasted the differences before, which is the result of biotransformations of hops compounds that occur in the presence of yeast. There’s another reason to believe wet hopped beers will taste different. All you need to do is taste it over time. When I taste beer about 24 hours into fermentation, I get a very green taste. Over time the beer starts to open up and the oils come through in the aroma and flavor. Again, in the words of Jamie Flyod “this is not a scientific exploration of brewing.” Right on, Jamie.
As a homebrewer, most of my beer contains hops because I cannot and never will be able to afford a centrifuge, which is why the taste changes over time after packaged. Another source of diminishing quality can b poor oxygen control in the bottling process that will hurt any hoppy beer. However, I’ve made wet hopped beers before and they’ve seemed to hold up well when kegged or bottled, but that might just because they tasted fresh and I drank it quickly.
Sources:
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In this installment of Zymurgy Live, Randy Mosher offers listeners an overview of the tasting process and explains why tasting is such an important skill for brewers of all types. Drawing from recent developments in neuroscience, he reveals the secrets behind tasting to help listeners get the most from their sensory experiences. Randy will also discuss some tasting basics to help beer enthusiasts strengthen their aroma vocabularies. Along with identifying contributions from the three basic food groups—malt, hops, and yeast—he’ll help listeners become familiar with the flavors associated with staling.
Randy Mosher has been homebrewing since 1984 and is author of several books, including Radical Brewing, Tasting Beer and Mastering Homebrew. Mosher is a creative consultant to the craft brewing industry and a partner in 5 Rabbit Cerveceria, a Latin-concept brewery in the Chicago area.
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A Guide to Exploring Local Flavor Using Cultivated and Foraged Ingredients by Stan Hieronymus; Foreword by Dogfish Head Founder Sam Calagione Boulder, CO • August 25, 2016—The growing hunger for locally sourced food is not a trend that has been blind to beverages, beer included. And while Americans have brewed beers using native ingredients since […]
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Single infusion mash at 154° F (67° C).
Ferment at 68° F (20° C) until gravity drops to 1.020 (5° P), rack into secondary fermenter and dry hop for two weeks. Bottle, using dry malt extract to prime. Allow to age about 6 months to reach maturity.
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Brew Guru™ Lets Users Find Beer, Get Deals and Save Money Boulder, Colo. • August 24, 2016—Beer lovers and homebrewers rejoice! The American Homebrewers Association (AHA) today released Brew Guru™ (aka the Pokémon GO for catching great beer deals). The new free mobile app delivers brewing knowledge, money-saving deals and local information on breweries, bars […]
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The American Homebrewers Association releases new mobile app, Brew Guru
We’re excited to unveil our new mobile app, Brew Guru. Aimed at helping beer lovers and amateur brewers find local breweries, redeem special offers and boost their brewing skills, Brew Guru™ is a must-have for every type of beer enthusiast.
Simply download the free mobile app on your Apple or Android device and start experiencing the power of Brew Guru™. Whether you want to find a brewery with a special discount or learn more about beer and homebrewing, Brew Guru™ has you covered!
Download the Brew Guru™ app today and follow the path to good beer.
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Free App Features Powerful Brewery Locator The American Homebrewers Association, a division of the Brewers Association, recently launched a mobile application that aims to help beer lovers and amateur brewers find local breweries, redeem special offers and boost their brewing skills. Available for iPhone, iPad and Android devices, the app is free to download and […]
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Specialty and seasonal beer sales from small and independent craft brewers are arguably the most diverse and exciting group of brands that beer distributors bring to market. However, what do you do when your loudest customers want those bright and shiny objects, but you need to make a living on cool brands by selling more […]
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Pardon the clickbait title. Despite a decade of success, I STILL get calls asking if the current growth in the craft industry is a bubble. Since apparently no number of “non-bubble” posts can dispel this notion – for this post I decided to take a more aggressive track. I’m going to start by arguing that […]
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What’s your current position at your brewery? I’m co-founder and president of Left Hand Brewing in Longmont, Colo. What’s new at Left Hand and what’s next on the horizon? New lab, expanded cooler, more sales people, and new equipment happening this year. The coming years will see competitive challenges increasing as the craft brewing space […]
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What makes South Florida Craft Beer so great? It is the people who relentlessly drive breweries to produce quality beer that is made probably down the street from you (if you’re lucky, right?).
Join us at Tap 42 in Fort Lauderdale Saturday (August 20, 2016) for a “Drink Like You Live Here” all day happy hour on all of their great South Florida brews. From Jupiter to Miami, Tampa to Port Everglades, they all have put South Florida on the beer map and there is no better way to honor that than getting together to drink it all!
Please join us and all of your truly local craft beer community Saturday as we celebrate being local, “Drinking Like We Live Here!” Cheers!
I’ve fermented quite a few batches of beer, mead, and cider at home. Typically they bubble away in a closet or fermentation chamber: places where they are out of sight (and smell).
It wasn’t until I had a 5-gallon batch of cider in my office that I truly noticed just how strong the odors leaving the conical can be in the first 72 hours of fermentation. We’re talking rotten eggs, sulfur,…farts.
I knew I had to come up with a solution to the problem after coming back to work only to smell that someone had stealthily nuked my office with a healthy dose of air freshener.
After telling a brew-buddy about my stinky predicament, he clued me in on a cool way to rig up a smell-proof airlock that he had seen on HomebrewTalk. I loved the idea and set out to see if I could build my own version using only things I had around the house.
The basic concept is to rig a filter to the top of an airlock that helps strip the fermentation smells from the CO2 being emitted through the airlock during fermentation.
Using the HomebrewTalk thread as inspiration, I came up with a design that used only things found in my apartment that would be simple to make yet effective. Follow along, or try making your own version using what you have on hand!
Activated carbon, also called activated charcoal, is a form of carbon processed to have small, low-volume pores that increase the surface area available for adsorption or chemical reactions.
Activated carbon is commonly found in household water filters.
Source: Wikipedia
Materials
Tools
How to Build
Follow these steps and you’ll have yourself a odor-eating airlock in no time:
Water filters, like this Brita filter, are filled with activated carbon.
I bunched up a few cotton pads and stuffed them in the cap, then laid a few flat atop to make a bed for the activated carbon.
The final product. It might not be prettiest airlock filter, but it’ll work!
Now’s your chance to make sure everything is secure and working properly. Add more glue to the caps if need be, and blow through the bottom of the airlock to make sure air can pass through. Once you’ve confirmed it’s good to go, fill it with a sanitary solution and stick it on your fermenter.
Duncan Bryant is web coordinator for the American Homebrewers Association.
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The international bittering unit (IBU) is meant to tell us something about the bitterness of our beer, but the scale is far from perfect. What does it mean for two beers to express the same bitterness, and must numerical equality necessarily follow sensory equality? Here are two perspectives on bitterness and IBUs from experienced homebrewers who have spent more time than most of us pondering such ideas.
* * *
By Kyle Jones
Something has been bothering me lately. It started with an ongoing problem with some of my hop-forward beers: many didn’t have quite the level of bitterness I had targeted. I was pretty confident in my homegrown brewing software, which is based on data in classic books by Greg Noonan, Ray Daniels, and others, as well as on the most current scientific data available to me. It uses the Tinseth method to calculate hop utilization with an integral calculus approach that accounts for the increase in wort gravity as the boil progresses.
I had long suspected that estimating the final bitterness of a homebrewed beer is one of the more imprecise things we do during recipe formulation. I had also been toying for some time with a method to empirically determine how much “effective utilization” one gets from a first wort hop (FWH) addition, considering both the purported “smoother” bitterness and the fact that some alpha acids are isomerized before formation of the hot break.
Iso-alpha acids that form before the hot break may precipitate out as proteins denature, coagulate, and form the break material. It’s also likely that hot break protein complexes are generally larger than the cold break complexes that form after vigorous boiling fragments the proteins that remain after the hot break.
Neither forums nor textbooks have much to say on the subject. Eric Warner, in his fantastic tome German Wheat Beer, discusses in the glossary (p. 139) that the formula he presents for estimating international bittering units (IBUs) can “be off by as much as 20%” owing to iso-alpha acid precipitation during fermentation and aging. In his excellent For the Love of Hops, Stan Hieronymus goes further, discussing work by Tom Nielsen at Sierra Nevada that indicates an IBU loss of approximately 20 percent during fermentation.
Hieronymus also cites observations by Mitch Steele, formerly of Stone Brewing, that suggest wort-to-bottle IBU losses of approximately 23 percent. Steele attributes these losses in part to pH drop during fermentation, which reduces the solubility of isomerized alpha acids. Hieronymus concludes that brewers can expect “about 50 percent of iso-alpha acids will be lost in the brewhouse and another 20 percent during fermentation and packaging” (p. 190-191, emphasis mine).
What really confuses me, though, is that homebrewing texts and recipes don’t seem to account for this phenomenon. Take, for example, the Ballast Point Grapefruit Sculpin clone recipe that appears in Zymurgy’s 14th Annual Best Beers in America survey (July/August 2016). The formulation specifies 70 IBUs, which is the exact same value listed on Ballast Point’s website.
I wondered, “How can a clone recipe that targets a certain wort bitterness have the same IBUs as the real deal, for which bitterness is presumably measured in the finished beer?” Ballast Point confirmed that those 70 IBUs are, indeed, measured in the finished beer and also stated that the brewery does account for IBU loss during fermentation and packaging. So some breweries adjust for this.
But others don’t. The Boulevard Tank 7 clone recipe appearing in the same issue specifies 37 IBUs, which the published hop additions do provide in the wort. Boulevard’s Tank 7 web page places the beer at a negligibly different 38 IBUs, and like Ballast Point, the brewery confirmed that this is measured in the finished beer. However, the hop schedule for Tank 7 that Boulevard graciously provided to me works out to about 38 IBUs going into the wort, suggesting zero bitterness loss from kettle to bottle.
To further complicate matters, a local brewery in Texas reported that they account for iso-alpha acid losses approaching 50% for some of their beers. That three breweries account for IBU losses so differently may reflect differences in how beer is produced, including differences in brewing systems, wort production methods, yeast flocculation, and clarification methods (e.g., centrifuged only vs. centrifuged and filtered).
Cloning commercial recipes is especially difficult when it comes to IBUs, as commercial breweries boil much larger volumes than do homebrewers, and wort runoff after the whirlpool takes much longer at commercial scales, meaning utilization for late and whirlpool hop additions is probably higher in commercial breweries than in home breweries. Test batches help brewers predict final IBUs they can expect from the hops they add to wort, but even commercial breweries find it difficult to translate IBUs from pilot-scale brews to full brew lengths.
These differences aren’t just limited to commercial clone recipes. In several Brewers Publications titles that feature recipes from well-known brewers, specified wort IBU levels, backed up by the weight, timing, and type of hop additions, typically fall squarely within the IBU ranges specified in the 2015 version of the BJCP Style Guidelines. For moderately hopped beers with relatively well-defined IBU ranges, such as German Pilsner and California Common, we might expect that targeting stylistically middle-range bitterness in the wort would yield finished IBUs nearer the low end of the style range, assuming even a 25 percent loss of IBUs from the kettle through fermentation.
It is important to note this assumes that IBU levels reported by the BJCP correspond to bitterness in the finished beer, which is how I suspect most brewers interpret them, although this is not explicitly stated in the Style Guidelines. The same pattern is present in many recipes from National Homebrew Competition winners in the September/October 2015 issue of Zymurgy.
Of course, all this said, myriad factors affect perceived and measured bitterness, many of which have nothing to do with iso-alpha acids at all. And in fact, homebrewers face much uncertainty in even estimating IBUs in wort or finished beer—utilization formulas, concentration corrections for wort gravity and iso-alpha acid content, first-wort hopping, and alpha acid losses during hops storage, to name just a few. Comparing bitterness in a finished beer to predicted IBUs for different homebrewed beers might be a great undertaking for a future AHA Fund Research Project. But even measurement of IBUs is fraught with uncertainty, and there are several anecdotes of different labs reporting vastly different measurements of IBUs in finished beer.
So, in the end, what does all of this mean? To me, it means that—based on my observations about the beers I brew—I probably need to increase the target IBUs in my own system by 20 to 40 percent to account for losses in the kettle and during fermentation. Perhaps I can become slightly more sophisticated by also accounting for yeast pitching rate in the future, as it is well-known that iso-alpha acids (and other hop compounds) bind to yeast cell membranes and are removed from the beer when yeast flocculates. Who knows? We might even see yeast strain data sheets updated to include information on expected iso-alpha acid losses at recommended pitch rates, as even different yeast strains vary in their propensity to bind these compounds.
To others it might mean not agonizing over whether to use the Rager, Garetz, or Tinseth formula, or whether to apply a 10-percent versus a 15-percent correction for alpha acid loss during storage. It also might that you don’t hit the target the first time out when trying to clone a commercial beer, as matching a commercial beer IBU-for-IBU is, in most cases, unlikely to yield a beer with the same perceived bitterness. Calibrating your palate and adjusting your hop additions based on your perception of bitterness in a fresh example of the beer you are trying to clone may be the best approach. Certainly perception of bitterness quality plays a role as well, and “smooth” bitterness may be confused with less bitterness.
But without a doubt, the most interesting thing will be debating this over a few IPAs at the next Homebrew Con.
Kyle Jones is a BJCP National-ranked judge and a member of the Houston Foam Rangers homebrew club. He lives in Bellaire, Texas. Kyle wishes to thank Eric Warner, head brewer at Karbach Brewing Company in Houston, and Scott Birdwell, owner of DeFalco’s Homebrew Supply, also in Houston, for their helpful discussions on this topic.
By Amahl Turczyn
As I’ve mentioned in previous articles, I prefer to first-wort hop most of my lagers, and I suffer IBU losses accordingly due to the binding of alpha acids with break material. My solution is to increase first-wort hop additions by about 50 percent on when I brew at home. But differences in equipment as well as procedure can also affect utilization.
For example, such increases were not necessary in the 10- and 7-barrel brewhouses I’ve brewed on, but we brewed mostly ales on those systems and never added first-wort hops. All of our hops were added post-break. This resulted in a relatively harsher bitterness, but it was desirable for the styles we made, and fewer hops were necessary to achieve the same IBUs. For craft brewers, cost of materials is always an issue. At home, I don’t mind buying twice as much Magnum to bitter my Classic American and Bohemian Pilsners.
I don’t see such compensation as a paradox as much as a reflection of just how different everyone’s systems are. When I brew a recipe from a magazine on my home system, clone or otherwise, I know I have to factor in a significant increase for bittering additions to get the same bitterness that was intended. Even post-break, 60-minute additions need a 20-percent boost.
Beyond that, there are dozens of other factors that affect isomerization. My home brewery doesn’t reach the full, crashing boil that Oasis Brewery’s kettle did, but then again, neither did the kettle at Wolf Tongue Brewery. Wolf Tongue was more than 8,300 feet (2,530 meters) above sea level—and since water (and wort) boiled at about 196° F (92° C), that also affected isomerization, but only by a small amount. The biggest problem was the electric heating elements we used, which could only manage an enthusiastic simmer. So we added more hops to compensate.
You get a feel for the level of bitterness you can expect from certain alpha additions on certain systems and plan accordingly. That isn’t a very scientific assessment, but as Kyle points out, even testing for bitterness levels can have a margin of error from lab to lab. And that testing is expensive, often prohibitively so for the small brewer.
And then there’s the issue of actual IBUs versus perceived bitterness. A caramel-heavy, under-attenuated English barleywine or double IPA might contain 100 calculated IBUs and still taste much sweeter than a dry, West Coast-style “single” IPA that boasts just 70. Most brewing software calculates dry hop additions to contribute 0 IBUs, but anecdotally, those resinous hop oils do contribute to the sensation of bitterness as well as to hop flavor and aroma.
It’s also very possible that just as some beer judges are more sensitive to off-flavors like diacetyl, clove phenols, or metallic character, they might also have differences in sensitivity to the perception of hop compounds. The type of hop compounds also matters: I find that Calypso and Horizon have very smooth bitterness for high-alpha hops, whereas Comet and Chinook are harsher and more astringent. This may have to do with cohumulone levels, but there are many more compounds that could affect smooth or harsh perception.
Perception of hop character, when drinking a beer, involves myriad olfactory transmissions from palate to brain. (See Kevin Wright’s piece on Sensory Analysis in the July/August 2016 issue of Zymurgy.) It would be great to quantify them in a lab, and I imagine big brewers spend a lot of capital attempting to do just that. But for small and amateur brewers, measuring exactly how hoppy any given beer isn’t strictly necessary—it’s enough to recognize relative hop intensity from one beer to the next. I’ve had a lot of 70-IBU IPAs from many different craft breweries, and perceived hop bitterness is seldom the same.
Given the unavoidable differences from one system to the next, all we can do for recipes in Zymurgy is choose an “average” system’s utilization, keep parameters like batch size and efficiency consistent, and let homebrewers tweak them as necessary. For the clone recipes that I’ve developed for Zymurgy, I go by the numbers predicted in BeerSmith 2. Since you can choose the calculation formula, I stick with Tinseth. Plugging the same recipe into other brewing software may yield different numbers, but from what we’ve seen, they’re usually fairly close.
As homebrewers, one of the fun things about brewing is making a batch from a recipe, evaluating it, tweaking it to our individual tastes, and then brewing it again. Craft brewers do this, too, at least during the initial stages of releasing a new beer. They brew a pilot batch—or maybe more than one—and once they get the recipe dialed in, especially if they are going to add that beer to their regular lineup, they keep the recipe as consistent as possible.
I still find it amazing that craft brewers can take a homebrew recipe for the Great American Beer Festival (GABF) Pro-Am competition and spin it up to seven or ten barrels of (hopefully) identical beer without necessarily knowing what the original homebrewer’s system was like. There’s a substantial margin of error there that they must overcome in the process, and getting it right usually comes down to experience.
Amahl Turczyn is associate editor of Zymurgy. He homebrews in Lafayette, Colo.
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Just ahead of the 76th annual Sturgis bike rally, I had the opportunity to visit the brewers of South Dakota and attend a South Dakota Brewers Guild meeting. This meeting garnered the largest group of SD brewery representatives to ever come together. Fifteen breweries and breweries-in-planning met at Firehouse Brewing Co in Rapid City to […]
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Our next installment of Zymurgy Live, the AHA’s new webinar series, will be with renowned beer expert and historian Randy Mosher. Members of the AHA can log on with us for a live presentation on Tasting Beer with Randy next Wednesday, August 24 at 7 p.m. EDT, 6 p.m. CDT.
We asked Randy a few questions about what attendees can expect to learn at next week’s webinar.
Q: Your webinar is going to cover the wide topic of “tasting beer.” Can you give us a quick preview of the kinds of things you’ll be covering in the presentation?
A: I’m going to try to cover a lot of ground. First there’s some basic neuroscience and why you should care about that. Then we’ll talk about vocabulary and why we are so poorly equipped for coming up with words for aromas, plus a tip or two. I’ll talk about malt aromas using a graphic from the new book, and we’ll taste our way through hops and then talk our way back to yeast. Then we’ll talk about the tasting process itself, and why you should never brush your teeth within an hour or so of critical tasting.
Q: Why is it so important to have a refined tasting palate as a homebrewer?
A: Well, your ability to critically taste in terms of technique, vocabulary, and broader aspects of style, balance, and other criteria places limits on your ability to brew, just as eyesight limits a realist painter. Of the questions I sent out when I was putting Mastering Homebrew together, that’s the thing that came back the strongest from all my brewing heroes. It’s just one of the fundamental building blocks. Can’t stress that enough.
Q: Do you have any suggested beer(s) or beer style(s) for attendees to have ready to taste along with the presentation?
A: Well, everybody loves hops these days, right? So let’s have a hoppy IPA (or as hoppy a beer as suits you) and we can talk about hop vocabulary, glycosides, observing bitterness, and more. If you want to do a second beer, perhaps some yeast-obvious beer is appropriate: something Belgian or possibly a hefeweizen.
Q: Can you tell us a little more about your newest book, Mastering Homebrew?
A: Sure. It’s been out since April, 2015, a big homebrew book with a strong focus on ingredients and recipes—flavor, really. I’ve been working on a revised and expanded version of Tasting Beer, which will be out in March, with a lot of new information in it, which is why I’m all pumped up on this topic.
Q: Can you tell us more about your work with 5 Rabbit Cerveceria and Forbidden Root?
A: I am actually a partner in 5 Rabbit Cerveceria and another brewery here in Chicago, Forbidden Root. My role in both is the same: I’m involved in the beers and the way we express ourselves. 5 Rabbit takes Latin American inspiration and turns it into lively, unique craft beer. At Forbidden Root we call ourselves “botanic brewers,” which means we try to create beers from hops and many other things to create unique, balanced, drinkable beers. We have a “gin’n’juice” concept beer and a cherry stem amaro out right now, and we also have a brewpub. We do a lot of pre-trials and tabletop blend-ups and other kinds of rapid prototyping with both breweries.
Space is limited, so reserve your seat now for Wednesday’s webinar with Randy, Tasting Beer.
The post Randy Mosher Discusses Upcoming Zymurgy Live Webinar appeared first on American Homebrewers Association.
To brew this IPA, use a single infusion mash at 150-152°F (66-67°C). Mash in with 16.5 quarts (15.6 L) of 170°F (77°C) water. Mash for 45 minutes, then sparge with 16.5 quarts (15.6 L) of 170°F (77°C) water. Boil for 90 minutes adding hops as indicated in recipe (if you do not have a hop back, add hop back hops to the kettle as you chill the wort).
Chill wort to 68°F (20°C) and transfer to fermenter. Pitch yeast starter and aerate well.
Ferment in primary one week or until fermentation subsides then transfer to secondary with dry hops. Age two weeks then bottle or keg.
The post Sippin’ on the Dock of the Bay IPA appeared first on American Homebrewers Association.
The sixth in our series of dry hopped pale ales was released today, both on draft and in cans, and features the hop Simcoe. It’s an interesting line of beers, in which we dry hop our pale ale with a single hop varietal in order to showcase its unique flavors and aromas. Fans of hops are intimately knowledgeable and enthusiastic about which specific variety of hops are present in a beer, much in the way wine lovers can be of grape varieties.
Because of this interesting release, we decided to kick off the beginning of video series in which members of our team get together after their shift to share a beer (or two) and discuss some of the goings-on around the brewery. We’ll be constantly improving, discovering new things as we go along, and, hopefully, bring in some friends to share in our passion for the craft.
Stick around and watch the inaugural video below, and hopefully you come away with a better understanding of Simcoe.
Hi everyone,
It’s the 35th anniversary of the Great American Beer Festival, y’all! Can you believe it? There are just 52 days until opening night of the Great American Beer Festival and all of us at the Brewers Association can’t wait to see you in Denver.
The first GABF took place in 1982, and there were 24 breweries, 47 beers and 800 attendees. In 2016, we expect 800 breweries, 3,800+ beers and 60,000 attendees!
Speaking of numbers… this year, in partnership with Jeff Dense, Professor of Political Science and Craft Beer Studies at Eastern Oregon University, we will be conducting an on-site survey in order to estimate the economic impact of GABF. The survey asks you to identify the location of your brewery, number of brewery attendees to the event, and expenditure data in support of your brewery’s attendees for categories (Lodging, Food and Drink, etc.) used to estimate the economic impact of GABF.
Please plan to take approximately three minutes to complete the onsite survey. In recognition of your participation, the Brewers Association will hold a drawing for one brewery to receive five complimentary entries to the 2017 Great American Beer Festival! All responses are confidential, and only cumulative data will be reported. If you have any questions, feel free to contact Professor Dense at jdense@eou.edu.
A few reminders:
Look for more updates here in the coming weeks…
Cheers!
#TGIGABF
The post Economic Impact Study appeared first on Great American Beer Festival.
As we near the end of Summer, Goose Island wants you to savor every last bit of it with the Sour Sisters III – Gillian (2016) badge. Gillian brings white pepper, strawberry, and honey to a harmonious blend. Partially aged in wine barrels, this Belgian style farmhouse ale is slightly tart and pleasantly sweet in a refreshingly effervescent body.
This brew is perfect for sharing, so grab some friends and unlock the Sour Sisters III – Gillian (2016) badge by checking-in one (1) of any vintage of the Sour Sisters (Gillian, Lolita, Juliet, Halia, Madam Rose) from 8/15/16 – 9/15/16.
To learn more about each of the sisters, head over to gooseisland.com and be sure to get the latest from Goose Island on Untappd, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram!
The Brewers Association Export Development Program (EDP) recently participated in the 2016 Great British Beer Festival (GBBF) and satellite events in London. More than 30 EDP members sent 142 different beers for the week of events, and five BA member breweries sent representatives. Reception for the Guild of British Beer Writers The week began with a reception for the […]
The post BA Export Development Participates at Great British Beer Festival appeared first on Brewers Association.
The BA Finance Committee, with the help of EKS&H, is creating a Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) manual to develop a craft brewing standard for calculating COGS. Your participation is needed to help us make a useful tool for you and other craft brewers. It does not matter if you are an expert or never […]
The post Help BA Develop Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) Manual appeared first on Brewers Association.
Save 40% During the Member-Only Pre-Sale Starting Monday, August 15!
Did you know one of the benefits of your American Homebrewers Association is early access to our latest release—Brewing Local: American-Grown Beer? Members also receive a 40 percent discount off the cover price.
This exclusive member-only pre-sale takes place in our online store and starts Monday, August 15 and ends at 11:59 p.m. PT on August 29.
What better way to support the American Homebrewers Association and get the newest Brewers Publication book for 40% off?
The post Brewing Local Pre-Sale Starts Aug. 15 appeared first on American Homebrewers Association.
Be very still. Listen. Do you hear it? It’s a sure sign of autumn.
No, not the falling leaves. Not the crunch of football helmets either. Listen. There, there it is. An accordion. A tuba. A shout of O’zapft is!, followed by the clinking of glasses. It’s time for Oktoberfest!
In the Sept/Oct issue of Zymurgy, we highlight a few Oktoberfest celebrations in Beeroscope, including the big one in Munich. But we obviously couldn’t include them all—there’s only so much space in the magazine. Here, then, is a festive assortment of October festivals to represent every U.S. state and the District of Columbia.
Some are huge Bavarian-style blowouts. Others are small afternoon gatherings. Still others are bona fide craft beer festivals in their own right. No matter where you live, there’s a festival nearby guaranteed to get you in the mood for fall. So get out there and enjoy.
Prost!
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Alabama Oct. 5–9 |
Louisiana Oct. 1–2 |
Ohio Sept. 16–18 |
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Alaska Oct. 7–8 |
Maine Oct. 7–8 |
Oklahoma Oct. 20–23 |
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Arizona Oct. 7–9 |
Maryland Sept. 24 |
Oregon Sept. 15–18 |
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Arkansas Sept. 24 |
Massachusetts Boylston Schul-Verein Oktoberfest Sept. 10–11 |
Pennsylvania Reading Liederkranz Oktoberfest Sept. 28 to Oct. 2 |
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California Sept. 9–Oct. 29 |
Michigan Sept. 15–18 |
Rhode Island Newport International Oktoberfest Sept. 24–25 |
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Colorado Fri/Sat/Sun, Sept. 23 to Oct. 2 |
Minnesota Oct. 7, 8, 14, 15 |
South Carolina Oct. 21–23 |
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Connecticut Sept. 9–25 |
Mississippi Oct. 7–8 |
South Dakota Sept. 30 to Oct. 1 |
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Delaware Sept. 16 |
Missouri Sept. 30 to Oct. 30 |
Tennessee Oct. 7–9 |
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Florida German American Society of Central Florida Oktoberfest Oct. 1 & 22 |
Montana Oct. 6–8 |
Texas Sept. 30 to Oct. 2 |
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Georgia Sept. 10 to Oct. 29 |
Nebraska Crescent Moon/Huber Haus Oktoberfest Sept. 23–24 |
Utah Aug. 13 to Oct. 9 (weekends) |
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Hawaii Kauai Beer Company Oktoberfest Oct. 5–10 |
Nevada Sept. 16 to Oct. 31 |
Vermont Oct. 1–2 |
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Idaho Sept. 17 |
New Hampshire Sept. 17 |
Virginia Oct. 1 |
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Illinois Sept. 9–11 |
New Jersey Sept. 24–25 |
Washington (state) Sept. 30; Oct. 1, 7, 8, 14, 15 |
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Indiana Brewed IN the Fort Craft Beer Fest Sept. 10 |
New Mexico Oct. 7–9 |
Washington (D.C.) Sept. 17–18 |
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Iowa Sept. 23–24 |
New York Sept. 17, 18, 24, 24 and Oct. 1 & 2 |
West Virginia Morgantown Brewing Company Oktoberfest Oct. 8–9 |
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Kansas Sept. 30 to Oct. 1 |
North Carolina Oct. 7–9 |
Wisconsin Sept. 29 to Oct. 2 |
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Kentucky MainStrasse Village Oktoberfest Sept. 9–11 |
North Dakota Oct. 7–8 |
Wyoming Sept. 17 |
Dave Carpenter is Editor-in-Chief of Zymurgy Magazine at the American Homebrewers Association.
The post Oktoberfesting Across America appeared first on American Homebrewers Association.
As craft beer continues to rise, so does the amount of data to digest. The ever-present question is, “Who is the craft beer lover and what makes them tick?” At the Craft Brewers Conference, held in May in Philadelphia, Mike Kallenberger (Troposbrand.com) and Lindsay Kunkle (The Futures Company) presented one of the most in-depth talks […]
The post Understanding Today’s Craft Beer Lovers: Millennials, Women and Hispanics appeared first on Brewers Association.
Paulaner brewery’s deep ties to Munich are apparent by its strong presence at the Oktoberfest. Having been first brewed in the city by the Paulaner Monks in 1634, the brewery’s traditions have stayed strong through the years. Paulaner offers two Oktoberfest biers to enjoy: The Original Oktoberfest Märzen, the first bier served at the Munich Oktoberfest and the Authentic Oktoberfest Wiesn (vee-zin), the only bier served in the Paulaner Oktoberfest tents in Munich and Germany’s most popular Oktoberfestbier!
Celebrate Oktoberfest and Paulaner’s rich histroy this fall by unlock the all new “The Original and Authentic Oktoberfest Biers”. Simply check-in to any one (1) Paulaner beer between August 15th - October 15th and it’s yours.
Continue the Oktoberfest celebrations by checking in to two (2) more beers from Paulaner (total of three) and you will be entered to win great prizes like a 5-liter stone mug, LED sign or other great Paulaner Oktoberfest swag.
Learn more about Paulaner’s history, tradition, and their ties to Munich’s Oktoberfest at http://ift.tt/29qoYVn.
What’s your current position at your brewery, and how did you get started in the craft brewing industry? I’m the owner/brewer of Pareidolia Brewing Co. in Sebastian, Fla. My wife, Lynn, and I run the daily operations of our brewpub including brewing, kitchen management, marketing, and public relations. I started homebrewing in California in the […]
The post Pete Anderson appeared first on Brewers Association.
Guillaume Boulanger, director of production at La Barberie Brewery in Quebec City, has been homebrewing for a decade. He’s also a beer bottle lover, which explains why he created an awesome bottle filling system he calls the Automatic Boulanger Bottling System. What makes his system so special? It fills multiple bottles at a time and stops filling at a desired level so you don’t spill any precious homebrew, which allows you to do other things with your time, like enjoy homebrew (or clean up and sanitize bottles).
For one reason or another, I prefer bottling my beer. I have a 100 liter HERMS brewing setup, so as you can imagine it takes time to bottle all my beer. Over the past several years, I’ve been trying to find an easy way to bottle big batches as fast as possible, and after a lot of trial and error I came up with the Automatic Beer Bottling System (ABBS). It’s not very expensive to build and very reliable. Our average bottling time is 100 liters in four hours. So the concept is simple, it’s an automatic bottle filling system that allows you to bottle condition big batches of beer in a fraction of the time.
The ABBS is a gravity-fed, multi-bottle line that automatically fills your beer bottles to the desired level. The key to the system is a float valve (I use the Blichmann AutoSparge™) that levels the uncarbonated beer in a second vessel before filling your bottle. How does this work? The bottling vessel and the beer end up at the same level by communicating with the bottle filler. It’s called the concept of communicating vessels. If the containers contain a homogeneous fluid, when the liquid settles, it balances out to the same level in all of the containers regardless of the shape and volume of the containers. If additional liquid is added to one vessel, the liquid will again find a new equal level in all the connected vessels. In other words, your bottles will fill up to the level of liquid in your secondary bottling vessel.
Here’s a list of what you’ll need to build an automatic bottle filling system:
First, drill a 13/16″ hole (with a step drill bit or knock out punch) on the side of the bottle vessel (oval stainless roaster) 4″ from the bottom. This is the hole for the AutoSparge™. Drill another 13/16″ hole in the bottom of your bottling bucket if it doesn’t have one already.
Next, drill four oval-shaped holes in the lid. These will be for the bottle fillers. On my setup, the holes are 3.5″ apart.
You’ll need to build the frame for the bottling system. Use the 2″x4″x8′ stud with a couple screws to construct the frame. Cut down two 25″ pieces for the bottom, two 15″ pieces for the roaster pot holder, two 12″ pieces for the vertical part of the frame, and screw them all together as shown in the picture. The clamp holder will hold the siphon clamps. The piece of wood needed for this portion of the frame is 1″x1″x18″ and needs an angle of around 25° on one side. If you can get your hands on a table saw to do this cut, it’s highly recommended. Pre-drill the frame and then screw in the piece of wood.
After you’ve built your frame, you need to modify the siphon clamps to fit the clamp holders. Cut down the curved part of the clamps, drill one hole and chamfer them. Pre-drill the clamp holder and screw it onto the frame.
Last step is to modify the four spring tip bottle fillers. Cut these so they are 9″ long. Make sure to clean and chamfer the cut ends. Cut three 15″ 3/8″ siphon hose tubes and one 26″ 3/8″ siphon hose tube. Plug these into the spring tip bottle fillers. The longer tube will be used to empty the bottling vessel at the end of the bottling session because of the lower level of beer in the bottling veesel. Lower the longer bottler filler to finish filling the unfilled bottle.
Apply some Teflon tape to your stainless steel kettle valve kit with barb on the bottling bucket and the AutoSparge™ with the female stainless 1/2″ NPT x 1/2″ barb on the bottling vessel. This will help prevent leaks and make sure your equipment is tightly secured. Mount your bottle fillers on the clamp holders and then through the oval holes of the lid.
As a precaution, do a test run with your new system by putting some water in the bottling vessel and then start the siphon. You’ll need to adjust the AutoSparge™ for your water level to be just as high as the top of your bottles. Make sure to mark where you leave the AutoSparge™ for next time.
Finally, empty everything out, clean and sanitize, transfer your beer and prime, and enjoy the easiest bottling day ever!
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I’m always on the lookout for ways to improve my brewing processes without breaking the bank. Most recently, I’ve had my eye on the popular hop spider DIY project. This innovative design suspends a hop bag in the boil, allowing access to the opening of the bag at any time. All hop additions are added into this one hop bag. Once the boil is over and you are ready to rack to primary, simply pull out the hop spider and you’re left with hop sediment-free wort.
Initially I set out to build a “fancy” hop spider, like the ones you’ll see when searching Google. As I was walking around the local hardware store collecting materials, it dawned on me that I could basically put together something just as functional, but for much less money. Five dollars later I had myself what I dubbed “the poor man’s hop spider.”
I purchased one 3.5-foot piece of 5-millimeter threaded metal rod which I cut in half and four “bulldog” binder clips from the hardware store for a total of $5. I already had a large muslin bag in my brew closet and two standard binder clips which were donated to the cause. You can substitute the metal rod segments with two long, metal grill skewers or spoons. Really anything that can withstand heat and can sit steadily across the diameter of the boil pot will work.
To set up the poor man’s hop spider, start by placing the two metal rod segments so they are sitting on the rim of the boil kettle. Next, secure the hop bag to one of the rods using one standard binder clip. Secure the other side of the hop bag to the other rod with the other binder clip. Last, separate the rod segments so they are about a half foot apart and clip the bulldog binder clips to the rim of the kettle so the rods cannot slide towards each other. See the picture for clarification.
That’s it! Be sure the hop bag is long enough that a good portion will be submerged during the boil. Then simply add all of your hop additions into the suspended bag, remove the hop spider when you’re ready to rack to primary and watch the sediment-free wort flow into your fermenter.
One day I will build a fancier, more robust hop spider (stay tuned to HomebrewersAssociation.org for the build guide), but for now this frugal alternative will do just fine!
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