Wheat beer, and Wheat in Beer

Wheat beers have a long history and wheat was quite possibly the original grain used to make the first grain-based alcohol beverage, but in reading the history of that matter, there seems to be quite some argument about what came first, so we won't get into that. In either case, while these days barley certainly is king when it comes to the base grain used to make beer, the addition of wheat can make for a very refreshing and palatable drink that can come in many forms. Hefeweizen is probably the most obvious, but there are also Dunkelweizen, Weizenbock, American Wheat, Belgian Witbier, Berlinerweisse, Gose, Grätzer, and other styles where a little wheat is appropriate. In fact wheat can be added to almost any style to gain some extra body and head retention.

The June recipe was an American Wheat with Citra hops. This is a really easy beer to brew, and an easy beer to drink that can be enjoyed by almost all beer drinkers. The trick with many wheat beer styles is time. Many beers benefit from a few weeks of aging/conditioning before they are drank. However, the low alcohol and hazy nature of wheat beers lend themselves to drinking young. This is opinion of course, when any fermented beverage is “best” is entirely up to the drinker. But, drinking a wheat based beer fresh is a different experience than letting that same beer age. The nuanced flavor of the wheat shines through, with a soft “wheat flavor” reminiscent of wheat crackers and fresh baked whole wheat bread. Unfortunately this character tends to fade pretty quickly.

There are some tips when brewing your own wheat beer:

Use rice hulls. If your grain bill includes more than 20% huskless grain, such as wheat, rye, or flaked grain, then you need to add the husk back in. Rice hulls are a great way to do this. If you do brew-in-a-bag mashing, then I wouldn't worry about rice hulls until you get into the 80% range.

Use a blow-off tube. Wheat beers can ferment pretty aggressively, and if you have a 5 gallon batch in a 6.5 gallon fermenter, you will likely lose beer out the top. Using a blow-off tube can make this loss less violent.

Watch those fermentation temps. This is a good idea with any beer, but especially when using the weihenstephaner hefe weissbier strain of yeast, you can get a drastically different tasting beer with the temperature you ferment at. Warmer (69º+) can give you big banana flavors, while cooler temps (low 60ºs) can emphasize the clove phenolic flavors of the yeast.

We always hear people say, “I don't like wheat beers.”, but after talking with them, they have really only tried German Hefeweizen style beers, that probably are not very fresh. Wheat can do so much more. So, experiment with this versatile grain and maybe try something you haven't had from the liquor store. If you have been a wheat naysayer, you might just change your mind.

Using Fruit In Beer!

Should you add fruit to a beer? Well, fruit in beer isn't just a recent fad, in fact it is probably how most fermented grain beverages started. While there may be a lot of debate to what came first, wine or beer, from the research I have done, it seems like early feremnters put whatever items could ferment together into a fruit/grain mixture that would get them drunk. Fast forward several thousand years, and the German/Belgian/France area of Europe started adding fruit mixes to their (now well defined) beer in the early 1900. These were called Radlermass or just Radler, and then in England changed to Shandy. These were typically 50/50 blends of citrus juices mixed with a light beer style. These big fruity beers can stretch the definition of what most beer lovers call "beer", but they are a nice drink to have in the hot summer months.

You don't have to go to a 50/50 mix however. Both homebrewers and craft brewers alike, love to add subtle fruit flavors to their base beer styles, and when done correctly, can be pleasing to even the most staunch beer geek. So, how do you do it?

There are a couple things to consider when adding fruit to beer:
Simple is probably better. You don't want to muddy up the waters too much. While you can find complex mixtures that work well, having a simple beer style for the base will let the fruit flavor show up better and brighter in your beer. Also, too many fruits can leave people confused about what they are drinking. You might like Bananas, Strawberries, and Cantaloupe on a fruit plate, but those might not mix well in a beer.

Pasteurize your fruit. Picking up apples from your backyard, crushing them and throwing them in your fermenter might feel like a throwback to simpler times and more "natural", but there is wild yeast, mold, and bacteria all over the fruit even when washed and throwing them into a sugary environment could create off flavors, or spoil your beer. Mash up your fruit and heat it to 160 degrees for 10 minutes to kill the unwanted microbes. Don't boil it though, this can kill some of the fruit flavor and coagulate proteins that can leave your beer hazy. Using a pre-packaged puree can let you skip the pasteurizing process, since it has already been done for you.

You can put fruit in your beer at any time during the process. The mash, the boil, the primary fermentation, or secondary. As a rule-of-thumb however, the later on in the brewing process any flavoring is added, the brighter that flavor will be during consumption, so there are some things to consider. If you want to simultaneously make your beer and pasteurize your fruit, you can add your fruit to the end of your boil (flameout, while cooling). If you don't typically do secondary, you can add pasteurized fruit to the end of your primary (it will ferment again for a bit and push out the oxygen that was introduced when adding the fruit). If you want to add it to secondary, you can add the pasteurized fruit to a sanitized bag and add it there too. The bag will help with clarity before you bottle or keg.

How much fruit to add is a popular question, however this is very subjective. What is a lot to one person may be too subtle for another. I would say that 2-5lb of pureed fruit is most common in a 5 gallon batch of beer, but remember, that the base style of beer matters too. While 2lbs of raspberries might be almost too much for cream ale, it may barely register as a fruit beer in an imperial stout. See the AHA chart for a good jumping off point.

Extract vs. actual fruit? Chances are, if you have had a commercially made fruit beer, there was no actual chunks of fruit used in the process. Most of the time a "natural" fruit extract is used. These can be quite good, and leads to a brightness or fruitiness that you might not be able to achieve with real fruit. Unlike actual fruit which contain high amounts of sugar, Extracts don't ferment, so there is an advantage to adding them right before you bottle or keg, so you can get the flavor level you want in real time. In my opinion there is a flavor base, or a backbone, that brewers get when using real fruit, that just can't be achieved with extract only. Conversely there is a brightness that just can't be achieved when using only fruit. Some of the best beers I have tried used a secret ratio of both... the secret is... it's up to you.

So, go out and try different fruits in different beers and do what sounds good to you!

Make this beer a lager... if you want.

We always like to encourage people to try their hand at lagering. Lagers are crisp and clean, and typically really easy to drink, and they don't have to be light in color and flavor, but if you are new to brewing you might have some questions about lagers. Cold fermentation temps is the key difference between ales and lagers, but there is more to know about it if you want to start lagering your beers. Here is a quick breakdown of cold fermentation using most lager strains of yeast. 

 

PITCH RATE:

Lagers typically have a reduced ester profile with discernible malt character. It is very important to recognize that pitch rate is directly related to the amount and intensity of ester production. Increasing the quantity of yeast pitched is the most effective method of reducing the ester profile in the finished beer. You will need to double the yeast you would typically need in an ale fermentation.

PRIMARY FERMENTATION TEMPERATURE:

Fermentation should take 2-4 weeks at 52 °F. The best temperature will depend of the yeast strain used and what you want to get out of the flavor profile. After fermentation you will want to raise your temperature as close to 62ْF as possible. This is called a diactyl rest. The increase in temperature will both assure fermentation is complete, drive of any remaining CO2 that might cause “of favors”

and clarity issues, and finally, it will allow the yeast to absorb the diacetyl produced by fermentation. 

SECONDARY FERMENTATION:

source: https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/

A secondary fermentation at a temperature below the primary fermentation allows for a slow reduction of any remaining fermentable sugars. This secondary fermentation can take from one to three weeks at temperatures starting between 39-45 °F and slowly falling to as low as 33 °F. The length of the secondary depends on the amount of fermentable sugars remaining.

CONDITIONING OR "LAGERING":

Lager roughly means “store” in German. It is a time when harsh favors from fermentation are mellowed. Yeast re-absorb some of the ester compounds from fermentation as well as some of the sulfur compounds. Malt tannins coagulate with haze-forming proteins and precipitate out along with some sulfurous compounds. Temperatures should remain very stable during lagering, generally in the range of 33-36 °F. Contact with oxygen at this point is very detrimental to beer favor and should be avoided at all costs. Lagering time depends on many factors. If a cold secondary fermentation was employed, then the length of the lagering period can generally be decreased. A lagering period of two to eight weeks is typical.The higher the ABV of the beer the longer you may want to lager also.

While many homebrewers have converted refrigerators or freezers with external thermostats to carefully manage their lagering temperatures, you can make a good lager with just a cool basement. If you can get sub 60 °F in a basement or cellar for your primary fermentation and secondary fermentation, then keg or bottle from there, you can make a decent lager that can be crisp and refreshing without the added cost of a dedicated feremtation chamber. Give lagering a try this winter if you can, the worst thing that will happen is you will make beer... and that's not so bad.

 If this quick rundown peaked your interest in lagering there is another article you can read from the American Homebrewers Association

Adding Coffee To Your Beer

We usually like to include a historical reference to what we are writing about, but there doesn't seem to be much historical documentation on this. The Founders brewery seemed to have stumbled upon their Breakfast Stout when a chocolate covered espresso bean was eaten at a bar, then washed down with a stout. The resulting beer has been a popular seasonal ever since. Homebrewers however, have been adding this for decades, from what we have heard stories of, and it makes sense since beer and coffee have a lot in common. We're sure there is a big middle section to the Ven diagram showing the crossover between people that like coffee, and people that like beer. There are even similarities in the detractors of these beverages. Prohibition against beer consumption is well known, but attempts have been made over the history of coffee to outlaw its use as well. Not to mention some religious opinions on the consumption of both coffee and beer.

The similarities are not just social however. Indeed, when talking about the popularity of IPAs and how some do or don't like the bitterness of them, we liken it to coffee drinkers. More than likely when someone starts drinking coffee they don't love the bitterness, and end up buffering the seemingly acrid taste with milk or cream, or sugar, or chocolate... or all of these, but as coffee drinkers become more used to the taste, they realize it is the bitterness that is drawing them in. Same with bitterness in beers. It is there to balance the sweetness of the drink, but people find themselves pushing that bitterness level to the extreme, because there is an appeal to that sensation when done correctly. So, it makes sense to add coffee flavor to not only stouts, but even light colored beers. Combining the two products is something akin to providence (take that religious groups), it was just going to happen.

So how do you do it, well we pieced together the following from several sources including our own experience.

Directions:
Grind or smash whole beans to a coarse or medium grind then cold brew or hot brew the coffee to add to your beer. Or, you can add the grounds (or whole beans) directly to your secondary fermentation.

Hot vs Cold brewing coffee:
- Hot brewing is just regular old coffee making. It’s an easy way to pasteurize your coffee if you are adding it later in fermentation, and while it does pull flavor out of the beans quickly, it can pull some acids and bitterness out of the beans.
- Cold brewing uses cold or room temperature water to get the flavor out of the beans, but without as much bitterness. leave sit for 12-24 hours then strain your grounds from the water.

When to add the coffee to your beer:
- Pre-boil/boil additions can give you better head retention in your final beer, and totally pasteurize your coffee, but can minimize the coffee flavor and kill delicate aromatics of fancy coffee you might be using.
- Primary fermentation additions will increase coffee flavors and retain most subtle flavors of beans, but can reduce the head retention of your beer. Coffee bean oils = reduced head.
- Post fermentation additions are easy to do, and you can do it to taste before you keg or bottle. Just add till you get the desired coffee flavor amount you like in your beer. Head retention could suffer, and using cold brewed coffee could potentially be harboring infection causing contaminates.




How much coffee to add:
- 12-20 oz of coffee per 5 gallon batch
- Amounts can very wildly however due to the strength of coffee being brewed, the kind of beer it's being added to, and personal preference of the person drinking it.

Dry Beaning (like dry hopping):
- Add your ground beans to secondary. Use a fine mesh bag, to reduce grounds in your final product. Leave beans whole for less color extraction of the bean, but this will extend the steeping time needed to achieve the desired flavor contribution to your beer.
- Use whole beans if your want less dark color extraction, but you will want to increase your steeping times for the same amount of coffee flavor. 

Or take it from the experts.
Cold extraction process =
Add .5 lbs of coffee to 24 oz of cold filtered water in a sanitized container. Allow to sit in the fridge for 24 hours. Then run it through a coffee filter. All or part may be added depending on taste.
-from "Radical Brewing" By Randy Mosher.

 For subtle coffee notes try a coffee malt like the recipe found on the Montly Brews site.

Speaking English - Bitters and Pales

Pale Ales and Bitters can be very similar in flavor, so why the different naming conventions? Well, there seems to be some debate on why different people, in different parts of the world name beers the way they do, and indeed even the source material used to figure things out seem to contradict each other. But, it seems that generally speaking, Northwestern Europeans, prior to the 16^th century called grain based fermented beverages that were flavored/bittered with a myriad of botanicals “Ales”, what we might now call “gruit”. After the adoption of hops for bittering, the newer standardized naming convention was "beer". It would take some time, but Ale then became synonymous with beer, and would be used interchangeably in most parts of the world. Starting in the 19^th century, brewers and malting companies started to produce a paler malt product that could be used to make very light colored beers, to which many breweries in northwest Europe started referring to as Pale Ales as a general term for light colored beers.

While we here in the US might think of the Standard Bitter as being an age old British product for hundreds of years, it seems the term wasn't really used much, or at all, until World War II. Then the word Bitter was more of a distinction from Mild ales to note the more-bitter version of beer that was being produced, and was not derived from a branch of Pale Ales brewed at the time. So while a hop forward British Pale Ale of the time may have closely resembled an English Bitter, they came from different styles of beer making and (I'm guessing here) were probably separated more by the marketing devises of the time than actual stylistic differences.

Today, the BJCP does distinguish between Pales Ales and Bitters. Style 11 - British Beers, splits Bitters into 3 categories: Ordinary Bitter, Best Bitter, and Strong Bitter. Style 12 – Pale Commonwealth Beer, uses this vernacular to describe light colored “...bitter ales from countries within the former British Empire.” and also refers to 18b. American Pale Ale, and 24b. Belgian Pale Ale.

It seems that for now “Bitter” has been solidified as purely a naming convention for British beers while Pale can originate from not only England but from anywhere. Bitters however can easily be defined as Michael Jackson notes in The New World Guide to Beer, “...full of flavor -- the flavor of hops, and to some extent, of good British malt. 

So, when brewing a Bitter of any kind, work on that strong malt backbone with traditional English malts, then hop it to a amount very noticeable while still balanced, and you will create your very own Bitter! There is a great recipe available on the Monthly Brews website for November you can fill it at your Local Homebrew Shop, or right from their website. Note your IBUs and ABV if you plan on entering it in competition so you know in which category to enter.

 A New Venture From Salt City Brew Supply!

The homebrew-of-the-month subscriptions you have seen in the past lock you into a recipe every month, provide you with nothing new to play with, and leave nothing to the imagination, and imagination is why all of us homebrew in the first place, isn’t it?

 So, what is it!

The Monthly Brews is scaled for homebrewers in either a one, two, or five gallon product, so almost everyone can join. The goal is to provide brewers access to ingredients they may have never tried before, either because their access to a homebrew store is limited, or they see the different ingredients, but are not sure how they would work with a recipe. Monthly Brews has simplified this, giving brewers fresh ingredients that are less commonly found, that taste amazing in many different beer recipes and… here is the innovation of the Monthly Brews… lets the brewer decide how to use them. That’s it!

Never heard of Idaho Seven hops before? Heard of Ahtanum hops, but never used them? Wanted to try some floor malted pilsner, or Red X malt, but your local homebrew shop doesn’t carry it and you don’t want to buy a 55lb bag, or are unsure how to use it? Well that last one is a mouthful, but it’s a common issue. Monthly Brews will send you cool grain, hops, and yeast every month with the hope that you haven’t ever used at least some of the items in your box before. We keep everything separate so you can use them how you want, and when you want, but don’t worry, we also provide a recipe suggestion to use every ingredient… if that is what you want to do.

The recipe included is created/brewed/taste tested with an award winning brewing group with over 40 years combined experience, including 2 BJCP certified judges, 2 homebrew supply store owners, and a professional brewer. Monthly Brews takes pride in its recipes, but no matter how much we like our beer, we encourage you to make it yours and experiment.

This isn’t just a recipe of the month club. It is a recurring subscription box of cool brewing ingredients, and something extra. We also include an item with your ingredients subscription to try out and evaluate for yourself. These mystery items are just a cool gift from us to help keep your interest, in case awesome brewing ingredients wasn’t enough. 

Use your Mr.Beer® Fermentor for All-Grain Brewing

Use your Mr.Beer® Fermentor for All-Grain Brewing

You got a Mr.Beer® beer making kit, and have brewed a batch of beer or two, and the beer is turning out OK, but where to go next? You want to make the beer "your own" instead of just mixing a can together with warm water and adding yeast. How do the breweries do it? There is a natural "next step" in the hobby of home brewing, and if you have been enjoying it so far, it's time to start brewing like the breweries, but on a much smaller scale. 

What is the difference between Extract brewing (Mr.Beer®) and All-Grain brewing?

Beer is made from grain (specifically the sugar from grain), hops, water, and yeast. The grain (barley, wheat, or rye) is malted by large malting companies like Briess and sold to breweries and homebrewers. Malting companies will also Extract the grain sugars from the Malt kernels and create a syrup, or spray dry the syrup into a powder. These products are called Liquid Malt Extract (LME) and Dry Malt Extract (DME) respectively. LME, and DME are commonly referred to as just "extract" and are used by homebrewers only since they are an easy source of fermentalbles for beer. Some malting companies will go one step further and infuse LME with hop oils to impart the bittering and some flavor from the hops. With hop infused LME all the homebrewer needs to do is add water to dilute the LME and then add yeast and ferment. This is called extract brewing, and it makes beer, but limits the control the brewer has over the beer. In fact, one might call this "beer fermenting" rather than "beer brewing". 

Steeping some specialty grain like a tea, and then adding it to LME or DME and boiling it all together with hops is called grain/extract brewing and while this is still not the same process that breweries use to make beer, it is closer than a pure extract fermentation. The brewer is picking from hundreds of kinds of grains, and hundreds of kinds of hops added at different times during the boil to create almost limitless variations of beer. These kinds of recipe kits are the standard for most "stove top brewers". They are easy and create awesome beer. 

All Grain brewing is the process that breweries use to create beer. Instead of paying a malting company to extract the malt sugar into a concentrate, they do it themselves in a process called "mashing", which is just a fancy term for steeping or soaking. When malted grain is held at a certain temperature in water, the natural enzymes in the grain start to convert the starches to fermentable sugar. This is easy to do at home with small batches. You just need a kettle to hold the hot water and a straining bag to hold the grain. For example, a 2 gallon batch will require about 4lbs of grain steeping in at least 1.5 gallons of 150 degree water for 60 minutes. This will create the sugars you need. You can then pull out the bag of grain let it drain and rinse it with more hot water. All that sugary water you collect is the same now as when you add the LME or DME to water to dilute it. Now you just need to boil it with hops to create your "wort". Cool the wort, add it to your 2 gallon fermentor and add yeast. This is the exact same process that breweries use to make beer. You are just using equipment that is cheap and easy to use in your kitchen.

What is needed to start making All Grain beers with the equipment I already have?

Luckily if you have a Mr.Beer® kit, you already have a fermentor, and once your beer is fermenting, the process is no different than you are used to. However, you will need to hold a bunch of water and grain, then do a boil, so a kettle (a large stock pot) is a must. A 5 gallon kettle works great. It will give you some room to spare, and is about the biggest you can go for stove top brewing. You will also want a couple of straining bags. One for the grain and one for the hops. That is it. It isn't a complicated process. it is just a couple more steps in the process than you are used to, but you will have the same control over your beer as a professional brewer, and can make any kind of beer you have ever heard of... in your own home. You can put together your own recipe, find a recipe on the internet and scale it to 2 gallons, or get one that is scaled already at Salt City Brew Supply.

Prost!

Grainfather: Review - Justin Field - Salt City Brew Supply

As a home brewer who likes gadgets I often dreamed of building my own automated system. Then the Grainfather came along and ruined that dream because my dream cost way more money and
the design didn't look as sexy.

The Grainfather is an electric PID controlled all grain brewing unit designed and distributed by
Imake Ltd, located in New Zealand. There was a successful kickstarter campaign, yay crowd
funding, and the Grainfather was brought to market. It is advertised as an all-in-one brewing system and is available for $899 which makes it about $800 cheaper than it's closest “equivalent” the Speidel Braumeister.

On February 19th, 2016 I received my tax refund and proudly walked into Salt City Brew Supply to
purchase the Grainfather unit that I spent many a Sunday shift fondling and secretly kissing when
the other employee's had their back turned. One cannot just purchase a Grainfather without an introductory batch of beer and fortunately there was an extra batch sitting in the back of the shop waiting for one of us to take it home. With both items firmly in hand I hurried home to unpack the sexy silver mistress from it's container.

Upon first glance it is a pretty basic machine. Stainless steel and plastic make up the majority of
the parts with a few silicone pieces here and there. There are machining marks on some pieces,
nothing that concerns me. If it ain't ugly, it ain't pretty. It's light, coming in at only 22 lbs and
takes up less space than my old 3 vessel system. It is made up of an 8 gallon outer tank that is both
the boil kettle and the mash tun. There is an inner vessel with a grated bottom and top with an
inner tube to hold the grain during mash. A 6 watt 1800 rpm pump handles all the movement of
liquid, a counter flow wort chiller takes care of cooling, and of course the digital PID controller
than handles temperature regulation. As I began assembly I noticed that the system is put together
with quite a bit of thought, showing a well engineered piece of brewing furniture that does not cost
much more than a homemade three vessel system. One thing I do need to mention is that even
though it is advertised as “all in one,” it still requires the use of a hot liquor tank to heat and
distribute the sparge water (for a 5 gallon batch). That was my one point of hesitance when making the decision to purchase the Grainfather, but decided the benefits outweighed the need for an extra pot. Also I make a lot of fancy stocks so I will put an additional 7 gallon pot to good use. Also I already had a brew kettle. Also it comes in handy later in the Grainfather process.
I am one to rush putting things together without reading the instructions fully. 5 years of working

for Ikea makes me almost an expert at figuring out convoluted systems. I became frustrated when
putting together the Grainfather, but it was my own fault for thinking it was a complex device.
Relax, have a home brew, read the instructions, watch a YouTube video, and if you still can't get
things together a little grain dust or water helps lubricate the seals that are prone to popping off
during assembly.

Once assembly was complete I filled the unit with 4 gallons of water, turned it on, tested the pumps, made sure the controller was calibrated, and timed the various stages of heating and cooling for reference later on. Everything worked swimmingly. I gave things a quick scrub down
with PBW and a rinse and she was ready to get the first batch going! The Grainfather uses special math to calculate mash volumes that's a little different than the well known 1.25 quarts per pound of grain most home brewers use as a starting point. With the help of some 'maths' provided in the manual I determined that my 11.68 pound batch needed 4.8 gallons of mash water, coming to approximately 1.68 quarts per pound. I was curious so I played with some
theoretical batch sizes to see if that was consistent for the purposes of programming Beersmith and determined that no, it was not consistent. I saw a variance of 1.65 to 1.78 quarts per pound dependent upon the total weight of the grain. There is a handy calculator on the Grainfather
website and it doesn't look too difficult to create an excel sheet to determine these numbers. I filled the outer container, decided on a strike temp of 152*F, assembled the grain vessel as described, lowered it into the unit, set the PID controller to the desired temperature, and flicked the appropriate switches. I put the recirculating arm on and turned the pump on as well. The instructions did not specify this but my brain seemed to convince me I would get a more consistent temperature throughout the vessel if I did this. The mash water was at strike temperature within 10 minutes! How exciting!

At first it appeared there wasn't going to be enough water in the grain vessel to successfully dough in the grain. I put my faith in the Grainfather and went ahead with it anyway. While stirring out the dry pockets it seemed a little thicker than I'm used to but everything looked and smelled like it
should. I assumed by recirculating the mash, the grain would stay plenty hydrated during the process. I placed the lid and the recirculation arm on, turned on the pump, and set my timer for 60 minutes. At first the mash was cloudy, but it quickly cleared up as it was filtered through the grain. It was easily the clearest wort I've ever produced. I made one mistake during this step and did not realize that the ball valve under the recirculation arm can be used to control the flow of the wort. The liquid was flowing so fast it was ending up dropping down the overflow tube in the middle of the mash, rather than running through the grain. I'm sure enough of it made it through the grain, but in the future I plan to dial the speed back slightly to encourage more filtering. One thing to get out of the way now, is that the PID controller is not entirely automatic. You must manually change the temperature if you plan to step mash. It's pretty simple and took no more than 10 seconds of my time to set the mash out temperature. Ten minutes later I was successfully mashed out and ready to sparge.

My initial hesitance with purchasing the Grainfather was the fact I needed an additional vessel to
heat and hold sparge water. You can't really claim the title of an “all in one” brewing system if
you need an additional piece of equipment to make total use of it. However, the system and it's
footprint in my one bedroom apartment has far exceeded expectations and the additional pot isn't
even an inconvenience.

To sparge with the grain father one turns off the pump, turns off the heating element, removes the lid and recirculation arm, and lifts the inner vessel slowly out. They include a handy handle that latches to holes on the vessel to aid in lifting. It's a bit of weight on 12lbs of grain so I recommend going slowly. The unit may not be appropriate for folks that cannot lift a lot of weight. As you lift and the wort drains and it gets easier, so just take it slowly. Once you lift the inner vessel to the top, you just turn it 90 degrees and the welded feet rest comfortably on the inner rim to allow the remaining wort to drain. Sparge water is calculated using a formula based on your original volumes so be sure to write those down! I needed 3.5 gallons to sparge this batch. You'll need to use the formula because it's impossible to see inside of the kettle with the grain vessel sitting on top. A fair complaint, but I had hope these guys knew what they were doing. I was too excited to start brewing that I didn't take into account building a rest to keep the sparge kettle above the
Grainfather so I just poured in the water by hand. Sparging went very quick, a byproduct of hand pouring and the huge surface area of the false bottom. After the last of the wort drained, I placed the sparge pot on the floor and put the inner vessel inside of it to catch drips as I began the next step.
Exactly 6.5 gallons of wort in the kettle! That sparge volume formula really worked! I took a gravity reading on my refractometer and I missed my gravity by a mile. Efficiency was calculated at only 53.2%. I damn neared cried. “Why Grainfather?! Why?!” Good thing I take notes! After reading through them I noticed that the loss of efficiency was less about the Grainfather and more about me 1.) Running the mash circulation too quickly, 2.) Sparging WAY too quickly, and 3.) Sparging at too low of a temperature. My sparge thermometer was off by about 10*F. Always make sure your equipment is calibrated!

To boil one only needs to flick the switch to boil. This bypasses the PID and fires the coil at full
power. From 154*F to 204*F(boiling temperature in Salt Lake City) it only took 45 minutes, a
little less time than my stove. I expected it to take a lot longer so I walked away to start typing this
review and came back to a near boil over. It was epically exciting! I used brew on an electric
stove and the strength of the boil was far more than I was used to so I was happy with that. I set
my time and did my hop additions as I had planned them. It was a pretty uneventful, in a good
way, boil.

After the boil comes the cooling stage. The Grainfather comes with a lovely counter flow chiller. It's easy to setup and they include every possible fitting you might need to attach it to a water
source. You place the lid on the unit, the chiller rests on top of that, you feed the outflow tube
back into the Grainfather, and attach the inflow to the pump. Make sure the outflow tube is
partially submerged in the wort, otherwise you risk oxidation of hot wort. Run the hot wort
through the chiller for 5 minutes or so to sanitize it. After five minutes start your cold water flow.

One additional note on cooling:
Do not allow the outflow tube to sit on the
bottom of the kettle, suspend it just
inside the top of the wort.
If it touches the bottom of the kettle
the cold wort settles there tricking the
thermometer into thinking
it has cooled completely,
while the top portion remains hot.

The chiller cools the wort and pumps the cold wort back into the vessel cooling the whole thing down, in a closed system, in about 10 minutes. The controller conveniently displays the temperature and you can watch it drop for fun! It cools so well that when I came back 15 minutes later, I was reading 58*F, way too cold for my yeast. I had to turn the hot water on and recirculate a little longer to bring it back up to temp. When you are ready to transfer, just turn the pump off, move the outflow tube to your fermentation bucket, turn the pump back on, and in 5 minutes later the wort is ready to be pitched. Go Grainfather!  After I made sure the beer was safely tucked away, it was time to clean this beast. Cleaning up after brewing is one thing I really dislike and on my old setup, I would clean at every step ensuring that I was working the entire 4-5 hour brew day. I was amazed at how easy the Grainfather
cleaned up! I dumped the trub out of the unit, removed, rinsed, replaced the pump filter, filled the unit with 3 gallons of water, 1 oz of PBW, and replaced the lid and counter flow chiller. Set the temp to 132*F, turned the pump on and walked away for 5 minutes. I didn't really walk away, I dumped grain out of the inner vessel(easy) and washed it in the sink, took 2 minutes at most. After five minutes I removed the chiller and ran some water through it to remove the cleaner, quickly scrubbed the inside of the unit with a sponge, dumped the water, filled with 3 gallons cold water, and ran the pump through the recirculation arm for 10 minutes, and then dumped it out. Viola! It was clean.

Overall it was an absolute pleasure brewing on the Grainfather! So much so I'm planning to brew again tomorrow. This time I will take my time sparing and make sure my flow settings are proper to see if I can work out some of the efficiency issues. It is easy and intuitive to use, the documentation is detailed and informative, cleaning is simple, engineering and workmanship are apparent, and most importantly it makes beer entirely in the footprint of a 10 gallon Rubbermaid mash tun.

In conclusion The Grainfather is not a Speidel Braumeister, it is not a PicoBrew, it is not a fully
automated all in one brewing system. It is a very affordable, very functional, and very exceptional
BIAB based system that is fun and easy to brew on. It does the job it advertises and it does it for
50% less than it's nearest competitor. I am happy with my purchase and plan to brew often on my
Grainfather system. If you lack brewing space and want to improve the consistency of your beer
then the Grainfather is for you.

Common Homebrewing Myths

There are common misconceptions with homebrewing that persists with many people that have "heard" about the hobby, or "has a friend that does it", and these perceptions keep people away from a fulfilling and fun craft that produces amazing products.
Here are a few myths we at Salt City Brew Supply and Ogden City Brew Supply here quite often,
and we can help put them to rest:

Myth - Brewing Beer Takes Too Much Time
Accuracy - Somewhat True
Truth - Brewing beer takes a few hours to steep/mash grain, boil and add hops, cool down and add yeast. After your brew day, it takes a few weeks to ferment, and clear, followed by an hour or two to bottle your finished beer, and another week or so to carbonate. All in all, you will spend 4-8 hours of labor to get your beer ready to drink and 4-6 weeks of waiting.

Making wine from a kit takes only a total of 2-4 hours of labor to get your wine finished an in bottles, but it takes higher alcohol beverages, such as wine, more time to mature. Depending on the wine you could be waiting 8 weeks to a year for proper aging.

It is certainly quicker to grab a 12 pack of beer or a bottle of wine from the store, but really, you just have to wait for that first batch. Keep a steady rotation fermenting, and you'll find you don't even have to drive to the store, it will already be at your house waiting for you!


Myth - Making your own beer and wine at home can make you sick
Accuracy - False
Truth - Homebrewing beer and wine is safe and easy to do without spoiling you product. Beer and wine are both food products and if not handled properly they can go "bad", but nothing that grows in fermenting beer or wine can hurt you. The worst that can happen is you make something that doesn't taste very good, or you get an infection of acetobacter which will eventually turn your drink to vinegar... but even that can be good... maybe not what you were shooting for... but good none the less.

The fact is, if you keep your equipment clean and sanitized you never have to have a "bad" batch of beer or wine, and there are products available today to make this process as simple as clean, rinse, sanitize! There are no-rinse sanitizers like StarSan, that are harmless to the touch, and break down into yeast food that actually helps your beer and wine ferment. Now getting sick from drinking too much of your delicious beer or wine, is something we just can't help you with. Hangovers, sometimes, are inevitable


Myth - Too Much Homebrew Will Make Me Gain Weight
Accuracy - Oversimplification, but True
Truth - Drinking alcoholic beverages in excess can lead to weight gain. Alcohol = Calories. When the calories consumed are greater than the calories burned, unfortunately we gain weight. Since drinking calories doesn't seem as bad as eating them, it can make it easy to over indulge. This is just a universal truth however, and doesn't have any more bearing on Homebrewed beer or wine than imbibing the same drink from a commercial provider. So if you typically drink a pint of beer or a glass of wine for dinner, then drinking the home brewed version won't have any different affect on your waistline.

Myth - Making Alcohol in Utah is Against the Law
Accuracy - False
Truth - According to House Bill 51 passed in 2009 it is legal to homebrew "(A) 100 gallons in a calendar year, if there is one individual that is 21 years of age or older residing in the household; or (B) 200 gallons in a calendar year, if there are two or more individuals who are 21 years of age or older residing in the household;" This means you can brew your favorite beer, wine or cider without any license. Just don't sell it. And distilling it (heating your alcohol to collect the vapor, then recondensing it for a higher percentage) is Federally illegal, so stick to fermenting, and you will stay well withing the law. The only hard decision now is what kind of beer or wine to make!

There are more Homebrew Myths to come, but if you didn't see your question answered here, feel free to contact us at the stores, follow us on Facebook, or email info@saltcitybrewsupply.com

Winexpert Limited Edition 2015

Here is this year's Limited Edition 2015

A unique collection of five distinguished varietals from some of the world’s most renowned wine-growing regions. Available by pre-order only. Order yours by December 4th, just $25 down.
Pre-orders available at both the Salt City Brew Supply and Ogden City Brew Supply locations, or online!

Fourtitude

Gewurztraminer Verdelho Muscat

Mosaic Red

Pinot Grigio Verduzzo

Barbera

Top 12 Mistakes New Homebrewers Make - Again

This was one of our first posts here on the SCBS blog, but it is a good one, and with all the new brewers out there that just got a brew kit for Christmas, it is a great time to blow the dust off of it and put it at the top of the blog once again. Here are a dozen things that can help the new home brewer when starting out. These are common issues that can easily be avoided and help make a better beer.

12. Using 5 ounces priming sugar

Your Local Home Brew Store (LHBS) will often sell pre packaged priming sugar for bottling, which is just what you want for a five gallon batch for most beers (1oz/gallon). However, many batches of beer may start as five gallons, but after transferring the beer off the yeast cake, evaporation, samples you take, and any spills that may happen, the final bottling volume of beer may be considerably less than this. If the full 5oz of priming sugar is used, this can create an overly carbonated bottle of beer that could potentially just spew out foam when opened or poured.

 

 

11. Relying on Airlock / Not waiting long enoughGetting excited about your first few batches of beer is common, but moving them along too quickly in the process can be a mistake. Getting anxious to bottle your beer before it has fully fermented can result in blown bottles down the road. Relying on just the airlock as an indicator that your beer is done and ready to be bottled is a common mistake. Even after your airlock has stopped is it a good idea to let you beer age for a while. The extra time won’t hurt it. The only way to truly tell that your beer has stopped fermenting is by taking a hydrometer reading a couple days apart to make sure the specific gravity is not changing.

 

 

10. Squeezing the bag after steeping

Steeping grain is something you can do to greatly improve an extract only beer. Most ingredient kits are built with a healthy amount of steeping grain and a muslin bag (sock) to hold it all (1-3 pounds). After steeping the bag of grain in some warm water you should pull it out and discard it. However, it is a natural tendency to want to squeeze this bag of grainy goodness to get all the sweet liquid from it, but this is not a good idea. There is a bitterness (and not the good kind you get from hops) that reside in the barley husk, that can be very noticeable in your final beer.

 9.Starting with a complicated beerIt is true, that for many beers the brewing process is very similar, but as a beginner it is easy to get excited and want to go for a complex and high alcohol beer such as an Imperial Stout, Belgian Tripel or Double IPA. These beers can have extra steps or ingredients, or just a bunch of hop additions to keep track of, but the biggest reason not to start with one is time. Big beers need time to age properly and you don’t want to wait 3-6 months to find out you did something wrong. Worse, if you only have one equipment kit, you will be taking up space in your secondary fermenter for three months and not brewing more beer. Start with some beers that will be done in a month or so, if for no other reason than to fill the fridge before you start aging your 10% monster brew.

 

 

8. Not following the recipe/Just following the recipe/worrying too much

Some people get stuck doing exactly what the instructions say which leads to some anxiety when the inevitable problem/situation happens that forces them off that course. Others throw caution to the wind and start adding a bunch of extras like 50% more extract or hops than the recipe calls for. Both of these extremes will produce beer, but brewing should both be fun and produce good beer. Getting too worked up about getting everything just right can reduce the amount of fun you have while you are getting into a new hobby, and throwing your beer out of any recognizable style can possibly make the beer something you don’t want to drink. So don’t worry while you are brewing your first beer, just have fun while trying to brew a recipe that is tried and true so you can enjoy the fruits of your labor.

 

 

7. Not removing brew pot from heat

You will probably have a boil-over eventually, but there is a really easy way to help keep this from happening. If you remove your kettle from the heat source before you add your extract the slower thermal change will help keep this from happening (at least less violently). There is also the added benefit of not scorching your Liquid Extract as you add it, since there won’t be a direct heat source on it as sits on the bottom of the pot before you get it stirred up and in solution.

 

 

6. Not aerating the wort adequately

To make it simple, your yeast needs only a couple of things to sustain a healthy start to fermentation; sugar and oxygen. The only time you should intentionally add Oxygen to your beer is when you are adding (pitching) your yeast. Feel free to shake, aggressively pour, or slosh your wort (unfermented beer) at this point in time, as this will introduce the Oxygen that your yeast needs to reproduce at a healthy rate.

 

 

5. Wrong temps

Temperature control is what making beer is all about. It is a little less critical in an extract/grain kit, but controlling the temperature at every stage of brewing is what leads to consistent results and minimal off flavors. Just as a rule of thumb for ales; 155°F (Steeping), Aggressive boil, 70°F (pitching yeast), then 60-70°F (fermentation).

 

 

4. Not keeping records

This might not seem as important as some of the other things, but if you don’t keep notes of - what you used in your recipe, how much yeast you added, and what temperature you fermented at and for how long, you could find yourself wishing that you had down the road. These are just some of the notes you need to record per batch so you can dial in your recipe for the best beer the world has ever seen, make the same beer over again... or heaven forbid, help you sort out what went wrong.

 

 

3. Chlorine

Many municipal water supplies have a good water profile for making beer. Hard water can be good for some beers, soft can be good for others, but chlorine (or the more stubborn form, chloramine) is not good for any beer. Depending on the amount you get in your finished beer it can lead to a plastic or even band-aid taste, which can be very unpleasant. Using fresh spring water is ideal, but you can also treat your water with campden (metabisulfite) to help the chlorine “gas-out”. Just one campden tablet can treat up to 20 gallons of water.

 

 

2. Incorrect pitch rate

Adding yeast to your cooled down wort (pitching) is pretty straightforward, but adding the correct amount is a really easy way to reduce “off flavors”, and unfortunately this is commonly overlooked by the home brewer. There are benefits to having a quick start to your fermentation, and adding correct amount of yeast cells to your batch can make that happen. Your LHBS can give you the long explanation on how to calculate the correct pitch rate, but for a 5 gallon batch of beer over 5% alcohol, you will benefit from either one packet of dry yeast, or two packs (or vials) of liquid yeast. You will need even more than this for even higher alcohol beers, or any lagers.

 

 

1. Cleanser vs Sanitizer

Back in the old days of the 1990s and earlier, home brewers would use soap to clean and either iodine or bleach to sanitize, but this combination was hard to deal with and replaced worrying about bacteria to worrying about off flavors from soaps and chemicals. These days home brewers have access to products made specifically for their hobby, but starting out you may get these items confused.  First use a cleanser to clean any organic matter from your equipment such as One Step, or PBW (both brands are cleansers designed for brewing). These products contain what is essentially dry hydrogen peroxide and while some people even use them as sanitizers, they tend to leave a film so rinsing is recommended, and once you rinse something, you are assuming the water you used for rinsing is free of microorganisms. This is where sanitizer comes in. Products like StarSan and iodophor are no rinse sanitizers that will not harm your beer. However, you can’t sanitize something if it isn’t first cleaned, so clean  with a cleanser then sanitize with a sanitizer, and you will greatly minimize the potential for a ruined beer. Some may call this over kill, but it is a small price to pay to avoid dumping 5 gallons of precious beer down the drain.