by Erich W. Gunther, EnerNex Corporation, USA

Even the busiest people in our industry need a break from time to time. For Erich the best way to relax is by being busy doing something else he enjoys - brewing beer!

Most people that know me may have noticed that I am a bit of a work-a-holic -
OK,
so maybe that is an understatement!  To address this, years ago my wife suggested (OK, mandated) that I get a hobby.  My wife Jane is a chef and we both love food and drink so I was looking for something in this arena that she would accept.  Long story short, beer making turned out to be acceptable.  Little did we know at the time that it was the perfect storm - it involves most of the elements of technique that go into cooking a fine meal - good ingredients, attention to detail, cleanliness - but also a lot of engineering is involved.  The perfect storm!

There are a lot of home brewing books out there to cover the basics and kits that make it easy to get started, but they often result in mediocre results with a lot of effort.  I thought I would share my lessons learned that make it easy to turn out a great beer with as little effort as possible.

There are several ways to make a homemade beer but the simplest is to use the malt extract method.  This is the method described in most home brewing books and is what you find when you buy a kit from your local home brew shop.  You can make a great beer this way with just a few deviations from the basic recipes and approach that you find described in books and the kit instructions.

Like cooking, it all starts with good, fresh ingredients.  For beer, that means five things:   Malt; Specialty grains;  Hops;  Yeast; and  Water.  All of these need to be of superior quality to get a superior beer.  That includes the last ingredient - water.  Water makes up 95% of the finished product so it should be of the highest quality.  I choose to purchase carboys (5 gallon jugs) of mountain spring water sold for water coolers.  That way there is no chlorine or other contaminants that may interfere with fermentation or give off flavors to the beer (Fig. 2).

From the other ingredients, the next most important is the yeast.  The dry yeast that comes with most kits is acceptable, but can be unpredictable at times in activating and it doesn't give you much control over the flavor.  Selecting an alternate yeast allows you to experiment with different flavors that result using different types of yeast.  For consistency and control over flavor, I use liquid yeast I get from my local homebrew shop or online ( www.morebeer.com or www.northernbrewer.com ).  These yeasts are a lot more expensive ($7.00 at my local shop), but are well worth it for the flavor and ease of use.

The hops and malt extract are more forgiving and have a long shelf life in the form we are using them here - dry and liquid malt extracts and pelletized hops.  You can use fresh hops, but that takes a lot of experience to calculate the amount needed.  Pelletized hops are readily available at homebrew shops and in kits which are very good in quality, and consistent.  Just make sure that they are kept refrigerated in their original sealed package to ensure maximum longevity and freshness. I will refer the reader to a homebrew book for detailed instructions, but I have included my most popular recipe and basic instructions bellow.  I will focus now on the key differential elements for making a great beer that you won't find in the books.

To make it easier to get the beer as clear as possible and minimize clogging if you filter the beer later, I use nylon bags to hold my hops and specialty grains during the brewing process.  These can be found in your local homebrew shop - I use the finest mesh they have.  This keeps unfermentable material out of the wort and eliminates the need to filter it out later.

When steeping your specialty grains, be very careful of the temperature - keep it around 155o F (68.3o C) and make sure you don't scorch the grain bag by leaving the heat on too high.  As shown in Figure 1, brew your beer outside if you are using a propane heater - Carbon Monoxide (CO) is produced with the incomplete combustion of Propane (C2H8).  Otherwise it produces carbon dioxide in high volumes which still isn't good in an enclosed area (Fig. 3).

Use a wort chiller to cool your beer at the end of the boil as quickly as possible (Fig. 6).  A wort chiller comes in many forms but the easiest to use and clean is a simple coil of copper tubing with garden hose fittings on it that is used as a heat exchanger (see, thermodynamics come into this too - totally geek).  You can buy one at one of the on-line homebrew stores I noted earlier.

Everything that is going to touch the beer after boiling the wort and cooling it must be sanitized.  Most people who end up with bad beer can blame it on being contaminated by wild bacteria or yeasts.  I use a no-rinse sanitizer (One-Step) that is really easy to use.  Just a tablespoon of the white powder in warm water in a clean sink is good enough to sanitize tubing, thermometer, hygrometer, aeration stone, fermentation carboy or bucket, kegs, etc.

Before pitching yeast, make sure that the wort temperature is 70o F (21.1o C) or less, or you will kill the yeast or delay its reproduction which lets wild bacteria and yeast "skunk" the batch.  I had this happen to me recently on a 10 gallon batch because I was impatient and pitched the yeast too soon.  Also, aerate the wort using an aeration stone and air pump with filter - or just agitate the wort in the fermentation container.  This gives the yeast the best chance to reproduce quickly and overcome any wild yeasts or bacteria that may have gotten in the wort.

Control the temperature of the wort while fermenting to keep it in the proper range for your yeast.  For ale yeasts like mentioned in the recipe bellow, I use 68-69o F (about 20o C).  I use a small refrigerator controlled by a commercial thermostatic control.  If you are fermenting where it is cool, you will need a fermentation heater for your fermentation bucket or carboy.  These are available at the web sites I noted above.  Of course, if you have a stable temperature in your home from 68-74o F (20-23o C)- that will do just fine.   In Figure 4 you can see the external controller temperature probe.

OK, this is the most important tip to get good beer and not be frustrated -

DON'T BOTTLE YOUR BEER - keg it instead.  Bottling is a total pain in the butt.  Too much cleaning, sanitizing, and messing with natural carbonation - it sucks all the fun out of beer making - at least for me.  After fermentation is complete, I transfer my beer to five gallon soda kegs (also called Cornelius or Corney kegs). You only need one, it is easy to clean and sanitize, carbonate, and directly supports easy dispensing in a simple draft system.  If you want some bottles for gifts, buy some 1 liter Grolsch style bottles and fill them after kegging and force carbonating.

Use a beer siphon pump to transfer beer from a primary to secondary fermenter or into your keg.  Doing so manually (sucking the beer into a tube with your mouth like you would when stealing gas) is a very good way to contaminate your freshly brewed beer.  Cheap siphon starters are available at your home brew shop.

Many home brewers end up with under or over carbonated beer if they try and naturally carbonate by adding priming sugar as directed in many beer kits.  It is way easier and much faster to force carbonate.  This is done simply by pressurizing the keg with CO2, cooling it and shaking it periodically.  Figure 4 below shows my setup for cooling to just above freezing, force carbonating, and storing.  It only takes 24 hours or so to carbonate this way.

Most ales will be done fermenting after a week, you can rack (move via siphon) it to a glass secondary fermenter (see a home brewing book for more information) at the end of that first week, let sit for a second and maybe a third week, and then rack it into the keg.  It takes me 4 hours from start to finish including cleaning and putting everything away on brewing day, about an hour to rack the beer to a secondary fermenter a week later, and another hour to rack it into the keg and put it under pressure at the end of week three.  A total of 6 hours of labor only on weekends over a 3 week calendar duration which fits well into my crazy schedule!

The most important part comes next - enjoying the beer!  Set the pressure on your CO2 system to 5-10 pounds, use 8 feet (2.4 m) of small tubing from the keg to the tap for better pressure control - and serve!  I suggest finding friends to enjoy it with.  You will soon find that you attract many new friends with your new hobby.  If you are really good, you will end up with good looking beer groupies as in the tailgating event! (Fig. 7)