I-Guid-Brewng-art - 6/12/11

"Intermediate Guide to Brewing" by HL Rory McGowen.

NOTE: See also the files: brewing-msg, N-Guid-Brewng-art, Bottle-Labels-art, fruit-wines-msg, wine-msg, bev-labels-art, barley-water-msg, small-beer-msg, ale-msg.

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NOTICE -

This article was submitted to me by the author for inclusion in this set of files, called Stefan's Florilegium. 

These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org

Copyright to the contents of this file remains with the author or translator.

While the author will likely give permission for this work to be reprinted in SCA type publications, please check with the author first or check for any permissions granted at the end of this file.

Thank you,
Mark S. Harris...AKA:..Stefan li Rous
stefan at florilegium.org
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You can find more articles by this author elsewhere in the Florilegium and on the Medieval Brewers Home Page at http://forgottensea.org/medievalbrewers/

Intermediate Guide to Brewing
by Rory McGowen
In the previous article that I wrote, "Yet Another Newbie Guide to Brewing" (YANG) (http://www.florilegium.org/files/BEVERAGES/N-Guid-Brewng-art.html ), I mentioned a lot of things that I just briefly touched on and said that I would cover it later in an Intermediate guide. Well, this is it. For this article, I am going to assume that you have been brewing a bit, possibly even following my YANG article. If so, thank you. I am always glad to teach newer brewers what I have found out from my research and my personal experience.

In this guide I am going to go into depth more on theory, than on application. This won't be a walk through like the last guide, but you should be able to use this guide with the previous one to improve your techniques. Also, I promise to use language and examples that hopefully most people will be able to understand.

By now, you may have figured out that there is more to the brewing world than just beers and wines. But those are our two broad categories. There are also cordials, meads, ciders, and 100's more. But in the end, they all fit, one way or another, under beers and wines. Why is that? Because fermentation only comes from the conversion of sugars to alcohol and CO2 by yeasts. You probably know that fruits have sugar, so that explains wines; but what about beers that come from grain containing starch? That's pretty easy to explain, too. A brewer, in making beer, takes grain and germinates it (or gets it to start growing). But the young plant that needs to sprout from the grain can't grow on starch, so it converts the starch to sugars for the plant to feed on. It is at this time that the brewer stops the germination process and uses the sugars (malt) produced from the starch. So if all fermentation comes from sugar, why aren't beers and wines actually under one category? They are: brewing.

The brewer doesn't actually create alcohol. Despite man's best efforts, we do not fully understand the how the yeast makes this change, and we cannot duplicate it without the yeast. We know that there are over two dozen enzymes at work within the yeast, but what each are, and what they do,  and what order, are still a mystery to us.

In the last article, I gave you advice on what yeast to use. But there is a lot of information that should go into deciding which yeast is right for your project. And a lot of terms that you should get familiar with if you are going to chose yeast appropriate to your projects.

Yeast come in many strains, or varieties. Dogs are a good analogy. While all dogs are canines, not all dogs are German Shepards. Some dogs are Saint Bernards, some poodles, and others beagles. Some dogs are good herders, some are retrievers, some are bloodhounds. Still others are cold weather dogs, while some prefer more temperate climates. All this is true of yeasts as well.

Some yeasts have high activity levels and ferment fast, while others are slower. Some can tolerate higher levels of alcohol than others. Some like cooler temperatures, some like it warmer. Then you have some yeast that flocculate, or clump together, while other yeasts are more spread out. Attenuation, or the efficiency rating of conversion, becomes part of the factor eventually. Not to mention pH levels, or whether it is a top fermenting or a bottom fermenting yeast. And when you have all that figured out, don't forget flavor. Who wants a yeast that leaves a terrible flavor?

Right about now you are saying: "What. . .Wait. . . Whoa!" I don't blame you. I just wanted to get the point across that choosing your yeast can be a fairly involved process. Let's go back through those again.

Activity level refers to the whether a yeast will ferment fast or slow. The faster the fermentation, the more possible it becomes to produce off flavors. But sometimes a fermentation needs a kick in the pants. You might get what we call a "stuck fermentation" that needs persuasion to continue. Fermentation may become stuck for a number of reasons, but it generally means that, for whatever reason, the process has stopped (or never really got started) and you need to introduce a fast yeast to get the process started again. A fast yeast is also good for projects with a high Original Gravity (OG) that may need assistance getting started.

Alcohol tolerance is how much alcohol a yeast can stand before it goes dormant and stops producing. Most beer yeasts stop under 10%, while wine yeasts generally start there and head up to about 18%. One strain has been "rated" for 21%, but only under ideal "lab" conditions. So the next time someone tells you that they made a 30% wine, first ask them how they measured it since hydrometers only go to 21-22%, and second, ask them where they got the miracle yeast. I will return to the topic of alcohol tolerance later, but I want to get through the other topics first.

Flocculation is the "pack mentality" the yeasts have. Do they stick together or do they just float around by themselves? This becomes more relevant when combined with top fermentation versus bottom fermenting. Lets say that we are making a mead. A mead is a wine that is made with honey. Honey is a heavy sugar that will settle to the bottom and clump together. In this situation, it would be better to have a high flocculating, bottom fermenting yeast. Compare this to elderberries that float. A high flocculating, bottom fermenting yeast is just about the last thing that you want in this case, right? Or what about an apple cider, where the sugar is evenly distributed throughout the must? You would want a very low flocculating yeast so that as much of the sugars get touched as possible.

Attenuation is how efficient a yeast converts sugar to alcohol. I have read that most yeasts attenuate 66-77% of the total amount of sugars present in a must. So that means that not only are you factoring in the percentage of alcohol you want to determine your OG, but you have to realize that not all sugar is going to get fermented to begin with. This is just another reason why the hydrometer trick I showed in the previous guide isn't 100%.

And like I said, once you balance all of these factors, you must consider taste. I did an experiment in the summer of 2000. I made a five gallon honey mead wort. Separated it into 15 different one gallon carboys and pitched 15 different yeasts. I did it to show that every yeast has a different flavor. The experiment was a complete success. The class that I gave involving the different "meads" went over very well, and the students that attended now have a deep appreciation for the fact that flavor is a major factor in yeast choice. The major draw back is that I cannot share the taste results with you in this format. Take my word for it when I say that every one of them was very distinguishable from the next. What was the best one you ask? Well given that taste is subjective, and doesn't even begin to address the topics above, I can't really answer that question. The one that influenced the flavor of the mead in a positive way was, in my opinion, Lalvin's RC212. Check the following chart for some results of research I have done on different yeasts. It is far from complete, but it will give you an idea of the differences in yeasts. http://mbhp.forgottensea.org/yeast.html

If you recall from the previous article, I described a process for determining how much sugar you need to add to your must's OG to predict its Final Gravity (FG). In that explanation, I described taking your OG and subtracting the percentage of alcohol your yeast was rated for to determine what your FG was going to be. In that exercise I had you use the Specific Gravity (SG) scale on your hydrometer. I did this to get you used to using the SG scale. Most hydrometers nowadays come with a Potential Alcohol (PA) scale that is divided by percentages for you. The neat thing about this PA scale is that most hydrometers made today in the USA, have accounted and adjusted for the SG curve, the fact that alcohol is not as dense as water, and the attenuation problem described above. So this scale, while not as scientific as the SG scale, will work better for most everyday homebrewers.

The same trick that I showed you before, can be used using the PA scale, and be more accurate for your purposes. One of the things that you can add to the trick, however is to find a wine that you like a lot, as far as sweetness. Now using the hydrometer, get the PA percentage. Use this number for your FG from now on. Say for instance that you like a PA 4% wine. Now add the alcohol tolerance rating of your yeast, say 14%. You end up with 18%, or a SG of 1.138, pretty close to our example in the previous guide. If you switch yeasts, and use a champagne yeast with an alcohol tolerance of 18%, you can just add your 4% to that and figure on a OG of PA 22%.

If you were following the YANG guide, then I had you get the minimum amount of gear for getting started. And undoubtedly you have picked up some other tools along the way as well. But I want to take a moment and go over some of the gear that you might not know of, or haven't gotten, or didn't know what it was so you didn't get it.

First I want to stress the importance of your brewing pot. Seriously, in ancient times, in Central American cultures, your brewing pot was blessed by the local priest and anyone touching your pot was punished with death. It was a very serious affair. In today's world, I don't think that touching your brew pot is a valid argument in a murder trial, but it is an important tool nonetheless.  6 gallon Stainless steel pots are the ultimate in luxury for today's brewers. I wouldn't mind having a 6 gallon glass Pyrex pot either, but I don't want to see the price tag. I always steer people away from aluminum pots.  For several reasons. When I was a younger brewer, a report was published that linked aluminum with Alzheimer's Disease. Since that time, the report has been somewhat debunked, but just in case. . . Besides, aluminum is a porous metal, meaning that it does not have a smooth finish to it. It is riddled with microscopic pits and craters. Aluminum retains whatever is in those pores and passes it on to your next batch. No matter how hard you scrub your pot. So let's say that you made a pyment (Grape Mead) last week and are now ready to make a cider (Apple Wine). Despite the fact that you washed the pot really well, there were some bacteria that found a tiny pocket of pyment in a pore of your pot and now that bacteria is in your cider. Of course you are going to pasteurize your must, but you see how easy it is to pass crud along in an aluminum pot? Secondly, aluminum oxidizes really easy, and those oxidized particles come off and flavor your must in a most funky and unpleasant way. Stainless steel and glass pots don't do this. So for these reasons, stay away from aluminum.

With the bigger pot, you may need a bigger spoon.

Brewing supply stores usually carry a brewing spoon that has a 30-36" handle that allows you to stir just about anything. These are really handy. A "Wine Thief" is also another handy piece of brewing hardware. It's basically a piece of plastic tube with a bulbous end, kind of like the hydrometer, with a hole in each end. You put the thief in your must, cover the top hole with your finger, and pull out the thief full of your must. It makes taking a SG reading really easy. A brewing thermometer is also a very handy item to have. You might also start picking up extra carboys so that you can make racking easier and have more than one batch going at a time. This will eventually require a shelving system strong enough to hold the weight of several carboys. In extreme cases it will require the building of a separate kitchen so your Significant Other (SO) can have their kitchen back. Someday you might want to start recycling bottles, which means that you are going to want bottle brushes, bottle jet washers that fit on the kitchen faucet, bottle drying trees, and wine racks stacked with both full and empty bottles. All of which may lead to you needing a second house; because its either your SO or your brewing. . . Aren't you going to miss your SO?

Now is as good a time as any to touch on why you might need a brewing thermometer, and explain why previously I had said that boiling the must is completely unnecessary. This is a heated argument within the brewing community; excuse the pun. To boil, or not to boil, that is the question. Many people believe that you must boil the must. It is the only way to kill everything that might be bad in your must. Or is it?

I had you boil your must in the YANG guide, so why would I now say that you don't need to? I told you to boil before to get you used to the idea of pasteurizing your must. And in using fruit juices from concentrate, it won't do any real harm. But when dealing with real fruits and real juices, as you will eventually do, if you haven't already; it is fairly important not to boil the must. When you boil the must, you break down proteins and pectin in the fruit juice and they then turn gelatinous. This will be seen as a haze within the wine, and is nearly impossible to get rid of. Boiling also destroys natural enzymes in the juice that give it stability, body, and flavor, and give the yeast necessary environmental support. So if we aren't going to boil, how do we pasteurize the must and make it safe? Follow the chart below. 

120 F for 60 min
130 F for 40 min
140 F for 30 min
145 F for 20 min
150 F for 17 min
155 F for 13 min
160 F for 10 min
165 F for 7 min
170 F for 2 min

The lower the temperature, the more natural your wine will taste. But it is important for safety that your must gets pasteurized if you are following my guides; because in my guides I do not instruct you to use chemicals like sulfites (camden tablets) or potassium sorbate.

Why don't I instruct people to use chemicals? Pick up any bottle of commercial wine and the label clearly states "Contains Sulfites." If its good enough for the commercial guys, it should be good enough for you, right? Do you know why that label says "Contains Sulfites?" Because it has to according to Federal guidelines. One-tenth of America's population are allergic to sulfites. Think about ten people you know, and now think about the fact that at least one of them cannot safely drink wine containing sulfites without severe discomfort or hospitalization. Now think about those same ten people and realize that using my methods, every one of them can enjoy the wine I have been teaching you to make. Thus it is important to follow the advice given here regarding the cleaning and washing of everything and pasteurizing the must.

If the debate can be so easily solved, why is it such a heated discussion? Because brewing is about pride, and no one wants to think that they are wrong. And some people swear that chemicals are absolutely necessary in modern brewing. That is their opinion, and they are perfectly welcome to it. But it is personal experience that these same people do not put the "Contains Sulfites" warnings on their homebrew because you, as a drinker, should expect it to have chemicals. Which is a terrible attitude to have. These people made a beverage that is dangerous to one-tenth the people in America, didn't put a warning on the label, and then they blame the victim for being stupid. And when you point out the error in their logic, their pride and knowledge is challenged, and hence, the debate goes on.

In my previous guide, I showed you the way to make wine without chemicals. Keep in mind that for thousands of years, cultures all over the world made alcohol without chemicals. But if you feel the need to use chemicals, then by all means do so. . . just have the courtesy to warn others.

So what keeps the alcohol you made from going bad, since it doesn't have chemicals. First, we pasteurized it. Then we cooled it quickly in transferring it to the carboy through the use of ice. Next, we added the yeast that we had already started.

Why does that last bit about the yeast make a difference? Glad you asked. We start the yeast early to get it active and reproducing. When we add it to the must, the yeast we started is active. Whereas the yeast and bacteria that may have gotten in the must during the time we put it in the carboy and cooled it are not yet active. So when we put our good yeasts into the carboy, they cannibalistically eat the yeast and bacteria that we didn't introduce. That is why it is important to start your yeasts early. If you just sprinkle the yeast straight out of the package into the must, then it becomes a foot race to see if your good yeast will become active before the bad yeasts. And since this isn't the movies, the good guys don't always win. Also of note about yeast, is that during the fermentation process, as yeasts die off, they create minute amounts of natural sulfur; not enough to be harmful to humans, but enough to keep bad yeasts from eating them. There is balance in nature, and it is man's influence that disrupts that balance.

I keep mentioning "Bad Yeasts." What are those? Well, they aren't yeasts that grew up on the streets and joined gangs, if that's what you're wondering. There are literally thousands of millions of types of yeast. Of those, only 250 will produce alcohol through fermentation. And of those, only 24 are "good" yeast, or yeast that will produce drinkable alcohol. The other 226 types of yeasts that produce alcohol will either make you sick or make you blind. Those are the bad yeasts.

Another factor in wine health is the pH level of the must. This refers to the level of acid in your must. This can be measured with the use of pH strips or with a pH meter you can get from the brewing supply store. A slightly acidic wine will not only taste "alive" but it will help preserve your wine. Why do you think that nearly everything that you drink or eat contains some ascorbic acid or phosphoric acid? It is to help preserve it. Oddly, brewing yeasts happen to like a slightly acidic environment. But too much acid is not only harsh on the taste buds, but also a harmful environment for yeasts. Like I said, nature has balance. This is why we added the slice of lemon in the previous guide. But there is a much more precise way of adding acid to your wine. Your brewing supply store should carry "Acid Blend." This is a mixture of three different acids that you can add to your wine. With this you can precisely manipulate your acid levels. For a more advanced study on acids, please take a look at Master Gerald Goodwine's article at: http://mbhp.forgottensea.org/acid.html

But there is still more you can do to help naturally preserve your wine. Ever wonder why most beers and wines come in green or brown bottles? It is to protect it from light. Light is harmful to your brews. That is why I generally insist on using green bottles for wine. It protects the wine inside from the harmful light on the outside. Heat will also destroy a finished wine. So keep your bottles out of direct sunlight and do not store them in areas prone to getting hot. That also happens to be why most professional wine cellars are dimly lit cellars. They are dark and the temperature is constant year round.

Let's talk about ingredients for a few minutes. Up to now, you may have been using fruit juices or extracts. But nothing tastes better than fresh fruit. The very first real fruit wine that I ever made came from my grape vines. It was a lot of work harvesting enough grapes to make a single batch of wine and preparing them for the must. My wife and I each collected 5 gallons of the ripe grapes from the vines. We then took them into the house and picked them from the stems, placing them in the sink for washing. While doing this, we sorted through the grapes to remove the unripe ones, over ripe ones, infected grapes, or those afflicted with worms or other such insects. We then washed the good ones in the sink and came up with around five gallons. We put this on the stove in my 6 gallon stainless steel pot, added just enough water to cover the grapes, covered the pot, and cooked them over the lowest heat possible overnight. In the morning we removed the grapes into a mash bag, which is a nylon mesh sack, squeezed all the juice we could from the grapes, and proceeded in making the wine as we would normally. The results from our fresh juice were well worth the effort! We have done that every year since.

The next "from fruit" wine I made was a pineapple wine. Why? Because it was exotic and the pineapples were on sale really cheap. But with pineapple, you must remove the skin to get to the meat of the fruit. We quickly figured out that in just cutting the skins off, we were losing valuable juice. So, as I have said before, being a brewer will make you inventive. I sent my wife to the local dollar store to pick up a new dish rack. We washed up the "pan" that comes with the rack and used it as a cutting board with a bowl located at the spout end. This worked quite well. Most of the juice from cutting up the pineapple was captured, and it and the cut up fruit were added to the pot. This time I decided to leave the fruit in the must. And even left the fruit in the carboy during the primary fermentation. The results were a very strong, definite pineapple flavor. The fruit was removed during racking, and the wine was fantastic.

I continue to use both methods to this day. If the fruit that I am using is lightly flavored, I leave it in the must until the first rack. It the fruit has a very strong flavor, I generally pull it out of the must before starting the fermentation. Remember, you can make adjustments during that first racking.

The first cider that I made was definitely lacking something when we got to the first racking. So my wife, ever the quick thinker, pulled out some cinnamon bark sticks that she had in a jar. We tossed a few into the cider to see how that would turn out. The result was incredible. The natural cinnamon bark flavored the cider with a taste that was better than any cider I had ever had where the pre-packaged cinnamon was added during the cooking. Not only did it have the cinnamon flavor that helped liven up the otherwise boring cider, but because it was cinnamon bark, it added a barrel-aged flavor that you just don't get with most homebrews. My point is that you should experiment and invent, and using fresh ingredients really pays off.

One thing you should get into the habit of doing as you start to create your own recipes, is to start keeping a log/recipe book. At the end of this article I have provided a sample of one of my log pages. A log helps you in two ways. If you keep track of every detail of the process, you can either reproduce a great result, or avoid reproducing a terrible result. It also becomes invaluable when discussing your beverages with other people or in entering them into competition. Competition? You can't be serious. . . Why Not? Nearly every decent-sized city in the country has some form of brewing competition in the area. Check with your local brewing supply stores. If you and your friends like your wines, why wouldn't others? And you might learn something. Brewers are always eager to give advice. . . Why do you think I wrote these articles?

That just about covers the intermediate guide's purpose of explaining the theories behind the procedures, and expounding on improving your results. Keep up the good work, and happy brewing. 

Brewing Log Examples

Name of
Mead/Wine:______________________________________________________

Date of Vinting:_____________
Batch size:__________________

Ingredients:____________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________

Time of Boil:____________________________
Temp of Boil:____________________________
When and how ingredients and Honey/Sugar were
added:____________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________

Beginning Specific Gravity: __________________
Temperature of wort when yeast added:_________
Dates of Racking:
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________

Date when bottled:______________
Ending Specific Gravity:_____________________

Comments:_______________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________


Name of
Beer:___________________________________________________________

Date of Brewing:_____________
Batch size:__________________

Ingredients:____________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________

Time of Boil:_________________________
Temp of Boil:_________________________
When and how grains and Hops were
 added:_______________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________

Beginning Specific Gravity: __________________
Temperature of wort when yeast added:_________
Dates of
Racking:________________________________________________________

Date when bottled:______________
Ending Specific Gravity:____________________
Amount of Priming Sugar:____________________

Comments:_______________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________


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Copyright 2001 by Paul Fry. <rory at forgottensea.org>. Permission is granted for republication in SCA-related publications, provided the author is credited.  Addresses change, but a reasonable attempt should be made to ensure that the author is notified of the publication and if possible receives a copy.

If this article is reprinted in a publication, I would appreciate a notice in the publication that you found this article in the Florilegium. I would also appreciate an email to myself, so that I can track which articles are being reprinted. Thanks. -Stefan.

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Edited by Mark S. Harris	I-Guid-Brewng-art	2 of 11