How to Make Your First Commercial Batch of Beer in 75 Easy Steps

As you may or may not know, I have somehow found myself a job as a professional brewer. I make the beer at Kent Falls Brewing Co, a farm brewery (Connecticut's first). It's pretty sweet! I've been lucky now to have jumped into the world of pipes and clamps and hoses that is professional brewing, and have even made it to the point where we're successfully moving beer out onto the market. How does this work? What sort of process does one go through as a novice pro brewer? I'm sure many of you are curious what it's like to make the dream happen, and so I'd like to share with you these 75 Easy Steps by which you, too, may make your first Commercial Beer. If you are impressed by just how effectively this guide allows you, too, to bring your first Commercial Beer out to market, please share with your friends, family and neighbors so that they too may absorb this useful knowledge!

1. Spend three years opening a commercial brewery. This step is probably the easiest. As anyone in the industry will tell you, breweries practically open themselves.

2. Okay, obviously most of that step #1 was just super painless, but towards the end maybe you find a hiccup or two. Just basic fun stuff like maybe the auger (the pipe that transports the grain from the mill to the grist case) won’t align the way it was intended due to the placement of another pipe, and you’ll have to diagram out some crazy schemes before realizing the grain mill can just go in a different corner altogether, and a super-long auger run solves the problem. Something like this will delay your planned brewing schedule a few weeks, but there was other stuff to get done anyway.

3. When you are just about ready to brew, the winter will take a turn toward the unfathomably brutal and smother your remaining sanity in a blanket of endless snow. This will delay your planned brewing schedule a number of times, but there’s always other stuff to get done anyway. Shoveling, for instance.

4. When the snow let's up for half a day and schedules align, perform your first water brew (a test of the brewing system with only water, rather than actual production of wort). There will be some weird quirks to figure out, some procedural questions to answer, but in general, this goes pretty smoothly. Congratulations! You have now boiled water.

5. Transfer water into a fermentation tank. Find that the glycol immediately chills the tank down to near-freezing temperatures and can’t be turned off. Okay. Uh. That’s… not supposed to happen. Something wonky is going on with the solenoid valves of the glycol system, apparently. This will delay your planned brewing schedule by a day or two. It's okay, you can just... do another water brew, I guess? It's probably for the best, really, if you think about it. The more prepared you are, the better!

6. Briefly considering jumping into the bottled water market instead. The margins are much better.

7. On your second water brew, you’re certain your brew system is operating smoothly. This is great. You’re so close, you can practically smell the wort. Just have to wait for this glycol situation to get sorted out, but that's only a matter of time.

8. Also your cellar-side pump stops working every five minutes due to some unforeseen electrical issue because of course it stops working every five minutes due to some unforeseen electrical issue no it’s cool this is fine it’s just another few days, like, whatever at this point, you know? It’s fine. We've already been delayed a few months, what's a few more days? Seriously, it’s fine, it’s not that big of a deal, we’ll just brew on Monday. All that will be fixed by then, you know.

9. Okay. It’s Sunday night. Time to prep the grain so you're set to go in the morning. Get ready for your FIRST EVER COMMERCIAL BREW holy shit this is so exciting.

10. Why the **** will the grain mill not work?

11. Too tired for this. Can’t troubleshoot. We’ll figure it out in the morning.

12. Monday morning! Brew-time! Right after we figure out this grain mill.

13. Okay, okay, that was our bad. Can’t load the grain in before you start the mill. Should have known better. To be fair, all the labels on the mill are in German. Were you supposed to know what “Zu / Auf / Zulauf” means? Maybe you spent two years teaching yourself German back in the day and you still don’t ******* know what that’s supposed to mean in the context of a grain mill. What do you look like, some kind of German mill scientist? I mean, now you know what that’s for. Okay. Needs to be Zu before you start the mill or it jams. You have to Auf the grain in there as it starts. Got it.

14. NOW WHY IS THE SCREEN FLASHING A RED WARNING LIGHT?

15. AUGER ERROR???

16. WHY WON’T THE AUGER WORK NOW ARE YOU…. ****. ****. OKAY FINE. FINE. THAT’S FINE.

17. Because the coil has popped out of the back of the rotor and jammed itself into the wall, is why. That’s why, right there.

18. At this point brewing is obviously not going to happen until Tuesday, but that’s cool. All the kinks should definitely be worked out by Tuesday. Figuring out a way to work around this whole “auger not working” business isn’t really that hard. One step closer!

19. Look, seriously, it’s no big deal, we’ll just mill 1,400 lbs of grain into buckets and load it into the mash tun by hand. That’s fine. That’s totally fine. We could certainly do that if it’s required. We’ll just get started on that right now, in fact. 1,400 lbs of grain, right on that.

20. You’re brewing! You’re actually brewing! Congratulations. This 20th step in Making Your First Batch of Commercial Beer is easily one of the most important. When Making Your First Commercial Beer, you definitely want to start by Brewing a Beer. Or, if not start, then at least certainly include this step somewhere along the way.

21. Go ahead and make wort. You got this. It's all just hoses and tri-clamps, man. Don't open the wrong valve, don't do anything hastily, don't melt your crotch with hot water and dangerous chemicals, don't ruin thousands of dollars worth of beer, etc. Also might as well make another pot of coffee. Gonna need that.

22. Transfer wort into fermentor. Wow!

23. Pitch yeast. Sanitize everything carefully! Almost there! Stay on target!

24. Holy shit! You did it! The fermentor is half full, now all you have to do is brew another batch tomorrow, let it ferment, crash, harvest, transfer, package, distribute... Oh, and clean. Still a whole lot of cleaning to do. Let's make some caustic and start that CIP on the kettle. What time is it? Never too late for another cup of coffee, anyhow.

25. Man, what a long day. That... that was exhausting. Time to crack open a few beers and celebrate. You've been saving something special for just this moment. Empty it into your face!

26. Get some rest, buddy. You've earned it.

27. Wake up a few hours later, time to do it all again! Let's get some coffee going first though!

28. Still have to load the grain in and stir by hand, but you're a pro at this by now. Think of all the money you save working at a brewery, not having to pay for a gym membership! The benefits really stack up here, when you think about it.

29. Definitely about time for more coffee.

30. Why does the hose water smell like weird plastic chemicals? That's gross. Don't want that in your beer. Guess we can't use the hose? Can someone look into this?

31. Okay, but this step mash in the kettle requires rinsing out the last of the mash to transfer. We're going to need to chase it down with some other source of water. How about service water through the spray ball? That should get it out, right? Yes. Yes. Brilliant. You're a real problem-solver, you are.

32. Why isn't the water coming out of the spray ball? Is everything open?

33. It's just trickling out, like it's clogged with... oh, fuck. Fuck.

34. We clogged the fuck out of our sprayballs with mash, didn't we?

35. FML.

36. Hopefully today's run-off into the kettle won't take four hours like yesterday, but you'll get that sorted out. Just like everything else! Haha!

37. Wait, did you leave the kettle bottom valve open? You're running-off into the kettle, dumbass! It's gonna go down the drain!

38. Stupid! You're so stupid!

39. Run! Run! Wipe out on the floor! This'll hurt a bit.

40. Close call. Maybe poured a liter or two of first runnings down the drain. Not a big deal. Probably didn't need to almost kill yourself, sprinting around a brewery with wet floors, but hey. Really liked that hustle.

41. Mental note: don't ever run. Do things quickly but deliberately. Have full situational awareness at all times, no matter how exhausted or stressed you are.

42. Drink more coffee.

43. Can someone spend, like, eight hours unclogging these spray balls with a paper-clip, one tiny fraction of a grain hull at a time? If someone could just do that right now, that would be just great.

44. Don't worry, we'll accidentally clog them again a second time at the end of the day, when we try to CIP. Ha ha ha.

45. Everything else should go pretty well, though!

46. No truly significant screw-ups. That's very good. Look, at the end of the day, all that matters is you hit your numbers and made wort (and thus, beer) that tastes good. All in all, if you look at it in that light, this is going shockingly well!

47. In a few days you'll notice some epic purple bruises all down the left side of your chest from that wipe-out, of course.

48. Just can't count on things to function smoothly the first time around, I think is the lesson here.

49. Fermentation is really rolling though! So that's great. This beer is going to be delicious.

50. Well, fermentation went perfectly. As long as all the Actual Beer Stuff continues to go smoothly, there's really nothing to get frustrated about. Nothing else matters! Okay? Just keep that in mind because soon you'll be getting your kegging platform up and running and half of the menu displays are in Chinese! Ha ha. Hahahaha.

51. Fill some barrels, fill the brite tank. Relatively easy day.

52. Plan out the rest of the week. Figure it'll take a few hours to try out the kegging platform, work out any kinks in the setup, and teach yourself some basic functional Mandarin. After you know it's running smooth, you can start carbing the beer. Plan to spend the following day packaging. They'll be long days, but it'll feel so good when you're done!

53. Thursday: Test out your kegging platform. You've learned your lesson, by now: it's probably not going to work the first time, okay? Might as well just anticipate that.

54. The fitting for the compressed air into the kegging platform does not appear to be right. So it's just venting air into the atmosphere and won't get up to pressure. Pneumatics won't work. You saw that coming, didn't you?

55. Friday: Fix the connection with the weird, non-standard size fitting. Great. The kegging platform works! Let's get practice cleaning some kegs! Like you said, everything is going to have some hiccup or kink the first time through. Just gotta find it and...

56. Why did it just shut off? Why did it just stop and shut off?

57. Is there a fuse blown somewhere?

58. We'll just get on the phone again and see if we can figure this out!

59. Isn't it miraculous how the human body manages to work so well, almost all of the time? Think about it, man. It's incredible. It's like really pretty rare and usually only after many years of successful operation that it simply fails to function one day. And what real maintenance does it require? Just regular fuel. Waste. Cleaning is optional, really. And normally, that's pretty much it. The human body, man. The human machine. It really is a machine, you know? Just absolutely miraculous, when you really think about it.

60. Long story short: the fuse box inside the kegging platform blew and you need a new one. You make sure it's going to arrive tomorrow, so at least you can package first thing next week.

61. Saturday: Okay, the kegging platform works again!

62. Sunday: Time to carb up this son of a bitch so you can package on Monday!

63. Monday Morning: Why is there beer in the CO2 lines...?

64. Okay, so the CO2 ran out overnight, and the beer started to back-flow. Fortunately, it must have happened right before you came in in the morning to check, so you didn't lose anything significant.

65. Monday: Debate whether beer will be fully carbed by evening with enough time to package, or if it's better to take it slow and plan to package on Tuesday.

66. Take numerous Zahm readings throughout the day to test the carb level. It's going a lot slower than you would have thought, and eventually you'll realize you'll need to hold off until Tuesday to package.

67. Tuesday: Still needs some more carbonation. Take more Zahm readings.

68. You hit it! Let's go!

69. This is actually really easy now that everything is working right. Pretty sweet, in fact. What a convenience this kegging platform is, ultimately! This is so exciting! Your beer will be out on the market by tonight!

70. Calculate, based on keg-filling time, how long it will be until everything is package. You estimate you should be done by around 7 pm, easily, at the latest. Right in time for dinner.

71. You're drooling at the thought of the tasty wild game burger that awaits you, next to the first-ever draft pour of your beer.

72. You are done kegging around 9:30 pm.

73. Race to the first bar ever to carry your beer. Enjoy a burger that the kitchen kindly held for you. Watch with anxiety as the bartender pours the first pour of your first commercial beer.

74. Feel intense relief: it tastes exactly how you wanted it to taste. You've done it! Your beer is out there for the world to tick. In kegs, at least. The easiest way to package. Now you just have to build your bottler from scratch!

75. That can wait, though. Have some more beer first! And also might as well make a fresh pot of coffee!

Barrel-Aged Sour Saison on Doughnut Peaches - Recipe & Tasting Notes

Brewery: Bear Flavored
Style: Sour Farmhouse Ale / Saison
Brewed: 4.24.14
Bottled On: 9.24.14
ABV: 5.6%

Life in a barrel, round two.

The first thing out of my beautiful new-to-me (used) 6 gallon oak barrel was a weird concoction, partly just to see if anything even weirder than what I was planning would arise. So I aged a 14% ABV Brett cyser in the guy. When that checked out, clearly its next passenger would have to be beer. And since its previous inhabitant had been funky, its next inhabitant would be so too. I'd committed this barrel to funkdom for life.

Many homebrewers don't get the chance to mess around with barrels. Small barrels have this annoying tendency to be both aggressively over-priced, and yet less practical in use than their bigger brothers, due to the drastically increased ratio of surface area. Which means they'll set you back a lot of dough, and yet you can't easily age in them the types of beers a brewer would be most inclined to age in a barrel. Like long-aged sours.

Fortunately, I brew a lot of sour farmhouse ales that only take a couple months to finish up. Just about perfect for small-barrel aging.

Sour saisons have become big lately, and I wonder if it's just because saisons in general really took off, and obviously we're going to try to sour just about anything, or if everyone realized the same thing at the same time: you can ferment out a sour saison in much less time than a lambic-like aged sour, and yet still achieve a beer that's complex and interesting enough to be worth the effort. Saison yeast are so highly attenuating that there's generally not a lot of residual sugar left for the other microbes to work on — meaning, theoretically at least, less time required. And sour saisons generally don't invite the entire complex ecosystem that most aged ferments have, so there's less of the long-term breakdown of complex sugars; more big pushes of initial primary fermentation. Since I incorporate Brettanomyces in mine, you still have at minimum the standard aging process of a Brett beer. But that's a matter of months, not years. Some sour saison blends use only Saccharomyces and lactobacillus, and those could probably finish up in weeks.

I've been tempted to move a long-aging sour into this barrel, believe me. I have a few going that would be solid candidates. The problem then, is, your barrel is now permanently an aged-sour barrel, as far as the cultures inside go. So you've either got to keep moving aged sours in and out of it, keep an aged sour in it for a while (until another is ready to fill it) and risk an ingress of too much oxygen, or else leave the barrel empty of beer for long spells in between brief aged-sour excursions. (Even writing all those logistical concerns out hurts my head). I've given this much thought, trying to decide what cultures I wanted to have a home inside this wood permanently. The sour saison culture (White Mana) living within now is, I'm pretty sure, the best possible tenant.

One of my favorite souring cultures, a barrel that had already proven to be reliable and trustworthy, and a good base saison. What else could a beer need?

Fruit, maybe?

And so I ventured to Fishkill Farms, one of my favorite local growers of Food, where I've also done a few homebrew demos and sauerkraut workshops. They're good people and take their shit seriously, so I knew they'd have something for me. Sure enough, I found not just beautiful peaches, but a type of peach I didn't even realize existed before: doughnut peaches. Look if you're just going to go ahead and combine two of my very favorite things together in one weird looking fruit, I am so on that.

Adding fruit to a beer in a barrel is a royal pain in the ass. The easy way would have been to cut the peaches into cubes and jam them through the bunghole of the barrel. For some reason that is no longer clear to me but was clearly the result of sheer stupidity, I felt strongly at the time that puree'ing the peaches would be the way to go. Cubing and dropping would have been much faster. But I got out my blender and spent a lovely Thursday evening covered in peach detritus as I blended, two liters at a time, and poured the puree into the empty barrel. Once the peaches were all blended up real nice and inside the barrel, I finally transferred the beer on top of them. Piece of cake doughtnut!

Actually, I remember now: I figured turning the peaches into puree would save me the trouble of potentially having peach cubes lodged in my barrel afterwards, impossible to remove. Shit, that was actually smart. I take back portions of the last paragraph. There might just not be a good way to easily add fruit into a barrel. At least this was just one 6 gallon and not dozens of 225 liter barrels. It's the small things in life.

Peach is notoriously subtle in beer, hard to express even in tame sours. An average for fruit in sour beer is probably somewhere around 1 lb per gallon. With peach, some brewers go as crazy as 4 lbs per gallon. I went with half that. The result, and the success, is subjective... as with so much in brewing. At first I felt this still didn't come out with enough peach character. Many I gave it to said that it had the perfect amount of peach character. As it aged, I came to agree: sure, it could be peachier, but the subtle nature of the flavor is perfectly balanced by the gentle acidity and smooth, richer oak character. Oak and peach together seems like a no-brainer to me, with the vanilla and lingering tannic structure from the barrel positioned just enough to compliment the fruit character, you've established one of the quintessential flavor pairings of the culinary world (peach and vanilla). And I think this is part of the reason that the peach itself doesn't have to be overwhelmingly present, but just present enough. What you want here is the third corner of a well-balanced triangle. There's a brisk, clean acidity, and some residual funk from the last occupant of the barrel: I'm actually quite surprised how much of the cyser carried over. It takes this maybe from a three-pointed beer to a four, but as all of the elements exist in harmony, I find it works quite well even with this unexpected additional dimension.

I found the main down-side to this "fruit in a barrel" business the hard way, when it came time to drink this batch. Pureed fruit still leaves lots of little bits and pieces, which mostly settle to the bottom of the beer by the time it's ready to package. But it would be impossible to avoid sucking them up entirely, and suck up many pieces of peach I did. As a result, the "late fills" off my bottling bucket received huge amounts of sediment. And as a result of that crazy amount of sediment, the bottles all gushed (tons of nucleation points for CO2 to start foaming) and poured like sour peach smoothies. The majority of the bottles, which have only a typical amount of sediment, are perfectly carbed. Except for the ones I bottled in these weirdly-shaped Belgian-cap bottles I love, which, apparently, my Belgian crown capper does not love. And as a result of that, some of those bottles pour basically flat. As a result of all of these things, this may be the most inconsistently carbonated batch of beer I've made in years. Sours are always a pain in the ass to carb properly and consistently, but my main takeaway: always use something to filter out fruit chunks. A fine mesh straining bag, or a steel screen like I use in my dry-hop setup, would both make a huge difference in the amount of gunk that ends up at the bottom of your bottles.

Then again, a sour peach saison smoothie isn't the worst thing in the world, either.


Recipe-
5.0 Gal., All Grain
Brewed: 4.24.14
Bottled On: 9.24.14
Fermented at room temp, 72 F
OG: 1.048
FG: 1.005
ABV: 5.6%

Malt-
72.7% [#6] Pilsner malt
12.1% [#1] rye
12.1% [#1] white wheat

3.1% [4 oz] acidulated malt (pH adjustment)

Hop Schedule-
0.5 oz Citra (old leaf hops) @FWH

0.75 oz Citra (old leaf hops) @flameout

Yeast-
White Labs Saison II

House Sour Saison Culture - White Mana

Other-
10 lbs Doughnut Peaches

1 Oak Barrel

No-Hop, No-Boil, Lime-Zest & Kiwi Gose - Recipe & Tasting Notes

Beer: Alagoas
Brewery: Bear Flavored
Style: Gose
Brewed: 8.05.14
Kegged On: 9.06.14
ABV: 4.2%

Appearance: golden yellow, slight haze, ample head, good retention
Smell: lime, citrus, lemon, lactic sour, mild funk
Taste: lime, lemon, upfront lactic sour, rounder soft fruits, tangy acidity, slight salty finish
Mouthfeel: high carb, light body, crisp, puckering lingering sour in finish

Perhaps being the Fermented Man has its advantages as far as my control of bacteria, or perhaps the lactobacillus strains I welcomed into my house last year have gotten a whole lot more comfortable since I began inviting so many of their peers to party. Whatever the reason, I took an even bigger gamble with this summer's "quick sour" beer, but in spite of the added difficulty, the result is far more delicious than any of last year's attempts. If I'm feeling really generous, I might even go ahead and call this one of my favorite batches of sour beer that I've made.

Why did I decide to do a sour, salty gose with kiwis and lime zest to be ready just in time for late September? Let's pretend it's not just because I don't have very good organizational skills to keep my brewing schedule on track and say it's a f*** you to July-released pumpkin beers via reverse seasonal creep. Sure.

There was actually a brief window in which I considered dumping this batch, funnily enough. Not because it tasted bad or anything, but because I thought my sheer, glaring negligence must have ruined it in some way. I had always wanted to do this as a gose with no hops added and no boil — just run straight off the sparge into a keg. I would then purge the keg of oxygen because kegs are really great for that kind of thing, and oxygen is bad for sour mashes and can lead to domination by bacteria that make your beer smell like puke. I've tested out various methods to avoid this with last year's Bearliner Weisse and a few other previous brews, but the basic strategy is pretty straightforward: avoid oxygen when doing something like a sour mash and using bacteria from raw grain. 

A keg is the perfect way to purge oxygen from headspace and keep it out. But you'll have to excuse my short-sightedness here: this summer was, quite frankly, a bit rough. I was a little fried, a lot stressed, distracted, and disoriented. And it didn't occur to me until I already had the not-boiled wort in the keg: what would happen if the bacteria started kicking off a lot of CO2?

My original plan beyond this point was not to rely on just the lactobacillus from the grains (whatever survived the mash, since I wasn't boiling anything at any point), but to pitch some of my house culture to ensure ample souring. As this was all happening in early August, I even thought about putting the keg of souring wort in my car for a day, which was the hottest location I could think of at the time. But okay: what if I put the keg in my car and it started fermenting furiously? Not all strains of lactobacillus produce much CO2 — there are homofermentative strains and heterofermentative strains, but it's hard to know which you have, especially when, like me, you planned to pitch a blend of house cultures. And while I could check on the keg fairly frequently to pull the pressure relief valve, I suddenly didn't feel very comfortable about those sporadic purgings of CO2 build-up being the only thing between me and a car bomb.

So I stalled, kind of got busy and distracted and unfocused, and the wort / beer sat in the keg in my apartment for a few days without any additional microbes pitched. Once or twice a day I would pull the pressure relief valve to vent any built-up gas that might be accumulating, should some spontaneous fermentation be occurring. After a day or two it was clear that there was no gas building up, and therefore likely not much fermentation happening. Should I pitch bacteria into the keg anyway and just keep on pulling the pin, hoping that would be enough? Or should I just transfer the whole thing into a bucket, even though that maybe defeats the point of my oxygen-avoidance plan in the first place? And should I be worried about some sort of unfriendly microbe taking up residence in the wort due to the multiple days it sat without fermentation to ward off hostiles? Cthulhu knows I've read plenty about botulism this year, and still haven't been able to determine exactly why it never seems to be a concern in unfermented wort. While debating the safety of this batch — and yes, even briefly considering dumping it — I reminded myself that many breweries buy wort and ship it in sealed containers. In Europe especially, a lot of this packaged wort is destined for lambic production, where the full onset of fermentation may not occur for a few days. There are definitely situations out there where it sounds like botulism should be a concern, and yet I've never heard of anyone dying of botulism from beer (have you?). My guess is that the pH of wort even before fermentation may already be too low or something. In either case, I had also added 14.5 grams of sea salt to this batch, it being a gose, and with that added buffer, I decided I'd once again embrace my destiny as a death-defying, botulism-dodging crazy-person badass and go for it.

[Editor's note: Speaking of which, while I have your attention — please consider pre-ordering my book, which will allow me to tackle even more crazy experiments, and allow you to read about them. In addition, if you'd like to drink some of my crazy experiments, such as this gose and many other sours, I'll be hosting a book reading preview party / fermentation sampling event next May. I will go out of my way to ensure epicness. Sign up for it now via my IndieGogo dealy. Okay, thanks, cheers, back to the brewing!]

The exact fermentation of this gose would be hard to replicate for anyone lacking the means to break into my apartment and steal some of the jars I keep sitting around, as much of my souring cultures are not available commercially, and, I'm guessing, have mutated quite a bit as I've maintained them and let them adapt to their new bear-focused environment. However, with this batch, I did introduce Lactobacillus brevis, newly available from Wyeast, to the cocktail. But in general, I've found that I'm getting a much cleaner, rounder, fuller lactic sourness from letting the lacto do its thing over time, rather than trying to pump it up for a frenzied, brief sour mash period.

As this entry is already getting long, I won't get into how brewers have this weirdly intense fear of letting lactobacillus survive in their beers... even brewers who are otherwise happy to embrace Brettanomyces. We'll save that one for another day. But as you may have noticed, this beer was never boiled or in any way pasteurized (other than from the temperature of the mash itself), and so the bacteria remained very much alive throughout and to the present. I don't find any danger of lactobacillus making the beer "too sour" or something; but then again, I like my Berliners and gose to have a very full tangy sourness. (For comparison, if you've had Westbrook Gose, I would say the sour character in this batch of Alagoas is very comparable). Nor does letting lactobacillus live require extended aging periods, in my experience. I always add Brettanomyces to my quick sours, and even so, they're done after about a month. Speaking of which: why add Brett when there's already so much going on here? The main danger of having an aggressive sourness in a beer like this is that Saccharomyces could stall out due to the pH level falling too low before it can fully attenuate. Brett is much more pH tolerant, and will help the beer finish out dry; at least, that's the idea. This finished out at 1.008, which might be on the high side for the style, but has the benefit of providing some body and balance that a drier version might otherwise lack.

Finally, what says "October" better than kiwis and lime zest? I had 2 lbs of kiwis sitting in my freezer for months that I was just waiting to use for something, and while I knew they wouldn't add much character (especially at that very low ratio — typically I'd add fruit at 1 lb per gal. or more) I figured I'd toss them in anyway. I added 2.8 grams of lime zest (and also squeezed out the juice from the limes into the beer as well), targeting about 200 ICUs based on Shaun Hill's scale. The plan was to add more, almost double that, but when I tried the beer a few days after that first addition of zest, the lime aroma was beautiful and the flavor perfectly subtle, supporting of the sourness, it was already exactly what I was looking for. Not wanting this to be an aggressively lime-forward beer, I decided to keep it at that lower dosage and went ahead and kegged the beer.

The result is the most crushable beer I have ever made, and a base I'm looking forward to trying with many other variations of fruit and zest.

BRB time for a keg-stand.


Recipe-
5.0 Gal., All Grain
Double infusion mash at 122 F / 148 degrees F
Fermented at room temp, 72 F
OG: 1.040
FG: 1.008
ABV: 4.2%

Malt-
43% [#3] Pilsner malt
43% [#3] white wheat malt
14% [#1] special roast

Hop Schedule-
N/A

Yeast-
House Lactobacillus cultures

House Brettanomyces cultures

London Ale III

Other-
14.5 g sea salt
2 lbs. kiwi fruit
2.8 g lime zest
juice from 3 limes

How I Dry-Hop My IPAs with No Oxygen Pickup and No Clogged Kegs

It's a metaphor for society.

Since the beginning of the year, I've been alluding to a new dry-hopping procedure I devised. I've probably explained it in parts here and there, but never in great detail. Since I've gotten a number of emails about exactly what I use and how I go about it, I figured I'd do a short (editor's note: not really that short, as usual) post on the process. I've been very, very happy with the results, and it doesn't really require much extra effort, just a few more pieces of equipment to (easily) be cleaned. The only downside, potentially, is the cost, and dedicating a keg just to dry-hopping.

Here's the basic theory behind this: oxygen is very bad for hops. When I was bottling my IPAs, no matter how good the recipe or how well-managed the fermentation, they would always drop off very, very quickly. The better you can prevent O2 from infiltrating your beer, the better chance the hop character has to preserve its awesomeness. 

During fermentation and for maybe a week or so after, enough CO2 is generated that there's a protective blanket over the beer. Yeast are still cleaning up and doing their thing. Oxygen has been purged from the fermentor during what was hopefully a nice healthy fermentation. After this is when we most want to prevent oxygen pickup in our beers. A brewery can simply do a conical dump to remove trub (rather than transferring to a secondary) and can purge headspace with additional CO2 in the fermentation vessel, then transfer to whatever serving vessel they utilize, which will also have been purged of oxygen. Keeping O2 out is fairly easy with a standard brewery setup, and I wanted to emulate this process. 

1st Step - Initial Dry Hop in Primary

I add the first round of dry-hops after the end of primary fermentation, which is usually about 5 - 7 days after brewday. Enough of a CO2 blanket should be hanging around at this point that I'm not too concerned about oxygen getting in. This first stage dry-hopping is pretty standard. I let it go for about 5 days.

2nd Step - Second-Addition Dry Hop / Secondary Keg
I generally ferment my IPAs in a bucket with a spigot, because buckets fit in my fermentation fridge and carboys do not. However, this step is the one place where some oxygen could still be getting into my beers, as I'm not transferring under CO2 pressure at this stage, and the CO2 blanket over the beer in the primary vessel may be diminished by now (~12 days out from brew-day). Recently, Luke at MetaBrewing made a similar post about kegging beers without oxygen pickup — in fact, I almost scrapped this post when I saw his pop up, but upon reading, we actually have a fairly different approach which could, in fact, easily be combined. Luke's system is designed to get the beer out of the primary and into a keg under CO2 pressure, and the keg could just as well be my "dry-hopping in keg" method, carrying on with my procedure from this point. Check out Luke's post if you want to go all the way with this concept.

The end goal of this second stage is to dry-hop in a fully-sealed, CO2-purged vessel where oxygen can be banished with assurance. In other words, dry-hopping in a keg*, while still limiting the amount of time the beer is on the dry-hops. The main problem with dry-hopping in a keg is that hops tend to clog dip-tubes very, very easily. I personally find nothing in the entire homebrewing hobby more irritating than repeatedly clearing a diptube until it finally starts dispensing beer.

Here's my system.

1). Trim end of diptube (I used a dremel) about an inch to an inch and a half.

2). Slide a Corny Keg Dip-Tube Screen over the trimmed end of the dip-tube. This is short, coarser screen that fits snugly over the dip-tube. If you're using leaf hops, it may be enough on its own, but will likely clog if you throw too much mass up against it. It is probably not enough to filter out many smaller particles on its own either.

This filter can be purchased here.

3). For this reason, I use a larger, secondary filter that is open at the top but is such a fine grade (300 micron) that it will keep out all hop mass from the bottom and sides. Here's a link. I've seen this filter available from a few sources, some of them cheaper, but it can be hard to search for. I recommend digging around.

Here's the quirk behind why I went with this particular filter, though: it's actually designed to put the hops inside of it and contain them, like an expensive, durable hop bag. It's not meant to filter them out, but to act as a hop sleeve. I tried this. I did not like it for this function at all — as large as the tube is (it's almost the length of a keg, as you can see next to the dip-tube above), the hops swell and get compacted, there's not enough surface area exposure, and the extraction I got was disappointing.

However, I found that the two screens in combination, acting as a filter to keep the dip-tube clear, work brilliantly. I'm sure there are other screens (or other combinations of screens) that would also be effective — whatever is the cheapest way you can pull this off, go for it. The goal is simply to keep the dip-tube clear while at the same time giving the hops the chance to float around freely in all that beer, extracting their precious deliciousness.

3rd Step - Transfer Off Dry-Hops Into Serving Keg
After you've done the last stage of dry-hopping in your perfect O2-free keg vessel? Connect the dry-hop keg to your sanitized, CO2-flushed serving keg through the beer-out connects. Attach the CO2-connect to the gas-side of the dry-hop keg. (There will be nothing on the gas-side serving keg connect, the only connect which will be free) Crank the pressure, then open the relief valve on the serving keg until gas has pushed all the beer from the dry-hop keg into the serving keg.

You now have a lovely, aromatic IPA free from the scourge of oxygen. Hooray!

Once the beer is in the serving keg, I just keep it in the keezer and charge it normally under CO2 pressure. This is another point at which there is more room for experimentation. What about carbing, at least partially, while the beer is crash cooling before transfer out of the dry-hop keg? Or why not even rig up the gas to push in through the dip-tube of the dry-hop keg, thus both rousing the hops and carbing at the same time? This is something (the effect of CO2 on dry-hop character) that I haven't seen much information or research on, and will certainly play around with more in the future.



*Yes, you could also use this same setup to simply dry-hop in the keg you're drinking out of. I chose not to do this for two (somewhat) arbitrary reasons. One, as I mentioned, I wanted to emulate the setup and process a brewery would use. Dry-hopping in a keg sort of feels like cheating; my favorite IPA makers obviously manage to achieve their aroma and everything without taking this added measure. I wanted to know that I could, too. More practically, some brewers feel that letting a beer sit on dry-hops too long begins to extract vegetative flavors eventually. While this probably wouldn't be a big concern at fridge temps, especially considering how quickly I drink my IPAs, I decided to hold off on dry-hopping in the keg as a bonus future step rather than my default approach.

Dry-Hopped Brett Saison - Recipe & Tasting Notes

Beer: Clever

Brewery: Bear Flavored
Style: Farmhouse Ale
Brewed: 1.06.14
Bottled On: 3.30.14
ABV: 4.4%

Appearance: pale straw yellow, aggressive head, lingering foam, good retention
Smell: soft funk, fruity meadow, soft yeast, grass, berries, citrus, earthiness
Taste: soft fruit, grassiness, berries, citrus, juicy finish, slight tartness
Mouthfeel: high carb, medium body, slight bite, clean finish

Brewers and drinkers these days are extremely fond of Brettanomyces —  I would say we're maybe a little guilty of fetishizing this genus of wild yeast, sometimes. But with good reason. Not only is Brett capable of producing powerful and unique flavors, with countless new strains yet un-utilized, but its ability to terraform and even protect a beer from harmful forces is a happy secondary benefit. This batch was essentially an 'extra' from some other projects I'm working on; I'll save a full explanation of those projects for a later date, but for now, let's just say... For Science. The exact same recipe resulted in three beers: a saison, a Brett saison (this one), and a sour farmhouse beer (which I hope to write about next week.)

Being a few gallons of bonus beer, I was just kind of messing around with this one to half-assedly work on a type of beer I wish I could drink more regularly, and find more varied examples of: American-hopped Brett saisons. One recent example that works devastatingly well is Praire's 'Merica, which pairs abundant Nelson Sauvin dry-hopping with a Brett farmhouse culture. Other homebrewers have done excellent clones of that beer, though I figure most fruity American hops should pair well with the base concept also. Mainly, I just think that Brett really wants something to play around with, and hops give it a lot of ammo. Fruity, citrusy hops steer the resulting funk in a very refreshing, accessible direction, and what's all I'm really looking for (in life.)

And thank goodness for Brett's hardiness, because I very nearly ruined this batch due to kegging newbishness. I figured I would batch prime the keg, because with Brett involved, and in no hurry to drink this one quick.... why not? Why tie up my limited CO2 resources? A week later, I check on the keg, thinking it should just about be carbed, and find... well, not really sure what, but the gas-line disconnect won't fit over the gas-in keg poppit. Being, again, new to kegging, I have no idea why I might be encountering this issue. Maybe the keg is a pin-lock and I don't know what those fittings look like? I let the keg sit in my kegerator for a few days as I try out various things, finally concluding that I just got a weird keg. Or maybe some kind of fitting is missing. But at that point, of course, there's no CO2 pressure in the keg from the natural carbonation I attempted. Clearly I'm not going to be serving from this keg. With some two weeks wasted on that mess, I decide to just rack back out of the keg and bottle it.

The first bottle I poured, only a few weeks after bottling, had a slight hint of oxidation. I let it sit for a bit longer. Amazingly, now, there's almost no hint now at how close this batch came to being ruined by a pressure-less keg. Right after dry-hopping, it sat with plenty of headspace and likely a minimal CO2 blanket protecting it. But instead of cardboard, there's only a soft, fruity Brett character. Brett likes oxygen (to some extent), and I've heard before that saison strains enjoy an 'unpressurized' fermentation environment as well; a carboy covered in tin-foil or a permeable sponge stopper, vs. an airlock. It seems worth playing around with different environments to conduct primary fermentation of farmhouse ales, and this is something that's likely easier for any homebrewer to experiment with than a brewery, most of which are locked into using their conicals.

Not that I'm implying my kegging-cluelessness benefited this beer; the fact that it turned out as fine as it did was a very pleasant surprise. Most of the dry-hop character was probably lost in that period, but there are certainly echoes of lingering fruitiness in what the Brett picked up, and transformed, and created on its own. Figuring that I'd given this one more than ample time to dry out, I made sure that carbonation in the bottles was fairly high — most of them threaten to gush, which seems to be very typical of Brett saisons. But this doesn't have that harsh, sharp bite that many highly-carbed beers have, and the yeast character is softer as well, rounded out into fruitiness by the Brett, rather than the usual multiple directions of jagged complexity I find in the style. Perhaps this is tamer and more mellow, but along the lines of that Praire beer — I think it's just how I like my saisons. I'm not the hugest fan of aggressive phenolics, and I'm willing to trade some of their complexity for a soft, quaffable, quieter version. With more presence from the dry-hops, this would shine even more.

Though if I wanted to recreate a beer exactly like this one, it remains to be seen if I could. If you're still wondering about that keg: eventually one of my friends helped me to fix it. I honestly can't even remember what was wrong with it, but I was probably missing an O-Ring or something dumb. Sigh.

Recipe-
6 Gal., All Grain (Split Batch)
Brewed 1.06.2014
Mashed at 150 degrees for 60 minutes
Fermented at room temp, 72 F
OG: 1.038
FG: 1.004
ABV: 4.4%

Malt-
78% 2-row malt
11% white wheat malt
11% rye malt

Hop Schedule-
2 oz Belma @5 min
3 oz Citra dry hop for 6 days

Yeast-
White Labs Saison II

Mangrove Jack Belgian Saison

Brett L

Brett Custersianus

Brett Trois

The Benefits of a Hop Stand / Whirlpool Hopping for Hop Flavor

When I originally learned about the technique known as "whirlpool hopping," my first question as a homebrewer was: "Wait, how do I make an actual whirlpool?" Most commercial brewers do a literal whirlpool post-boil with a dedicated whirlpool vessel. But like many homebrewers, I use a simple copper immersion chiller, and I don't even have a ball valve installed on my kettle. No whirlpool here.

So my first tip to you, Young Whirlpool Master, is that the whirlpool hop technique is probably best referred to by the homebrew-friendly term "hop stand." Stirring gently helps — you can use either a mash paddle, sanitized spoon, or your pump — but the focus of the technique is not the physical action of whirlin' so much as the timing. A whirlpool hop / hop stand addition is done post-boil, giving the hops contact time with the wort at hot-but-not-boiling temperatures, which allows a depth of essential oils (and therefore flavor/aroma) to be extracted.

What do you do? Turn that flame off, toss your hops into the wort, and let them sit for 30-60 minutes. Once the wort reaches about 160-180 F, turn on your chiller and continue as normal. That's it! Pretty simple. But why bother to take this extra step, you may ask? And doesn't it open up a brewer to all sorts of problems?

Conventional wisdom has it that you should try to chill your wort as quickly as possible after the boil to reduce the risk of infection, hot side aeration, chill haze, or DMS. Doesn't a 30 to 60 minute hop stand defeat the whole point of having an immersion chiller or a plate chiller? And more so, isn't it a waste of hops, adding them after the boiling temperatures that ensure isomerization? Why not just dry hop some more?

Bless you for asking such astute questions. 

Risk of infection doesn't really set in until around 170 F, maybe lower, so spending a few more minutes at those temps isn't going to do much harm. Hot side aeration, in my opinion, requires some serious effort, and is rare to the point of being almost a myth. Even with a gentle stirring of the wort to keep hops in suspension, there's no real aeration happening during a hop stand; at least no more than during a normal chill. (A few minutes later, when the wort is cooler, you'll be aerating the heck out of it anyway). Sure, haze is a very real concern with hoppy beers, but one that's not likely to emerge only from the fact that you did a hop stand. All those hop particles floating around from the crazy amount of hops you likely tossed in are much more inclined to form a haze than the meezly 30 minutes you took to let them soak in. Finally, what about DMS? Well, I have yet to experience DMS just from a lag in cooling my wort. I can't recall reading any account from any other homebrewer who has, either. If you're using pilsner malt or are for some reason extra worried about DMS, arrange to boil for an extra 30 minutes first.

Now, on to the good stuff: you should do a hop stand because it captures flavor and aroma that will be driven off by the boil. Any boil. Previously, most people realized that the later in the boil you added hops, the more flavor they would contribute versus bitterness. A 5 minute addition provides more hop flavor than a 15 minute addition, while a 30 minute addition really only contributes bitterness, just not as much as a 60 minute addition. A hop stand merely extends this strategy, since hot wort still allows for the flavor-providing essential oils in hops to be extracted. Even boiling for five minutes will drive off some of that character — but seeping in hot wort won't. Or at least, not as much. Each oil volatilizes at a different temperature, listed below:

Myrcene - 333 F* (167 C)

Humulene - 210 F (99 C)
Caryophellene - 262 F (129 C)
Farnesene - 203-257 F (95-125 C)

*There seems to be some debate / confusion about the volatilization temp of myrcene. Myrcene will volatilize even at room temperature, but higher temperatures happen to speed up the process. Check out this HomeBrewTalk thread for more discussion.

Additionally, there may be some benefit to doing a hop stand at different ranges of temperatures, or adding one dose of hops immediately post-boil and a second dose of hops once the wort has cooled some. Commercial breweries that focus their hop additions entirely on the whirlpool are reporting a surprising amount of bitterness extracted, as alpha acids continue to isomerize until the temperature falls to the range of about 175 °F. This does pose some issues for the consistency of your recipes, if you really care about nailing a certain IBU number (personally, I kind of don't, as I feel IBUS are largely meaningless). A BYO Magazine article suggests calculating a 10% alpha acid utilization rate. Personally, I add my whirlpool hop addition to Beer Smith as a 10 minute addition, and figure that's close enough. I'm only shooting for a ballpark IBU figure, and I will adjust the recipe to taste for the next time. 

Of course, this is assuming you're adding the whirlpool addition right after flameout, when the wort is still hot enough to isomerize the alpha acids. Generally, this is what I have done: switch off my burner, dump in the hops, put the lid on, and hop stand for about 30 minutes, stirring every now and then. When the 30 minute hop stand is over, the wort has usually cooled down to around 180 F. I then turn on the water flow and let my chiller cool the wort to pitching temp.

However, if you don't want to get any bitterness from the whirlpool addition, there is an adaptation to the method that will accommodate this, seeing as you probably won't get any more alpha acid isomerization once the temp drops below 175 F. One method is to turn on your chiller for a few minutes until the temp hits the 170 - 180 F range. The lower temperature will, in theory, reduce the vaporization of essential oils. Of course, going further down, past the 160 F range, even further reduces your chances of driving off low flashpoint oils, but I'm not sure this is really necessary, personally.

Of course, there is also the option for a split addition approach, which I believe is what I will be doing for my hoppiest beers in the future. Add some of the hops immediately after flameout, let stand for 20-30 minutes (or until the temperature has dropped to ~180ish F), then add the rest of the hops, and let stand another 20 / 30 minutes. Then cool down to pitching temps. In this way, you should cover the best of both worlds.

The temp and timing is up to you, and there seem to be a number of methods that would bring good results. You're going to have to adjust for your brewing system, which is likely different from my brewing system, and almost certainly different from a commercial brewing system. You're also going to have to adjust for the recipe you're brewing, and your tastes. 

I was skeptical when I first read of this technique, assuming it was one of those "Well, if you've got enough hops that you want to cram them in at every possible moment..." indulgences (I'm looking at you, mash hopping). However, the more hoppy beers I brew, the fewer hops I've been adding to the boil. For hop-forward styles, I find myself adding hops at First Wort, just a bit at 60 minutes, and flameout + hop stand. If your goal is to extract as much flavor and aroma as possible, is there really a benefit to grabbing those few IBUs achieved with a 15 or 10 minute boil addition? You could get the same from a minuscule bump in your 60 minute or FWH addition. What I really want out of my hops is flavor — the bitterness part, that's easy. Whatever brings me closest to that unadulterated hop flavor, that's what I'll be doing.

Equipment Review - Fast Rack Bottle System

Fast Rack is a new "bottle management system" (a term that I think I just made up) from two guys up in Toronto, Mitchell Lesbirel and Casey Binkley. It is being positioned as an alternative to the ubiquitous "Bottle Tree," and while the issue of "how you dry and store your bottles" is probably never going to ignite the same impassioned debate as dry-hopping technique, or whether to secondary, Fast Rack does have the potential to make bottling day a lot easier for some people.

The main question Fast Rack poses to you, the homebrewer, is: "where do you put your bottles after you sanitize them?" If you just notch them over the pegs of a Bottle Tree, you're opening yourself up for possible infection. With the Fast Rack, the idea is that the inside of the bottle never touches anything: the neck of the bottles is cushioned by the open-slot design, and your sanitizer is allowed to drain out, where it'll continue doing its thing along the way. Can't really argue with the simplicity of that idea.

Does it work? Absolutely. As I said, it's a simple design, and there's not really much that could go wrong with it. If you want to store your bottles in it long term, it seems to stack well, too — the video the guys have on their site shows the Racks going seven high and remaining stable. Personally, I only have two racks, enough for ~50 bottles of beer — as much as I'd need at one time. I have a ton of bottles (as you can see below), of all sorts and shapes and sizes, so the ability to expand is nice.

And these are just my *empty* bottles, man.

One of my primary concerns was that Fast Rack would be cumbersome (or wouldn't stack well) with a mixed lot of bottle sizes — I use classic long-neck, stubby, and Anchor 12 ounce bottles, some 16 ounce bottles of various sizes, and a mix of bombers and 750 ml bottles. While the bigger bottles mean that you can't fill up every opening in the Fast Rack, it's still possible to stack another rack on top so long as you have four equally sized bottles in the corners. The rack above merely rests on the concave bottom of those four bottles (see the top pic). It looks precarious, but feels sturdy.

One other small thing I like: the Rack has the same dimensions of your basic case of beer, so boxing up the bottles would be easy. Just set the box upside down over the bottles, flip the rack over, remove, and your bottles are all positioned neatly in a box.

The bottom line is: Fast Rack is simple and effective, a clever solution to drying and storing bottles. I'll need to acquire a few more "racks" before I can build my Lego-like stack of bottles up to the ceiling — and ditch my Tubberware containers completely — but it has the makings of a nice, simple convenience. The guys at Fast Rack were kind enough to send me these Racks to review, but I've since seen them pop up in most of the homebrew shops I use — both LHBS and online. You can also buy Fast Rack at their website. (Unrelated: I like that the "home bar enthusiastic" pic is the one with the exotic, sultry waitress. She looks more like a homebrewer, right?)