Beer brewing

October 1, 2009 at 6:54 am Leave a comment

If you asked all my friends what kind of beer to bring to one of my parties, they would all tell you “Dadi doesn’t like beer”. So who would imagine that I would ever get into beer making. I used to not like beer at all and never understood how people could drink this bitter bubbly drink. I was strictly a wine and cocktail drinker, but a little effort from people who know what they were doing and my mind was changed. I don’t drink a lot, but I can definitely appreciate a good beer now.

This summer my friend Chris was looking for someone to brew beer with. I was of course happy to join him. I am always interested in finding out how to prepare new food, and in this case new beverages. My kitchen transformed into a mini brewery, the “DadiChris Brewery”. I was excited because I really wanted to learn this whole process and see how it all works. I’ve always been fascinated with learning about things that are made through a strict process, but have so much variety at the end. A sophisticated cake, beer, wine, candy and more.

We weren’t fancy with our preparation. We used a borrowed home made brewing kit. It was as if we wanted the beer, but didn’t want to use our own money for a kit. I felt I was in safe hands, considering the fact Chris had brewed a few successful batches before. More importantly I didn’t have to worry about my kitchen blowing up in a beer explosion or anything like that.

We made a wheat beer - Hefeweizen with vanilla beans, orange peel and coriander. We were hoping for a lighter beer for the hot L.A. summer. Although the brewing process itself was more exciting for me than trying the end product. Here is the recap of what we did:

We heated up 3 gallons of water to 170º F

Then added 10 lbs of malted grains – 5 lbs malted barley and 5 lbs malted wheat. We also added a few cups of oatmeal to give some extra body.

After mixing the room temperature grains with the hot water, the mixture hit a strike temperature of 152º F.

At this temperature the enzymes in the malted grains are quite active, and they start breaking down the starches in the grains into a simpler sugar – maltose – which can be used by yeast.

After an hour at this temperature saccharification was complete and we moved the grains to a straining device (since our pot – or “mash ton” if we had proper equipment – didn’t have a screen or spigot).

We used hot water – about 180º F – to sparge the sugars from the grains.

This sweet water – or “wort” – was collected and brought to a boil.

Hops were then added to the boil (cascade and saaz varieties).

Some of the boil was used to steep our spices. We used real vanilla beans, fresh and dried orange peel and coriander seeds that we toasted.

After an hour of boiling, we chilled the wort to room temperature and transferred the liquid to a sterilized fermentation vessel, known as a “carboy.”

The yeast culture was then added to the cooled wort.

After a week or two, primary fermentation was complete.

Then we transferred the “green beer” to sanitized bottles, added about a teaspoon of dextrose (simple sugar) to each bottle, and capped them.

The fermentation of the sugar inside the sealed bottles creates the carbonation, as the CO2 produced by the yeast cannot leave the bottle as it did in the carboy.

Another week and it was good to drink.

The result – very light and refreshing homemade beer, that my friends and I loved so much. The experience was educational and enthralling for me. I’m definitely planning to experiment again (trying different techniques, adding new and interesting flavors: dark chocolate, chili and maybe some Oktoberfest beer too).

Anyone who calls themselves a beer enthusiast must try making their own beer. It is important to understand the whole process if you are really going to appreciate the end result.

Peace, love, and beer bellies.

Dadi