Homebrew bloggers

Charlie Papazian, a homebrew revolutionary.

Blogs are definately a hot commodity these days and it seems that if you don’t blog, you’re out of the loop.

Charlie Papazian, one of the fathers of the modern homebrew movement, is in on the action. In addition to Zymurgy, a magazine devoted to brewing started in the 1970s, a homebrew “bible,” The Complete Joy of Homebrewing, written in 1982, and his involvement with the American Homebrewer’s Association, Papazian is keeping himself busy with a little blogging here and there.

The Beer Examiner, started earlier this month, is a logbook of Papazian’s musings and news on the brew world–craft, micro and homebrews in particular. As of today, there are only a few entries, but the blog has some fun and interesting tidbits. Of course, there is a wee bit of self-promotion in there–but who’s to blame a guy for spreading the word about a world he is so involved in through blogging? After all, in the blogging world, anything goes.

Some of Papazian’s posts have a “What’s in my Glass?” section where he talks about his latest brew, or what might compliment the weather or the season. There are some artful photographs of various beers, too.

Just another fun addition to the ever-growing, ever-changing craft brew world! Check it out!

Cheers, Mr. Papazian!

New Website Launched!

It’s finally here! The Craft of Homebrew Beer has been uploaded! Though it needs a few tweaks, the majority of the site is finished.

Visit http://jo540.bu.edu/keident and take a look!

I think I’ll go have a microbrew. Phew!

Brewer’s Association announces top US beers

The Brewer’s Association recently released a “Top 50″ list of both craft brewing and overall brewing companies. The BA calculates the top US brewers in these two categories by using overall sales. Not surprisingly, the top three were the “big three”– Anheuser-Busch, Miller and Coors.

In the craft-brewing world, the top three were: Boston Beer Company (makers of Sam Adams), Sierra Nevada Brewing Co, and the New Belgium Brewing Co.

Interestingly, the top two craft-beers are two of the “older” craft brewers in the US, both starting operations in the early 1980s.

Not just anyone can be considered a craft brewer. According to the Brewer’s Association, craft brewers brew less than 2 million barrels yearly, and are connected with the communities they brew in. They adhere to traditional methods of brewing, which means they must use at least 50% malt in their beers (not fillers like rice and corn).

Craft brewers have gained in steady popularity since their resurgence in the late 1970s. The Brewer’s Association claims that craft brewers brewed up over 8 million barrels last year alone, and is a $5.7 billion industry. Compare that to the 200 million barrels of beer produced annually, (which is 6,200,000,000 gallons) and you can start to see just how much of the “barrel” craft brewers take up. There are over 1,000 craft-breweries in the US, and only 20 “non-craft” breweries, according to the BA.

So when you relax and have a brew, which will you choose?

Sharing the wealth

Weather and a global demand for hops has affected the ability for brewers to get the hops they need. A few posts ago I wrote about a conversation I had with Ralph Olsen of Hop Union in Yakima Washington about the shortage, and he was helpful in explaining how hops are bought and sold on the global market (see Fire, drought and demand=Short hop supply).

I also spoke with Todd Bellomy of the Sam Adams Brewery, in Jamaica Plain, Mass., about the shortage and how larger breweries are dealing with the situation. Todd told me that Sam Adams, part of the Boston Beer Company headed by Jim Koch, buys its hops mainly from Germany and England, and have locked their hops in at a certain price.

The brewery buys bulk quantities of hops and stores them, which has helped them continue to brew the major beers in their lineup with the same hop varieties despite the shortage, Todd said.

Still, the hop shortage has affected some of the smaller batches Sam Adams brews. One of the winners of last year’s Longshot American Homebrew contest won with a particularly hoppy beer made with seven kinds of hops, Todd said. The brewery had a difficult time finding all the hops needed to brew the recipe the way the winner intended.

“People wouldn’t even trade hops with Sam Adams,” Todd said, of the company’s efforts to secure the hops they would need to brew the beer. “We could not procure them at any price.”

Sam Adams instead only brewed two of the three winning beers, and plans to release the third beer when those seven hop varieties become available on the market again, Todd said.

In the meantime, Sam Adams has started a hop sharing program to help smaller breweries cope with skyrocketing prices. The company released 20,000 pounds of hops, and is selling them to small breweries at cost, he said. Brewers have to demonstrate basic requirements, such as the small size of their brewery and their hop need, and can apply online at the Sam Adams website.

Like Ralph at Hop Union, Todd is uncertain when the hop market will stabilize. “Hops are harvested in August and September,” Todd said. “So we won’t know until October or November.”

Recipes!

If brewing beer is like making soup, then what do beer recipes look like?

Many brewers tweak basic recipes and make them their own. They log their failures and successes in a variety of ways. 2006 Sam Adams Longshot American Homebrew contest winner Bruce Stott keeps his recipes in an Excel file. In addition to recording the ingredients he’s used, he also notes the brewing conditions, the temperature of the batch at various points, and more.

Recipes can be simple lists of the ingredients needed, with a few tips on how long to brew and at what temperature. Other recipes, like Bruce’s, make note of the brew’s gravity (alchohol content as measured with a hydrometer), and keep careful detail of each stage in the brewing process.

A typical, simple recipe can look like this: (taken from BeerRecipes.org)

Ingredients:

• 7 pounds, GWM pale malt
• 14 ounces, Carastan malt (36L) (Huge Baird)
• 1/2 ounce, chocolate malt
• 7–1/4 gallons water, treated with 1/2 ounce gypsum and pinch

OG: 1.051 in 5-1/2 gallons

Procedure:
Mash in with 8 quarts at 170F. for a target of 153-155. Conversion done in 30 minutes. Mash out at 168. Sparge with remaining supply liqour to collect 6–1/4 gallons. 90 minute boil. Chill and pitch yeast. Ferment at about 68F.

Rack to secondary after fermention dies down and dry hop with Cascade pellets and Kent Goldings. Let sit until fermentation completely done (e.g., pellet crud sinks)—about a week or two.

Prime and bottle or keg in the usual manner.

*******

There are a plethora of sites on the Internet that offer beer recipes. A good friend of mine swears by Cat’s Meow, a no-frills site that offers recipes categorized by beer type. It has been around since 1994, and boasts hundreds of recipes. The site has an index and a search function to find the recipe you’re looking for as quickly as possible. Cat’s Meow also has a converter, so brewers who don’t want to calculate the difference between a gallon and a liter can type their measurements into a form and the site will do the rest.

Upon closer inspection however, it looks like Cat’s Meow might not be updated anymore, or will be taken down soon. The site’s creator, Mark, recommends recipe-searchers to try Gambrinus’ Mug, a site very similar in presentation to Cat’s Meow. The difference is that users can now contribute their own recipes and grow the database that way.

BeerRecipes.org is a little more dressed up than the previous two sites, and offers recipes organized by beer type, as well. In addition to recipes, the site has a brew forum, links, and a mailing list for those brewers who want to be connected to the brewing world at-large.

There are many more sites offering beer, mead, lambic and even wine recipes on the Internet; all it takes is a simple search! It pays to do some research and to experiment with different recipes. Bruce Stott’s extremely organized record system has taught me that the best way to make a good beer the second time around is to keep good notes!

But most importantly, brewing beer is supposed to be fun!

Fire, drought and demand = Short hop supply!

Some of my interviewees mentioned a hop shortage to me in our discussions, so I decided to take a closer look. Even though I read the newspaper and listen to NPR daily, I had not heard of any hop shortage. Turns out, I might just live under a rock. Hop Shortage? Yes indeed.

So I called Ralph Olsen of Hop Union in Yakima, Washington to get a feel for what is going on. Ralph is the owner of a hop-buying company that sells largely to American craft brewers, though Ralph said they do deal hops internationally.

I had heard that we were experiencing a hop shortage because of a fire in the state of Washington. Ralph confirmed that a fire had indeed occurred, and in a warehouse next to his. He claimed, however, that the fire only destroyed about 3% of the US supply of hops, and that the fire occurred over two years ago.

I had also heard that drought had damaged some of the crops, and Ralph agreed that weather certainly is a factor, as it is in any farming market. But, he claimed, fire and drought, though a nuisance, were not the real reason the US is experiencing a shortage of hops.

In fact, what I learned about hops turned into a lesson on the global marketplace. The US is not the only country experiencing a hop shortage; many other countries around the world need hops and some are willing to pay exorbitant prices, Ralph said. US craft brewers are feeling the crunch because buyers in Europe need hops so badly they are willing to pay more, thus driving prices up.

Ralph explained that for years the global hops market had a surplus of hops–so much so that smaller hops farmers in the US were slowly driven out of business. A specialized market became even smaller–for instance, Ralph said, when he started in the business in 1978, there were over 200 growers in the US. Now there are only 50-60 growers, he said. But the surplus of hops kept prices low–as low as $2 a pound.

But with the growing popularity of craft-brewing in the US, and the explosion of brewing in countries like China, hops have suddenly become an item much in demand. Today, hops are selling as high as $25 a pound, and are quite difficult to find, Ralph said.

Will the hop market continue at this rate? Ralph said he expected the shortage to continue for a few more years before the market evens out. He explained that for the market to stabilize, a few things have to happen.

For one thing, craft brewers will learn to use hops other than what they are used to–and Ralph even used the old “soup” analogy I heard from Roger on my trip to the Modern Homebrew Emporium in Cambridge. Ralph said that hops are like spices for brewers, and that they “just get used to what they are using,” much the way we find spices we like and stick to them in our kitchens. In order to stay in the game, they will have to adapt their recipes, or find themselves out of business.

The shortage will also encourage growers to plant more acres of hops, Ralph said, but brewers won’t see a higher hop yield for a few years.

Until then–brewers will have to get (more) creative, and beer drinkers may see craft-brew prices go up.

So–relax while you can with a homebrew!!

Next time I’ll talk about what I learned about the Sam Adams hop sharing program when I visited the brewery in Jamaica Plain, Mass.

Cleanliness is Godliness

“Sanitizing your equipment is one of the easiest and most fundamentally important things you will do. If you do not take caren to clean your equipment, the best recipe in the world will result dissapointment.” –Charlie Papazian, “The New Complete Joy of Homebrewing“

If I have only learned one thing in my homebrew quest, it’s that you can’t make a good beer with dirty equipment.

Though it’s nearly impossible to prevent some bacteria from finding their way into the brew-stew, improperly cleaned equipment can literally change the chemistry of the beer and produce a yucky taste nobody will enjoy. Each ingredient we add should be done intentionally so that the flavors come out just right.

But good tasting beer doesn’t just come from the ingredients. How you clean your equipment and store your freshly-brewed beer matter almost as much as what you’ve lovingly added into your batch. If you don’t clean and store with care, you may invite other “friends” into your brew that could change the beer for the worse.

Yeast, one of the four main ingredients of beer, plays a big role in the fermentation process. Not only do the tiny microorganisms eat the sugars from the malted barley, they also add flavor to the beer. There are thousands of yeast strains in the world; but they don’t all make good beer. They are all over the place, on our bodies and in the air–everywhere.

Over the years, brewers have developed a special yeast just for brewing, much the way bakers have developed their own yeast for breads. Conveniently named, brewer’s yeast is really the only yeast you want in your brew, which is why sanitation is crucial in the brewing process. If you don’t clean your equipment and cover your beer as it ferments, yeast from the air or bacteria from the equipment can spoil your brew.

There’s no one sanitizer that works the best, I’ve found–people seem to use what works for them. When my Dad brewed beer, he always bought “B-brite,” a bleach-free powder that he added to his cleaning water. Other people swear by a diluted bleach-water mix, while still others use sterilizers made from an iodine base.

Whatever the cleanser may be, use it it often and carefully clean your brewing materials. Once you’ve brewed up your beer in your sparkly-clean equipment, keep your brew properly covered and stored, and the yeast will do the rest for you!

In the meantime, you can relax with confidence, knowing you have the right yeast in a clean brew that will make the perfect batch of beer.

Cheers!

Independence! (of a homebrewer)

Like our forefathers, homebrewers are an independently-minded lot. After all, George Washington and his fellow Patriots made sure they had American-made brew around, and some even brewed themselves.

After Prohibition nearly destroyed the craft brewing industry, American beers became lighter in color and taste. Dissatisfied after years with little or no other options, homebrewers struck out to create their own craft brews.

Homebrewing didn’t really take hold in the U.S. until the late 70s and early 80s when the few craft beers available were expensive and usually imported.

Creating a beer takes ingenuity and a certain independent spirit. As Bruce Stott, a Cape Cod resident and master homebrewer showed me, homebrewers often have to fabricate their own equipment and tweak recipes in order to come up with just the right brew.

2006 Sam Adams Longshot Homebrew contest winner Bruce has learned a lot from his trial and error over the past 13 years. He has developed and designed a few tools to help him in the brewing process.

Above is a wort chiller made from copper tubing. Bruce bent the pipe into a spiral, then added fittings to attach a hose. He sets the wort chiller in the hot wort, running cold water through the pipes to cool the brew down and get it ready for the next step in the brewing process. He told me he couldn’t find one in any homebrew supply stores near him, so he just made his own.

See more of Bruce’s homemade equipment in a video of Bruce brewing up a batch of beer coming soon.

Until then–relax and have a homebrew (hopefully your own)!

Thousands of Beers but Only Two to Choose From

Stout, Pilsner, IPA, Belgian, Porter, Weisse, Bock, Dortmunder, Witbier, Lambic…..the list goes on. Brewers throughout history have graced beer aficionados with a wide variety of beer types, from dark and creamy, to bitter and amber, to crisp and light.

I sat down for a few minutes with Mac, a bartender at the Sunset Grille and Tap in Allston the other day to talk about just how many types of beer there are. I figured, what better source on beer than a tender at a bar that serves more than 110 beers?

What he said surprised me.

“There are really only two,” he told me.

TWO? Then why does the Sunset have such a huge menu?

That’s because most beers fall under the category of ALE or LAGER. It all depends on how the yeast (that little microorganism that creates the alcohol content) is fermented. Any brew that falls under these two categories has been subsequently named to distinguish it for its taste, hue, and other factors like the country it was brewed in.

ALES are a beer that are fermented at warmer temperatures (between 60-75 degrees Farenheit, according to Beer Advocate,) with the yeast fermenting at the top of the batch.

LAGERS are fermented at cooler temperatures (closer to 34 degrees Farenheit. Thanks Beer Advocate guys!) and the yeast ferments on the bottom of the batch.

Mac went on to tell me that lager beers are relatively new, considering the fact that people have been brewing ales for thousands of years. The reason lagers are “new” (created in the past few hundred years) is the fact that they are fermented at cooler temperatures. Before pasteurization and refrigeration were invented, brewers could only ferment beers that could withstand warmer temperatures without becoming “skunked,” or bad. Those are the richer, darker, stronger- tasting ales we know and love.

Since lagers are brewed at cooler temperatures, they come out “crisper” and “cleaner,” according to Mac. Many of the mass-produced American beers fall under the lager category.

Judging from the Sunset’s menu, there are far more ales to choose from than lagers. Yum! I’m getting thirsty just thinking about it!

So if you’re in the area, stop by the Sunset Grille and Tap, have a chat with a very knowledgeable bartender and enjoy a cold one. Good luck trying to pick your sampler from all those beers!

Cheers!

Like Making Soup

Today I visited with Roger of Modern Homebrew Emporium, a brew supply store in Cambridge MA, to learn more about what ingredients are needed to make a brew of my own at home.

I have only made home brew beer from kits like “Coopers,” and was curious to see how I might concoct a brew of my own with the raw materials. Roger assured me that brewing beer is simple and fun, and is much like making soup. According to Roger, you take the four basic ingredients: barley, yeast, hops and water, and if you can follow a recipe, you can brew a beer.

Roger has been brewing beer for years and loves to brew for the season. Today we sampled a smooth chocolate porter, brewed up by one of the Emporium’s employees. Good stuff!

The beer was dark in color, like coffee, and had a light head. Unlike some major stouts, this brew was smooth and not at all bitter. Of course Randy, the brewer of the beer we sampled, said he is trying to perfect the recipe, and is experimenting with adding the ingredients at different stages of the process. Even though we liked it, he said he’s not there yet with what his vision of the perfect chocolate porter should taste like.

In addition to selling all kinds of beer-making ingredients and supplies, the shop also has cheese-making and wine kits. For any brew novice, there is a wide selection of books and kits to get started, in addition to the raw ingredients for a brew master to concoct the next great American beer.

An audio slide show of the ingredients that make a great brew will be available when I launch my site in a few weeks.

Until then, sit back, relax, have a homebrew, and Cheers!