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2015 Cooking Club Week 19: Indian Pale Ale
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29-05-2015 11:03am#1
As my username suggests, I enjoy making my own booze. My husband and I have often made our own cider from the apples that grow in his mother's garden. This year, my husband started brewing his own beer. It's worked out so well I thought it would be good to share here. There is technically some cooking involved, before anyone asks!
Right, the beer. This particular brew is an amber coloured, hoppy ale. It tastes like Metalman (if you've ever tried that - it's on tap in Against the Grain and Alfie Byrne's) but this is a lot more bitter, with bigger flavours and a nice floral edge.
I didn't know anything about making homemade beer before this. My initial question was "will it be smelly?". We live in an apartment and I have vague memories of my Dad brewing very stinky gooseberry wine at home when we were kids. Luckily, brewing beer at home is not a stinky process. When you are doing the boil on the stove I would recommend having a window open, but when the beer is fermenting over a period of weeks you won't even notice it.
This is a pretty cheap approach to drinking top-notch craft beer. Once you have all the equipment, it works out at about €1 per pint. Pretty good, considering you would pay around €4 for a bottle of good craft beer in the off-licence.
Right, first things first. You'll need to invest in some equipment if you want to brew your own beer. We bought from Home Brew West (www.homebrewwest.ie) and the Home Brew Company (www.thehomebrewcompany.ie). Both sell similar stuff; below I've listed the equipment we bought with the links and prices. If you drink Grolsh or something with a swing cap then you can save money on buying new bottles. You can also brew this beer without an immersion heater as long as you can keep the beer at a fairly constant temperature between 17c and 23c for a couple of weeks. Obviously the equipment costs a bit at the start, but once you have it you can resuse it every time you brew a new batch.
Equipment
Fermenter €11.95 https://www.thehomebrewcompany.ie/25-litre-fermentation-vessel-p-244.html
2 x 20 bottles €24.95 x 2 https://www.thehomebrewcompany.ie/amber-swing-top-bottles-brown-500ml-20pack-p-920.html
Hydrometer €2.95 https://www.thehomebrewcompany.ie/hydrometer-p-94.html
Graduated cylinder €3.99 https://www.thehomebrewcompany.ie/trial-jar-plastic-p-95.html
Syphon €3.95 https://www.thehomebrewcompany.ie/syphon-extendable-deluxe-p-770.html
Bottling stick €4.99 https://www.thehomebrewcompany.ie/bottle-filling-stick-plastic-p-55.html
VWP €1.85 https://www.ekmsecure53.co.uk/ekmps/shops/homebrewwest/index.asp?function=DISPLAYPRODUCT&productid=82
Star-san €13.95https://www.thehomebrewcompany.ie/star-san-sanitiser-8-oz-236ml-p-1426.html
Paddle mixer €1.95 https://www.thehomebrewcompany.ie/beer-paddle-plastic-16y-p-80.html
Immersion heater €39.95 https://www.thehomebrewcompany.ie/electrim-75-immersion-heater-p-692.html
Muslin cloth €1.25 https://www.ekmsecure53.co.uk/ekmps/shops/homebrewwest/index.asp?function=DISPLAYPRODUCT&productid=175
LCD thermometer €5.99 https://www.thehomebrewcompany.ie/index.php?main_page=advanced_search_result&search_in_description=1&keyword=LCD+Thermometer+Deluxe+
Thermometer €3.45 https://www.thehomebrewcompany.ie/thermometer-12-spirit-p-96.html
Bottle brush €1.95
https://www.thehomebrewcompany.ie/bottle-brush-p-54.html
Total cost without the bottles and immersion heater = €58.22
Total cost with bottles and heater = €148.07
Remember, all of this is reusable for every batch you do.25
Comments
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Okay, onto the ingredients. Again I've linked to where we bought everything and indicated the prices.
- 20 litres bottled water (don't use tap water as the chlorine can affect the health of the yeast. Get cheap 5 litre bottles from a supermarket.)
- 1 can Coopers IPA €14.95 https://www.ekmsecure53.co.uk/ekmps/shops/homebrewwest/index.asp?function=DISPLAYPRODUCT&productid=252
- 1.5kg Extra Light Spraymalt €18.95 (enough for 2 batches) https://www.thehomebrewcompany.ie/spraydried-malt-extract-extralight-3kg-brewing-grade-p-181.html
- 50g Citra hops €7.70 (enough for 2 batches) https://www.thehomebrewcompany.ie/citra-pellets-usa-100g-vac-packed-alpha-acid-144-2014-har-p-2541.html
- 50g Galaxy hops €8.10 (enough for 2 batches) https://www.thehomebrewcompany.ie/galaxy-aus-pellets-100g-145-aa-vacuum-packed-2014harvest-p-1846.html
- 50g Simcoe hops €5.84 (enough for 2 batches) https://www.thehomebrewcompany.ie/simcoe-pellets-100g-vacuum-packed-alpha-acid-130-2013-harvest-p-2224.html
- Boil 4 cups of water and 1 cup of spraymalt for 10 minutes.
- Pour this into a bowl, pop the thermometer in and then cover with clingfilm to help keep sterile. Cool quickly to 30c. If you run a sink of cold water and sit the bowl in this it will cool quickly.
- Remove the cling film, add yeast and then re-cover with clingfilm.
- Leave for 4 hours. Occasionally open the cling film briefly to allow fresh oxygen in - this will help the yeast grow. It should look like this at the end:
Next thing is preparing and sterilising the fermenter and the paddler. The fermenter is the big 25 litre bucket that your beer will brew in. Soak this in hot water and add some VWP powder - about 1 tsp per gallon, so 5 tsp in total goes in. Do this in the bath, it's easier.
Sit the paddle mixer in the fermenter so it also gets sterilised. VWP is chlorine based so it's good for cleaning but can leave a taste. We'll wash it out later so don't worry about it.
Leave this to soak in VWP for at least an hour while you get on with the cooking part of things.0 -
Now we get to THE BOIL. This is the only vaguely smelly part of the proceedings.
- Add 1.175kg Spraymalt to a large pot with 1 litre bottled water. During the boil this bubbles up a lot so make sure you use a large pot. I use a 7 litre stockpot and it is just about big enough.
- Bring to the boil, then drop the heat to medium and mix constantly for 30 mins. A podcast or TV show on a tablet in the kitchen will help the time pass faster. The mixture will change colour and thicken from this:
To this:
This is fairly much boiling sugar so don't let it boil over and be careful not to splash yourself.
Now add 20g Citra hops which looks like this:
And simmer for 15 mins on medium-low heat.- Add 20g Galaxy hops and simmer for another 15 mins.
- During this 15 mins there are a few bits to do, but come back and give the pot a stir every few mins to make sure it doesn't stick.
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Put the can of Coopers IPA into a pot of stinking hot water. The heat makes it easier to pour later.
- Go back into the bathroom and empty the VWP from the fermenter. Rinse and sponge down the inside.
- Fill the fermenter with Star-san. Star-san is a non-rinse sanitiser that is food safe so you don't need to rinse it off. This helps keep the fermenter sterile.
- Just before you turn the heat off under the spraymalt/ hop mix on the stove, empty the Star-san out of the fermenter (but don't rinse any excess off).
- Bring the fermenter and paddle into the kitchen. Take the pot off the heat and add 20g Simcoe hops. It should look like this:
- Add the rest of the bottled water (19 litres) to the fermenter.
- Add the contents of the pot and the can of Coopers IPA to the fermenter.
- Stir this really well, pushing the paddle through to introduce oxygen - this will help the yeast to start growing.
- Check the temperature. It it's under 27c then add the yeast. If not, then wait until it's cooled down and then add the yeast. The yeast won't like a high temperature.
- Take the graduated cylinder and fill it with the mix from the fermenter. Drop the hydrometer into the cylinder. It will float back up and settle at a level. Read the hydrometer and write down the reading - you'll see the one in this pic is reading about 1.04.
- This reading is your original gravity - you will need this at the end to work out the alcohol content of your beer (i.e. how strong the beer is).
- Close the fermenter now. You can see our immersion heater attached to the lid in this photo - this is a brewing heater but it's very similar to the heaters use in tropical fish tanks.
- Add the airlock and fill it with a small bit of spirits. We use cheap brandy that we bought in Lidl that turned out to be too awful to drink.
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Move the fermenter to a place where it can be kept at a constant temperature between 17c - 23c. We keep it in our spare bedroom as we rarely have the heating on in there. This means we can use the immersion heater to keep the temp the way we like it.
Now walk away and leave it alone for 3 weeks.
After 3 weeks, it's time for some dry hopping. Take 30g Citra, 30g Galaxy and 30g Simcoe hopes. Quickly open the fermenter and chuck the hops in. Closer the fermenter again and wait for one more week.
A week (a month after we started the process), your beer is now ready to be bottled. When you open the fermenter, don't be dismayed that it looks manky. It's meant to! It won't look like this when it's fully finished so don't worry.
- Fill a big container with hot water, add some Star-san and put the bottling syphon (the tube that pours the beer into the bottles) and muslin filter into it to sterilise them.
- The syphon has a bottling stick attached to it. Inside this bottling stick is a value; when you push this to the bottom of a beer bottle, the beer will flow in and when you lift it out the flow stops. This means you can fill your bottles easily and precisely.
- Take a graduated cylinder of beer from the fermenter and take the hydrometer reading as you did before.
Dig out your previous reading - use that plus this new reading to work out the strength of your beer with this calculator: http://www.brewersfriend.com/abv-calculator/
I'm expecting this brew to come out at about 3.6% alcohol.0 -
- Heat 185g Spraymalt in 2 cups of water until the spraymalt is dissolved. You don't need to boil it, once it's dissolved it's ready to use. Once the spraymalt is dissolved, chuck it into the fermenter. Leave this to settle for a while wash the bottles.
- Wash the bottles with a bottle brush and hot water.
- Wrap the muslim around the end of the syphon which goes into the fermenter. This stops the hops ending up in your bottles.
- Place 2 bottles into the container filled with Star-san to sterilise them and let them fill up with the liquid. The bottles need to be full of Star-san for 1 minute to be fully sterilised.
- Put the muslin wrapped end of the syphon in the beer.
- Suck on the syphon with your mouth to get the beer flowing, once it is going gravity with do the rest.
- Fill one bottle and seal it. Put another bottle in the Star-san to sterilise.
- Repeat until all the beer is bottled.
Leave the beer in the sealed bottles for one week at room temperature to let the yeast act on the fresh spraymalt that you added. This adds bubbles.
Store in a cold room from then on. This helps the yeast come out of suspension and makes the beer go clear instead of cloudy.
Refrigerate, put your slobby pants on and DRINK SOME BEER!
The very final bit is the washing up. This is very important so that your equipment doesn't go manky. Rinse any gunk from the equipment, sterilise using VWP for at least an hour - again the bath is handy for this - and just make sure everything is clean so you are good to go again when your beer starts running out.
Enjoy!0 -
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Great thread!
Dedicated forum here if people have more questions. http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=13530 -
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The problem with higher temperatures when brewing is that they can produce funky/off flavours. That doesn't happen with lower temperatures, the yeast just goes dormant until the temperature rises. Normal ambient temperatures in most Irish homes is generally spot on, if not on the high side. I've done a lot of home brewing and the biggest problem has always been trying to keep the temperature down.
sure, high temperatures are the enemy A heater with a thermostat set to switch it off once it hits the low end of the temperature range will keep your yeast active at nighttime. Setup like that, it should not contribute to a high temperature problem. 0 -
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