Before beginning my brewing journey, I found myself with little knowledge, a sizable order of brewing supplies, and a copy of “Brewing Microbiology” by Charles Bamforth, Ph.D.
This was a new venture into food science for me. Despite majoring in microbiology and taking courses in microbial ecology, I knew next to nothing about how to brew beer. I knew how to bake bread and ferment food in general from cooking daily meals, but beer and liquor always seemed like a pipe-dream for an amateur like me.
When the five-gallon pot, liquid malt extract, and specialty grains arrived on my doorstep, I thought that this was going to be an involved process. But actually, this assumption couldn’t have been further from the truth. Brewing beer is a lot simpler when done in small, non-industrial batches.
I start each brew looking at a spreadsheet I created to optimize my favorite brew. Right now I’m trying to work through a barley-oat beer, though I think I prefer a pure barley beer.
When I start to pour the initial batch of water, I’m always concerned that I’ll burn myself. I’m clumsy, which means the 150 degree Fahrenheit water could easily scald me. But this temperature is the best to help start the brew, so I grit my teeth and pour the 2.5 gallons in anyway.
Afterward comes the steeping step. I’ve always been more of a fan of coffee myself, but the specialty grain (typically barley, wheat, and/or oats) gets bundled into a cheesecloth bag that ends up looking like a misshapen giant tea bag which my little sister posts to her Instagram to amuse her friends. At this point, I’m poking at the bag to make sure that the flavor comes out, but I’m always afraid that the solution will become bitter.
“Flavor town” isn’t something that I think suits my personal taste. While some people like to leave their bag of grains in for longer, I remove my bag after 30 minutes and let any remaining flavor drip into the solution.
By this point, the pot looks and smells like the grains the mixture was steeped with. If you taste the mixture, it will taste like a beer. But it’s the sort of beer that you get a holiday work function: cheap and not really a beer you’d pay to drink.
I’m still nervous at this point, since I could still screw up the beer. My glasses are clouded with steam and I frantically look for the malt extract. Usually, it’s sitting out in the back of my fridge, but I’m never sure where it is. The malt extract is what makes the mixture into a (hopefully) great tasting beer. Malt extract is a dark and sweet liquid that contains all the sugars needed for yeast to start fermenting alcohol. Then I scrounge up some hops. I squeeze them in my palms to see if they smell zesty. They get dropped in and make a satisfying “plop,” one coming after another.
I crack open a beer that I’ve already made and take a swig. There’s no way that I can screw up the batch at this point. All that’s left is making sure I add the right kind of yeast.
The type of yeast you use in brewing beer matters a lot. Yeast are small, ovular fungi that can ferment sugars into alcohol. The types of yeast that exist vary wildly. Baker’s “Active Dry Yeast,” sold in a jar, is a type of yeast that people can buy, but wild yeast also exists in the air the beer is being exposed to.
When I started brewing, I didn’t realize that this distinction mattered. All I knew was that pouring the malt extract into my steeped liquid was called a “wort.” I didn’t know that there were so many distinct forms of yeast that I had to watch out for while brewing.
This issue also persists when I set up the plastic kegs I use for the fermentation process. I have to sanitize everything to make sure that no other bacteria or microbes get into the solution. If they do get in, the other microbes can cause my beer to be off in flavor or otherwise dangerous to drink.
The yeast that I do want is “brewer’s yeast,” which is a strain of yeast similar to the yeast used in baking. Thankfully, I have these little guys in a jar by my setup. They’re usually tucked in between the plastic funnel I use to pour the mixture in and a bunch of old microbiology textbooks that I consult whenever my beer starts to smell off.
When I start filling the mixture, I think of how easily this setup could backfire on me. I had an organic chemistry lecturer who once told us how bombs killed you: “The massive amount of pressure is what ruptures your organs, but then the shrapnel from the bomb gets you too.”
My yeast isn't going to hurt me, but I always make sure that I don’t fill the plastic kegs to the top. If I do add too much, the pressure build-up could cause the kegs to explode and launch plastic shards at me. And to be honest, that doesn’t seem like a pleasant way to get hurt.
My yeast finally gets poured straight into the mixture. I always feel bad for them because I basically starve them out without oxygen. But all I can really think about at this point is the pale ale I’ll get to enjoy, so I have next to no remorse for ending them.
The fermentation process then means that I can ignore the kegs for a couple of days. Depending on whether or not I want to make an ale or another kind of beer, the length of fermentation can take anywhere from five to 11 days.
At the end of the process, I get to ceremoniously siphon my beer into bottles, ready to drink whenever I feel like it. My beer is a little hoppier than I like. It’s not bad for a homebrew operation and perfectly passable. But I haven’t given my friends any samples yet. They’d probably think it’s amateurish, but I’m sure if they’d happily drink it, since it’s free beer.
The verdict on my beer: a soft six out of 10.
If you ever get the chance to brew beer, I would suggest going for it. The process might seem involved at first, but you end up getting a nice product that you can enjoy over time. You learn to appreciate the process of fermentation and microbiology just a little bit more. If anything, at the end of the wait, you at least get a cold beer out of the process.
Reach writer Andy Chia at pacificwave@uw.edu. Twitter: @GreatBaconBaron
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