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Beer Refresher Course

If you’re going to be brewing beer, you’d best know what it is and what it’s made of. In The Naked Pint, we wrote, “Beer in its most basic form is a carbonated alcoholic beverage made from fermented grains. It is primarily made up of four key ingredients: malt, hops, water and yeast.” Boom. Done. Now you know more than most people on the street. During the fermentation process, yeast eats the sugars from the malt and the natural byproduct is alcohol and carbon dioxide (CO₂). This is what makes beer bubbly and alcoholic instead of just malty, hoppy water. The art of beer making is how these ingredients work and harmonize together to create a delectable experience for your senses. Here’s a slightly more detailed description of the ingredients:

• Malt: Malted grains, typically barley, sometimes wheat or other grains; they provide the fermentable sugars in beer, any color that you see in the beer, and flavor.
• Hops: Delicate, green flowering cones that grow on a vine; they provide all of the bitterness and/or dryness in beer, act as a preservative, and offer flavor and aromatics.
• Yeast: Classified as fungi, yeasts are single-celled organisms that eat the sugar during fermentation and create alcohol and CO₂; they can also provide flavor and aromatics.
• Water: The type of water used in brewing is an important part of the process; water can be soft or hard and may contain chemicals or excess minerals.

It’s all coming back to you, right? You don’t need to know everything about these ingredients to start brewing, but it certainly helps if you have a solid understanding of how the ingredients affect beer. Otherwise it’s a bit like brewing with a blindfold on: You may make a yummy beer, but you won’t understand why or how you did it. So let’s get a deeper understanding of these ingredients.

You’d Be Nothing Without Me: Malt

In the simplest explanation, malts are cereal grains (usually barley) that have gone through the malting process. During the malting process, the grain is encouraged to germinate and sprout by being soaked in water and is then dried to halt the germination process. This process renders the starch that exists in the seed usable as a fermentable sugar. The grain is then kilned, roasted, smoked, baked, and so on to different degrees and to every shade of gold and brown imaginable—from the lightest beige biscuit malts to the darkest black patent malt. The flavor these different malts impart depends on many factors: How long they were roasted, at what temperature they were kilned, or if they were roasted and kilned. Malts are steeped and/or boiled during the brewing process to extract the fermentable sugars, flavor, and color from the grains.

WHAT DOES MALT CONTRIBUTE TO BEER?

• Color: The degree to which the malt has been roasted, and the combination of the colors of the malts used in the brewing of a beer are the sole factors responsible for the color of that beer. Neither water, hops, nor yeast (save for some cloudy effects in some styles) has an effect on the color of a beer.
• Alcohol and CO₂: The amount of malt used, in conjunction with the amount of yeast used, is solely responsible for the alcohol content of that beer. CO₂ and alcohol are created as a byproduct of the yeast eating the sugars in the malt.
• Flavor and aromatics: Depending on the malting process used, malted grains can impart many different flavors. Here are some flavors you can expect from different malts: bread, biscuit, toast, nuts, honey, caramel, toffee, coffee, chocolate, and ash. Hops and yeast tend to dominate in the aroma category, but you may smell a toasty or coffee character from the malt.
• Sweetness and mouthfeel: Many people describe sweet beers as “malty.” What they are tasting are the residual sugars and additional alcohol content that can remain in a beer from an especially large amount of malt. This results in a prominent sweetness of flavor and a viscosity, heat, and fullness in the mouthfeel of the beer. They may also be noting an absence of dryness or bitterness, and this is the result of a low hop character in a beer, not necessarily because of a lot of malt character.

A Word to Know: Wort

Wort is a word you definitely want to be able to throw around when talking about brewing. First off, you need to know that it’s pronounced “wert.” Yeah we know, it’s weird, but pronouncing it wrong is a dead giveaway that you are a newbie in the craft beer world. It derives from the Old English wyrt. Wort is the liquid that you end up with after the mash. Basically this is the beer before it is fermented. Wort is a sweet and strange-tasting liquid, but as you become a seasoned homebrewer, you will grow to love tasting the wort and guessing at how the beer will change after fermentation. So say it loud, say it proud, say it right, WORT!

HOW TO USE MALT IN YOUR HOMEBREW

When you’re homebrewing beer you are brewing in one of four ways: extract only, extract with specialty grains, partial mash, or all-grain. Note that all of the malt (except for flaked malts) has to be milled (or crushed) before use. The definition of these terms differs among homebrewers, but here is the basic idea behind each style of brewing. (The recipes in this book each use one of the methods listed below. Although each recipe can technically be adapted to any of these methods, our recipes record the method we used to brew each beer.)

• Extract only: These brewing recipes use only malt extract as the malt and sugar source of your beer. Malt extract is basically a wort that has been reduced for you and comes either in a syrup form or a dry powder form. When brewing extract only or partial-mash recipes, you will use malt extract as a large part of your recipe. The extract replaces the mashing of the base malt in all-grain or partial-mash brewing. It is basically a nice, easy shortcut for homebrewers.
• Extract with specialty grains: This is brewing with recipes that use mostly malt extract as the base malt but that also call for a small amount of specialty malts to be steeped like tea. These malts primarily provide flavor and color to your brew.
• Partial mash: This is basically the half step between extract brewing and all-grain brewing. With partial mash, you use some malt extract as your fermentable sugar source and some base malt and specialty malts as your fermentable sugar source. The extra step here is mashing the grains, which means that instead of steeping for about 30 minutes, you will keep the grains in water for a longer amount of time, usually an hour, at a constant temperature. This allows the malt to undergo the conversion of starch to fermentable sugars. The liquid from the mashing process is then added to malt extract during the boil. Using this method is a bit more advanced but allows you some more control over the flavor and quality of your beer.
• All-grain: This is what professional brewers in a brewery do. They use only grain, no extract. All-grain brewing requires a lot more time, space, water, and patience than the other methods. That’s why it can be challenging to do in a homebrew situation. With all-grain you are mashing all of your malt, there is no extract involved.

I’m Not Jaded, I’m Bitter: Hops

Oh, Humulus lupulus (Latin name for hops), wolf among the weeds (translation of the Latin name), how important you are to beer! Hops may be just the small female flowering cones of a vining plant, but these delicate, tiny green pine-cone-looking things pack a powerful punch. Basically, hops are what add the balance to what would otherwise be a cloyingly sweet, potentially moonshine-like concoction instead of a mélange of sweet and dry, sometimes even bitter, flavors. Many people don’t realize that hops are totally invisible in a finished beer. Hops are used in beer in the boil, during which the hops’ qualities are extracted, and the actual hop cones are strained out of the beer. You can detect hops, however, by tasting and smelling the beer. This means you can’t look at a beer and know how bitter it is. Let that sink in a minute…. Neophyte beer drinkers often think the color tells you something about the bitterness, but that’s just not true. You have to smell and taste a beer, whether light or dark or amber in color, to be able to describe it as dry or bitter.

WHAT HOPS CONTRIBUTE TO BEER

• Bitterness: The most important quality that hops provide in beer is bitterness. This is due to something called alpha acids that exist in the resin glands of hops. Different hop varietals have different alpha acid levels and different qualities. Some are better for bittering, some are better for flavoring, and some are better suited for aromatics, others are great for all three. The longer the hops are boiled, the more bitterness you’ll get out of them; the less they’re boiled, the more aromatics you’ll get out of them.
• Perceived dryness: Hops contain a chemical compound called tannins that contribute to the puckery or cottony mouthfeel that we perceive as dry (true dryness being the actual lack of sugar versus the feeling of dryness on your tongue). Tannins exist in other places in the food world. They exist in the skins and stems of grapes, contributing dryness to wine. They exist in tea leaves and in wood and in many fruits. Tannins also exist in malt—so hops aren’t the sole provider of dryness in beer, but they are the main contributor.
• Aromatics and flavor: Hops can provide subtle to smack-you-in-the-face aromatics in beer and, at times, some hops are added only to provide aromatics. Hops can be spicy, earthy, herbal, or grassy. They can taste and smell like grapefruit rind, pine tree, rosemary, citrus, and pot (no you can’t smoke hops, but they are related to cannabis).
• Preservatives: Early in brewing history, brewers discovered that hops have an antibacterial/antimicrobial quality that can act as a preservative in beer. This allowed for more stability, which provided longer storage time and the ability for beer to travel farther. It was this discovery that led to the famously aggressively hopped beers like the India Pale Ale and the Russian Imperial Stout. More hops were added to help keep the beers from going bad on the journey from England to India, and from England to Russia, respectively.

HOW TO ADD HOPS TO YOUR HOMEBREW

Hops are added to beer at different increments when you are boiling the wort. These are called “hop additions.” Some beers require only one hop addition, others may have three, four, five, or more. Typically hops are always added at the beginning of the boil. These hops function as bittering hops. They provide the bitterness, balance, and/or dryness for your beer. A second addition can provide bitterness and flavor, and these often function as flavoring hops. If another addition is added toward the end of the boil or at the very end, these hops primarily provide aroma and are referred to as aroma hops.

The combinations of types of hops, number of hop additions, and amount of hops used are endless. Every recipe is slightly different, and it’s easy to get carried away with hop additions. We’ve tried to restrain ourselves with the recipes in this book, but you’ll get to use different types of hops and a variety of combinations.

You will see hops for sale online or at the homebrew supply store in the following forms: pellets, fresh cones, and plugs. We use pellets (with a few exceptions) in our recipes because they are extremely efficient and easy to get ahold of. Here’s a rundown of the different options:

• Pellets: These little things look like cat food, but certainly don’t taste like it. They are actually whole hops that have been ground and pressed into a mold. This is our generally preferred version of hops for homebrewing and for many professional brewers. They are extremely efficient in evenly distributing the flavor and bitterness in hops.
• Fresh cones: These are fresh, pretty-looking dried hop cones. They resemble a bunch of green dried flowers. Some professional breweries, like Sierra Nevada Brewing Company in Chico, California, use only fresh hops in their beer. For many professional breweries, fresh cones can be hard to come by in the quantity they need, so they often use pellets instead.
• Plugs: These are whole-hop cones that are shredded and compressed into plugs. Each plug weighs about a half an ounce. They are used mostly for aroma and dry hopping. They’re a bit more rare than the previous options.
• Aged: These hops are just what they sound like. They are hops that have been aged, sometimes for years. They can come in pellets or cones and can be any varietal. Aged hops are used in beers when you want absolutely no bitterness from the hops but are still looking for some drying qualities. Sour beers like Lambics most frequently use aged hops.

Where the Action Is: Yeast

Known in the days of yore as “God Is Good,” yeast has for eons been considered the magical mechanism that creates fermentation. All hail yeast! Yeasts are living organisms, which form colonies of single, simple cells. Officially, scientists call this organism a fungus. Yeasts are hungry, and yeasts can be furious! They can be lazy and they can die. How much food (sugar) there is for the yeast to eat in your brew, at what temperature the yeasts are allowed to eat, and how healthy the yeasts are create conditions responsible for how much alcohol and CO₂ you will ultimately have in your beer. This yeast that we’re talking about is not the bread yeast you’ve had in your cabinet for 2 years, or the brewer’s yeast that you got at the health food store for the vitamin B₁₂. This yeast is known as Saccharomyces cerevisiae and it’s specifically cultured for the fermentation of beer.

WHAT DOES YEAST CONTRIBUTE TO BEER?

• Alcohol: Obviously, without yeast, we would have no fermentation and thus no alcohol. And then we would be sad.
• Esters: Esters are chemical compounds that yeast emits in beer and our brains perceive as pleasant flavors and aromas. There are many different yeast strains that contribute different flavors and aromatics. They mimic many things. For example, esters can be fruity like pears, strawberries, and dark cherries; they can be spicy like cloves and white pepper; they can be flowery like rose petals and jasmine; and they can be herbaceous like sage and lavender.
• Mouthfeel: Yeast can contribute greatly to a beer’s mouthfeel through the carbonation of the beer. In the process of creating alcohol, yeast also creates the CO₂ that exists in beer. If the yeast strain has produced a lot of carbonation, it will create a prickly feeling on the tongue that makes the beer feel lighter and more crisp. Also, if the beer style is unfiltered, the yeast will remain suspended in the beer, providing a fuller, rounder, thicker mouthfeel.
• Style: Specific yeast strains create certain flavors and aromatics that are quintessential to a certain style of beer. For instance, Bavarian wheat yeast contributes esters that impart the banana and clove and bubble gum characteristics that Bavarian Hefeweizen is known for. Saison yeast gives that style of beer its spicy, peppery, citrusy qualities.

HOW TO USE YEAST IN YOUR HOMEBREW

When you hit the homebrew supply store for the first time, you may be surprised to see what yeast actually looks like. Examine a typical vial of yeast and you’ll see immediately it’s not the prettiest ingredient in beer. Yeast looks like light brown sludge, kind of gross but also kind of cool. It makes you feel like you’re about to perform a science experiment, which is exactly what you’re doing. Here are the types of yeast you’ll use for homebrewing:

• White Labs brand tubes (liquid yeast): These are vials of liquid yeast from one of the major yeast-producing companies. They need to be refrigerated until three to six hours before you brew. Then take them out of the fridge and let them come to room temperature. When you’re ready to add the vials to your brew, shake them up and dump the yeast in.
• Wyeast Laboratories brand Smack-packs (liquid yeast): These are large plastic packages that contain liquid yeast and a tiny pack inside that you’ll smack open to get the yeast activated and working. Once you’ve smacked them, they’ll usually swell up, which is exactly what you want. (If the package doesn’t swell, don’t worry, this happens sometimes.) These packs need to be refrigerated until one day or at least three hours before you brew. When you are ready, take them out of the fridge, smack the pack, and let the package come to room temperature.
• Dry yeast: Until pretty recently if you were brewing beer, you were most likely using dried yeast. Now more people prefer brewing with the liquid version, but dry yeast does have its advantages. It has a longer shelf life and can keep for months. It also has a high cell count and starts fermenting very quickly. The downside is that dry yeast strains are not kept sterile, so there’s always the chance for contamination. You should rehydrate your dry yeast before you add it to the beer. For best results, rehydrate your packet of dry yeast in 95° to 100°F water and then proof the yeast by adding a bit of sugar to see if the little buggers are still alive after being dried and stored. (Look for rehydration instructions on the packets.)
• Yeast starter: Many brewers recommend doing something called a yeast starter to help the yeasts get a head start before they are pitched into the beer, but the yeasts we recommend you use have very high cell counts, so you don’t need to make a starter. Ready-to-pitch yeasts, and the larger 175-milliliter Smack-packs do not need a starter, especially if they’re fresh. Make sure to look at the use-by dates on the packaging.

During fermentation, the yeast is going to eat the sugars in your wort and create alcohol and CO₂ as byproducts. Each style of beer and yeast has an ideal fermentation temperature. Some even work better if the temperature changes during fermentation. For example, Saison yeasts do well when the beer is heated up during fermentation to 80° to 90°F. In each recipe we have provided an ideal temperature at which to ferment your brew. Most of us don’t live in an ideal brewing situation, so we understand that you may not be able to maintain this temperature. Don’t worry too much, your beer will still be tasty. But if you live in a hot or cold climate, you may want to protect your beer by keeping it in a cool or warm spot in your abode.

Water, You’ve Heard of It

Because beer is made up mostly of water, the water is an important ingredient in the brewing process. That being said, we hesitate to talk about water chemistry and its makeup in beer because this is where a beginning brewer (we know because it happened to us) can start to get bogged down in chemistry and water table charts and pH levels and parts per millions and calcium sulfate and mineral content, spending hours trying to decide about adding gypsum salts or other things to adjust your water one way or the other to get the perfect brew. We also know—from experience—that you can brew perfectly delicious beer without knowing much about water chemistry.

It is true that famous beer styles brewed around the world use local water sources that have different mineral components, different pH levels, and so on. As a result, different regions are better suited to making certain types of beer. However, you do not have to duplicate Dublin water to make a great Irish Stout.

Your water source is definitely something to have a peripheral understanding about, but unless you have an Erin Brockovich–type situation happening with your water, you can probably use your tap water to make perfectly good beer. We do. Some styles may turn out better than others. For instance (though this is a bit of a generalization), nuanced Pilsners and other light-colored styles usually do better with low-alkaline water or softer water, whereas a rich Irish Dry Stout and other dark-colored styles generally do better with high-alkaline or hard water. Once again, we brew both of these styles in our home kitchens using our tap water, and we must say they’ve turned out pretty damn good. And we’re using good old Los Angeles municipal water.

All Beer Is an Ale or a Lager

All beers in the world fall into one of two categories: Ales or Lagers. We find that most people, men and women alike, don’t know the difference between the two. They use the words interchangeably, guessing at the meaning, so we’re going to break it down for you here (please pass the information along to your friends).

WHAT’S AN ALE?

An Ale is a beer that uses yeast that has been cultured to ferment at the top of the fermentation vessel and at relatively high temperatures (60° to 75°F), resulting in a quick fermentation period (seven to eight days, or even less). Ale yeasts are generally known to produce fairly big flavors (there are exceptions.) You’ll often get a lot of aromatics from the whiff of an Ale. Ales tend to have more residual sugar, meaning sugar that has not been consumed by the yeast during the fermentation process.

WHAT’S A LAGER?

The word Lager comes from a German word meaning “to store.” A Lager is a beer that is brewed using yeast strains that are cultured to ferment at the bottom of the fermenting vessel and at relatively low temperatures (34° to 50°F), resulting in a long fermentation time (weeks to months). Lager yeasts produce fewer byproduct characters than do Ale yeasts, creating a cleaner, crisper taste (again, there are exceptions).

What’s Your Type? Beer Styles

So what is a beer style? Well, basically, it is a name given to a beer based on its general flavor profile and/or its origin and history. The first thing you usually know about a beer is its style, as this is often on the label; therefore, it is helpful to understand the attributes of these styles.

We explained earlier that all beers are either Ales or Lagers. In addition, Ales and Lagers are broken down into styles. For instance, a Pilsner is a style of Lager, a Doppelbock is a style of Lager, a Porter is a style of Ale, a Stout is a style of Ale, an India Pale Ale is, obviously, an Ale.

Beers are categorized both on the basis of historical tradition and on sensory characteristics. Flavors that are most important to a beer style are type and strength of malt, yeast strain, strength of bitterness, and the type and strength of hops. Aromatics that are most important to a beer style include strength and type of malt aroma, strength and type of hop aroma, and yeast ester aroma. The feel of a beer in the mouth, both from thickness of the liquid and the amount of prickliness from the carbonation, is also an important factor in determining a beer style. The visual characteristics that are most important to a beer style are color, clarity, and the nature of the head (for example, the thickness).

Whether the beer is dubbed Bavarian Hefeweizen or Russian Imperial Stout, the name hints at what the aromatics are like, how strong it is, what sort of body it has, how it was brewed, and even its history. There are many, many variations of each particular style, and each brewer makes his or her own version of specific styles, but knowing a beer’s style gives you an idea of what to expect.