Beer Brewing 101

Hello! This is Dustin (Amanda's husband). Amanda has asked me to do a post on her blog about beer brewing. I have been brewing beer for about 3 or 4 years now and I consider myself to be intermediate in experience level.

I just entered two beers in the Deschutes County Fair this week, in a beer contest. One is a chocolate stout and the other is a bavarian style hefeweizen. For each entry there are two bottles, one for judging and one for display. I designed labels on the computer and everything. The judging is not done by just anybody either. The judges are certified by the Brewers Association of America, so there are very specific qualities they look for. They use scorecards and do a write up with feedback on each beer they judge. It's really awesome to get feedback on my beer from a prefessional! Two years ago I got a blue ribbon (1st place) with a porter that I entered in the fair. This year I am hoping to win best of show (better than 1st place) or another blue ribbon with at least one of my beers. Amanda, Lucy, and I are going to the fair later today so we will find out then! I'm sure Amanda will share about our adventures at the fair in a later post.

Anyway, back to my brewing "how to". The type of beer brewing I do is called "extract brewing" which is more advanced than brewing from a kit, but not as advanced as "all grain brewing". Extract brewing requires 5 or 6 ingredients... grain, malt extract, hops, flavoring if desired (fruit, chocolate, etc.), water, and yeast.

I brew in a 6 gallon stainless steel stock pot on top of a 60,000 BTU turkey fryer propane burner. Turkey fryers provide the amount of heat needed to bring a couple gallons of water to a boil very rapidly and can be purchased for about $75. Most of my other equipment came in a kit from our local home brew supply shop for about $100. The cost of ingredients for each batch of beer runs about $30 and makes enough beer for about 50 twelve ounce bottles (8 six packs). I recently started using 22 ounce bottles though to save on bottling time. I can fill about 26 of them per batch.

I have my brew time down to about 4 hours including prep time, brewing, and clean up. Here's how it's done with pictures from start to finish (from when I brewed my chocolate stout)...

 
From left to right: Sanitizing equipment, grains, steeping the grains

 
From left to right: Strained the grains, added malt extract, added the "flavoring" hops

From left to right: Added "bakers" chocolate, added the "aroma" hops, added Irish moss

 
From left to right: Stained the hops, chilled the beer/added yeast, first stage fermenting (1 week)

From left to right: Transfer to secondary stage fermenter (1 week), bottled (1-2 weeks), "Neurotic 8" bavarian style hefeweizen (left) and "Where is my heater?" chocolate stout (right).

That's it! Total time from brewing to ready to drink is about 3-4 weeks. Wish me luck in the fair!

- Dustin

 

Comments

[LeeAnn]

I wish you luck! Hope you win! Thanks for the post - that's really very inspiring! ~lee

[holly]

Great post Dustin!!! We would give anything to try your beer sometime with you!!!!! I am sure it is so very good!
Great job explaining everything in a way I could understand!

[Betty]

I really liked the "neurotic 8" it's to bad there isn't anymore in our fridge...Good luck at the fair. BJ

[Dustin]

Thank you for the nice comments! I didn't pick up any awards this year, but there is always other competitions and the fair again next year. It's fun just to enter them and have people I know see it there. Got some good feedback from the judge that will help improve my recipes if I brew up another batch of either of those beers. I still have more of the Neurotic 8 hefeweizen if anyone would like more or would like to try some. :)