When you start this hobby everyone tells you that if you can boil water you can brew beer. Well I have boiled water and it is nothing like brewing beer. Probably if they would have told me about the sanitation of everything in site, the different temperatures that you need to ferment the wort at, or the importance of yeast I may not have ever started.
Looking back I am glad I started with blinders and that first batch was a Scottish 80 Shilling beer which was the Scottish’s answer to English extra bitter beer. It had very little head but it tasted good.
Now that I have read 3 books, and counting, on brewing and countless magazine articles and even resorted to You Tube to learn about brewing it has been worth it. But my education is not complete. YEAST
Probably one of the most important aspects of brewing and the least understood. Only certain yeast strains can produce beer. The yeast basically take the simple sugars in the wort and convert them into liquid food. They produce alcohol that helps add bite to the beer and they help in the formulation of flavor and aroma.
Face it if beer had no alcohol it would be just another drink. But the amazing yeast do a variety of chores and have the most input into the taste and aroma of beer. The yeast in the first 72 hours of fermenting impact the beer by producing flavor and aroma. They also start to produce CO2 and alcohol.
When we first started we used the yeast out of the box and pitched it when we lowered the temperature of the wort to the range that yeast could live and multiply in. The beers we made were excellent and we moved on without much thought to our little friends.
As time went by I read a article about yeast starters for the heavier beers. By using a yeast starter you increase the number of yeast cells by 4-6 times. The yeast cells are healthy and strong and ready for their one mission in life, to make beer!
How important is Yeast? Take two batches of wort and use two different yeast and you will end up with two completely different beers, even though you started with the same ingredients.
The more you learn the more you realize that controlling all the variables of brewing is not easy. I have a better appreciation for the big boys. No matter what beer you drink, Budweiser, Miller, Coors, Sam Addams or what ever every beer tastes the same.
When you open a can of Bud Lite you know what to expect every time no matter where you buy it from. How hard is that? Extremely!! You need to control the temperature of many things from the grain while in the mash tun to the temperature of the fermenting beer. Temperature is key in almost all of the process’s. It’s critical in the beginning when breaking the grains down to make the wort. You need to control the boil because a vigorous boils versus a rolling boil will change how the complex sugars are broken down for the yeast to use. You need to control the temperatures in the fermentors.
If you have large fermentors like the big boys they need to watch the temperatures at the various levels of the fermentor. Another byproduct of yeast is heat. The yeast are very good insulators and in a large fermentor their can be a 6-10 degree difference from the middle to the edge.
What I have started to explain is that brewing beer is fun. It is a practical chemistry experiment and if you pass the test you get to enjoy the test by drinking it. I have just pointed out some of the large variables. Their are more that I will address in future posts.
Passing the Chemistry Test!!
The more I learn and realize that our first batches where like
We are starting use temperature to control the yeast as they work better in certain ranges. We are learning how to re-use the yeast and control that variable. So the next time you pop open a can or a bottle of beer or watch your favorite beer poured from a tap tip your hat to the brewmaster for getting it right every time. In upcoming posts I will expand on the different variables and will continue with the history of beer. Thanks and have a Homebrew.
