The Gruppster’s Brew

A Guide on Creating an Enjoyable Beer that Defines Your Style

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I didn’t care much for beer when I was younger. In fact, I didn’t enjoy a “cold brew” until my late teen years when I tasted my first craft beer. But what really peaked my interest in craft beer, a holy grail of drinks, was the discovery of microbrews. Now, some people might say that alcoholism and science cannot coexist. Home-brewing not only disproves this idea, but it also shows how the two enhance one another to produce a beverage of such quality enjoyment. Like any practice, the brewing process gets easier and results in a better product with each subsequent trial. Now if you read this guide and your first brew doesn’t reach the standards that you were expecting, you just need to remember the encouraging words of our 39^th President’s brother, Billy Carter: “There is no such thing as a bad beer. It’s that some taste better than others.”

Engineering Your Beer

Step one in producing your delicious creation is to determine the type of beer you would like. First off, you will decide whether to brew an ale or a lager. While there are many different variations of these two categories such as bocks, IPAs, stouts and barley wines, there are far too many to define and describe here without writing a short novel. The idea is to pick a general style you want to try out and then research the specifics of your choice. Ales are great to begin with, as they have been the style that has been getting our ancestors hammered for centuries in the past. Lagers, on the other hand, are considered a much younger species of beers since we have had less experience with them (only the last few centuries or so), but there is no wrong choice.

Once you have made your initial decision, the real fun of the creation process begins. Now we can decide upon the numerous appearances and tastes that will fashion your wort and, in turn, your beer. Wort is what we like to call our liquid before the fermentation process, when all of the human effort (besides bottling and drinking) has been completed. I will go into more detail about how this gets turned into beer later on in this guide.

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As you will experience, the malts and hops you choose will define the taste of your beer throughout the creation process. Certain malts will develop into sweeter flavors than others. The right combination of malts with the hops can complement each other to give you a good, balanced brew. Similar to many other types of pairings, the general rule applies - opposites attract. You can also create a “hoppy” beer by choosing an especially strong set of hops to add earthy, herbal, spicy, or even citrus-like flavors and aromas to the beer. Hops are also what give the beer its bitter taste, which you can later quantify in what has come to be known as International Bittering Units (IBUs). For example, “an American Light Lager may have 5 to 8 IBUs, while an Imperial India Pale Ale (IPA) may have 100 or more IBUs” (Nachel 1). Along with bitterness, the color and gravity—the general viscosity or thickness of the liquid—of the beer can largely impact the overall enjoyment of a beer.

Color begins with the grains you choose to make the beer. “All beers have color, whether it’s light, dark, or somewhere in between… Light-colored grains results in a pale-colored beer; conversely, darker-roaster grains produce darker beers” (Nachel 1). Some of my favorite breweries manage to even create red colorings in their beers. Gravity on the other hand comes from the level of maltose dissolved in your wort. With higher levels of maltose per unit of volume, the beer will gain a more “full-bodied” feeling. This is similar to the idea of wine having “legs” when swirled in the glass. All of these factors will come to define the greatness of your drinks.

Alter the Process, Define the Taste

So how do we begin the process of brewing our well-thought creation? You will have to gather all of the required equipment and ingredients. You will need:

-       5+ gallon boiling pot

-       A fermentor of equivalent size,

-       Sterilizer

-       Thermometer

-       Hydrometer

-       Scales (optional)

-       Straining bag (for your grains)

-       A barrel or bottles depending how you would like to ferment your beer

-       Bottle caps and a bottle capper (if you choose to use bottles)

-       A syphon tube

-       The ingredients of your chosen beer

Since I don’t want to bore you with all the specifics and many steps that are subject to change with each brew, I will include a link to a YouTube video created by WNCBikeRider that can describe the basic process with some visual demonstrations. The man may seem a bit dry in his tutorial, but the dryness only added to the humor in my opinion.

After a few trials, you may begin to embrace your inner artistic self by changing your temperatures, heating times, or the volumes of ingredients to enhance your brew to better fit your liking; I personally like to add in multiple varieties of hops and in greater quantities to produce exotic flavors that transform the brew into a novel creation. I have used Simcoe hops, for example, which provide a pleasant pine flavor that I highly recommend trying. Adding extra hops can turn your IPA into a Double IPA or even an Imperial IPA. The endless possibilities of manipulating your beer allow you to explore your creative side in the art of brewing.

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John Palmer summarizes the process in 5 easy steps:

“1. Malted barley is soaked in hot water to release the malt sugars.

2. The malt sugar solution is boiled with Hops for seasoning.

3. The solution is cooled and yeast is added to begin fermentation.

4. The yeast ferments the sugars, releasing the CO₂ and ethyl alcohol.

5. When the main fermentation is complete, the beer is bottled with a little bit of added sugar to provide the carbonation,” (Palmer).

Palmer has links on his page that will describe a few alternative methods like brewing with extract and steeped grain, but this guide is meant to explain the more creative aspects behind the process. You begin with a large (preferably 5 or more gallons) pot of boiling water in which you place the grains contained in a bag, similar to a tea bag diffusing in water. When the water is at a boil and the grains have seeped into the water, you should add the packets of malt that you have selected. At particular intervals after pouring in and stirring the malt, additions of hops must be added to the mixture. The choices you have made at the start of the brewing process come in to play here and will express their colors in the final product. In addition, the timing of adding the yeast to the mixture can make an enormous difference in your beer. I also told a small white lie when I said you need to decide at the start whether the brew should be an ale or lager. It is in fact the type of yeast you use that actually determines the category of your beer. While top-fermenting yeast will float on the surface of your beer during fermentation and produce an ale, bottom-fermenting yeast, in which “the yeasts sink to the bottom of the beer during fermentation” (Nachel 2) will produce a lager. I bet you always thought that yeast infections could only be a bad thing, but without them, alcohol would not exist.

Unleashing Your Inner Beer Snob

Once your yeast has turned your wort to beer and you bottle your brews, you need to continue to keep your beers in a temperature-controlled environment. After a few weeks, your beers are ready to be tasted. If this is your first brew then you should probably try the first opening with a sample group to make sure the taste is at least close to par (I said the process was fun, but not always easy). When you’re willing to share the beer on a larger scale, I recommend having a beer tasting party. My brothers and I would invite all of our friends whom appreciate a good beer and everyone would bring a large bottle of a craft brew made by their favorite brewery. Give everyone a tasting cup (preferably a clean glass each time) and a small sample from each bottle. Now is the time to unleash your inner beer snob. 

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To earn the title of a beer snob, you will be required to have experience with many of the various craft brews—you can’t trust someone who only drinks Shock Top and Coors—and a certain vocabulary to show off your beer smarts.  I mentioned earlier how you can shoot for a well-balanced beer, but describing a beer goes way beyond saying that one has an even level of flavors. Beers can be hoppy or malty, floral or roasty, or perhaps even complex and aggressive. The more you experience tasting, the better you will learn these terms along with many more. No one becomes an expert after the first IPA.

At some point in your beer tasting party, you should bring out your creation to allow your friends a sample. You will know immediately by their faces if your beer should be put into a competition or poured into the toilet. Take everything you hear into consideration and try again with your next beer. Perhaps you added way too much malt or didn’t leave your grains in long enough. On the other hand, you may have brewed an amazing beer. If so, you should do your best to replicate your work and enjoy the fruits of your labor long into retirement.

The Bottom of the Glass

Your first attempt at home brewing may be full of mistakes and your efforts may result in a liquid so bitter that you wouldn’t let your dog drink it. I encourage you to not let a single failure stop you. Brewing is a fun and exciting experience when you finally get the hang of it. I highly recommend that you brew with your best friends and drink from start to finish. One last piece of advice I will give you is that the better your hops smell, the better the taste they will add to your finished product. Good luck and happy brewing!

Works Cited 

Ettlinger, Steve, and Marty Nachel. “The Basic Styles of Beer”. Beer for Dummies, 2^nd Edition. <http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/the-basic-styles-of-beer.html>

Ettlinger, Steve, and Marty Nachel. “Traits of Taste in Different Beers”. Beer for Dummies, 2^nd Edition. <http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/traits-of-taste-in-different-beers.html>

“How to home Brew Beer in Your Kitchen”. Web. <http://drinkcraftbeer.com/home-brewing/how-to/how-to-home-brew-beer-in-your-kitchen.html>

Palmer, John. “Introduction.” How To Brew. 2015. Web. <howtobrew.com/book/introduction>