Most of us don’t realize how heavy a garage door is until we have to deal with one whose spring has broken, professional installers excepted. When the spring springs (usually when you’re leaving for work) you have to go about the tedious business of disconnecting the garage door opener, heroically heaving open the door, backing out the car, and running for your life when the full weight of the door comes crashing back down. It is then that you learn just how much these things weigh.

And when it comes time to replace that broken spring, getting the right size is crucial. Too small, and the automatic opener struggles to perform its eponymous task. Too large, and the door is hard to close. An effective garage door spring supplies just enough upward force to make a large steel door featherweight to operate and make you feel like a superhero.

I bring this up because understanding how to balance your home draft system is a lot like choosing a garage door spring. In fact, it’s fundamentally the same thing.

Opposing forces

Just like a garage door, a well-designed draft system successfully balances two opposing forces. In the case of the door, these are:

1. The weight of the door itself, and
2. The force supplied by the spring.

Similarly, a good draft system needs to balance:

1. The gas pressure that propels beer out of the keg, through the beverage line, out of the faucet, and into your glass; and
2. The total resistance that tries to keep the beer from moving forward through your kegging system.

Using our garage door analogy, pressure is like the weight of the garage door, while resistance is similar to the spring. Let’s consider each in turn.

Giving in to Pressure

Pressure from carbon dioxide serves two roles in a draft system:

1. It pushes beer from the keg to your glass.
2. It maintains proper carbonation in the keg.

Without top-pressure from carbon dioxide, a keg will gradually go flat as it empties, just as an opened bottle of beer does if left out on the counter overnight. And you need the right amount. Too much pressure, and the beer will gradually overcarbonate. Too little, and it will lose carbonation with time. Remember, carbonation always adjusts to match the carbon dioxide pressure in the headspace above the beer (Henry’s Law).

So, the very first step in balancing your draft system is to determine the proper carbonation level for your beer. This number may vary from one style to another (a spritzy Bavarian hefeweizen needs more carbonation than a simple English bitter), but a good, all-purpose number is 2.4 to 2.6 volumes. Most commercial kegs are carbonated in this range.

Now carbonation level varies with both applied pressure and storage temperature. So the next step is to figure out what serving pressure delivers the carbonation you want at the temperature at which your beer is stored. Most commercial setups are designed around a 38°F storage temperature with 2.6 volumes of carbon dioxide, so that’s what we’ll assume here.

You can calculate how much pressure is needed to achieve a given carbonation level at a given pressure, or you can use a chart. I prefer a chart. This one comes courtesy of the Draught Beer Quality Manual, a publication of the Brewers Association.

Carbonation Level Chart
* Chart assumes sea-level elevations. Add 1 psi for every 2,000 feet above sea level.
Vol. CO2 →	2.1	2.2	2.3	2.4	2.5	2.6	2.7	2.8	2.9	3.0	3.1
Temp. (ºF)	psi*	psi*	psi*	psi*	psi*	psi*	psi*	psi*	psi*	psi*	psi*
33	5.0	6.0	6.9	7.9	8.8	9.8	10.7	11.7	12.6	13.6	14.5
34	5.2	6.2	7.2	8.1	9.1	10.1	11.1	12.0	13.0	14.0	15.0
35	5.6	6.6	7.6	8.6	9.7	10.7	11.7	12.7	13.7	14.8	15.8
36	6.1	7.1	8.2	9.2	10.2	11.3	12.3	13.4	14.4	15.5	16.5
37	6.6	7.6	8.7	9.8	10.8	11.9	12.9	14.0	15.1	16.1	17.2
38	7.0	8.1	9.2	10.3	11.3	12.4	13.5	14.5	15.6	16.7	17.8
39	7.6	8.7	9.8	10.8	11.9	13.0	14.1	15.2	16.3	17.4	18.5
40	8.0	9.1	10.2	11.3	12.4	13.5	14.6	15.7	16.8	17.9	19.0
41	8.3	9.4	10.6	11.7	12.8	13.9	15.1	16.2	17.3	18.4	19.5
42	8.8	9.9	11.0	12.2	13.3	14.4	15.6	16.7	17.8	19.0	20.1

Using the chart, we find that maintaining 2.6 volumes of CO₂ in solution at 38°F means applying carbon dioxide at 12.4 pounds per square inch (psi) of pressure. As long as we maintain the same temperature and applied pressure, the beer in the keg will remain carbonated at 2.6 volumes from the first glass to the last.

Now here’s the kicker. The very same pressure that maintains carbonation in your beer also has to push it out of the keg and through the draft lines. That’s the essence of what we call a direct-draw draft system, which is what virtually all kegerators are. The beer is drawn directly from the keg, hence the name. And this is the fundamental trick with direct-draw systems:

In a direct-draw draft system, the pressure at which beer is pushed through the lines must be the same as that required to maintain carbonation in the keg.

More complex systems like long-draw draft setups use a blend of carbon dioxide and an insoluble gas like nitrogen to push beer at higher pressures without introducing too much CO₂. But we won’t deal with those here.

Vive la résistance

So, we know our serving pressure. Great! But if we were to just hook up a faucet directly to the keg, with no beverage line in between, beer would come shooting out at a high speed, and you’d end up with a lot of foam and spilled beer. That’s where resistance comes in.

Resistance is what slows down your beer en route from keg to glass, so that beer comes out of the faucet nice and slow. And in most setups, there are only two things that provide resistance:

1. Gravity
2. Friction in the beverage lines

You already know about gravity. If you point a garden hose into the sky, the water eventually falls back to the earth, no matter how high you shoot it. The same is true for beer. The constant pull of gravity slows it down, and it just so happens that the amount of this pull is easy to calculate:

For every foot of height between the keg and the faucet, gravity reduces the effective pressure by about 0.5 pounds per square inch.

So, let’s say that from the chart above, you’re serving your beer at 12.4 psi. If you’re using a typical draft tower setup, the faucet might be located about two feet above the center of the keg. In that case, gravity offers about 1 psi of resistance, which means you need to supply another 11.4 psi of resistance to overcome the remainder.

The solution for most homebrewers is to simply use enough line to make up the difference, and that’s where friction in the beverage lines comes in. The amount of line you need depends on the type of line you have. Again, the Draught Beer Quality Manual offers some help:

Type	Size	Restriction	Volume
Restriction values for several types of beverage line
Vinyl	3/16” ID	3.00 psi/ft	1/6 oz/ft
Vinyl	1/4” ID	0.85 psi/ft	1/3 oz/ft
Vinyl	5/16” ID	0.40 psi/ft	1/2 oz/ft
Vinyl	3/8” ID	0.20 psi/ft	3/4 oz/ft
Vinyl	1/2” ID	0.025 psi/ft	1-1/3 oz/ft
Barrier	1/4” ID	0.30 psi/ft	1/3 oz/ft
Barrier	5/16” ID	0.10 psi/ft	1/2 oz/ft
Barrier	3/8” ID	0.06 psi/ft	3/4 oz/ft
Stainless	1/4” OD	1.20 psi/ft	1/6 oz/ft
Stainless	5/16” OD	0.30 psi/ft	1/3 oz/ft
Stainless	3/8” OD	0.12 psi/ft	1/2 oz/ft

Let’s say, then, that you are using 1/4” inner diameter (ID) vinyl beverage line. According to the chart, it supplies 0.85 psi of resistance per foot of tubing. If you need to overcome 11.4 psi, then you’ll need 11.4 psi ÷ 0.85 psi/ft = 13 feet of beverage line or so.

Thus, in our hypothetical example, a keg of beer stored at 38°F and carbonated to 2.6 volumes of CO₂ should pour perfectly if the faucet is located 2 feet higher than the keg and we have at least 13 feet of beverage line. Easy peasy.

Summary

Balancing your draft system is straightforward if you follow these simple steps.

1. Choose a carbonation level that you wish to maintain in your beer. About 2.4 to 2.6 volumes of CO₂ is a good number if you don’t have a good reason to do differently.
2. Based on the temperature in your kegerator, select the serving pressure that will deliver that level of carbonation (accounting for elevation, if necessary, by adding 0.5 psi for every 1,000 feet above sea level). This is the pressure you need to balance.
3. Account for the effects of gravity by subtracting 0.5 psi for every vertical foot between the center of your keg and the faucet. If by some chance the faucet is below the keg, then add 0.5 psi per foot of vertical instead of subtracting.
4. Based on the type of beverage line you use, divide the remaining number by the resistance to obtain the number of feet of line you need.

Remember, you need only do this once, and as long as nothing changes, your system should happily serve you pint after foam-free pint. Cheers!

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Dave Carpenter is the Editor-in-Chief of Zymurgy Magazine

The post A Balancing Act: How to Balance Your Home Draft System appeared first on American Homebrewers Association.

Saison is a classic Belgian “farmhouse” style that can be tricky to reduce to a one-sentence description. Brewers have taken the style in many different directions, though all are typically hallmarked by peppery, fruity, and sometimes tart Belgian yeast character.

We’ve compiled 5 different saison recipes that capture that array of flavor possibilities. You can find many more saison and other homebrew recipes in our homebrew recipes archive.

1. Battre L’oie Saison

Dry, Malty, Classic

John Palmer presents this saison recipe in his book How To Brew: Everything You Need to Know to Brew Great Beer Every Time. The recipe is a classic take on the farmhouse style with Palmer describing it as having “a dry, grainy malt character, firm bitterness and mineral structure, with lots of aromatics coming from the yeast.” This homebrew recipe is a great foundation for adding spices and other adjunct ingredients.

Full Recipe

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2. Bale So Hard

Hoppy & Tart

This one is for the hop heads. Bale So Hard, a 2016 Great American Beer Festival Pro-Am entry by homebrewer David Hellen and Bell’s Brewery, includes a dose of dry hops after fermentation to add heaps of hoppy aromatics without the bitterness. The result is a an easy-drinking saison with a fragrant nose of American hops and Belgian yeast. You’re going to want to brew a double batch of this one!

Full Recipe

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3. Saison de Craisin

Strong & Spicy

An array of spices–including orange peel, dried cranberries, coriander, and cinnamon–adds a flavor kick bringing this saison recipe to the next level. Pair that with a pound of honey to boost the alcohol level up close to 10% ABV and you’ve got one dangerously delicious brew!

Full Recipe

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4. Triptych Tart Rambutan Saison

Tart, Dry, Unique

This interesting take on saison comes straight from the brewers at Adroit Theory, a Pennsylvania craft brewery known for its esoteric beers. The star of this saison recipe is rambutan, a tropical fruit native to the Malay-Indonesian region that has a sweet, mildly acidic flavor very reminiscent of grapes. The result is a a tasty saison that is a little tart on the tongue with a dry finish that keeps it refreshing.

Full Recipe

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5. Dark Winter Saison Recipe IV

Complex, Malty, Warm

Saison might not be the style that comes to mind when considering a great cold-weather beer, but Michael Tonsmeire’s Dark Winter Saison Recipe IV might be your new favorite winter warmer. This homebrew recipe has a lot going on, including an array of dark malts, a Brett-driven yeast, and a dose of red-wine soaked wood chips and currants. This complex, funky saison is a great example of brewers pushing the envelope on a classic style.

Full Recipe

The post 5 Must-try Saison Recipes to Brew at Home appeared first on American Homebrewers Association.

So you want to brew a fruit beer. You’ve selected the perfect base beer style and fruit combination and it’s time to start sourcing the fruit and making a plan of attack.

As with many aspects of homebrewing, there are many ways to achieve a similar outcome, so think about which of the following processes will work best when planning to add fruit to beer.

Finding Fruit

Finding the fruit for your beer is as simple as heading down to the grocery store and loading up the cart, right? To some extent, yes, but a beer can only be as great as its raw ingredients, so it is crucial to try and find the highest quality produce you can get your hands on.

In a perfect world, fruit is grown in your backyard. Buy growing your own, you can allow the fruit to achieve optimal ripeness, and you know the exact what conditions the fruit was grown in. But, alas, growing fruit trees is not something you wake up and decide to and have ready for your next brew day. Off to the market…

Before heading to the grocery store, look for local farms and nurseries or visit your neighborhood farmers market. These sources produce the “heirloom” type of produce that typically use minimal amounts of chemical growers and pesticides and focusing on quality product rather than speedy mass production. This option may be a bit pricier than going to the store, but the quality is worth the expense to achieve delicious fruit flavor in your beer.

And if all else fails, head to the grocery store! Great fruit beers can still be made with produce purchased from grocery chains, with a little extra care. First, spend some time rummaging the fruit bins for the ripest specimens you can find. Mass producers of fruits often harvest before the point of optimal ripeness to extend shipping and shelf life. The trade off is a less-flavorful fruit. Grocery store fruits are also often grown and treated with chemicals, so take care to give fruit a thorough washing before adding to a beer (though, this should be done with any produce purchased).

If fresh fruit is not available, frozen fruit and purees are the next best option. Frozen fruit and purees are also a great way to purchase quality fruit ingredients at a more affordable cost, especially if your recipe calls for large additions. They also take less time to prepare when adding to beer. Keep an eye on the ingredients and avoid products that have large amounts of preservatives.

Juices are another option that can be used with great success, and like frozen fruits and purees, you should look for products free of preservatives and made of real fruit. Some folks use extracts and essences of fruits, but this is where you start to get into the realm of the artificial-tasting fruit beers.

Fruit Amounts

With a source of fruit determined, you now need to know how much fruit to purchase. This is not a cut-and-dry situation, and since fruit beers are created from many different base styles, you need to focus on balancing the strength and qualities of the beer with that of the fruit.

For example, two pounds of raspberries may be perfect in your five-gallons of strong stout, but the same amount in a session wheat beer could be overwhelmed with raspberry character. Also, take into account whether or not the fruit has a strong acidic quality, which will require more consideration in creating balance between the fruit and base beer.

Be sure to keep careful notes of the amounts you use in relation to your batch size and recipe, so in the future you can make more informed decisions based on your experiences and your preferred taste. The following chart can be used as a starting point to determine the appropriate fruit amounts in any given homebrew recipe:

Fruit (fresh)	Pounds/Gallon	Grams/Liter
Apricots	0.25 – 2.0	30 – 240
Blackberries	0.5 – 4.0	60 – 480
Blueberries	0.5 – 3.0	60 – 360
Cherries (sour)	o.25 – 2.0	30 – 240
Cherries (sweet)	0.33 – 4.0	40 – 480
Citrus	0.25 – 1.0	30 – 120
Currants	0.33 – 1.5	40 – 180
Peaches	0.5 – 5.0	60 – 600
Plums	0.5 – 2.0	60 – 240
Raspberries	0.25 – 2.0	30 – 240
Strawberries	0.5 – 3.0	60 – 360

This table was taken from “Sweet & Sour: Adding Fruit to Sour Beer” by Kevin Wright featured in the May/June 2015 Zymurgy magazine. Access the article and see the full chart which includes equivalents for purees, concentrates and dehydrated/dried fruits.

Preparing & Adding Fruit

The methods of preparing fruit will largely depend on the form of the fruit (ex. whole, puree, juice, etc.), and at what point the fruit will be added to the beer. Again, there are many ways to skin the proverbial cat.

Whole, puree and juiced fruit is often added in the last minutes of the boil. This acts as a quick pasteurization step to prevent any potential bacterial contamination that could make your fruit beer go south. Adding fruit to the boil means the fruit is in the wort during active fermentation. Having fruit in the fermenter during fermentation causes a much different fruit character then you might find when adding fruit post-fermentation.

For starters, the fruit will likely add fermentable sugars to the wort, which you may want to account for when formulating the recipe. Fermented fruit also has a much different character then post-fermentation fruit additions. A lot of the fruit character will be blown off from the rigor of fermentation, and what remains will be a more wine-like fruit character since the fruit’s sugars were fermented, rather than a fresh fruit quality. In some fruit beers, especially those that may use wine grapes, the fermented fruit character may be desired. 

Purees and juices can be added directly to the boil kettle. You can do the same with whole fruit, but you may want to consider mashing or pulse-blending the fruit before adding it to the boil to help release more of the juices. Bagging the fruit in a hop bag is suggested if dealing with a lot of flesh and seeds, but it’s not 100 percent necessary if you take care not to rack the solids into the primary fermenter.

If you’re after more fresh fruit character that is reminsicent of the raw fruit being used, then stick with post-fermentation additions after primary fermentation has nearly completed. However, since you don’t have the high temperatures as you would when boiling fruit, you need to take extra care to avoid contamination (unless, of course, you are after something wild). Often times juices, purees and frozen fruits undergo flash-pasteurization which leaves little risk for contamimation if added to beer. Whole fruit, on the other hand, is another story.

First, mash or pulse-blend the fruit to release the juices and create more surface area for the beer to be in contact with the fruit. Now you have three options for pasteurization. First, is a low-heat pasteurization method that you can do in a double boiler or carefully directly on heat. Hold the mashed fruit at around 150-170°F for about 15 minutes, and that should rid the fruit of most of the unwanted bacteria. Second, simply freezing the mashed fruit before adding it to the fermenter. It is said that freezing and thawing fruit a few times helps release more flavors by breaking down cell walls, which means a fruitier brew! Third, simply do nothing at all and hoping for the best (good luck!).

Once you’ve pasteurized your mashed fruit, bag it in a hop bag like you would dry hops and add it to your secondary fermenter or keg. Make sure all the juices make it into the fermenter, too, even if the bag doesn’t contain it. Then, simply age it on the fruit like you would dry hops. Pull samples and once it tastes as you hoped, yank the bag and bottle or start serving! You can forgo the hop bags and add fruit directly to the fermenter, but this will likely require filtering, racking to additional fermenters and/or cold crashing to get clear, solid-free fruit beer.

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Sources: “Brewing with Fruit” by Dave Mentus (May/June 2010 Zymurgy); “Notes from a Fruit Beer Fancier” by Randy Mosher (July/August 2002 Zymurgy); “Sweet & Sour: Adding Fruit to Sour Beer” by Kevin Wright (May/June 2015 Zymurgy).

The post How to Add Fruit to Beer appeared first on American Homebrewers Association.

Being frugal and making friends with beekeepers have benefits for the experimental meadmaker, and occasionally I get to play with crystallized comb or rinsings from extruded frames. But because the sugar concentration of washed honey is unknown, the density (specific gravity) of diluted honey has to be checked. Today we enjoy access to the wonderful glass hydrometer, but hydrometers have a habit of rolling off the counter when brew day rolls around. In the absence of a hydrometer, brewers in the past often used an egg. Really.

How the Floating Egg Test Works

The floating egg technique works thanks to the internal anatomy of an egg, which includes an air sac at the rounded end for the bird embryo to breathe. A fresh egg has a relatively small air sac, but egg shells are slightly porous, and the air sac grows as the contents of the egg slowly evaporate and dry out. A very fresh egg sinks in water, but an old egg with a large air sac will bob up and float. This float test is still used in modern times to test whether or not an egg is fit to eat before cracking it.

Specific gravity is a dimensionless quantity that compares the density of a substance to that of water. By definition, the specific gravity of water is 1. Anything with a specific gravity greater than 1, like wort or must, is denser than water, and anything with a specific gravity less than 1, like ethanol (alcohol), is less dense than water. When salts or sugars (like honey) are dissolved into water, the extra particles change the density of the solution.

 

A fresh egg has a density between 1.03-1.1 g/mL, which means it will float in a solution that has a density greater than or equal to 1.03-1.1 g/mL.¹ (The density of pure water is an even 1.0 g/mL.) Thus, an egg placed in must or wort having a specific gravity greater than approximately 1.030 to 1.100 will float. The denser the liquid, the higher the egg will bob in the solution.

Must Density Matters

Throughout most of history, every last bit of honey would have been used, not just the honey that’s easy to extract. The centrifugal honey extruder is a modern convenience that allows for high yield with minimal processing, but before this useful invention, honey would have been extracted by hand, first by leaking and breaking up the combs, and then by washing the broken combs in warm water to dissolve the remaining and any crystallized honey.

The resulting mixture of honey and water would be of unknown strength and would have needed to be checked before brewing: insufficient fermentable sugars could result in an easily spoiled brew, and too much sugar can inhibit yeast growth and stall fermentation. Master brewers likely could eyeball or taste and have a perfect brew each time, but the less experienced benefited from a visual aide like a floating egg. By the end of the 17th century, a hen’s egg was specified for this purpose.²

Historic brewing recipes are uncertain as to whether the must should be heated or not, and they often recommend testing the strength before boiling,³ apparently not realizing this evaporates water and increases density. The brewers are also not quite able to make up their mind if the must should be cold, blood-warm, or boiling, which could indicate they did not understand how temperature affects specific gravity either.

The 1597 Dutch beekeeping manual Van de Byen by Theodorus Clutius says, “and let it cook / until an Egg can float in the liquid / then set it off the fire,” which could have yielded a nicely boiled egg if it were not removed quickly enough. A 1616 Danish cookbook–the oldest such known–advises one to “put an egg or two into this lukewarm brew so that there is a part of egg as big as a 2 shilling over the water then it is sweet and fat enough,” which probably is the most accurate measurement.

Several 17th-century brewing recipes associated coins, especially twopence and the groat, with the floating egg. The diameter of the coin would be used as a size measurement of the diameter of the bit of shell sticking above the water surface, and this measurement averages a ratio of 3:1 to 4:1 of water to honey dilution,⁴ which are appropriate ratios for mead must.

How to Float an Egg

The diameter of an ideal groat is approximately 23-24 mm, and the diameter of a US quarter is 24.26 mm (0.955 inches), which makes a quarter the perfect stand-in for the old groat.

The size of the air sac changes as an egg ages–interfering with the results of our density test–so it is very important to use a fresh egg that has not yet had time to evaporate. It is also important to check the supposedly fresh egg, as eggs sold in the supermarket are not always as fresh as you might assume. To do this, calibrate the egg in plain water before every density test to make sure it sinks flat to the bottom, with both butt and tip level (see figure below).

Differences in breed, health, age, and diet can also cause the size and shape of the egg to differ quite significantly. For the best results, compare several eggs and pick out the most average one.

The table below correlates egg position–that portion of the egg visible above the surface of the liquid–with specific gravity, giving us an idea of what to aim for. Egg readings are given for ale yeasts with alcohol tolerances of 10% and 12% by volume.⁵

Mead Style	Starting Gravity (10% ABV tolerant yeast)	Diameter of Egg Visible above Surface	Starting Gravity (12% ABV tolerant yeast)	Diameter of Egg Visible above Surface
Dry	1.085	touches	1.100	20 mm
Medium	1.095	18 mm	1.110	26 mm
Sweet	1.100	20 mm	1.120	30 mm
Dessert	1.100+	>20 mm	1.120+	>30 mm

To make sure there is enough sugar for the yeast to feed on, the egg should float. But if it starts to tip over and not reliably point up anymore, the solution has become too strong, with too much honey sugar for the yeast to properly work, and fermentation will likely stall. The average range of 1.08 to 1.12 g/mL at which the average round, fresh-laid egg floats and points upward is also the ideal range of sugar content for starting a successful brew using standard yeast.⁶

So, after all this, where do you start? Start with a fresh egg no more than two days old, of the roundest kind, weighing less than or about 2 ounces (57 g). Calibrate the egg in room-temperature water to make sure it sinks flat. Make your honey must, heat and evaporate as needed, let cool down to blood temperature, and add your egg.

If the egg sinks, the must is too weak. If it floats close to tipping or tips, the must is too strong. If it is too weak, add more honey, stir well, and try again. If it’s too strong, add a little water, stir well, and try again. As you can imagine, it is easier to start with too strong a solution and dilute it, than to start with a weak solution and try to incrementally dissolve more honey. If your must does need some strengthening, make a strong honey or sugar solution first, and incrementally add that to your must, not straight up undiluted honey.

It has been my experience that if the egg tip touches but does not break the surface of the must, it will ferment to a nice, dry wine-like mead. If you prefer something sweeter, aim to have the egg break the surface and show an area about the size of a quarter, or a bit less. If at first you don’t feel at ease trusting your fresh-laid egg, use a modern hydrometer the first few times, in conjunction with your egg, to get the hang of this technique. Before you know it you’ll reach for an egg, conveniently located in your kitchen.

As a homesteader and medieval reenactor, Susan Verberg enjoys researching alternative ingredients and old fashioned techniques. Verberg primarily brews mead and keeps bees when possible, but also occasionally dabbles in historic–especially herbed–beers. For more on Verberg’s mead brewing, check out her collection of medieval recipes and techniques.

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Sources

• [1] http://homesteadlaboratory.blogspot.com/2014/02/historical-lye-making-part-2.html
• [2] Digby, Kenelme. The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelme Digby Knight Opened, 1669
• 2005 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16441
• [3] Digby, To Make Metheglin
• [4] To Bear An Egge, Making mead with medieval hydrometers. SCUM 16, p.21-28.
• [5] Sibly, Belinda. The Egg Test for Period Brewers and Mead Makers, 2004, p.20-29.
• http://brewers.lochac.sca.org/files/2014/02/The-Egg-test-for-Period-Brewers2.pdf
• [6] Sibley

The post Egg over Mead-ium: Measuring Gravity With an Egg appeared first on American Homebrewers Association.

Growing hops at home is a common past time of the homebrewer. It’s a great way to be more hands on with your homebrew, to supplement some of the hops needed in your beers, and to open up the opportunity to easily brew fresh and wet hopped beers.

After harvest, drying is a crucial step in preparing your homegrown hops for storage. A hop oast is essentially a screen that hops are placed on to allow speedy drying. In this article, we’ll show you how to easily build your own hop oast.

Construction

Parts Needed: (around $30)

• 7 pieces 2x4x8′ kiln-dried fir
• 48″ x 7′ aluminum screen material roll
• 3″ wood screws (56)
• Staple gun
• Box knife
• Cordless drill

Begin by cutting each board into 4 – 23″ pieces (keep the scraps). I just had the guy at Lowes do this for me. Take each of the pieces and begin screwing them together using two screws to each joint. Align each joint so that they are flush on top and bottom, and that the end of one board is flush with the side of the next at a 90° angle.  Don’t go overboard to insure a perfect angle as it will self align when you make the last connection. Once you have all four corners drilled together, set the tray aside. Repeat this until all seven trays are built.

After you have all seven trays built, set one aside. Place the others together two wide, and three tall on a flat surface. I did this on my driveway. Once they are flush and straight, roll the screen out over the top of them. The 48″ width should be a perfect fit across two trays, and the 7′ should easily cover the three trays up. Once you have the screen spread over, use the staple gun to attach it to the corners, then work your way around all of the trays along every side rail and every corner until each tray is fully attached to the screen.

Now take your box knife and insert the blade between two trays through the screen and cut along the separation until all the trays are cut apart. You will have a little hangover from the edges, feel free to clean them up with your box knife, I just left mine for now (more important to get the hops dry when you build this after the bines have been cut down). It would be good to glue along the inside edge and allow it to dry to seal the trays from allowing hops to get stuck between the screen and box frame, and it will make cleaning easier after you are done with them.

After they are separated, take the small scrap pieces and use them to raise a box fan off of the ground a few inches. This will give you air flow to go up and through your hops. You will want to pick a place where there will be some heat, air flow for the humidity to escape, and that is not in direct sunlight. I used my garage and put a space heater next to it to blow under the fan since we had a cold front hit when I got the hops picked. I didn’t let it run unattended. I only did this on the weekend while I was home as I did not trust the space heater to run while I wasn’t home or while asleep.

Place the screenless tray on top of the box fan as a diamond for use as a base. If your box fan is large enough, you can stack it on top at the same angle as the box fan edges, but for mine, it worked perfect to turn it slightly so that it became a diamond to the square fan, creating an eight pointed star if outlined. This empty tray with no screen allows a little extra flow for the fan so it isn’t blowing directly against the screen and hop bed which may cause it to overheat.

Function

At this point, you should pick your hops into sacks and weigh them. It is always more fun to have a helper. Place a single variety into a single (screened) tray. Once your tray is full (about 1/3 up the side), set it on top of the base tray over the fan so that the tray edges align perfectly over each other. Continue to pick your hops, fill your trays and stack them up. Leave one of the trays empty to the side. I used a piece of masking tape to mark each tray to know which variety was in which tray. Next year, I may just add a plastic sleeve to the side and make up cards with the names of the varieties I grow to sort them that way (it will look much nicer).

Once your trays are filled with hops, place the last empty tray on top. This tray’s screen will keep things from falling into your hops, and keep the stray hop leaves in place to make clean up a little easier. At this point, turn on your fan to medium. Low will take longer, and high would be faster, but you don’t want to have it so high that you end up blowing any of the lupulin out of the hops.

Leave the hops to dry for a few days, gently fluffing them up every 12 hours or so to ensure even drying. I also swapped trays out so that the bottom trays became middle trays, top became bottom and middle became top. I continued this rotation whenever I fluffed them. They say that the hops should be about 20 percent the weight they were when you picked them. If you got one pound of hops, you should have around 3-3.5oz of dried hops. Another telling sign is that when you take a hop cone and bend it in half the strig in the middle should snap clean. If if bends and moves back then they are still too moist.

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Justin Bruce has been brewing to his own tune for more than four years after receiving his first basic equipment kit for his birthday from his wife. Beginning in late 2010 with an extract kit, he moved quickly into designing his own recipes which have won multiple awards including a “Best of Show.” In 2014 he won “Brewer of the Year” for the Cascade Brewers Society Homebrew Club. A father of two boys, Justin likes to have his boys help out with brewing when ever possible.  He is even making family engagement a large part of the vision for the production brewery he is planning to open in his home town of Eugene, Ore.

The post How to Build a Hop Oast appeared first on American Homebrewers Association.

While there are multiple ways to grow yeast in a starter, one of the most effective is to use a stir plate. Stir plates utilize magnetic attraction to create a vortex inside a container of wort, keeping the yeast in suspension and providing oxygen—which are both crucial to healthy yeast cell growth and replication. Similar results can be achieved by intermittently shaking a starter, but a stir plate is proven to result in greater yeast growth.

There are many different stir plates available from homebrew shops, but they can also be made fairly affordably. Many of the parts can likely be sourced around the house, and the rest easily purchased. As with most DIY projects, you can be as fancy or frugal as you please.

Project Materials

• Box: A box is needed to house the electrical components and hold the starter vessel. Almost anything with a flat surface will do. Old gaming systems, internet routers, cigar boxes—even Tupperware will work. Make sure whatever you select can hold the weight of your anticipated starter volume.
• Fan: Most DIY stir plates use fans from retired computers, but these fans can also be purchased from an electronics store for relatively cheap. A magnet is attached to the fan, which will rotate the magnetic stir bar inside the starter to create a vortex.
• Rare earth magnets: These sound more intimidating than they really are. Rare earth magnets can be harvested from an old computer hard drive, or you can find them at an electronics store. This magnet will be attached to the fan.
• Rheostat: A rheostat is used to control the speed of the fan, and ultimately the speed of the vortex in the starter. You may be able to salvage one from an old household electronic, or you can get a new from an electronics or hardware store.
• DC power source: DC power sources are the most common energy sources in electronics, so if you have an old charger for a cellphone, video camera, computer or something similar you should be all set. If not, a DC power source can be purchased from the electronics or hardware store.
  On/off switch: A switch can be harvested from just about any electronic with an on/off switch. Some rheostats have built in on/off switches.
• Magnetic stir bar: This is the one required piece that you probably do not have on hand at home. Most homebrew shops will have them available in various sizes. The rare earth magnet attached to the computer fan will rapidly rotate the stir bar, creating the vortex in the wort.
• Jumper wires: You might need a few extra wires depending on how complex you are planning to make your stir plate. These wires can be purchased or harvested from old electronics.
• Starter vessel: While this is not actually a part of the stir plate, when making a starter you will need a vessel to contain the starter wort. The ideal vessel is an Erlenmeyer flask, but a growler or mason jar would also work. They key to choosing a starter vessel when using a stir plate is finding something with a flat bottom that will not hinder the movement of the magnetic stir bar.

Construction

Start by centering the fan inside the box you selected. Secure the fan to the base using screws or super glue, taking care not to hinder the movement of the fan.

Once the fan is fixed to the base, take one or two of the rare earth magnets and center them in the middle of the fan. They should magnetically fix to the center, but if they don’t, they can be secured with super glue.

Drill small holes through the box to secure the on/off switch. Do the same if using a rheostat.

Now it’s time to wire the stir plate and bring it to life. While this can be done at home, there is always a danger involved when working with electricity. It is best to consult an electrician.

The fan should have two wires, one red and one black. The red wire is typically the positive and the black wire the negative. These two wires can be connected directly to the DC power source, but the speed produced will likely be more than what is necessary for a yeast starter.

To control the speed of the vortex, connect the negative black wire to the DC power supply, then connect the other wire from the power supply to the on/off switch.

Connect the positive (red) wire to the rheostat, then complete the circuit using an additional jumper wire connecting the switch and the rheostat.

Plug in the power supply and test your connections. If the fan does not power on, double check to make sure the positive and negative wires are in the right place.

Once the stir plate is functioning with the ability to control the speed of the fan, seal/close the box containing the electrical components. As a test, fill the flat-bottomed starter vessel to a typical volume you will be working with and gently add the magnetic stir bar.

The magnetic connection between the rare earth magnet mounted on the fan and the stir bar inside the starter vessel will cause the stir bar to rotate as fast as the fan spins, creating a vortex inside the vessel. This vortex will keep the yeast in suspension and provide oxygen as you propagate the starter.

There you have it—one homemade stir plate!

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Brendan Witt was an intern for the American Homebrewers Association.

The post How to Make a Stir Plate appeared first on American Homebrewers Association.

This homebrew experiment was originally published on Brulosophy.com.

It’s well known that temperature is positively correlated with reaction rates– as the warmth of a particular environment goes up, so too does the rapidity with which certain reactions occur. In the case of beer, these reactions are commonly associated with negative characteristics such as oxidation and staling, perhaps one reason refrigerated shelf-space is so zealously sought after by beer distributors and brewers, though likely secondary to consumer preference for “beer I can drink right now.”

Less of an issue for homebrewers due to our smaller batch volumes and usually, ahem, quicker consumption, storage temperature remains a concern for those who bottle condition and don’t have the capacity to store 50 bottles in a cool environment. Prior to making the switch to kegging my beer, this was certainly something I considered, as my garage fridge was often filled entirely with bottles, only to leave more sitting warm in a spare closet. With the birth of my son, that spare closet ceased being “spare” and my bottle storage space was dramatically reduced.

My switch to kegging wasn’t prompted so much by a desire for cold storage, but for the ease and convenience of the process when compared to bottling. However, I felt the quality of my beer improved, specifically that it was fresher, crisper, clearer, and more aromatic (especially IPAs) than when I bottle conditioned. I attributed these improvements as being due to the beer remaining at a consistently cool temperature post-fermenation, never rising above the setpoint of my cold keezer.

Could storage temperature really make that big of a difference, or did my love for kegging bias me in favor of the beer such that I invented a difference that was really all in my head?

Purpose

To evaluate the differences between a beer stored in a cool environment and the same beer stored in a warm environment over the same period of time.

Methods

This was not actually the intended xBmt on this brew day, but due to a miscalculation on my part, I had to rethink things last minute and was forced to test a post-boil variable.

Bohemian Pilsner Homebrew Recipe

Recipe Details

BATCH SIZE	BOIL TIME	IBU	SRM	EST. OG	EST. FG	ABV
5.5 gal	60 min	37.2 IBUs	3.8 SRM	1.052	1.012	5.2 %
			Actuals	1.052	1.013	5.1 %

Fermentables

NAME	AMOUNT	%
Pilsner (2 Row) Bel	10.25 lbs	95.35
Vienna Malt (Gambrinus)	8 oz	4.65

Hops

NAME	AMOUNT	TIME	USE	FORM	ALPHA %
Hallertau Magnum	11 g	60 min	Boil	Pellet	12.1
Saaz	30 g	30 min	Boil	Pellet	3
Saaz	37 g	20 min	Boil	Pellet	3
Saaz	37 g	10 min	Boil	Pellet	3

Yeast

NAME	LAB	ATTENUATION	TEMPERATURE
Saflager Lager (W-34/70)	DCL/Fermentis	75%	48°F – 59°F

Notes

Water Profile: Ca 55 | Mg 0 | Na 8 | SO4 45 | Cl 68

Starting a day ahead, I collected the full volume of water for this 20 gallon batch, catching it just in time!

I weighed out and milled the grains while my strike water was heating.

After transferring the slightly overheated strike water to my MLT and allowing for a brief preheat, I stirred in the grains to hit my target mash temperature.

I let the mash rest for 60 minutes, stirring occasionally to ensure good conversion.

At the end of the mash, I collected the proper volume of sweet wort and brought it to a rolling boil.

Hops were added during the 60 minute boil, after which I quickly chilled it to a few degrees above my groundwater temperature.

A hydrometer reading at this point confirmed I’d hit the OG predicted by BeerSmith.

I transferred equal amounts of the chilled wort to two 6 gallon PET carboys that I placed in my fermentation chamber to finish chilling to my desired fermentation temperature of 60˚F/16˚C.

Once there, I pitched 2 rehydrated packs of Saflager W-34/70 into each each fermentor.

It took about 24 hours for both beers before I noticed fermentation activity.

The beers fermented similarly over the following week, at which point I raised the temperature in the chamber a bit to encourage complete attenuation. With signs of fermentation absent around the 2 week mark, I took hydrometer readings and observed both had attenuated identically.

I proceeded with cold crashing, fining each with gelatin, then transferring to kegs. After purging the headspace in both kegs and leaving just enough CO2 to seat the lids, I stored one keg in a 35˚F/2˚C refrigerator while the other was placed in a closet in my house that maintains a temperature range between 68-73˚F/20-23˚C. The beers were left alone for a month before I moved them to my keezer, allowing them to thermally equalize for 2 days before burst carbonating. Even after another month of lagering in my keezer, the beers maintained a fairly dramatic difference in appearance.

Results

In total, 20 people of varying experience levels participated in this exBEERiment. Each taster was blindly served 1 sample of the beer stored warm and 2 samples of the beer stored cold in different colored opaque cups then asked to select the unique beer. At this sample size, at least 11 accurate selections were required to achieve statistical significance, though 12 accurate selections were made (p<0.05; p=0.013). These results indicate tasters in this xBmt were indeed able to reliably distinguish a Pilsner stored in a warm environment from the same Pilsner stored in a cold environment.

A brief comparative evaluation of only the two different beers was completed by the 12 participants who made the accurate selection on the triangle test, all remaining blind to the nature of the xBmt. The warm storage beer was preferred by 5 tasters, the beer stored cold was preferred by 2 tasters, 4 people had no preference despite noticing a difference, and 1 person reported there was no difference between the beers.

My Impressions: Whether skewed by bias or not, I really can’t say, but these beers hit right on what I expected them to taste like. The cold storage beer seemed to lose some life as it aged, but it remained quite clean, crisp, and enjoyable. On the other hand, I perceived the beer stored warm as having the characteristic sweet/cloying character I frequently associate with old or oxidized beer. While not entirely unpleasant, it lost many of the characteristics I expect in a typical Pilsner, bur rather possesses an impression of sweetness more reminiscent of a less phenolic Belgian Pale. Unlike prior xBmts, these beers genuinely echoed my expectation near perfectly, validating my belief that storage temperature matters.

Discussion

The fact tasters in this xBmt were able to reliably distinguish a beer stored warm from the same beer stored in a cold environment provides additional support to the accepted notion that storage conditions do indeed have an impact on beer, which has many implications. As mentioned previously, craft brewers want to get their beer into the mouths of drinkers in the best form possible, though their ability to do so is hindered by the limited amount of refrigerated shelf space in stores carrying their product. Moreover, homebrewers who bottle condition and don’t have the ability to store all of their beer in a cold environment will, in all likelihood, experience flavor drift over the life of each batch. The solution? If there’s a good one, I’d love to hear it.

I thought it was curious that only 2 of the 12 correct participants preferred the cold storage sample, which was my clearly preferred, while 5 liked the beer stored warm better. My hunch is this was more a function of the fact tasters weren’t aware of the style of beer they were drinking and hence chose the one with more overall character, or maybe some people actually do enjoy whatever it is aging in a warm environment does to beer.

I personally believe beer, in general, is a product best served fresh and, save for a few rare exceptions, decreases in quality with age. This even goes for styles many believe require aging such as strong Belgians and clean lagers. Ultimately, as someone who keeps all the beer I make in a cold keezer, it’s good to know it will likely live a little longer than if it were sitting a warm closet.

The post The Impact of Storage Temperature on Beer appeared first on American Homebrewers Association.

This post is a follow-up to How to Grow Hops at Home.

When to Pick Your Hops

The time has come. You’ve planned, pruned, monitored, cared for and put in the hours for you homegrown hops all summer. You’re starting to see those cones grow up the vine and you just can’t contain your excitement! Curb it just a little longer. A common mistake is picking the cones too early. You want to pick over-ripe hops rather than under-ripe hops, otherwise you’ll deprive them of those awesome alpha acids.

Depending on location, harvest occurs between mid-August and September. If these are first-year hops, expect a small harvest—most of the energy throughout the growing period is used to develop the root systems, making it difficult for cones to reach their peak yield. Expect a fuller harvest in the second year, and a big leap in hop yield the third year.

How to Check Hop Cone Ripeness

1. Give the cone a light squeeze. If the cone stays compressed, it’s not ripe enough. When they feel light and dry—and spring back after a squeeze—they’re ready to be harvested.
2. Pick a cone, roll it in your hands and smell it. If it has a pungent smell between cut grass and onion, it’s time to harvest.
3. Roll the hop next to your ear. If it makes a cricket sound, this also means they’re ready to harvest. If the lupulin turns orange and smells rancid, you’ve overshot your window.
4. The hop should be springy, dry and papery on the tips, and sticky to the touch.
5. Look for lupulin, the visible, thick yellow substance on the outside of the cone.

Harvesting Your Hops

There are two methods for picking your hops: pick by hand (recommended for first-year harvests) or cut down the bine (recommended for all harvests after the first year).

If you cut the bine down, cut two to three feet above the ground to prevent injury to the root system and crown. For first year bines, try to pick the cones and not cut down the bine until it dies off. Vital nutrients will flow back to the root system for the winter months and ensure it survives. For following years, cut the bine down and be careful not to damage or dirty those precious lupulin glands. You should expect one to two pounds of dry hops per mature plant.

Be sure to wear durable, abrasive resistant clothing, gloves and goggles during harvest. Hops have hooked hairs that can cause cause skin rash and small cuts.

Now, invite some friends over to help you pick the hops while enjoying some homebrew!

How to Dry Hops at Home

You’ve picked your hops, but you’re still not done. After you pick hops, you have two options: throw them directly into a brew and make a wet-hopped beer or dry them to use later.

Fresh hops are about 80 percent water, so you’ll need to use more than you would with dry hops. In general, wet hops are used four to six times the dry hop rate. For example four to six ounces of wet hops would be the equivalent of one ounce of pelleted dry hops.

If you choose to dry your hops to use later, you can also more easily predict alpha acid contribution, as dried hops are about 10 percent water, the equivalent of commercial hops.

Important factors for drying hops: time, light, heat and moisture.

To prevent oxidation and isomerization, drying shouldn’t last more than three days and heating temperatures shouldn’t exceed 140°F (60°C). Drying your hops is going to drive off some wanted aromatics, but temperatures above the 140°F threshold will drive off many more complexities.

There are a few different methods used for drying hops. The key is to dry them quickly without heating them up too much. Cooler temperatures will take longer, but will produce better quality hops.

Hop Drying Methods:

Food dehydrator: Using a food dehydrator is the easiest way to dry out your hops as it ensures air movement but does not get excessively hot.

Well-ventilated oven: You can use your oven to dry your hops by spreading them out on a pan. You will need to make sure that you get adequate air flow through the oven, watching closely by checking on them at least every 20 minutes. The temperature should never exceed 140°F (60°C).

Hop drying screen: If you have a small amount of hops to dry, the easiest way to do so is spread them out over a window screen or a house air filter. Place them in a warm, dry location. You can use landscape fabric over the top to keep them in the dark and occasionally fluff the hops so moist inner cones are brought to the outside of the pile. Leave them for a few days with a fan under or next to them to maintain air flow. You will also want to elevate the screen to improve air flow.

The hops need a moisture content of eight to 10 percent by weight to prevent molding. To see if they’re dry enough, try breaking the central stem of the cone, it should be brittle enough to snap in half. When dry, the yellow powdery lupulin should easily fall from the cone and the leaves should have a papery and springy texture. If your hops aren’t properly dried before storage, they could become moldy, wilted or rancid.

Package Your Hops

You’ll probably want to save some hops for later brew days, so making sure they are preserved for maximum brewing potential is important. First, you want to weigh them out and separate them into one to two ounce bags so you will only have to defrost the amount you need when it’s time to brew again.

Once you’ve divided up your hops into plastic freezer bags, food saver bags, or air tight jars, push as much air out of the containers as possible. A vacuum seal is ideal for this process, but not necessary. You’ll flatten out and crush your pretty little hop cones, but it’s for their own good! You don’t want any oxygen contaminating and ruining all your hard work. Label them with the type of hop and toss them into the freezer for safe keeping.

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John Moorhead is Director of the National Homebrew Competition and AHA Special Projects Coordinator.

The post How to Harvest, Prepare and Store Homegrown Hops appeared first on American Homebrewers Association.

Need some stylin’ new threads to step up your summer style? Check out the new American Homebrewers Assocaition merch over on our store!

In addition to the new stuff, you’ll also find our perennially popular items, including AHA pins, wall tackers, posters, growlers, and more.

Visit the AHA Merch Store.

Beer Pocket Tee

Beer me that pocket tee! Shirts with contrasting pockets are so hot right now… and you’ll look so cool sporting this one. View in store

Be Hoppy Tee

No need to worry when you can be hoppy! Ladies in the place, this shirt is callin’ out to ya. View in store

Brew Guru Hat

Keep your dome cool and look cool while sporting the snap-back Brew Guru hat. View in store

SRM Tee

Demonstrate your beery knowledge is on the next level. This tee is a great conversation starter: “Do you even SRM, bro?” View in store

 

The post AHA Releases New Sizzlin Summer Styles appeared first on American Homebrewers Association.

Developing a commercial hop variety takes at least 11 years. Each year, hop farmers plant about 40,000 new seedlings for trials. Of those 40,000 seedlings, only about 20 of them will eventually make it to commercial release (0.0005%). New hop varieties will be selected based on quality brewing attributes. These include characteristics like high alpha acid content and unique aroma and flavor profiles.

For your July 2017 club meeting, educate your club members on new hop varieties using the resources below.

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Zymurgy Volume 37 No. 1 – January/February 2014

The Next Big Thing – p. 54

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National Homebrewers Conference 2015

Brewing With Experimental Hops: A New Hop Variety Just For Homebrewers | Slides (PDF) | Audio

 

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HomebrewersAssociation.org

10 Facts From YCH Hops’ Hop & Brew School

 

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Tuesday Beer Trivia

The Evolution of Hops

The post Meeting Topic: New Hop Varieties appeared first on American Homebrewers Association.