I swear I will return.
We're just really busy lately. I got a new job, we have to move houses. Hopefully I can build somewhat of a brew area.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
History of beer and some terminology
Let’s start at the beginning. It’s funny to think that beer started being made based on someone’s laziness and inability to clean out some grains that got too wet. I would have loved to seen the first time someone realized what they had done by mistake.
Oh, yeah, but that was 7000 years ago! So let’s fast forward to the Middle Ages. In the middle ages there was water, and a ton of it. However, the water was full of icky microbes that made people sick. So people said to themselves, “Let’s boil the water to make it clean and then flavor this boiled water with something that will keep the icky little microbes from coming back.”
Kool-Aid wasn’t yet invented, so they realized that by soaking some grains and leaving the stuff out in a container for awhile, it would turn into something that didn’t make them sick and also made them feel pretty gosh darn good about themselves. Well, I guess it made them sick if they had too much of it, but that’s another topic altogether.
So now we have water that doesn’t have bad microbes in it. Now the water is good; it is pure; it is delicious. Now we want beer that is good, pure and delicious. As such, we ignore the naturally occurring yeasts (hence known as wild yeast) that made beer (almost by mistake) back in the day and focus on specially cultivated yeasts grown in labs that allows us to enjoy specific flavors and properties in the resulting drink. Beer is made in three steps:
Step 3 is, by far, the easiest part of the process. This blog concentrates largely on the first two steps, assuming that locking away beer into the bucket and letting it form some alkie is the easiest step. The last note I’ll write is a quick glossary of my most commonly used terms. Let me know if I miss any!
Oh, yeah, but that was 7000 years ago! So let’s fast forward to the Middle Ages. In the middle ages there was water, and a ton of it. However, the water was full of icky microbes that made people sick. So people said to themselves, “Let’s boil the water to make it clean and then flavor this boiled water with something that will keep the icky little microbes from coming back.”
Kool-Aid wasn’t yet invented, so they realized that by soaking some grains and leaving the stuff out in a container for awhile, it would turn into something that didn’t make them sick and also made them feel pretty gosh darn good about themselves. Well, I guess it made them sick if they had too much of it, but that’s another topic altogether.
So now we have water that doesn’t have bad microbes in it. Now the water is good; it is pure; it is delicious. Now we want beer that is good, pure and delicious. As such, we ignore the naturally occurring yeasts (hence known as wild yeast) that made beer (almost by mistake) back in the day and focus on specially cultivated yeasts grown in labs that allows us to enjoy specific flavors and properties in the resulting drink. Beer is made in three steps:
- Break down grains into sugar the yeast can use.
- Add flavoring. This is done with hops and other items.
- Insert yeast, ferment and enjoy
Step 3 is, by far, the easiest part of the process. This blog concentrates largely on the first two steps, assuming that locking away beer into the bucket and letting it form some alkie is the easiest step. The last note I’ll write is a quick glossary of my most commonly used terms. Let me know if I miss any!
- Mash – The stage of brewing that allows hot water (but not boiling) to break down the proteins found in grains into simple sugars the yeast can easily ferment
- Boil – The stage of brewing that boils the resulting liquid from the mash and allows for flavor additions
- Wort (wert) – The unfermented liquid after the boil has been chilled
- Trub (troob) – The yeast cake and any other solids that fall out of the liquid during the fermentation.
- Fermentation – The breakdown of the simple sugars created in the mash that are consumed by the yeast with the byproduct of alcohol and carbon dioxide.
- IBU – International Bitterness units or the measure of hoppiness your beer possesses. I also call this “Rayna beer face,” as higher IBU beers will result in a priceless scrunching of the face and wrinkled nose from my lovely wife.
- SRM – Units that tell the color of the beer. The higher the number, the darker the beer.
- ABV – Alcohol by volume is the generally accepted method of comparing alcohol content (vs. alcohol by weight)
- Drain pour – the worst thing that can happen to a brewer. This is the result of messing up a batch beyond all reasonable drinkability so that the beer has to be poured down the drain instead of down the gullet.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
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