Brewing again ... (Part 1)

 

Decided to pull out the brewing gear after a few years of inactivity.  Brewing during COVID did not work out for many reasons - but mostly because I would have drank way more.  I think it's a good time to get some practice brews in and experiment a little more than before so here's a little mini-series about how it has progressed.  

This series of posts is intended to help future me remember how to brew again.

Keep in mind it took about a day to prepare and find all the brewing gear I had "strategically" scattered around the basement through various basement emergencies in the past 3 years.  This post will never help me with that however, I just need to be more organized about storage and perhaps brew more frequently.

Luckily there were some old ingredients safely stored which I was able to incorporate into the recipe.  About 25 lbs of two-row barley and a variety of specialty malt grains will fill in two recipes I had good success with in the past. While I was a little short on some ingredients I decided to improvise.  Also there was a cider kit that I've convinced myself is worthy of experimentation so after making the first brew I planned to reuse the yeast for the cider kit to see how it turns out.

For planning a brew it's important to have everything you need for brew day:

1. Clean and sanitized equipment
1. Brewing vessel/bucket/carboy
2. Kettle(s)
3. Stir spoon
   
4. Hoses and siphons
   
5. Hydrometer and sample tube
   
2. Malts/grains/hops are measured out and any whole grains milled coarsely
1. Grains will be added to large brew in a bag to steep in the brew kettle
   
2. Hops can be measured and placed in cloth bags to add to boil as needed
3. If you are limited on hop bags just tie the bag so it can be reopened but tight enough where it will not open on it's own.
   
3. Water is prepared and ideally room temp (to speed initial boil). 
1. Use Camden tablets or balancer chemicals if needed
2. I usually use tap water in recent brews but in the past have used store bought water jugs
4. General Notes
1. Initial brew to bottle time is 1-2 weeks for most standard recipes
2. it's best to track activities along the way, especially when you find a good process and want to replicate it later. 
3. Use a beer brewing notebook or template to keep track of all the important variables.
4. Original Gravity will be the reference point for initial alcohol potential. The final product may be lower or higher than expected from this initial reading but it's a good estimate.  Hydrometer or a good refractometer will be required for this measurement, it's also a good excuse to taste a sample
5. Final Gravity measured at bottling time can then be used to calculate the alcohol content of the brew after the yeast and enzymes have done their work  
• The simple calculation for ABV = (og – fg) * 131.25
• Online calculators use a more advanced formula for higher gravity beers ABV =(76.08 * (og-fg) / (1.775-og)) * (fg / 0.794)