My First All Grain Beer

What an awesome weekend! Saturday I made my first all grain beer and Sunday I spent the day at the ‘Feastof Fields’ (forty booths of incredible beer, wine, spirits and food, that lasted for five hours! More on this later).

You would think that if you were going to start all grain brewing, without attending some sort of work shop, you would start with a beer that isn’t too complex, a beer that wont have a ridiculous amount of alcohol when it’s finished, thus not a lot of ingredients, therefore less things to go wrong. But no, I jumped right in the deep end. Partly out of a large desire to learn, partly scheduling reasons (later on that) and partly out of masochism I think. So what is my first all grain beer? It is a Christmas Ale, with the alcohol going to be around 8%.

What’s that you say? “It’s no where near Christmas. Why would you make a Christmas beer?” Simple, if I want to make a good Christmas beer and have it ready for Christmas, then I have to make it now. Because of the complexity and higher alcohol percentage of this beer, it needs time to mature, about 4 months.

So I am a bit of a worry ‘wort’ (yes, that pun was lame, but still intentional), in the sense that I want to make sure I know what I am doing before I do it. In preparing for making all grain beer, I have been reading three different books, a number of website and asking questions at my brewing supply store. 

I took all the literature I found and made my own step-by-step instructions. On Saturday morning I cleaned up the kitchen (a large clean workspace is very recommended), I had all the ingredients handy, and got to work.

I was expecting it to somehow go terribly wrong. It was fairly straightforward however, and I had a really good time. I did not however reach the recipes called for Original Gravity, which called for 1.078 and I only hit 1.070. That was a bit disappointing, as that is about one percent difference in the final alcohol percentage. If all the sugars get eaten, then it will be 8.8%, when it could have been 9.8%. But when I brewed it, I made sure to have a higher mash temperature. This will make the beer more full bodied, with a bit of sweetness left over. So I am guessing I might hit 8%. 

Beer in its traditional sense has four ingredients (in Germany, it’s the law that beer is made from only these ingredients), malted barley, hops, water and the ever so mystical, wonderful yeast. This beer however, being a Christmas beer, will have a few things added to it. This pic shows most of what I am adding. The process is to first add the cinnamon, vanilla and oak chip etc, to the rum, then transfer those rum soaked ingredients to beer after it goes to secondary fermentation. Oh yeah, the rum? it goes in too. But, not until I have done a little quality control on it. This process has two benefits. One, is obviously flavor. Two, is that the high alcohol content of the rum will sanitize the other ingredients before being added to the beer, so any kind of negative bacteria they might be carrying, will be killed. Mmmm, sanitization!

To make a beer from scratch requires a little more equipment (A mash tun, and a wort chiller), which yes, raises your cost of making beer. However, doing it this way means you are buying the raw ingredients of grain itself, which is a cheaper than buying the processed malt extract. So in the long run you will save money, and saving money is defiantly part of why I make beer.

If I went out and purchased ten 6 packs of beer, here in good old B.C., I would have to pay $75 – $120. That is the watered down light stuff. If I wanted something a little more robust, I could be paying anything up to $180.

Well if I make my own, for that amount of beer, I pay $25 – $40 for the ingredients. Some beers are more expensive to make than others. This Christmas beer I have spent $37 on just the basic ingredients. Rum and all that jazz costs extra. 

I have read about adding rum into the beer before, but I was a bit hesitant until at the Feast of Fields on Sunday, and I met a very helpful Brewmaster (and a lot more that that too), Mark Simpson. He suggested it and, by his credentials, I am going to go ahead and listen. At his table he had three beers on tap. An IPA, a Wheat and a dark ale (The names of the beers themselves are hard for me to recall as, there were a lot of tents, and I had had a lot of alcohol by that time. But, I do remember the taste.)

Each one, including the IPA, was very well balanced. The wheat beer was extremely refreshing. The dark Ale was paired with, at the same booth, a soft chocolate fudge brownie, that was awesome on their own, but together makes me think of the ending of a dramatic movie. The music has already swelled and now, though quite, it's more powerful than before. The camera is pulling out, leaving our hero standing, and us wanting to see more. I went and sat down and digested under the shade of a tree a little after that. 

The whole event was truly amazing. I recommend going to the 'feast of fields', next year to anyone who loves good food and drinks. You pay one larger price to get in, (compared to 'Eat Vancouver') but then get to go around and sample at every table, and not buy extra tickets. This way, you have paid for everything, so you want to sample everything, and everything is delicious. It took the whole 5 hours to get to every table, if you are trying to enjoy every table, not just stuff yourself.

My last post I mentioned that I had lost some weight (2.2 kg, or 5 pounds) after starting to drink beer. I realized that when I was going to try this year of beer challenge that I was going to be digesting a lot more beer and I didn't want to gain any weight doing it. So I thought about it and came to the conclusion that I would give up eating sugary things (for the most part that is. Sunday was an exception). So, no more sugar in my coffee, no more desert after dinner (most nights). That kind of stuff. I thought it was going to be quite difficult, as those of you who know me know how much I love dessert, well any good food actually. But if I just thought about getting to drink a beer, or have a glass of wine or two with my dinner, I could abstain. This is my beer diet. 'Eat less, drink more'.

The Beer Challenge

As kids go back to school on Tuesday, I will be heading to a school of my own. A school of beer. Embark with me on an adventure of joy and taste. Let your senses be permeated with pleasure, as I learn to make beer from scratch.

The plan? To make twenty four beers in one year. Twice a month I will start a new recipe, cut it in half and change something about that recipe to have a control and a test beer. The differences might be something small from adding or subtracting grains or hops from the recipe, to adding adjuncts like fruit, chocolate, coffee, or spices. After it's been bottled and ready to drink, I also plan on making a dinner dish to pair the beer with. So the question you may have, besides “can I come over and visit during one of these meals?”, may well be, “why are you doing this?”. What, that isn't your question? Tough, I am going to answer it anyway.

Have you ever tried something new and fell completely obsessed with it? Like, picking up an instrument, building something, teaching someone, playing an addicting video game? Something, anything that gives you joy. Well, I went to France for nine months. Five of those months were spent tending vineyards. I didn't even make any wine, I did pick grapes that made wine. I did get to learn a little about it, but I didn't make any myself. I knew though, even then, that I was completely enamored with it.

When I got back from France, I picked some blackberries and made some wine with my brother in law. I didn't have a clue what I was doing. I don't know how but, it's actually drinkable (if you decant it for over 2 hours, due to undesired carbonation).

While we were working and living on vineyards, we generally had very good wine every night with dinner, and most lunches too. Since I do not have a vineyard and a bottle of half decent wine in Canada is at least $15, my new feeling that a meal is not complete without a couple of glasses of wine cannot be indulged on the salary of a lowly animator.

So now I am faced with the fact that I have made a batch of wine and after splitting it with my brother in law, I have 14 bottles. After a month or so, I had 8. I quickly determined that I was going to run out soon, and that even if I started making wine from kits, I would still have to wait about 9 months before I have a drinkable wine.

What to do now, make more wine? Of course, a strawberry batch is on the way, and another blackberry will be started soon. But patience only goes so far. So what to do while I wait for the wines to become drinkable? Why not try beer? After a month or two, from when you start a batch of beer, you have a finished product that you can drink.

However, I was skeptical about being able to make a tasty beer. I am (was) a wine drinker. Only a year ago I had only tried one kind of beer that impressed me. (Later on that)

No offense to my dad, but all he ever drank was commercial lagers. Growing up with only commercial lager beers as a guide to beer is a little like only growing up with burnt steaks, you would end up thinking all cuts of meat tastes like charcoal (also true for me... no offense mom). Therefore, I lumped all beers into the category of “monkey piss”. Over the years, beers had slowly moved up into the “almost enjoyable” category, then fell back into the “monkey piss” category when my wife and I moved into our first apartment together, a few blocks away from a commercial brewery. The smell that emanated from that brewery, was so revolting to me that coming home from work some days I would pull my shirt up over my face, hold my breath, try not to visualize a thousand monkeys urinating into a giant steaming vat of rusted moldy metal and hope that I could make it home before loosing my lunch.

But then, one fateful day, a year and a half ago, I went to a friends going away party and tried a beer called Iniss & Gunn. Life would never be the same. Iniss & Gunn, is a type of pale ale that is aged for 77 days in Oak. Strong flavors of caramel, and oak, that completely blew my mind. Beer as it turns out, can fall into the category of”whoa” or “Phenomenal” or even, “ I was born for this moment. To drink this, and try to make this myself”.

Thus, it was decided for me, that I should make beer. But since my expectations for beer had become fairly high, I decided that I shouldn't make beer from a kit (though, if you are happy with kit beer, I am not knocking it. If you like it, make it, drink it and fight the man! *'man' being BC liquor taxes*) if I expect a beer to taste, not like a wine, but as fine as an aged, balanced wine, then I need to make it from scratch.

I went onto Craigslist and got a bunch of wine and beer making equipment for a very reasonable price ($110 for three primary fermenters, five 23Litre glass carboys, all the basic knick-knacks, a wine corker and about ninety wine bottles enough for three batches of wine.)

I jumped right in. However, not into all grain brewing right away, but extract brewing. Extract brewing is the next step from kit brewing. Kit brewing has all the ingredients in a can, ready to be boiled with water and sugar, for a while, add a yeast which eats the sugars and converts them to CO2 and ever so lovely alcohol. It's kinda like, taking a can of orange juice from concentrate and adding water to make juice. Nothing wrong with that. Also, it is a great way to fight the man, as you are paying a little under 50 cents a bottle (plus your initial start up equipment, which you don't need as much as I have, you can purchase every thing you need, brand new, for about $70. As long as you clean it, it will last you years.

Extract brewing is like using part of that concentrate can, and adding some freshly squeezed orange juice and maybe some berries to it. I went to a brewing supply store close to my work, “Dan's brewing supply store” and they gave me the malt extract (concentrated grain sugar), fresh grains, fresh hops and yeast. Also, step by step instructions to make sure I don't fail.

I was a bit paranoid, so I re-wrote all of their instructions and made my own step by step instructions. It took with my brother in law's help Michael and I over 4 hours to make it and clean up (I now have that time down to two hours and forty five minutes). It was a Pale Ale, that turned out caramely and hoppy, and it was so good that it didn't last 3 weeks after I opened the first bottle. Needless to say, I was thoroughly hooked. So now that I feel more confident with the extract method of making beer, I will attempt to learn all grain brewing.

Now when I smell fermenting beer, it makes me think of an orchard of apples at sunset, with wild flowers at the bass of every tree. Walking through these trees, or sitting upon low branches, is a choir of angels singing 'Were not gunna take it', from twisted sister.

There you have it. I not only love beer, I love making it. I am hoping that I can start working in a microbrewery some day soon, and one fateful day in the future, I will start a Microbrewery of my own. Then I will buy a small vineyard, and open a restaurant, where the steak will be served rare and all the dishes will be paired with a wine and or a beer. Yeah it's crazy hard work, and it'll take a lot of money. Some how, some way.

Coming soon, I will post a beer schedule for myself, I will post beer making videos, I will talk about food pairings, methods of developing your tasting palate, my notes on beers and wines I am currently drinking, the making of my own beers and wines and of course I will be ranting about BC liquor laws.

Each batch of beer I will make will be about 23 – 24 litres, or 66 bottles of 350ml bottles. If you have already figured out how much beer that would be in a year, than might I suggest a profession in counting bathroom tiles, no pay but highly neurotic, and there is always a person or two you can talk to in your head. The grand total is 1584 bottles of beer (incidentally you could sing 99 bottles of beer on the wall exactly 16 times with that number.) That is over 4 bottles of beer a day.

Now don't get me wrong. I will not be making this much beer to drink all myself. If it's good, my plan is to share it. But yes, I do want a glass of beer or wine with dinner. This does mean a bigger intake of calories. So how is it that since I started making beer and consuming it on a regular basis, that I have lost over 2.25 kg (5 pounds)? More on that in the next post.