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Learning About Beer
May. 7th, 2022 12:01 pmBack in 2000, give or take, I went on a road trip with a then-boyfriend. Along the way, we stopped at and toured an Anheuser-Busch brewery (maybe St. Louis?). I’ve toured more than my fair share of industrial facilities, but when I got to the part of the tour where they described how long they boiled the wort, I laughed in disbelief. I’ve had numerous people tell me over the years that, _of cours_ you boil the wort. And I’m like, why the fuck would you do that? You’ll kill everything interesting going on there. _Without exception_, whether the person had ever brewed beer or not, if they had any idea at all what wort was, they were adamant that it had to be boiled. And I have always gone, LOL, no, duh.
When I. came out and we visited a bunch of delightful taprooms and drank a bunch of beer, I got to thinking, you know, this is a grain thing, and I am a grain person, I really should actually put some effort into figuring out what the hell is going on, whereby I have one theory of how things work and literally everyone I talk to about it has a very different theory. I didn’t think they were _right_. I mean, people think that maintaining a sourdough involves throwing half of it away on the regular. That’s bonkers and wasteful and there’s no way in hell that is an ancient practice. Similarly, if you are fermenting something so that you have a safe beverage, then _you are not going to repeatedly boil it_. I mean, if you had the fuel to repeatedly boil some water, you don’t need to ferment anything. You just drink your boiled water. Duh. I mean, honestly, how is this even something we are discussing.
And I have learned things! I am not going to bore my readers with the arguments pro-boiling. You either can imagine them, or you know them, or you can find any number of primers out there to list them off for you. But recently, a bunch of people who had a lot of time at home have started to wonder about this boiling step also (I suspect this is because people have been making countertop kombucha, and it dawned on somebody that there might be some parallels).
So, here’s someone doing a side-by-side. They have a full, industrial brewing-but-at-home setup, all the fancy measurements, etc. They are making a very particular beer style, and _they cannot tell the difference of boil vs. no boil_. That is a helluva observation to make after all those arguments about sanitization, and stopping enzymes and dextrins and developing the hops and yada yada yada.
https://brulosophy.com/2021/04/05/the-no-boil-effect-evaluating-the-impact-on-new-england-ipa-exbeeriment-results/
Here’s someone who watched how it was done by someone who has been doing it the way predecessors have been doing it for a really long while:
https://byo.com/article/raw-ale/
It’s a great article; very worth reading. This isn’t _all the way_ to where I am going, but it is very close. In conjunction with articles about brewing single gallon batches, I think I’ll be able to put together a fun home experiment in beer, more or less like what I’ve done with the sourdough. I don’t know what I’ll be drinking, any more than I knew that I’d be eating pancakes sometimes, and English Muffins every day forever with the sourdough. But I’m looking forward to experimenting with sours, and with dark malts, because those are the things I like most consistently about beer. And you know I’ll be using my sourdough, not yeast from the store.
Still on the fence about whether I’ll bother with hops. I’m pretty excited by the idea that this could be something ready to drink in under a week, tho.
ETA:
I’ve got some wheat in a pint glass with some water waiting for it to sprout. This has been a hilarious process, because many places make such a big thing about sourcing wheat or whatever (solved problem here) _and then cleaning it_. I just poured water in, stirred it around. Water totally drinking water clear after that. I’m like, what the hell are you doing in those videos anyway also don’t answer that question.
The typical description of creating malt involve germinating by soaking and then resting until the acrospire is 2/3rds as long as a kernel. Then you dry it to stop the enzymatic process. Now you have malt.
BUT! What are you then going to do with the malt? Put it in water! And heat it up! WTF! Why dry it? I mean, I get why people who _sell_ malt dry it. But why should _I_ dry malt? I’m like, I can just make this with the wet stuff, right?
You know the answer is yes:
https://beerandbrewing.com/go-green-brewing-with-unkilned-malt/
I think I have a pretty good path now.
(1) Germinate wheat berries.
(2) Put them in a stock pot on the stove with water. Cook them for a while, not letting the temp get above 180, but getting it above 160 for at least a few minutes. Stop … whenever. Stir maybe? Watch what is going on and pay attention with other senses as well.
(3) Let it cool down. There’s a lot of stuff about boiling the wort and a lot more about ice baths and so forth. I … dunno? I’m still trying to understand all this. But it has to cool down before adding the sourdough, or the sourdough will die.
(4) When the temp is below 80 degrees F, add some sourdough. I’m unconvinced it really matters how much. Possibly pour it from the stock pot to something glass so that you can watch it for the next few days? The sourdough means it’s gonna get a little freaky looking, so don’t put it somewhere that it will gross anyone out, but also don’t forget that it exists.
(5) Wait. Days. I still need to figure out how to tell when it is “done”, but I feel like smell, maybe?
(6) Decant into some sort of pitcher or growler or whatever.
When I. came out and we visited a bunch of delightful taprooms and drank a bunch of beer, I got to thinking, you know, this is a grain thing, and I am a grain person, I really should actually put some effort into figuring out what the hell is going on, whereby I have one theory of how things work and literally everyone I talk to about it has a very different theory. I didn’t think they were _right_. I mean, people think that maintaining a sourdough involves throwing half of it away on the regular. That’s bonkers and wasteful and there’s no way in hell that is an ancient practice. Similarly, if you are fermenting something so that you have a safe beverage, then _you are not going to repeatedly boil it_. I mean, if you had the fuel to repeatedly boil some water, you don’t need to ferment anything. You just drink your boiled water. Duh. I mean, honestly, how is this even something we are discussing.
And I have learned things! I am not going to bore my readers with the arguments pro-boiling. You either can imagine them, or you know them, or you can find any number of primers out there to list them off for you. But recently, a bunch of people who had a lot of time at home have started to wonder about this boiling step also (I suspect this is because people have been making countertop kombucha, and it dawned on somebody that there might be some parallels).
So, here’s someone doing a side-by-side. They have a full, industrial brewing-but-at-home setup, all the fancy measurements, etc. They are making a very particular beer style, and _they cannot tell the difference of boil vs. no boil_. That is a helluva observation to make after all those arguments about sanitization, and stopping enzymes and dextrins and developing the hops and yada yada yada.
https://brulosophy.com/2021/04/05/the-no-boil-effect-evaluating-the-impact-on-new-england-ipa-exbeeriment-results/
Here’s someone who watched how it was done by someone who has been doing it the way predecessors have been doing it for a really long while:
https://byo.com/article/raw-ale/
It’s a great article; very worth reading. This isn’t _all the way_ to where I am going, but it is very close. In conjunction with articles about brewing single gallon batches, I think I’ll be able to put together a fun home experiment in beer, more or less like what I’ve done with the sourdough. I don’t know what I’ll be drinking, any more than I knew that I’d be eating pancakes sometimes, and English Muffins every day forever with the sourdough. But I’m looking forward to experimenting with sours, and with dark malts, because those are the things I like most consistently about beer. And you know I’ll be using my sourdough, not yeast from the store.
Still on the fence about whether I’ll bother with hops. I’m pretty excited by the idea that this could be something ready to drink in under a week, tho.
ETA:
I’ve got some wheat in a pint glass with some water waiting for it to sprout. This has been a hilarious process, because many places make such a big thing about sourcing wheat or whatever (solved problem here) _and then cleaning it_. I just poured water in, stirred it around. Water totally drinking water clear after that. I’m like, what the hell are you doing in those videos anyway also don’t answer that question.
The typical description of creating malt involve germinating by soaking and then resting until the acrospire is 2/3rds as long as a kernel. Then you dry it to stop the enzymatic process. Now you have malt.
BUT! What are you then going to do with the malt? Put it in water! And heat it up! WTF! Why dry it? I mean, I get why people who _sell_ malt dry it. But why should _I_ dry malt? I’m like, I can just make this with the wet stuff, right?
You know the answer is yes:
https://beerandbrewing.com/go-green-brewing-with-unkilned-malt/
I think I have a pretty good path now.
(1) Germinate wheat berries.
(2) Put them in a stock pot on the stove with water. Cook them for a while, not letting the temp get above 180, but getting it above 160 for at least a few minutes. Stop … whenever. Stir maybe? Watch what is going on and pay attention with other senses as well.
(3) Let it cool down. There’s a lot of stuff about boiling the wort and a lot more about ice baths and so forth. I … dunno? I’m still trying to understand all this. But it has to cool down before adding the sourdough, or the sourdough will die.
(4) When the temp is below 80 degrees F, add some sourdough. I’m unconvinced it really matters how much. Possibly pour it from the stock pot to something glass so that you can watch it for the next few days? The sourdough means it’s gonna get a little freaky looking, so don’t put it somewhere that it will gross anyone out, but also don’t forget that it exists.
(5) Wait. Days. I still need to figure out how to tell when it is “done”, but I feel like smell, maybe?
(6) Decant into some sort of pitcher or growler or whatever.