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Coors brewery tour

My wife and I took vacation recently in Colorado, specifically Fort Collins and Boulder which is about a hour north/north-west of Denver by car. There are several breweries that give tours in that area. One of them happens to be the largest single site brewery in the world, the Miller-Coors brewery in Golden Colorado. Hey, that sounds too good to pass up even if it is swill beer?

Miller-Coors pumps out an astounding 22 million barrels annual. A barrel has 31 gallons, so that is 682 million gallons, or 87.3 billion ounces of beer! It is hard to imagine all that beer. Sadly most of it is keystone light, Coors, and a few others. They have their own freight system which is pretty sweet.

The brewery is built right on the water source. They also own a glass bottle plant nearby. This all factors into why the beer is so inexpensive. The water there is reportedly very good for brewing, comes down out of the Rockies, must be pretty low in overall mineral content.

The tour starts on a bus that drives a few blocks through the town and then drops you off inside the complex. After they check you in, they take your picture. Later they try to sell it to you for $20. Then they give you a hand held device that acts as your tour guide. Like their beer, the tour was tailored for mass production.

Some of the inside of the facility is pretty neat, pictures provided.

They press their grains with these odd contraptions which they don’t explain. I imagine this is how they get an extra few percentage points of efficiency out of the brewing process, which probably amounts to millions of dollars annually.

Towards the end of the tour you get to see one of the packaging lines.

At the end, you can have three free glasses of beer, from about four different types too choose from.  We were not totally impressed and left most of it behind. Granted, we are discriminating beer drinkers. I wouldn’t say we are beer snobs, but our taste for beers has developed with our home brewing skills. One of the most notable flavors in Coors’ banquet beer is the sweetness. It dominates the flavor profile and squelches out any malt or bitterness. In the other styles we noted tannins, sourness, and oxidized flavors!

After the tour and the free beer, finally the best part – the gift shop. We had fun modeling cardboard keystone light and Coors hats made from the boxes the cans come in. They also make Coors Light bikini underwear, but we didn’t pick that up. I did bring home a $1 Miller-Coors plastic mardi gras chalice cup. I collect chalices and other beer glasses, so if figured for $1 what the heck!  It works good for ice cream.

Click here for the New Belgium brewery tour we took on the same trip, up in Fort Collins Colorado. Now that is worth going to. Fort Collins also has two other local breweries that give free tastings and a couple other brew pubs.

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Brewing Process Improvement Ideas

Consistency is the Virtue of Homebrewing
Part 3: Process improvements

To brew a consistent beer from one batch to the next, it helps to have clean, sanitary equipment each and every time. This is discussed in depth in Part 1 of this series. If you’ve just stumbled upon this article, I recommend starting from the beginning. It also helps to have a detailed recipe, and a good set of process notes to act as a ‘road map’ of how previous batches developed. This was covered in Part 2. However the best notes and the cleanest equipment can still be undone if your brewing processes leave the door open for uncontrolled changes from batch to batch.

The key points for consistency in your brewing process are are:

• Crush grains consistently
• Mash consistently
• Water chemistry balance
• Sparge consistently
• Cool the wort quickly
• Use the same type of fermentor and control the temperature
• Transfer the beer between vessels gracefully – gravity and spigots are your friends!

The good news is, these process improvements in home brewing can be made incrementally and on a budget.

The Crush:

A frequent source of variation is the crushing of the grain; while it’s certainly possible to crush your own grain with household items, do-it-yourself techniques inherently lend themselves to variations. Most homebrewing stores that sell grain have a mill and will provide that service free of charge with the purchase. Be careful though, your local home brew store (LHBS) mill might have the gap set a little too wide. This site has an article on how to best crush your grains.

The Mash:

Most people start out doing extract batches with a kettle such as this:

As you progress towards partial mash brewing or all grain brewing this becomes a limitation. The uninsulated metal pot has problems keeping the mash at a constant temperature. It requires a lot of attention to mash with (eg: stir, remove it from heat, stir again, then re-heat, etc). Over the course of the 60-minute mash time it is a lot of work to keep the mash in the 145F-158F degree temperature range. While this gives a good mix of alpha and beta type starch conversion for any given beer, it doesn’t give very consistent results from batch to batch. Switching to an insulated mash tun (converted from a cooler with a kit found at most homebrew stores) not only removes the stirring and temperature adjustment, it also means every batch of beer mashes the same every time. As we mentioned in the record keeping article, noting the temperature of the mash, and monitoring it closely is key.

Water Chemistry:

Water chemistry in mashing is also a concern and there are a lot of details involved. Generally adding a teaspoons or less of the correct brewing salts can help bring flavor ions into balance and the cost is negligible. This site has a water chemistry calculator and a write up that details water chemistry in brewing.

Sparging:

All-grain brewers also needed to sparge or lauder grain, another process that improves with practice. At its most basic, the process of sparging is pouring water over mashed grain to wash the remaining sugars and non-fermentables into the wort. Originally this is accomplished by simply pouring water over the grains, called batch sparging. Again here, noting time it soaks, the amount of water, and the temperature is crucial to success. To get even more consistent there is fly sparging, or the use of a RIMS/HERMS system.

Cooling:

After boiling the wort, it needs to be chilled to below 80F (26C) before the yeast can be added. The easiest method for chilling is simply to allow it to cool; unfortunately, this method is not only slow, but means that the wort is exposed to air (and thus wild yeasts, molds, and bacteria) for a longer interval. A wort chiller (below) speeds up the process considerably, reducing exposure and resulting in a more consistent brew week to week.

Fermentation:

Most homebrewers start out with a plastic pail with a simple lid, and this works very well for the first few batches and some swear by this approach. Upgrading to a glass or plastic carboy is more expensive, but with the addition of a simple airlock, you’ve just refined your process again. Glass vs. plastic fermentation has been debated in the brewing forums in the past. This site has an article explaining the pro’s and con’s.

The temperature of the fermentation is also key.  Yeast produce different flavor profiles at different temperatures, generally the higher the temp the more interesting the flavors will be. This can be a plus or a minus depending on the style but it is another variable to worry about in consistency.   Some home brewers have built their own insulated chamber to control for this.   Paying attention to what time of year a brew was done is a good way to start correlating temperature of fermentation with your results.  There used to be a rule in Germany that forbid brewing after summer started because they knew the beer would be ruined by the heat – of course back then they did not have climate control.

Transferring:

When transferring the wort to the fermentor it needs to be aerated but after that it should not be exposed to oxygen. If it does get exposed to oxygen it will develop off flavors in the bottle over time.

When possible, setup your equipment so it can be drained by gravity. For example, if your kettle has a ball valve on it, then you can drain the kettle into the fermentor quite easily through a sanitized hose. If your fermentor happens to be a bucket, you can fit it with a spigot (before hand) and similarly rack to the secondary or bottling bucket by opening the valve and draining through a tube. Bottling buckets with spigots are extremely handy. As for racking out of a glass carboy, an auto siphon is an easy way to go. If you have to manually raise the container up to the table, make sure to give it a few hours to settle first.

Conclusion:

All of these improvements can be done separately. Each improves one step of the brewing process, removing uncontrolled variables and ensuring that the only changes from batch to batch are the ones you, the brewer, intended. There’s nothing wrong with the basic starting kit, but as you progress in the hobby, you’ll find each of these improvements results in a better beer overall.

Achieving consistency can be a long road. It involves developing good cleaning habits, practicing strong record-keeping discipline, and gradually improving your processes. The reward for being able to brew beer that tastes the same from batch to batch isn’t just a consistently drinkable beer. It also means that the results of experimentation can be clearly identified, meaning each new batch means more knowledge for you, the homebrewer.

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Best Grind Setting for Grains

It pays to listen to your grist, it can tell you a lot about your brew day before you ever mash in, if you look and listen to what it is telling you. Do not underestimate the importance of a good crush and the pitfalls of a bad crush on brew day. Your brewing efficiency can be negatively impacted if the grain is milled too coarsely, making your beer weaker. However, if you grind too fine you risk a stuck sparge – which really sucks!  This article will tell you how to best mill your grain and provide photo examples.

(Fig. 1) The GOOD crush: A good crush is one that produces little flour, but fully separates the inner meal of the kernel from the husk. In doing so, the husk must be left mostly intact. The benefits of this crush are little flour which can cause a sticky stuck sparge, excellent mash conversion due to the fully exposed inner kernel, no astringency from shredded husks and a good filter bed from leaving the husks intact. Gap set to 0.035″.

Fig. 1

(Fig. 2) The BAD crush (too coarse): A coarse crush can be found relatively easily when buying pre- milled malts from many suppliers. Many homebrew stores crush their grains more coarsely to provide less of a chance of a stuck sparge, but this will also cause you low mash efficiency resulting in the need to use more grain to achieve the target OG of your brew. This crush is defined by no flour, cracked but not separated inner meal of the kernel, and yes, some whole kernels left in the grist. You will see poor mash efficiency, no astringency from shredded husks and a great filter bed since you are dealing with such large kernel/husk portions. Gap set to 0.065″.

Fig. 2

(Fig. 3) The BAD crush (too fine): When a poor crush is defined as too fine, it is generally caused by someone being a little over zealous in achieving high mash efficiency. A good goal, but you can go too far. This crush is defined by a lot of flour, shredded husks and nearly pulverized meal from the kernel. The results will be excellent mash efficiency (if you can actually drain the MLT), a poor filter bed from the shredded husks, some astringency from the shredded husks and an almost certain stuck sparge from the flour. For the record, labs will do a fine grind when analyzing grain extract potential but home brewers should avoid such a fine grind. Gap set at 0.025″.

Fig. 3

Use the crush setting specified by figure 1 above and you will have a better brew day!

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Mashing, Thick or Thin?

One variable that all-grain brewers may not consider is mash thickness and how it affects efficiency and wort quality. It turns out adjusting the water to grain ratio in the mash might help. Increasing efficiency in all-grain brewing reduces the amount of grain required to reach your target OG, thus reducing the cost of your new, or old hobby. Thin mashing can be one method of improving efficiency as well as wort quality.

If you utilize a 2.0qt/lb mash, as opposed to 1.25qt/lb, you are creating more of a “soup” in your MLT. Breaking up dough balls and mixing the mash is much easier and enzymes are also more effective at converting starches to sugars in this environment. A thinner mash results in better conversion efficiency, conversion efficiency being the % of total starches in the MLT being converted to sugars.

In this case we increased the mash water from 1.25qt/lb to 2.0t/lb. In doing so we reduced our sparge water volume, this is the water that we use to rinse the sugars from the grain in the MLT during the sparge and lauter. If your mash consists of 12lbs of grain and you increased your mash water volume by 2.25 gallons as in the above scenario, you are reducing your sparge volume by that same amount. This can reduce your lauter efficiency, robbing you of some efficiency as well.

Although the reduced sparge volume can rob you of a small amount of efficiency in the end, it also rewards you with a higher quality wort. Fist runnings when sparging are the best… the sugar content is high, the pH is low and you are not extracting tannins from the grain husks as you are with a long and high volume sparge.

Thin mashing is not for everyone. If you are already achieving 80% or better efficiency into your fermentor with a thicker mash, you will likely see no increase by utilizing a thin mash. In this case your conversion efficiency is already nearly 100%. Essentially, all that you are creating by thin mashing is a scenario by which you are reducing your sparge volume, thus reducing your lauter efficiency while seeing no increase in your conversion efficiency. You will have a net loss.

If you are currently achieving 80% efficiency or less, you may want to experiment with a thin mash. You could easily increase your efficiency 5-15% by simply mashing thin! You will also see a benefit from increasing the quality of your wort by reducing the amount of sparging. Excessive sparging increases pH and extracts tannins from the grain husks, both undesirable.

Try it! Deviate from the typical 1.25qt/lb mash and try 1.5qt/lb or even 2.0qt/lb! This author has realized an increase from 70% to 85% efficiency by implementing this method alone.

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How to Plant Hops for Home Brewing

Planting hops is a straight forward process. This article will walk you through what to consider when planting your hops. If you have not done so already, see our article on planning out your hops yard. You will need an area that is sunny, has good drainage, high quality soil, and a place for the hops to climb. Planting is best done in early spring when the threat of frost is gone, but not after May.

To plant the rhizomes, first dig a hole about one foot deep and one foot around. It is recommended to space plants at least five feet apart, but plants of the same variety can be three feet apart. Make sure to write down where each rhizome is located if you are planting different varieties.

Fill the hole with compost 2/3 of the way, then top it off with high quality potting soil. Any kind of compost, commercial fertilizer or manure will do. Put the rhizome about two inches under the soil in a little mound, horizontal, or vertically with the buds pointing up.

Cover the rhizome and give it a dose of water. Make sure to water it regularly for the whole season, but don’t soak it.

In the first season do not expect much growth. In a few months the first vines will emerge.

Only in the following summer will the vines really take off and start to yield a high number of cones that can be dried and used in the kettle!

Posted in Hops Growing | 8 Comments »

Planning Your Hops Yard for Home Brewing

Growing hops at home is a great way to expand the brewing hobby, practice a green thumb, and have fun in general. It is cheap to get started, and also saves money on each batch, though it does take up time like everything else in brewing.

Hops is a perennial and produces new vines annually starting in the spring from a crown that can live upwards of ten years. The scientific name of the hops plant is Humulus lupulus. The female hops plant is the one that produces the desirable cones used in brewing beer. The male plant is not used for brewing. The male plant can improve the yield in females nearby but its presence causes seeds to form in the cones which are not good for brewing.

When selecting what kinds of hops to grow, it is important to balance between bittering and aromatic variates so you have flexibility in brewing. Each plant will yield anywhere from one half to two pounds of dried cones when mature. I have two bittering (Nugget and Magnum), and four aromatic (Cascade, Kent Goldings, and two Hallertauer). This gives me plenty of surplus to share with friends or experiment with.

Location considerations for your hop yard:

• Sunlight exposure: Hops need lots of sunlight to grow properly. In the northern hemisphere a southern exposure is the best. At least eight hours of sunlight per day is recommended.

• Soil quality and drainage: The soil should be nutrient rich, with pH in the range of 6.5-8.0. Hops should to be kept away from damp areas to discourage diseases.

• Trellis setup: Hops need to climb, a minimum of 12 feet. Commercial hops yards have 18′ trellis systems. Hops will grow even higher than that, upwards of 25 feet. A trellis system can be as simple as two poles with a wire strung between them. It needs to be strong enough to support the weight of the vines and withstand windy conditions. The one I have is bolted together so I can tear it down in the fall when the harvest is over.

• Potting: You can start rhizomes off in planters, and this is recommended in cold areas. However, within the first few months they should be transplanted into the ground since the root systems like to spread out.

For practical purposes at home, the side of the house that faces the sun during the day is best. It makes a convenient location because of the warmth and the ease of rigging up something the vines can climb up. Way out in the back yard, or below a balcony are other great choices.

Late winter or early spring is the time of the year to order hops rhizomes. A rhizome is a chunk of root from an active plant. There are many affordable sources online but they sell out fast! When the rhizomes arrive, put them in the fridge (they should already be in a moist bag), and plant them on the first nice day that comes along. It is recommended to space plants at least five feet apart, but plants of the same variety can be three feet apart. Make a diagram of where each variety is located and keep it safe as you will refer to it again and again.

Posted in Hops Growing | 2 Comments »

Calculators updated, water chemistry added

All our calculators were overhauled today, some bugs were fixed (thanks to those of you who pointed them out).

The main thrust of the technical work for the last month or so has been the water chemistry calculator. We just launched that today and a related article that explains water chemistry in beer. We hope it comes in handy! Let us know what you think of it.

Time to sit back with SWMBO and drink a home brew.

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All Grain Water Chemistry Brewing Information

Understanding water chemistry in brewing is an important step to refining home brewing skills. It turns out less than a teaspoon of a couple key brewing salts can make a big impact in a batch of beer. This is mainly applicable to all grain brewing where full control over the mash chemistry is available.  However, the flavor profile is impacted by water chemistry in all brewing styles.

Tuning water to a particular style of beer adds a lot of fun and satisfaction. Balancing flavor ions gives absolute control over the final product. Water chemistry is also important for hitting the correct pH in the mash and can impact efficiency.

The first thing to do is obtain your local water report. Most cities provide this online with far more information than you will use in brewing. The values to look for are:

• Calcium (Ca⁺²)

• Magnesium (Mg⁺²)

• Sulfates (SO₄^-2)

• Sodium (Na⁺)

• Chloride (Cl^–)

• Bicarbonate / Alkalinity

Brewers living in cities with soft water are the most fortunate because they have complete control over the mineral levels in their brewing water. For brewers in places with hard water (high alkalinity and mineral content), dilution with distilled water and then re-adding depleted minerals is the easiest solution. Well water is a tough one as it will require lab analysis to be sure what the levels are, but it can be expected to be packed with minerals.

To help navigate all this information, we created the Brewer’s Friend water chemistry calculator. It helps you hit target concentrations and advises about minimum and maximum levels for each ion. Too much of a given salt can ruin the beer and cause side effects to those who drink it. The calculator also reports how the ion concentrations impact the flavor and bitterness of the beer.

The Brewing Salts:

Adjusting your source water the target water is done through adding a combination of brewing salts.

• Chalk – Calcium Carbonate (CaCO3)
  Boosts alkalinity and source of calcium. Good for adding alkalinity to soft water for brewing dark beers.

• Baking soda – Sodium Bicarbonate (NaHCO3),

  Boosts alkalinity and source of sodium.

• Gypsum – Calcium Sulfate (CaSO4 * 2 H20)

  Source of calcium, sulfate enhances hop bittering, but must be balanced with chlorides.

• Calcium Chloride (CaCl2 * 2 H20)

  Source of calcium for low chloride water.

• Epsom salt – Magnesium Sulfate (MgSO4 * 7 H20)

  Sulfate enhances hop bittering, but must be balanced with chlorides. Magnesium has a low ppm threshold for being safe (brewing range 0-30ppm), so use this one sparingly if at all.

Target ranges for mineral levels in beer brewing:

Flavor Ions:

• Calcium (Ca⁺²) – target range of 50-150 ppm
• Magnesium (Mg⁺²) – target range of 0-30 ppm
• Sulfate (SO₄^-2)- target range 50-150 ppm for normal beers, 150-350ppm for highly bitter beers.
• Sodium (Na⁺) – target range 0-150 ppm
• Chloride (Cl^–) – target range 0-250 ppm.

Harmful levels:
Concentrations above these levels are harmful to the beer, and much beyond they become harmful to our health!

• Calcium (Ca⁺²) – 250 ppm
• Magnesium (Mg⁺²) – 50 ppm
• Sulfate (SO₄^-2) – above 750 ppm
• Sodium (Na⁺) – above 200 ppm
• Chloride (Cl^–) – above 300 ppm

Sulphate and Chloride should be balanced in beer:

• 2:1 SO4 to Cl is good for bitter beer
• 1:2 SO4 to Cl for mild ales
• 1:3 SO4 to Cl for stouts and porters
• Chloride and Sodium add the maltiness of a beer.
• Sulfate highlights bitterness and reduces malt flavor.

Alkalinity Range:

Alkalinity impacts the pH of the mash, a key factor in efficiency. Bicarbonate (HCO₃^–) – ppm depends on style of beer, lower for lighter beers, higher for darker beers.

• 0-50 for pale beers
• 50-150 for amber beers
• 150-400 for dark beers

Sources:
Palmer, John, How To Brew, 2006
Daniels, Ray, Designing Great Beers, 1996

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Recording Keeping Tips

Consistency is the Virtue of Homebrewing
Part 2: Record Keeping

It’s no good to brew a great beer once, only to fail to recapture that glory every other time. In the last article, I discussed the importance of good hygiene procedures in brewing consistent beer. Good hygiene practices mean your beer contains just you intended it to, and nothing else. But if cleanliness means keeping out everything but what you want, then it’s record keeping that ensures that every batch contains exactly what you do want, each and every time.

Good record keeping is part of the brewing process, from start to finish. Since home brewing is a hobby, it may seem natural to ‘trust to memory’ when you make changes or experiment with a beer. Variation and experimentation are the heart of fun homebrews, and the key to discovering new & delicious beers, but trusting to memory is a sure way to never return to those new discoveries again. And if you can’t brew a consistent batch, it’s hard to know whether the changes from batch to batch are because of the changes you intended to make, or the ones you failed to control.

Beer brewing starts with the recipe. The first mistake many home brewers make is viewing the recipe solely as a shopping list. While it does have a list of ingredients, it should also include the mash schedule, the hops schedule, as well as all necessary adjunct information. Many computer programs will also calculate the anticipated starting and ending specific gravity. The calculators at this site can aid in getting to numbers such as (OG, FG, IBU, SRM, etc) and learning how to interpret them.

The grain, hops, & yeast for a recipe are usually purchased at your local homebrew store; as supplies vary from time to time, some substitution may be necessary. Any deviation from the recipe, no matter how trivial, should be recorded if consistency is your goal. Changing from American two-row grain to English two-row grain will definitely affect the flavor of your beer! The hop schedule on the recipe templates at this site don’t just include the name of the hop, but also include the alpha acid percentage; when substitutions do need to be made, having that extra information lets you make a closer match! Surprising to some, yeast can have a huge impact on flavor as well. Consider the difference between a Belgian Abby yeast, and a California common ale – both produce quite different result and apply to different styles.

Adjuncts need to be not only listed as ingredients, but also need every step of preparation included in the recipe. Adding roasted nuts to a beer can add good flavors, but the recipe needs to include not only the type and weight of nuts used, but also the time & temperature used for roasting, and the details on when the nuts are added. (mash, boil, primary fermentation or secondary) When you consider all the details for an adjunct like that, it’s obvious that ‘trusting to memory’ means never getting the same beer twice.

Record keeping continues through fermentation and bottling, as well. It’s useful to know what the final gravity is at bottling, and how long the fermentation was. If you bottle or keg-condition, it’s helpful to know when the beer is minimally carbonated for drinking, when it’s ideally drinkable, and when it’s gone past its prime.

Testing the final bottling gravity of the beer, noting how long the fermentation was, and keeping notes on minimum bottle-conditioning (if used) all add up to success the second time around. Fermentation temperature also plays a role. Advanced brewers setup temperature controlled fermentation chambers to dial this in, even for their ales, to keep them at a consistent 68F, for example.

Even if you’re unsatisfied with the results, keeping good notes on what you disliked, and what you did the first time gives a good starting point for what to change the second time around. As long as you’re still tinkering with a recipe, you should keep all previous notes to know how each variation changed. The ideal recipe should tell you what you need to buy, how you should prepare it at each step, how long it will take, and what to expect at the end.

Assuming that you’re using good cleaning and sanitation procedures, there’s no uncontrolled fermentation occurring in your beer and no unexpected trace flavors or contaminants. At this point, you should be keeping thorough, detailed records of each batch, so you should also have a pretty good ‘road map’ for brewing a particular batch. But there is still one source for uncontrolled, unplanned variations from batch to batch. The next article in this series explores how to refine the actual processes you use in your brewing to reduce unintentional changes from batch to batch.

Please check out our brew day checklist sheets, recipe templates and brewing calculators for more information about brewing with consistency.

The next article in this series is about brewing process improvement ideas.

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Brew Day Checklist for Extract Recipes Posted

Dear fellow brewmeisters and brewmistresses,
We have just posted a new PDF file for download. It is a checklist of steps in the beer brewing process for extract based recipes. You can find it by linking to it in the upper right corner of the site or clicking on this link: Brewday Checklist. This one goes beyond the others we have seen in that it gets into some good habits right away, such as sanitization and recording keeping. It also includes some optional fun stuff like cold crashing and kegging that will help get the brewing to the next level.

I was inspired to build this the other day as I nearly forgot to add brewing salts to the mash tun! With this brewing checklist on hand, I won’t forget a critical step in the brewing process. It complements the recipe templates which can also be found in the upper right corner. These of course all fit well with the calculators we have published.

We are currently working on all grain and partial mash versions of the checklist sheet, and a partial mash recipe template. A water chemistry calculator is also in the works!

PROST! – Larry

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