Brewer's Friend Home Brewing Software

Amarillo and Brown Sugar IPA, 2008

Amarillo hops impart a citrus grapefruit note to the aroma and flavor of the beer they are used in. This IPA recipe highlights the Amarillo hops and creates an IPA that is fairly mellow compared to some of the stronger IPAs.

This recipe is quite complex and deviates a bit from standard recipes. Using 6 pounds of DME, and the brown sugar later, I decided to dilute the primary to 6.5 gallons. Otherwise the beer would have been 6%+ alcohol by volume. This way there is more of it, but lugging the carboy around when it is full is harder.

After three days I added brown sugar directly to the primary fermenter. The sugar was dissolved in near boiling water and cooled before being added. This boosted the SG and darkened the beer slightly. It did not make the beer sweet since it is all eaten by the yeast. Adding sugar during primary fermentation is a trick to boost gravity. The yeast took off when I added the sugar. A blowoff tube was definitely needed.

In the secondary I dry hopped with more Amarillo. The results were awesome, this is one of the best beers I have crafted. Next time I will try a different type of yeast (this is the only thing I would dare change).

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Orange American Hefeweizen II, 2008

After brewing my first orange hefeweizen about two months ago I wanted to fine tune the recipe.
This time I used sterling hops instead of cascade to reduce the biterness. Some people mentioned it was pretty bitter (not a bad thing for me). I had originally set out to replicate the Eugene City Brewery’s Honey Orange Wheat, I thought that would be the next logical step. I also used half the amount of sweet orange peel. The results are closer, but this beer still has way too much flavor. To replicate ECB’s beer, I would need to cut the hops in half again, and probably cut the orange in half too.

One thing I have noticed about both times using coriander, after about 75 days the flavor really starts to settle down. I think these beers were better when they were the freshest. It could also have been oxygen taint. That said, this beer is ready to drink in about 4 weeks!

I brought a growler jug (64 oz) to a party and it was gone in 45 minutes with people asking for more. It is a beer that non beer drinkers can try a little of and enjoy.

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German Kolsh Ale, 2008

White labs offers a Klösh yeast for making a German ale. It is not as robust as a lager, this beer is light and a bit sweet. It’s a respectable easy drinking beer. If you want to lighten it up even more (like Budweiser or Coors), try substituting a pound of rice solids in place of a pound of DME. For me, it is so light there is no need to take it further. This is a great beer to brew for your first time. It is very simple with only one hop addition at the beginning.

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The Homebewer’s Answer Book – By Ashton Lewis

The Homebewer’s Answer Book – By Ashton Lewis
Solutions to Every Problem, Answers to Every Question

Pickup this book after you have been brewing for several months to fill in some gaps in your knowledge and open the door to new ideas. The book is compact in size but thick. It is not suitable to read for a raw beginner. It gets into a lot of complicated and advanced areas. I would get it in the first year and refer back to it over the course of your progression from beginner to master. Mainly the book focuses on how to perfect your brewing processes. Every home brewer can get a lot out of this book.

Topics unique to this book:

• Sanitization techniques
• Answers about use of materials in brewing, such as CPVC vs copper pipes, stainless steel vs aluminum, etc
• Dry hopping vs using a hopback
• Brewing with different levels of water hardness
• Reusing yeast and re-pitching rates, yeast considerations for lager beers
• All grain techniques, tradeoffs with different mash schedules, and the basic chemistry involved
• Putting beer on tap using nitrogen (nitro)
• Troubleshooting to improve head stability, chill haze, DMS, etc.
• Troubleshooting with bad batches

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When to use a blowoff tube

For dark beers or beers with a specific gravity greater than 1.060, in my experience, a blow off tube is need to keep from having an overflowing mess.

Here is a picture of a porter that is only 24 hours into fermentation. You can see the amount of gunk on the glass in the head space got up to the airlock. I pitched two cups of slurry from a previous batch of English Pub Bitter and the fermentation took off like a rocket. In five hours the tube was making a tapping noise every couple seconds as it bubbled. The strain is White Labs British Ale Yeast.

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Brewing Outside on Propane

Brewing outside can be a really fun experience. It saves time for a number of reasons. First, there is is less cleanup to do before hand and afterward. Second, the water boils a lot faster than on a stove. I have waited 45 minutes to boil 3 gallons on a gas stove, but with propane it is closer to 10 minutes. Another benefit is the smell of the wort is not kept inside the house, making it easier on your family *if* they don’t like it for some odd reason.

There are of course a few downsides. It is easier to get a boil over because there is so much heat going into the kettle. I am also careful not to burn ingredients on the bottom of the kettle. Propane can be dangerous to work around, so make sure the fittings are safe and the tank is secure.

Here is an image of me brewing some English Pub Bitter. There is under 15 minutes left as the wort chiller coil is already hooked up. For instructions on how to build a wort chiller, click here. Turning on the hose and letting it shoot the warm water into the lawn is fun and I used that water to rinse out the hops bags. Cooling with wort chiller took about 10 minutes!

Make sure to check the weather ahead of time.

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Hops Alpha Acid Table

Alpha Acids from hops contribute to the bitterness in beer. During the boil alpha acids are isomerized and increase international bittering units (IBUs). This site has an IBU calculator.

Hops also contain beta acids, which contribute to aroma only. The more alpha acids the more bittering potential per ounce. For example, one ounce of Northern Brewer (8.5) is roughly equivalent of two ounces of Domestic Hallertau (3.9) in terms of bittering potential.

This chart is a general guideline only. The actual AA varies from year to year depending on the weather, harvest conditions, and storage.

If you do not see your hops listed here please leave a comment or send us feedback and we will find out for you!

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Do It Yourself Immersion Wort Chiller Instructions

After reading about the benefits of wort chillers and seeing the prices I took it upon myself to build an immersion wort chiller. It takes about 30 minutes and a trip to the hardware store. No special tools are needed beyond a crescent wrench.

An immersion chiller works by taking advantage of the cool underground temperature of tap water. Running tap water through the coil allows a heat exchange to occur, removing heat from the wort rapidly.

The entire setup cost me $66.70. That was about half the retail price on an equivalent model. I won’t go back to ice baths ever again. It cools a 3.5 gallon batch in about 10 minutes! It is a big time saver when brewing.

50 feet of 3/8 ” soft copper tubing was desirable because that length is good enough for 10 gallon batches in the future.

I wrapped the coils around a bucket so they would fit nicely into my kettle:

Make sure the supply side starts at the top and the return side comes from the bottom. This will help with the hot water convection inside the kettle.

The store had 20 feet and 30 feet, but no single 50 feet length, so I combined the two tubes into one with compression fittings. It was nice that no soldering was needed because I was concerned about the health effects:

The supply side uses a standard female garden hose attachment with a compression fitting:

When I use this indoors, I attach a pvc tube to the outlet side and use a worm drive clamp to lock it down.

The final product, an immersion wort chiller:

NOTICE:
Make sure to test it out for leaks before using. You do not want boiling water and steam shooting everywhere when you are trying to make beer. Also be sure to clean it with a non abrasive cleaner to get all the grime from the factory off before dunking it into your wort. It will come out of the wort very clean because the heat scrubs off all the oils and tarnish. Cleaning took some trial and error. Vinegar did not work and left an ugly gray stain on the copper. What did work was lemon juice in hot water and some mild scrubbing with a dish rag.

To use, submerse in the boiling wort when the batch has 15 minutes left to sanitize the unit. Be careful, steam and hot water will shoot out of the in and out pipes. Hook up the hose and the pvc outlet tubing before submersing. When I brew outdoors, I don’t worry about the outlet tubing and point it away from my work area. For indoor brewing I put the pvc outlet tube down inside the sink so it doesn’t go anywhere. I have a converter for my utility sink which allows me to hook up the hose and run it into the kitchen. Your hardware store will have that too, I brought in the attachment for my faucet so I could get the correct size in one trip.

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English Pub Bitter, 2008

I wanted to try making something similar to the run of the mill beer in England. I found out from this batch, most of the flavor differences are due to the hops and yeast. Everyone who tried this beer really liked it.

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Orange American Hefeweizen, 2008

The Eugene City Brewery has a honey orange wheat beer that inspired me to brew this. This beer is much heavier in flavor and body, which I ended up liking better. You can still drink a ton of it one setting, and it was perfect for my bachelor party. The coriander comes through really nicely in a bright citrus flavor. As the citrus flavor falls off the potent cascade hops hit the tongue producing an excellent bitterness.

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