Let's Make Beer!

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The best way to take your brewing to the next level is the increased care in cleaning and sanitizing your gear. That’s boring to read about though, so I’m gonna share with you another easy way to improve your homebrew. Make a starter!

Liquid yeast cultures advertise that they have 100 billion viable yeast cells in each tube or smack pack. That’s a big number. But how many yeast cells does five gallons of beer need? Sorry to get technical, but it depends on the gravity of your wort. You want 750,000 cells of yeast per millimeter of wort, per degree Plato of gravity. Now if you have a hydrometer, instead of degrees Plato you may substitute the number value listed for Brix as it appears on the hydrometer.

If you’re pitching into a wort of 1.040, or around 10 degrees plato, you need 150,000,000,000 viable, living yeast cells… and double that for a lager! I hate math, so let’s ballpark it. This is around 4 billion cells per point of gravity in around a five gallon batch (again, double that for a lager).

Now, is it essential that you make a starter for every batch? Absolutely not. But if you do, the yeasties can spend less time reproducing and more time doing the work of making your beer. Also, when the gravity is high and there are lots of fermentables to eat, it’s good to pitch at a higher rate to ensure all the stuff is eaten. This is why some clever brewers will start a stout or other high gravity beer on top of the leftover yeast from a recently racked batch of lighter beer. The first beer was a starter!

So, how do you make a yeast starter? Luckily it is easier to make than it is to explain why you should make it. One to three days before brewing prepare your yeast as you’re used to. As the pack is swelling or the vial is warming or the dried stuff is hydrating, take a little more than a pint of water and bring it to a boil. You’re gonna make a tiny wort for your yeastmen and yeastwomen to eat up! Boil a half cup of extra light malt extract for ten minutes. If you have yeast nutrient (a good idea), throw it in for the same amount of time. Cool this like you would any beer, pour it into a sanitized growler or bottle, aerate the wort by shaking, pitch your yeast, and affix a sanitized airlock and stopper. You’re just making a small beer. You’re used to this. After the one to three days, it’s ready to pitch. If you are worried about the starter affecting beer flavor, you can chill the starter in the fridge. The yeast will settle to the bottom of the bottle. You can easily pour out the beer, retain the yeast, and then pitch it all into your beer.

Do this and you’ll get quicker, cleaner fermentations. Really.

It is a question that is as old as the hills.  Rare is the brewer who is not, at some point or another, approached by someone outside our grand fraternity of beer craftsmen who has not experienced the joy of tasting a delicious brew he or she has made themselves, and been asked, simply:

Why?

They may furrow their brows and ask, “Why do you go through all that, just for beer?  Why, when you can just pop down to the supermarket or beer speciality shop and choose from dozens or even hundreds of beers, would you want to go through all that effort?  Why deal with the mess and the equipment and waste all that time?  Why?”

Even the most dubious beer enthusiast must admit that any pastime from which the end result is delicious beer is inherently superior to other hobbies.  Beer, of course, is good.  Yet the question persists.

The experienced brewer will note that the questioner is suffering from ignorance borne from a whole host of misconceptions – that brewing is difficult, or expensive, or tedious.  It is precisely these misconceptions that ought to be dispelled as quickly as possible.

The discussion points that follow are intended to enhance the home brewer’s response to the question of why.

Brewing is cheap.  Honest.

After a modest initial investment in the basic tools of the trade, the beginning brewer will shortly realize that the few ingredients needed to make beer are actually quite inexpensive. There are but four vital components of beer, none of which can be considered exorbitant: malted grains or malt extract, hops, yeast, and water.

Popular beer kits, containing all the ingredients apart from water that a beginning brewer needs to make five gallons of beer, can often cost as little as thirty dollars.  Such a yield is approximately equivalent to 53 regular 12oz bottles, or almost 9 six packs.  It should be evident that after only a few batches of brew, a home brewer can “come out ahead” when it comes to monetary expenses.  And, of course, he or she will be consistently enjoying a superior product.

At this point, if the doubting drinker mentions, in the way of a counter-argument, a particularly inexpensive brand of beer, often available in large and rather boorish packs of cans, it will be obvious to the brewer that a larger intervention is required to rescue the palate of the poor soul.  Whereas this is far beyond the purview of this discussion, we recommend enlisting the additional help of friends or relatives who may be able to help them see the error of their ways.

As for equipment, once a brewer has a few batches “under his belt” he can grow his setup as much or as little as desired.  Indeed, there are plenty of gadgets one can invest in, many of which are great and worthwhile, but the absolute basics are simple. Starting with a large pot, a large spoon, a few buckets, a thermometer, a hydrometer, some siphon hose, and the beginning brewer is well on the way to creating beer.

And, while not an ingredient and not exactly “equipment”, cleanser is also critical.  We have all heard the saying that cleanliness is next to godliness.  This is at least partially true because cleanliness results in better beer.

As for bottles, an enthusiast can actually just save empty beer bottles, and purchase new caps cost that cost just pennies. Of course, one will need to clean re-used bottles very well (see above).  An important tip: one should save only those bottles that originally had “pry-off” caps, as the “screw-off” bottles cannot be re-capped.

After a new brewer’s first few batches, she will come to realize that the  greatest investment is actually her time.

Brewing is fun.

Yes, when one applies themselves to the noble art of brewing, one is most often graced with beer.  With just a little practice, one achieves really, really good beer.  But that is only half the point.  The brewing process is actually a really enjoyable way to spend one’s free time, making it a great hobby for the right-minded people.

A couple of things to note straight away:

Brewing is not difficult.  Not anymore difficult than following a simple recipe step by step.  And, like cooking, it is something that you get better at with practice.

Brewing is not magic.  Not anymore magic than noodles and broth making soup.

If one has any kind of basic competence and reasonable control of one’s faculties, they are perfectly able make your their beer.

And, as it turns out, brewing is something that can be a ton of fun to do with friends. It doesn’t hurt that some steps, like bottling, for example, can actually be a little easier with a second – or third – set of hands.

Now, granted, unlike baking cookies, a brewer is not going to be enjoying the fruits of his or her labor right away.  But on that special day when the brew is ready, the experienced brewer knows that there is nothing quite like sharing it.  And when a novice is ready to dive into the creation of the second batch – and as any brewer will attest, he or she most certainly will want to, as in brewing as in many other facets of life, success breeds success -  enjoying the previous batch as one works makes it all the better.

Plus, the brewer knows the pure enjoyment of experimentation.  Because any single batch of beer doesn’t require a great deal of monetary investment, if a brewer is bold, she will make minor tweaks to recipes, both in ingredients and techniques. Yes, it is true that upon occasion, a brewer may experience a batch that doesn’t quite turn out exactly as expected.  However, one should never be discouraged with any results, since barring some major goof or spectacularly misguided idea, the result will always be beer, and therefore will always be good.

A brewer creates something unique.

As a novice brewer soon comes to realize, despite its simplicity, the brewing process contains a number of variables, and relatively minor tweaks can produce different results.  Boiling time, fermentation temperature, and of course, variations in ingredients along with a lot of other little things can all result in slightly different beers, with different colors, aromas, flavors.

The point is, when one makes her own beer, it is hers.  Nobody else in the world – not the guy who bought another six pack shipped from the mega-brewery in St. Louis, not even the guy who brews with the same equipment and ingredients – will be enjoying her particular brew.  Unless of course you she shares it with them, a decision that Brew Camp naturally whole-heartedly endorses.

And the brewer can always customize his beer to suit his particular tastes.  If he enjoys extremely hoppy pale ales, beyond what any sane person would consider reasonable, he is encouraged to create it.  If she wants something sweet and fruity, there is nothing preventing her from achieving it except her own limitations.  If a brewer truly believes that he can make a better stout than Guinness, then he almost certainly can, because…

Beer tastes better when one brews it at home.

Even if a brewer uses precisely the same recipe and the same ingredients and are successful in attempting to recreate a favorite big-brewery beer, the product from the home brewer will taste better.  Commercial brews are almost always pasteurized, which cooks the beer and kills off all the yeast.  Home brewed beer is “live” – meaning that is still contains that live yeast – and therefore tastes more natural, more pure.  In a word, better.  Plus, home brewed beer can actually “age” over time, changing slightly in texture and flavor.

So a home brewer will know that when she opens that beer and hands it to a friend, they’ll be impressed.  Which suggests the best reason of all:

There is a special pride a brewer takes in creating his own beer.

Any master brewer will attest: there is nothing like sharing one’s own beer with others.  They know the pride of watching skeptics turn into believers with the first sip, of passing their latest creation over to eager hands who can’t wait to see what they’ve come up with now, of , taking only a little pleasure from the disappointment groaned when the “good stuff” has run out, and of being able to smile and say, “Don’t worry, I’ll make more.”

Regardless of what else a home brewer accomplishes during her day, no matter what she does for a living, when she cracks open a beer that she made herself, she knows that she has produced with her own hands and her own knowledge something real, something wonderful.  Something delicious and good and satisfying.

That is home brewing.  That is real beer, and welcome to it.