A couple of months ago I brewed two ales using 19th Century recipes from the Truman brewery in Burton.

Here’s how they turned out.

The brews were part of the International Homebrew Project (IHP), organised by Velky Al from Fuggled.

Last year’s IHP, which involved brewing a strong Scottish mild, caused a turning point in my brewing.

Not only did it open my eyes to how interesting brewing history is, more importantly I discovered that very simple recipes make some of the best beers.

In fact, I’ve continued to explore simple beers ever since.

So after that experience I was obviously keen to participate again.

This year’s brew was a Burton Ale, an historic English type of beer that’s often fairly strong and sweet.

As with most beers, Burton Ale evolved and changed over time. If you’re interested in knowing more you can read about it in Velky Al’s useful summary.

It’s said that Young’s Winter Warmer is a classic example, so if you’ve tried that you’ll have some idea.

T4 Burton Ale

The recipe was similar in some ways to the mild from last year.

100% pale ale malt, but this time flavoured with Kent Goldings rather than Fuggles hops.

Here’s the recipe as I brewed it:

6 litres final volume

Malt
100% Pale ale malt: 4.55kg
O.G.:1.081

Hops
83 IBUs Cascade (6%): 43g pellets for 90 mins
42 IBUs Kent Goldings (4%): 45g pellets for 30 mins

Yeast
Windsor

Although Burton became famous as a brewing town for its water, in the spirit of the International Homebrew Project I just used my regular brewing tap water.

That doesn’t seem to have negatively affected the beer, which you can see in the photo at the top of the page.

It’s very clear with a strong red colour. When held to the light it turns bright orange.

A thick head with fine long lasting bubbles forms on top of the lightly sparkling beer.

To smell it’s like a pint of bitter. There’s nothing in particular that stands out, but it’s a tempting smell.

The taste is more distinctive. There’s a lot of sweetness, which disappears when you notice strong bitterness and flavour from the hops.

I’ve been steadily drinking this beer for the last month or so, and while it’s been good all along, it’s become smoother each time.

Despite that, I would still say it’s “cloying” (unlike Velky Al’s batch).

It’s really quite tasty and pleasant, but after a pint or so the strong bittersweetness becomes a bit much.

A great beer to drink in small doses.

Bonus Burton Pale Ale

As I wrote at the time, I used this beer, with it’s large grain bill, as an excuse to try combined grist brewing.

After getting the wort for the Burton Ale, I soaked the grain in more water to make a second beer.

This was also based on an old Truman recipe from Burton, but a pale ale rather than a true Burton Ale.

Here’s the recipe:

11 litres final volume

Malt
100% Pale ale malt
O.G.:1.050

Hops
41 IBUs Cascade (6%): 21g pellets for 180 mins
40 IBUs Styrian Goldings (4.4%): 28g pellets for 120 mins
14 IBUs Hallertauer (4.8%): 19g pellets for 15 mins
14 IBUs Saaz (4.2%): 22g pellets for 15 mins

Yeast
Windsor

As a bonus beer I didn’t have high expectations, but I’m pleased with the results.

It’s a very bright beer both to look at and to drink.

Pleasant tropical fruit flavours are dominant.

The beer itself is very bitter, it reminds me a lot of the hoppy beers that turn up in England as summer ales. Brewers Gold, for example.

Sharp and refreshing: I like it.

A word of warning warning if you’re think of trying this recipe for yourself though. This has proved to be one of my least popular beers when offering it round!

I think both these ales are worth brewing again. However I wouldn’t recommend them as base beers for your fridge, as they seem to be something of an acquired taste.

Thank you Velky Al for organising another thoroughly enjoyable IHP. I’m looking forward to next year’s!

Brewing Burton Ale: International Homebrew Project was originally published on Home Brew Manual, a blog about home brewing. Stop by and find out how to make your own beer!

Finding beer balance: there’s more to life than beer, and more to beer than drinking it.

Every month beer bloggers from around the world gather to take part in the Session, sharing thoughts on a set topic. This time it’s Bryan from This Is Why I’m Drunk‘s turn to host.

He’s interested in balancing beer:

April’s topic is “Finding Beer Balance.” It’s a discussion I hope will offer a variety of responses as people consider their interests outside of finding the perfect pint.

Is beer your vice? Is beer your reward? Does beer really have to be either? Do you find lifestyle balance through work, hobbies, family…?

Beer’s one of my many interests and I never tire of reading about it, brewing it and of course drinking it.

But I also have plenty of other distractions to keep me busy and I don’t think I need to balance.

Beer’s found a natural, central but not overwhelming, role in my life and seems to have reached equilibrium with my other interests.

So life isn’t dominated by beer, but within beer itself I do, in an unplanned way, find balance.

Finding Beer Balance

Actually drinking the stuff is a very small part of it. Like Bryan I read a lot, but above all brewing has emerged as my big beer interest.

Brewing for the fun of it, not (just) to make beer.

As well as honing in on the beers I like (English ales), every now and again I balance that with something unexpected.

Which leads me to the rest of this post: a round-up of a recent experiment with coffee beer.

Brewing Balanced Beer

While not especially a fan of novelty ingredients I’ve got nothing not against them.

I recently tried out coffee in a brew, using this recipe:

Malts
66% Pale Ale
24% Munich
7% Crystal 120L
4% Roasted Barley
(O.G.: 1.058)

Mash Time
90 mins

Mash Target Temperature
68°C

Hops
Nugget: 11 IBUs First Wort Hopped
Nugget: 10 IBUs for 20 mins
Nugget: 3 IBUs for 5 mins
(24 IBUs)

Yeast
Windsor Dry

Other
Coffee, added at bottling

The idea was for a malty beer with mild hop presence leaving room for the bitter coffee.

Uncertain of how the coffee would turn out I split the batch in three and dosed each differently.

Here’s how the beers tasted.

No Coffee

Very malty, almost sweet although it does have a little hoppiness.

It’s very pleasantly bitter to drink, which I think is due to the roasted barley and dark crystal malt.

This is a very moreish beer that I’d say is balanced.

Not:

more like:

6g of Coffee per Litre of Beer

A subtle coffee smell is very much noticeable, at the expense of any beery aromas. It’s not especially pleasant: cold coffee rather than freshly roasted beans.

This makes sense. I added the coffee by cold steeping in the fridge for twenty four hours as I’d read that this gives a smooth flavour.

It’s a bit more acrid than the neat beer, and the coffee flavour is weak. It’d probably be hard to identify if I didn’t know it was there.

12g Coffee per Litre of Beer

Again, there’s a very strong cold-coffee aroma wafting out of the glass. This time it borders on intrusive.

Luckily it hasn’t infected the taste which is pretty good and coffee-like. I’m really glad I held back on hops as it’s a bitter beer anyway.

The ingredients have blended well and have made for a balanced, flavourful beer. However…

On Balance

On balance I prefer the plain beer.

It’s not that the coffee is unpleasant, or even unbalanced, just that it tastes too much like coffee.

It’s great for a glassful, but after that you just want something more refreshing.

The undosed batch, on the other hand, brewed slightly weaker would make a delicious easy drinking beer.

Finding Balance With A Coffee Beer was originally published on Home Brew Manual, a blog about home brewing. Stop by and find out how to make your own beer!

Last weekend I brewed my attempt at the International Homebrew Project Burton Ale.

After last year’s very strong mild left me feeling I’d missed a trick, this time I prepared myself for brewing two beers from the one mash.

Here’s how I planned it, and what actually happened.

Getting more than one beer from a single set of grains is not new.

One way of doing it is with parti-gyle. That’s an old brewing technique that yields several beers from one mash.

Fullers still use it to produce the family of beers that includes London Pride and Chiswick Bitter.

As far as I can gather, parti-gyle brewing specifically involves blending the beers after boiling.

The quality of the wort reduces with each rinse, and blending helps smooth out blemishes. Apart from that, as I’ve found out, controlling the gravities in completely separate worts is difficult.

But more on that later.

Parti-gyle seems to have been picked up by home brewers as a general term meaning “more than one beer from the same grains” but I think what I’m about to explain, without blending, is combined grist brewing.

I had the idea last year but it’s taken me this long to organise it. Mainly because as a brew in the bag brewer I’ve been wondering how practical it is.

BIAB Combined Grist Brewing

The Burton Ale recipe, set by Alistair at Fuggled, for this year’s Homebrew Project is simple:

100% pale ale malt
(O.G. 1.079)

83 IBUs Cluster for 90 mins
42 IBUs Kent Goldings for 30 mins

It’s based on an 1877 Truman No. 4 recipe, which was brewed in the company’s brewery in Burton.

This is the first beer from the combined grist.

To make life easier, I decided to take advantage of the way my brew process already works.

There’s a natural break between two different worts: the one that’s left in the brew pot when I remove the brew bag (the first runnings), and the one that slowly drains from the bag (the second runnings).

Normally I mix the two before boiling, but for the combined grist experiment I maintained the separation.

The first runnings would make the Burton Ale, with the rest going on to become the second beer.

Because I’ve been recording gravity and volume in detail, I was able to make some guesses about how the two beers would pan out.

Planning The First Beer

When I remove the brew bag from the pot, on average 2/3 of the starting volume of water stays behind, and it contains 2/3 of the total gravity points.

With 4.55 kg pale ale in stock, I planned the brew around that. Slightly random but you have to start somewhere.

Although I expected a higher efficiency than usual from the extra rinsing, I stuck with 70% for planning purposes.

This meant I would have 978 total gravity points to split between the two beers.

(I’m not going to explain the calculations in detail – read this if you can’t follow along)

Using 2/3 of those points, I worked out the starting water volume and hop additions for the Burton Ale.

Planning The Second Beer

For the second brew I didn’t want a random beer, but something related to the Burton Ale.

Browsing through Let’s Brew on Shut Up About Barclay Perkins I found another Truman’s beer, also from Burton, with the same grain bill.

(It sounds like all the Truman’s beers from Burton at the time were 100% pale malt).

It’s a strong export pale ale from 1883, so only 6 years after the No. 4 was brewed. The original gravity is 1.069.

The selling point was the unusual hop schedule, with hops from four different countries.

Not only was it intriguing, it happened to coincide with the contents of my leftover hop tub.

Knowing roughly how many gravity points would be left in the second wort, I could settle on a target volume and work out the hop additions for the second beer.

Two Beers From One Mash: The Recipe

I ended up with this recipe plan:

Start

100% Pale ale malt: 4.55kg
Starting Volume: 17.1 litres
Efficiency 70%

First Beer: Burton Ale

Assumed that first runnings are made of:
67% post-grain water
67% gravity points
8.3 litres expected volume

Equivalent to:
100% Pale ale malt
O.G.:1.079

Hops
83 IBUs Cascade (6%): 43g pellets for 90 mins
42 IBUs Kent Goldings (4%): 45g pellets for 30 mins

Yeast
Windsor

Second Beer: Export Pale Ale

Assumed that second runnings are made of:
33% gravity points
Extra water added: 9.8 litres
Expected volume: 4.7 litres

Equivalent to:
100% Pale ale malt
O.G.:1.069

Hops
41 IBUs Cascade (6%): 9g pellets for 180 mins
40 IBUs Styrian Goldings (4.4%): 13g pellets for 120 mins
14 IBUs Hallertauer (4.8%): 9g pellets for 15 mins
14 IBUs Saaz (4.2%): 10g pellets for 15 mins

Yeast
Windsor

Because the second beer is almost as strong as the first, I only expected about a litre more beer out of the technique than I would have got normally.

I hope you can see though, that with another 5-10 litres of water you’d get a lot more of a weaker beer. And the idea of getting two different beers from one brew day is pretty good in itself.

Brewing Two Beers From One Mash

The brew went fairly well. I did get two beers out of it, even though my “predictions” didn’t come true.

It started OK. The volume and gravity of the first runnings were very close to expected. The gravity points were a little short, that’s all.

It was so close I left the hop additions as planned.

Unfortunately the small batch size seemed to increase the evaporation rate to a lot more than I’d expected. After 90 minutes I was down to just 6 litres of beer.

By strange chance, this brought the gravity back up close to target and I finished with an original gravity of 1.081, just 2 points over.

The shortfall in beer forced my hand and I decided to lower the target gravity of the second beer.

This, along with the “missing” gravity points from the Burton Ale, let me increase the volume of the pale ale.

After a rough calculation based on what I knew, I heated 15 litres of water in the brew pot to 55°C and added back the grain bag.

When the water had reached 70°C I removed it and drained as usual.

To cut a long story short I finished up with 11 litres of beer at 1.050.

Summary

For what it’s worth, here’s what I brewed:

Start

100% Pale ale malt: 4.55kg
Starting Volume: 17.1 litres
Efficiency (in fermenter): 75%

First Beer: Burton Ale

“First runnings”:
67% post-grain water
47% gravity points
6 litres final volume

100% Pale ale malt
O.G.:1.081

Hops
83 IBUs Cascade (6%): 43g pellets for 90 mins
42 IBUs Kent Goldings (4%): 45g pellets for 30 mins

Yeast
Windsor

Second Beer: Export Pale Ale

“Second runnings”:
53% gravity points
Extra water added: 15 litres
Final volume: 11 litres

100% Pale ale malt
O.G.:1.050

Hops
41 IBUs Cascade (6%): 21g pellets for 180 mins
40 IBUs Styrian Goldings (4.4%): 28g pellets for 120 mins
14 IBUs Hallertauer (4.8%): 19g pellets for 15 mins
14 IBUs Saaz (4.2%): 22g pellets for 15 mins

Yeast
Windsor

If that’s of use to you great. But I suspect this requires more than one brew before any conclusions are drawn.

Testing the method is what this was for, and I’d say it worked.

I developed it from first principals, so apologies if there’s a more refined version out there I don’t know about. As I said, I wanted to work as much as possible with my current brew day routine.

It was a totally idiosyncratic brew based around my two fermenters (6 and 20 litres), the amount of pale ale malt I happened to have left, and my participation in the International Homebrew Project.

I just couldn’t resist trying the two Truman’s Burton beers together.

In a way it’s completely over the top to make so much effort for a few more litres of beer. On the other hand it was great fun!

Bonus

In the spirit of making the most of the malt, I finished up by making a plum cake with the spent grain.

Very nice it was too.

Two Beers From One Mash was originally published on Home Brew Manual, a blog about home brewing. Stop by and find out how to make your own beer!

This is an inventory of my beer reserves on March 1 2013.

The Beer Audit is the topic of today’s Session, the monthly gathering of beer bloggers. This time Pints and Pubs is the host. We’ve been asked to take stock of our beer.

So, here goes:

Fuggles Pale Ale

A simple pale ale brewed to explore Fuggles hops.

1 x 1 litre
7 x 330ml
Total 3.33 litres

Mapuche Pale Ale

Another pale ale, this time to try out Mapuche hops.

1 x 1 litre
Total 1 litre

Mapuche Special Bitter (MSB)

Very tasty special bitter, again designed around Mapuche hops.

4 x 330ml
Total 1.33 litres

Nugget Pale Ale

Yet another single hop pale ale.

1 x 330ml
Total 0.33 litres

Otro Mundo Strong Red Ale

The only commercial beer is this bottle of Otro Mundo strong red ale.

1 x 330ml
Total 0.33 litres

Porter

The most recently brewed beer in the collection. I split the batch in three: one plain, and two with coffee of different intensities.

A miscalculation on bottling day means the unflavoured one is still in the fermenter.

1 x 6 litres
Total 6 litres

Porter (Medium Coffee)

2 x 1 litre
4 x 330ml
Total 3.33 litres

Porter (Strong Coffee)

2 x 1 litre
4 x 330ml
Total 3.33 litres

Saaz Pale Ale

The final single hop pale ale.

1 x 330ml
Total 0.33 litres

Saison

Remnants of a batch I brewed six months ago.

2 x 330ml
Total 0.66 litres

Saison Unspiced

A recent brew that’s still maturing. This is without spices and was warm fermented to test against the original, spiced recipe.

6 x 1 litre
1 x 660ml
6 x 500ml
8 x 330ml
Total 10 litres

William Younger’s Mild

The last couple of bottles of strong mild ale brewed for last year’s International Homebrew Project, organised by Alistair from Fuggled.

The strongest and oldest beer I’ve got.

2 x 330ml
Total 0.66 litres

Total 53 bottles, 31 litres (I think)

What Does The Beer Audit Tell Me?

This is the first time I’ve audited my beer. Usually I just drink it until it runs out, so in itself it’s been an interesting exercise.

But we’re also asked to explain what the inventory tells us.

The bulk of the stock is home brew. I prefer to buy draught beer, if possible, which explains the near lack of commercial offerings.

There’s also the fact that I’m not a beer hoarder and don’t buy bottles to lay down. Bought beer has a quick turnaround and is usually drunk the same day.

The low numbers of many of the beers suggest I get through new batches of home brew quickly, but can’t bring myself to open the last few bottles. Look at all those lonesome pale ales.

Most importantly, my beer audit reveals that I need to free up some bottles. I’ve got to make room for 6 litres of porter and the Burton Ale I’m brewing tomorrow.

The Beer Audit was originally published on Home Brew Manual, a blog about home brewing. Stop by and find out how to make your own beer!

Here are the results of a quick bottle carbonation experiment. How long should you wait before putting your beer in the fridge?

I recently received a comment on an old post about flat beer asking why a batch of home brew had failed to carbonate.

There was a key piece of information: the beer only had 4 days to carbonate before being put in the fridge.

I assumed that it had been chilled too soon, before carbonating properly. But after replying I realised I’d given advice based on instinct rather than experience.

So I decided to test the theory.

As I was about to bottle a batch of saison, I set up a mini-experiment. After priming the beer as usual, I added one bottle of it to the fridge every three days for two weeks.

Would the bottles that went in earlier be less carbonated and flat?

Carbonation Levels

I’ve written about priming sugar and carbonation before, so I’d suggest reading that if you don’t know what it’s all about.

For this beer, I added enough priming sugar for medium carbonation. That means I expected a reasonable but not excessive amount of gas and head.

Bottle Carbonation Experiment Results

To see the results, I poured all the beers straight into the centre of the glass, aiming for the most head possible.

In an attempt to generate suspense, I’ll go through them in reverse order.

Carbonated 15 Days/In Fridge F0r ½ Day

The beer that had the full fifteen days at room temperature was nicely carbonated with a decent head and a pleasant gassy mouthfeel.

About right in terms of carbonation, although the beer itself needs a bit longer for some of the flavours to settle down.

Carbonated 12 Days/In Fridge For 3 Days

This beer had carbonated too well. It looked like I’d overprimed it.

Carbonated 9 Days/In Fridge For 6 Days

Although with less gas than the first beer, this was still OK and quite nice to drink.

This was the cut-off point I think.

Carbonated 6 Days/In Fridge For 9 Days

Another overprimed one, an anomaly I think rather than a result to later be relied on.

It goes to show how variation from beer to beer is part of home brewing.

Carbonated 3 Days/In Fridge For 12 Days

Just three days of carbonation at warm temperatures gave the beer enough time to develop gas and foam.

However, the head and fizz were short lived.

Carbonated 0 Days/In Fridge For 15 Days

Unappetising and flat, the beer that went straight to the fridge seemed to confirm the theory. Bottle carbonation is best done at room temperature.

Something that hasn’t come through in the photos is the differences in colour. The 0 and 3 day beers were muddy orange/brown, whereas the more carbonated ones were bright and punchy yellow.

I hadn’t expected colour to be affected so much.

Conclusions?

Although it may seem like there’s not a lot of difference, if you look at them all together you can see that the amount of head increases the longer they were carbonating outside the fridge.

Even the longer carbonated of the overly-gassy ones had more foam than its friend.

I’ve always treated two weeks as the minimum carbonation period and this test hasn’t changed my mind on that, even though you could probably get away with less.

The increased staying power of the foam convinced me it’s worth waiting the full fortnight.

There’s nothing particularly surprising about these results. In fact, here’s what the Yeast book says:

The way you store the beer also affects the degree of carbonation. If you store the bottles too cold, the yeast will not actively metabolize sugar and create CO2.

Although it was perhaps inevitable, it’s good to see my assumptions confirmed in reality.

Experimenting With Bottle Carbonation Time was originally published on Home Brew Manual, a blog about home brewing. Stop by and find out how to make your own beer!

Despite the amount of brew software that’s out there, it’s undoubtedly useful to be able to do your own brewing calculations.

I’ve been finding out how, and you can too if you want. All you have to do is keep reading!

Entering recipes into brewing calculators (like this or this) I’m never completely sure what I’m supposed to put where.

Volume, efficiency, gravity. These are ambiguous terms.

So after muddling along for long enough, I’ve spent the last few brews getting a handle on the numbers myself.

It turns out that basic brewing maths is not too tricky. And as with most things, spending time looking at it properly clears up a lot of doubts.

Home Brewing Calculations

My idea here is to use an example recipe to describe calculations for water volume, gravity, alcohol, colour and bitterness.

I planned it as a series, but in the event decided there’s just too much overlap between each ingredient for that to make sense.

It’s more logical, I think, to look at everything in one lengthy hit.

Before I go any further, I should point out why I’ve put off learning about this until now. It’s because most of the information out there is in ounces, quarts and gallons.

Much preferring metric units myself, I’ve always found it difficult to follow along. I just don’t have an in-built understanding of, for example, what a cup is.

So this guide is largely for those of you who like metric units, although the principles are the same for everyone.

Apologies if you work in ounces and gallons but I think it’s fair to say you’re already well served elsewhere.

I’m also specifically using BIAB brewing as an example, but the concepts apply equally to other brewing methods. The main differences are in the water volume calculations.

Starting at the End

In my opinion brewing equations are much more useful if they let you work backwards.

Instead of working out how much bitterness 40 g of Kent Goldings gives, it’s more useful to know how many hops you need to get 35 IBUs.

So that’s how I’ve presented the information where appropriate.

Recipe Planning

OK. Let’s say you’re trying to brew a strong ale with these characteristics:

90% pale ale malt
10% crystal 60L malt
Hopped with Fuggles (bittering) and East Kent Goldings (flavour and aroma)
O.G. 1.085
80 IBUS

The rest of this page explains how to work out what you need of each ingredient.

In keeping with the backwards theme, the best place to start is with how much beer you want to end up with.

How Much Beer To Make

Gravity and hop bitterness are both affected by final beer volume. The amount in the fermenter is what’s of interest in the calculations.

To account for spillages and siphoning losses it’s not a bad idea to add an extra litre to your finished target if you’re concerned about an exact volume.

So let’s make 15 litres of beer, planning for 16.

Target batch size: 16 litres

Before you can work out how much water to start with, you need to settle on the grain bill.

Planning Malt and Fermentables

The gravity of beer is usually given as a decimal, 1.085 in the case of the example pale ale.

It describes the density of wort relative to pure water, but it doesn’t tell you how much malt you need.

For that there are gravity points.

Thinking About Gravity Points

It took me a while to get gravity points, misguidedly focussing on gravity instead. Of course gravity is important, but once you shift to gravity points the various gravities (pre-boil, original, final etc.) make a lot more sense.

Gravity points describe the actual amount of sugar in your beer. Unlike gravity, which changes throughout brew day, gravity points stay the same. They are an absolute number that doesn’t change once you’ve extracted the sugar from the malt (unless you add raw sugar).

Here are some illustrations that explain the difference.

First, these two beers have the same gravity, represented by the density of the dots. Because of the different volume the total gravity points (the number of dots) is different.

The beer on the right has less sugar.

In the next example, the beers have the same number of gravity points. The different volume gives the one on the right a higher gravity.

The amount of sugar required to make both beers is the same.

It’s easy to work out how many gravity points you need, if you know your target original gravity and the target batch size:

So for the 1.085 strong pale ale:

Extract Potential

Every fermentable you add to the mash contributes gravity points. How many is determined by the extract potential.

White sugar (sucrose) to all intents and purposes contributes 100% of its weight, and is the reference for all other ingredients. It has an extract potential of 100%.

Malt on the other hand, even after mashing, is not 100% sugar. This is obvious, of course, because you throw the husks away afterwards.

You can use a malt analysis sheet, like this one from Briess Malt, to find out the extract potential of a particular malt.

Looking at that chart, find the Extract % next to the malt you’re going to use. FG and CG stand for fine and coarse grain, and describe the size of the crushed malt the % represents.

For the two malts we’re interested in:

Pale ale malt: 80%
Crystal 60 malt: 76%

The pale ale malt should give us slightly more sugar than the crystal, per weight.

Extract potential is a theoretical maximum that you’ll never get from a home brew set-up, nor probably would you want to.

This is where efficiency comes in.

Efficiency

The percentage of potential extract you actually get from your mash is called efficiency.

A good working number is 70%, although as you brew more you start to know how your system works and can adjust the number accordingly.

Now if we go back to sucrose, 1 pound of it contributes 46 points of sugar when added to one gallon of water. Another way of saying this is that it gives 46 ppg (points per pound per gallon).

All else derives from this, so before going any further let’s convert it to pkgl (points per kilogram per litre) with the conversion factor 8.345.

So 1 kg of white sugar adds 384 gravity points to 1 litre of water.

Now you can calculate the pkgl of anything:

But let’s get back to planning the recipe. Combining the above (extract potential, efficiency and the white sugar reference point) you get the equation for gravity points from any malt:

The gravity points in a beer is the total of each malt’s contribution.

As I mentioned above, I prefer to work backwards so rearranging the equation I get:

All that’s necessary now is to work out the number of gravity points that each grain provides.

Of the 1360 total 10% are from crystal 60 malt and the rest are pale ale. That means:

Pale ale malt:  1224 points, 80% potential extract
Crystal 60L: 136 points, 76% potential extract

You can now work out the amount required of each:

Pale Ale

Crystal 60L

We now have a grain bill:

90% Pale ale malt:  5.69kg
10% Crystal 60L: 0.67kg

OTHER MALT CALCULATIONS

At this point you can check what the likely beer colour is and how strong the beer will be.

Colour and strength don’t feed directly into the bitterness calculations, but you might as well get them right now. Then you can tweak the grains, if necessary, before going on.

Predicting Beer Colour

I’m going to skim over this, because by all accounts predicting beer colour is approximate at best.

Personally, I’m not especially bothered as long as it’s roughly in the ball park of what I’d expect from a particular beer.

The metric unit of beer colour is EBC, but the equations are all based around the Standard Reference Measurement (SRM).

There’s a straightforward conversion to EBC which can be done at the end.

To predict beer colour you need to know how many Malt Colour Units (MCUs) you have. These’re similar to gravity points, in that they’re a function of the amount of malt and its colour potential.

The total MCUs are worked out like this:

2.205 converts kg to pounds, 0.264 litres to gallons. I looked at taking those factors out and running the equation through as metric but it seemed to make things more complicated.

If you know an easier way of doing it please let me know!

On the same malt analysis chart you used for the gravity points, get the colour rating in Degrees Lovibond.

Pale ale malt:  3.5°L, 5.69kg
Crystal 60L: 60°L, 0.67kg

Then calculate the MCUs.

Pale Ale

Crystal 60L

Simply add the contributions of each malt to get a total of 31 MCUs.

There are several ways of turning this into a prediction of colour. But cutting straight to the chase, here’s the Morey version:

Which for the strong ale gives:

To convert SRM into EBC multiply by 1.97:

At this point you might decide to change the crystal malt variety to lighten the beer, for example.

Bear in mind that there are so many variables in beer colour such as length of boil, amount of hops, age of beer, etc., that an approximation is the best you can hope for.

If you want to know more, it’s explained clearly and in more detail in an appendix of How To Brew.

Predicting Alcohol Levels

This is a fairly straightforward matter, not worth spending much time on because of its approximate nature.

You can predict the final gravity, the amount of sugar left after fermentation, from the attenuation of the yeast. It seems reasonable to use 75% for every calculation, as this is a rough estimate anyway.

Let’s say our ale uses Windsor yeast:

So:

Predicting Water Volumes

Before moving onto hop bitterness, you need to look at water.

From a practical point of view you want to know how much water to start with. But you also need an estimate of the boil volume to use in the bitterness calculations.

The basic calculation for starting volume is straightforward:

S=Starting volume (to be determined)
B=Target batch size (as explained above)
G=losses to Grain (rate of e.g. 1.1 litre/kg)
E=losses to Evaporation (rate of e.g. 2.1 litre/hour)
H=losses to Hops and break (e.g 1 litre)

You should determine these rates for your own brewing system, but I’ve put my current assumptions in brackets as an example.

Losses to grain and evaporation need a little work before you feed them in:

So for the ale:

Start volume: 26 litres

Planning Hop Additions and Calculating Bitterness

While you could specify hops by weight alone (as in some old home brewing books), the chances are you’ll struggle to be consistent between batches, or to compare one beer with another.

That’s because alpha-acid content, responsible for bitterness, varies from hop to hop.

AAUs

The first step up from a simple weight is the AAU. This takes into account the alpha acid content:

It’s usually in ounces but it works just fine as a metric value, so long as you don’t interchange without converting.

For example, 40g Nugget with 12% alpha acid content:

If you’re brewing to someone else’s recipe you generally try to match the AAUs. Say your Nugget hops only have 10% AAU, you can work out how many to use like this:

So:

48 g of 10% alpha acid hops is the same as 40 g with 12%.

That’s all very well, but what about when you’re deciding how many hops to use in a recipe built from scratch?

To match relative bitterness levels across a variety of beers you need to be more accurate.

Unfortunately, there’s no simple equivalent of extract potential for hops.

The amount of alpha acid (the main cause of bitterness) that wort gets from the hops is called utilisation. This is dependent on many things such as length of boil, gravity of boil, age of hops, format of hops and more.

Many of these factors don’t work in a linear way so calculation is complicated. In other words, brewing software’s so useful because bitterness is a pain to work out.

Hop Utilisation and IBUS

Beer bitterness is measured in International Bitterness Units (IBUs). This can be predicted in advance if you know the alpha acid content, the amount and the utilisation of your hops.

The basic formula for IBUS is:

%A = Alpha Acid %
U = Utilisation (decimal)
W = Weight in grams
V = Volume (final) in litres

The good news is that the IBU is a metric unit, defined as 1 milligram of hop iso-alpha acid per litre of wort.

Utilisation is not completely understood and there are many proposals for determining it. This excellent article from Zymurgy runs through many of them.

Most often I see recommended the Tinseth method, which is what I’ve started using. It’s described here by Tinseth himself.

The important thing to realise is that for each combination of boil length and wort gravity the utilisation of the hops is different.

In a nutshell, utilisation increases with boil length…

…and decreases with wort gravity…

…although, as ever, advice is always changing and there’s now a theory that high gravity isn’t necessarily the cause of decreased utilisation.

You can use Tinseth’s formula to calculate utilisation manually, or look up the relevant combination in his table. It’s at the bottom of the description.

Boil Length and Boil Gravity

Before we get back to the ale recipe, you’ll see in the table that you combine boil length with wort gravity to get utilisation.

Boil length is self-explanatory: it’s how long you boil the hops.

Gravity is of the boil. To work this out, we need to bring back some information from before: gravity points and boil volume.

I think John Palmer uses the volume at the start of the boil, but Tinseth says to use an average so that’s what we’ll do.

You can work out the average boil volume by going back to the water calculations.

S=Starting volume
G=losses to Grain
E=losses to Evaporation

For our ale:

With this we can get the boil gravity:

Divide The IBUs

Before working out the weights, you need to make an executive decision about when to add the hops.

For the example, let’s say you decide:

Fuggles:  5% AA, 60 mins, 40 IBUS
Kent Goldings: 4.5% AA, 30 mins, 25 IBUS
Kent Goldings: 4.5% AA, 5 mins, 15 IBUS
Total 80 IBUs

Half the IBUS are added by the Fuggles at the start. The rest are spread between two additions of Kent Goldings that will give flavour and aroma as well.

Now we’re able to go back to the tables and look up the utilisation % for each addition.

Fuggles:  60 mins, 40 IBUS, 0.169
Kent Goldings: 30 mins, 25 IBUS, 0.130
Kent Goldings: 5 mins, 15 IBUS, 0.036

Note that 1.085 isn’t in the table, so I interpolated between the values given.

Rearranging the IBU equation we can work out the amount of each hop addition:

(V is target batch size, not boil volume).

Fuggles 60 minutes

Kent Goldings 30 minutes

Kent Goldings 5 minutes

Fuggles:  76g, 5% AA, 60 mins
Kent Goldings: 68g, 4.5% AA, 30 mins
Kent Goldings: 148g, 4.5% AA, 5 mins

Correction For Pellets

These hop weights are for leaves.

When using pellets, it’s usually agreed you need less of them but there’s no set correction factor.

Randy Mosher recommends reducing the quantity by 25% when using pellets.

Fuggles pellets:  57g, 5% AA, 60 mins
Kent Goldings pellets: 51g, 4.5% AA, 30 mins
Kent Goldings pellets: 111g, 4.5% AA, 5 mins

If IBU calculations are estimates, you may be thinking why bother?

Even if the beer doesn’t actually have 80 IBUS, or whatever (you’re not going to measure it), it is useful to know that it has 5 more than your last batch.

The End

Now we have the final recipe:

Target batch size: 16 litres (to get 15 litres of beer)
Start volume: 26 litres

Pale ale malt:  5.69kg
Crystal 60L: 0.67kg
O.G.: 1.085

Fuggles:  76g, 5%, 60 mins
Kent Goldings: 68g, 4.5%, 30 mins
Kent Goldings: 148g, 4.5%, 5 mins
80 IBUS

Yeast: Windsor

These are home brewing calculations as I’ve come to understand them. Please bear in mind I’m a mere home brewer, far from an expert brewing mathematician or scientist.

Test them out and see if they work on your system. If not, tweak them!

Finally, I’ve built a spreadsheet based on these sums that works everything out automatically and can easily be changed.

Of course I could, and do, use brewing software instead. But doing it has given me a good feel for what’s going on when I adjust recipes.

If you can I’d highly recommend doing the same.

Home Brewing Calculations: Recipe Planning By Hand (With Metric Units) was originally published on Home Brew Manual, a blog about home brewing. Stop by and find out how to make your own beer!

I never tire of drinking bitters and ales and always enjoy brewing different versions of them.

This special bitter recipe was built around Mapuche hops, but you could easily substitute another to make it your own.

Mapuche stood out from a series of single hop pale ales that I brewed recently. I’d not heard of it before but was intrigued.

The smooth bitterness and strong citrus marmalade flavour were distinctive and tasty.

Keen to explore the taste further, I developed a recipe I hoped would bring out the best in it.

Although I used Mapuche, the recipe could be brewed with other types of hop to give subtle twists on the same theme.

Developing The Recipe

If you’re building a recipe to suit a particular hop, you first need to choose a type of beer.

For Mapuche, special bitter seemed a great choice. I expected the malt flavours to complement the hops well.

Marmalade on toast is a great combination, which I thought would translate to beer. A little crystal malt could replicate the granary crust.

When by chance I read this old Fullers OBE recipe on Shut Up About Barclay Perkins I felt I’d made the right choice.

That is also a single hop recipe, and the tasting notes mention orange.

I took the rough proportions of the Fullers recipe (in terms of malt to adjuncts) and merged it with my session bitter recipe which I’ve used a couple of times before.

Looking for something more easy drinking than the strong Fullers ale, but with a little more oomph than the regular bitter, I settled on a starting gravity of 1.049.

I maintained the same hop additions that I used for the single hop experiment because they gave good balance between bitterness, flavour and aroma. This is what attracted me to Mapuche in the first place.

But because it has a strong, potentially overpowering flavour I lowered the bitterness units and hop additions.

Tasting The Beer

The beer as stands is balanced, with a good hop flavour and mild bitterness.

If you like bitter beers, or are using a different hop, I’d recommend increasing the amount.

It turned out very well. The subtle hop and malt flavours make it enjoyable to drink, and moreish.

I’m sure I’ll brew another variation soon.

Single Hop Special Bitter Recipe

Recipe Volume
20 litres

Fermentables
81% Pale ale malt: 4 kg
8% Crystal 60L Malt: 400g
7% Flaked maize: 320g
4% Brown sugar: 200g
(Original Gravity:1.049)

Mash Time
90 mins

Mash Target Temperature
65°C

Hops
Mapuche (6.9%): 22g FWH
Mapuche (6.9%): 22g for 20 mins
Mapuche (6.9%): 16g at flame out
(24 IBUs)

Yeast
Danstar Nottingham

Original Gravity
1.049

Assumes 70% efficiency

Brewing

I brewed with the brew in a bag method, but there’s no reason why it won’t work with full all grain.

The mash is a straightforward single infusion at 65°C.

To achieve a smooth bitterness I used first wort hopping (FWH), instead of the 60 minute bittering addition that’s in most beer recipes.

With FWH you add hops to the wort as it leaves the mash, before boiling. It’s said to create a more pleasant bitterness, and that’s borne out by my experience with it so far.

For my brew in a bag version, I remove the brew bag, drop in the hops and leave for fifteen minutes.

The heat’s turned on, the wort comes to the boil and the other hops are added as per the schedule.

Enjoy!

[Your Hop] Special Bitter Recipe was originally published on Home Brew Manual, a blog about home brewing. Stop by and find out how to make your own beer!

Reading about home brewing and beer is a fun way of finding out more about it. Almost as good as brewing itself.

So, here’s a round-up of three beer books I’ve enjoyed recently.

The books are quite different: there’s an all-out home brewing book, one about yeast and finally just a great read whether you like beer or not (granted, you probably do if you’re reading this).

Brewing Better Beer

First, a masterclass from home brew expert Gordon Strong.

This isn’t an instruction book. It assumes you already know how to brew and, more specifically, that you’re an all grain brewer.

Instead of showing you how, it’s look at why and what to brew. A pep talk encouraging you to push yourself.

It’s about developing your own ideas and achieving the necessary skill to implement them:

Anyone looking to master the craft of brewing should first work to get the fundamentals right. Before you can begin improvising and being truly creative and inventive, you should take the time to understand the proper way of doing things…

Rather than simply laying out the choices and letting you decide, I will try to lead you through the decision process and discuss some of the choices I have made in developing a personal style. The goal isn’t to have you emulate how I brew, but to use how I brew to help you develop you own way of brewing. Being a master means that you understand the body of knowledge and how to apply it, and that you are able to blaze your own path. You can’t really do that if you are trying to emulate someone else. Don’t strive to brew like I do; strive to brew better than I do.

If you follow this blog, you may have noticed that I’ve already taken this to heart with my own exploration of the brewing process.

The book covers a lot of ground quickly, explaining how choice of equipment, ingredients and techniques should all be informed by what you want to achieve.

There’s an emphasis on questioning and testing as a way of eliminating doubt from the brew process. Strong encourages you to focus on the important things, avoiding unnecessary concern for insignificant details.

I found the discussion on beer judging towards the end of the book to be overly long and padded, but it’s a small complaint in an otherwise great book.

If you’ve already got the basic brew process down and are looking for a push forward, you may find it here.

Brewing Better Beer on Amazon (or UK).

Yeast

Although called Yeast, it’s the sub-title that most clearly explains what this book is about: The Practical Guide To Beer Fermentation.

The topic may sound dry, boring even, but Chris White and Jamil Zainasheff’s book is very readable, and is peppered with stories from yeast’s history.

One thing I found especially interesting were the frequent mentions to “selective pressure”.

Brewers, apparently unwittingly, have repeatedly harvested only the most useful yeast from their fermentations. This greatly reduces the yeast’s chances of mutating from generation to generation and gives brewers a degree of consistency.

After setting the scene, the books contains practical advice on most aspects of yeast use. It’s information that I’ve seen in other home brewing books, but not so clearly explained.

Among the topics of interest are why to make yeast starters, pitching rates, flavours (good and bad) and use or not of secondary fermenters. There are also extensive notes on setting up your own yeast lab.

However, despite my enjoyment of the book, I suspect that if you’re already knowledgeable about yeast you may find it overly simple.

That I could easily read and understand everything leads me to suspect there’s a final level of detail missing.

In fact, the authors themselves acknowledge this:

This is a book for those who are in the early stages of their love of yeast and what it can do for their beer.

It’s pitched (pun post-rationalised to be intended) as a “practical guide” and it is indeed full of things you can try yourself.

After reading it I feel I’ve got more idea of what I’m aiming for when preparing wort, as well as the fermentation environment I need to provide for my beer.

Yeast on Amazon (or UK).

Hops and Glory

Finally, a book that’s not totally about brewing but is my favourite of the three.

Part history, part sea adventure and part beer book, Hops and Glory is Pete Brown‘s account of his recreation of IPA’s journey from England to India.

The IPA story, as you’ve probably heard, goes like this: it was a special beer developed for the Indian climate and the long conditioning process offered by the journey out there.

Before starting his own journey, Brown sets out his stall:

There had to be much more to the basic IPA story. But as well as proving or disproving the myth – that this sea journey alchemized the beer in some way – the voyage would have many more facets.

Indeed it does. Brown nimbly interweaves historical information about beer and the British Empire with his own trip in an impressive and gripping way.

There are many strands to the book.

The rise and fall of Burton as the centre of the brewing world is covered right up to the present day. We also get a glimpse of London during the days of the British Empire, along with tales of what was going on in India.

It wasn’t all pleasant of course, but it’s fascinating to read about it.

Despite my obvious interest in the beer and brewing, above all it was the adventure that kept me turning the pages.

The sea voyage from Britain to India, via Brazil, is compelling and inspiring. It makes you yearn for a pint of IPA and a good holiday.

Of the three books, Hops and Glory is the one that I most heartily recommend.

Hops and Glory on Amazon (or UK).

3 Good Beer and Brewing Books was originally published on Home Brew Manual, a blog about home brewing. Stop by and find out how to make your own beer!

Here are some notes and ideas for a porter recipe that includes coffee.

Trying to decide what to brew next is sometimes tricky. There are too many options.

My beer reserves at the moment are heavily loaded towards pale ale. There are bottles of single hop beer as well as a batch of freshly bottled strong bitter (recipe coming soon, just as soon as I’ve got a good photo of it!).

Coming through for bottling is a batch of saison that I brewed to see how much difference spice additions and fermentation temperature make.

So there’s a lot of light coloured beer.

Although I continue to brew single hop pale ales as and when I can, I want to mix in something darker.

It feels like a good chance to try something new, so I’m going to brew a coffee porter.

Coffee Porter

My awareness of this drink comes from this review of Wolaver Alta Gracia Coffee Porter.

I’ve not tried one myself so am shooting in the dark really, but it sounds as though it could be tasty. It’s a brew that’s just for fun and an excuse to try out coffee in beer.

My previous attempt at porter was fairly successful, probably the most popular of my beers with people who aren’t me, so I’ll use that as a base.

It had a great malty flavour which I think will work well with the coffee.

My Porter Recipe

Recipe Volume
15 litres

Malts
68% Pale Ale: 2.6 kg
16% Munich: 0.6kg
10% Crystal 30L: 0.40kg
4% Black Patent: 0.15kg
2% Crystal 60L: 0.08kg
(O.G.: 1.056)

Mash Time
90 mins

Mash Target Temperature
68°C

Hops
Nugget (12%): 9g for 90 mins
Kent Goldings (5.3%): 5g for 20 mins
Kent Goldings (5.3%): 20g for 5 mins
(30 IBUs)

Yeast
Windsor Dry

Wolaver Coffee Porter Clone

Conveniently, in the Wolaver coffee porter review Bryan (the author) included a link to this clone recipe:

(Scaled to same batch size as mine)

Recipe Volume
15 litres

Malts
80% Pale Ale: 5.1 kg
8% Crystal 60L: 0.54kg
5% Chocolate 380L: 0.34kg
4% White Wheat: 0.25kg
2% Black Patent: 0.15kg
(O.G.: 1.068)

More
75g cold steeped coffee added near end of fermentation
1/2 vanilla bean (split, scraped and chopped)

Mash Time
90 mins

Mash Target Temperature
68°C

Hops
Nugget (12%): 19g for 60 mins
(27 IBUs)

Yeast
US 05

Developing A Recipe To Brew

The Wolaver clone is darker and stronger, and slightly less bitter than mine.

For the new recipe I’ve opted to use my grain bill a starting point because I know it’s a nice beer.

However, black patent malt with coffee could result in excessive bitterness. I considered changing for chocolate malt, but I’m also nervous of using that for similar reasons!

Instead I’ll use roasted barley, for the first time. I hope it will contribute coffee flavours and work in the same direction as the rest of the beer.

Bitterness is also a concern when it comes to hops. I like the Wolaver clone’s idea of using Nugget hops because of the smooth bitterness they can add.

The Nugget pale ale I recently made was very clean, with a slight fruity sweet taste that might complement the coffee nicely.

I’ll copy the hopping schedule from that beer, adjusting it to match the IBUs of the Wolaver clone.

For the coffee I plan following the advice of Randy Mosher by using 113 to 227 g (4 to 8 ounces) per 19 litre batch. I’m not sure whether to go all out or subtle.

Coffee is obviously a dangerous ingredient that could completely overpower the rest of the beer. It’s naturally bitter and often acrid if badly prepared or over-stewed.

Most advice suggests that cold steeping offers the smoothest results.

I’m calling this a coffee porter but really I’m aiming for a dark coffee beer that tastes good.

Coffee Porter Recipe

Recipe Volume
15 litres

Malts
64% Pale Ale: 2.6 kg
17% Munich: 0.7kg
15% Crystal 30L: 0.60kg
4% Roasted Barley: 0.15kg
(O.G.: 1.056)

Mash Time
90 mins

Mash Target Temperature
68°C

Hops
Nugget (12%): 9g for 60 mins (FWH)
Nugget (12%): 9g for 20 mins
Nugget (12%): 9g for 5 mins
(26 IBUs)

More
90 to 180g cold steeped coffee added near end of fermentation

Yeast
Windsor Dry

Any tips would be gratefully received if you’ve brewed with coffee before!

Coffee Porter Recipe was originally published on Home Brew Manual, a blog about home brewing. Stop by and find out how to make your own beer!

Beer glassware is a subject that can run and run. Does it or does it not make a difference to the taste of beer?

Whatever the answer, here are some illustrations of the options!

It’s often claimed that the choice of glassware has a big effect on the flavour of your beer.

I have no reason to dispute that.

However, as was pointed out when I recently hosted The Session, there’s more to beer than brewing and drinking.

There’s a whole range of things that affect enjoyment of beer: place, time, mood, company etc. Flavour is just one.

For this reason I don’t tend to choose glasses based on the benefits or otherwise of a particular model.

But from a design and beer culture point of view, I thoroughly enjoy the huge variety of vessels out there.

Each glass (allegedly) affects the way you appreciate the smell, taste and appearance of the beer.

Smell

One of the main differences between beer glasses is whether they have an open or closed rim. Classic pint glasses, for example, are open whereas Belgian tulip glasses are closed.

The idea with the closed glass is to catch aromas and gases above the beer to enhance the smell.

Taste

Because taste is in part governed by our noses, the extra aromas in the closed glasses are said to enhance the flavour of the beer.

Appearance

The look of a beer also influences how much you enjoy it, I think.

Thinner glasses show off clarity. Many are thin at the base, to highlight colour and transparency, and widen at the top to encourage the build up of a large head.

Dimpled Glass Tankard

Relatively traditional in Britain, the dimpled glass pint is popular for drinking ales.

The thick, patterned glass creates many attractive colours and reflections, and the handle supposedly stops the beer from warming too quickly.

Goblet/Chalice

Many Belgian breweries have their own beer glass, such as this one from Orval.

They’re often used for big beers that you sip slowly.

Maßkrug

A German glass tankard that’s usually 1 litre in volume.

They’re popular at Oktoberfest, not to mention in Bavarian beer halls around the world.

Pint Glass: Conical

There are many varieties of the humble, utilitarian pint glass. The most basic is this simple tapering one.

Pint Glass: Nonic

The nonic is so named because the bulge towards the top stops the glasses from chipping around the rim when they’re washed.

Pint Glass: Tulip

Another variant on the classic pint, this one always reminds me of Guinness.

Snifter

Typically used for tasting brandy, where the comfy rounded bottom lets you warm the drink inside with your hand. Similarly, the thin glass and large surface area warm the liquid fairly quickly.

High alcohol, aromatic beers are usually drunk from these glasses, which collect the beer’s aroma inside.

Summer Glass

Good for tasting Pilsners and other lagers where foam and clarity are on display.

Tasting Glass

Similar to a snifter, but even better at encouraging carbonation.

Good for strong smelling, gassy beers such as IPA and Saison.

Tulip Glass

Another variant of the same theme: glasses designed to collect aromas.

You may recognise this one as a Duvel glass.

Weizen Glass

Originating in Germany where it’s used to serve wheat beer, the Weizen glass is narrow at the bottom and wider at the top.

The shape encourages aromas to form, but more importantly leaves room for the foam that forms in these heavily carbonated beers.

Yard Of Ale

Beloved of students and hardened drinkers, the yard of ale contains about 2.5 pints.

The awkwardly shaped bottom means there’s no chance of savouring your beer. One long swig is the only choice.

Does The Beer Taste Any Better?

I enjoy using a glass rather than drinking from a can or bottle. I think that does make a difference.

A snifter-type glass certainly traps aromas and thus enhances flavours. For tasting, in the sense of really concentrating on flavours, this is probably the best bet.

But for regular drinking I think the differences are largely aesthetic or cultural. Even the choice of whether to use a glass at all.

What about you? Do you think the glassware makes any difference?

Thanks to Bryan at This Is Why I’m Drunk for the information on the tasting, snifter and summer glasses, and for inspiring this post in the first place.

Some Illustrated Beer Glassware was originally published on Home Brew Manual, a blog about home brewing. Stop by and find out how to make your own beer!