Today we salute you, Mr. (or Ms.) Not Gonna Drink Watery Beer.
Amidst all of the 55- and 64-calorie beer quaffing weenies, there you are with your personal mug club mug full of Honest Lawyer I.P.A. You know the beer isn't just about the buzz, it's about the craft of brewing. Strong beers are gaining steam in town thanks to the Iowa Beer Equality Bill, which passed in March and allows Iowa breweries to make and sell beer with an alcohol content up to 12 percent. Before that, coming up with creative, knock-down-boozy brews was the duty of local homebrewers.
Gear Up: The basic ingredients of beer (malted barley, hops, yeast and water) are pretty simple, but if you want to turn your kitchen into a brewery, here's what you need*:
Equipment kit: Fermenter, bottling bucket, beginner's guide, sanitizer and cleaner, siphon tubes, capper and thermometer. Cost: $76.09
Stock pot: Four-gallon minimum, $40-ish at Target.
Extract beer ingredient kit: Beginners can stick with an ale, which ferments at a room temperature, rather than a lager which requires refrigeration, $24-$52.
56 brown bottles: Hoard non-screw cap bottles (for a few months) and caps, although Beer Crazy owner Mark Nauman said most experienced brewers say the best extra money they spend on the hobby is kegging equipment.
Hydrometer: Not 100 percent necessary, but gives you the specific gravity reading. Use the hydrometer to measure the percent of sugar before fermentation (original gravity) and then the amount left after fermentation (final gravity.) The difference between your gravity readings tells you how much alcohol is in your beer.
* Products from Beer Crazy, 3908 N.W. 100th St., Urbandale, but you can also shop for supplies at Heartland Homebrew Supply, 232 Sixth St., West Des Moines, open 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturdays.
How to brew all-grain beer in a small space:
"The way I do it is like making a giant tea that you can eventually get drunk on," Dan Haggerty, Jr., 27, explained. Haggerty, one of the youngest members of the Iowa Brewers Union, has made his passion for brewing into a sort of quest to encourage the hobby locally. He tweets under @HomebrewDSM and helps organize and pours his beer at events like the upcoming Moustache Brew Bash. Haggerty brews on a turkey fryer in the garage, but the compact "Australian" method should work for stove top brewers, too.
Before you begin: Set up a sanitizing station. Anything that touches your beer, including the spoon, pot, bucket, bubbler, carboy, funnel, and strainer needs to be squeaky clean. The easiest way to ruin a beer is by failing to sanitize and allowing it to get infected. Now on to the steps:
1. STEEP YOUR GRAINS. Heat water to the desired temperature (about 120-140 degrees, depending on your recipe), add your boiling bag of grains, cover and let steep for 30 minutes. A more involved next step would be to then heat another pot of water to a temperature about 10 degrees hotter than the first, but Haggerty just kicks the pot already on the heat up a notch to sit at that temperature for another half hour. This high heat starts breaking down the sugars in the grain. Then, he brings the "wort" (the brown liquid that results from steeping the grains in the water) to 170 degrees for 10 minutes. In all, your grain bag should be steeping on the heat for 70 minutes.
2. ADD THE HOPS. Remove the bag of grains (it's best to set your soggy boiling bag on a strainer, so you can return any dripping wort to the pot) and bring your wort to a boil. Then, you'll want to start adding hops and whatever extra spices or flavors you want. Haggerty noted that Miller Lite's boast that it's "triple hopped" is mighty funny to homebrewers who know all beers are triple hopped. This "Ahh, Memories Ale" demo batch (recipe below) is actually quadruple hopped. Add hops according to your recipe. Haggerty added them 10, 15, 30 and 60 minutes into the boil.
3. CHILL OUT. Next, it's time to take the wort off the heat and cool it. You can do this in the bathtub with cold water, in a tub of ice or with a wort chiller - copper tubing with cold water running through it. It can take quite a while (45 minutes or so) for wort to go from boiling to the 60 degrees you need, so break into the fridge for a six pack and wait, adding more ice/cold water as needed.
4. START TO FERMENT. Now it's time to filter your wort into a carboy (Haggerty finds them filled with water for about $20 at Gateway Market). Then add your yeast and shake the carboy to mix it in. Top the carboy with a "blow-off" (a little vodka-filled glass tube on top of a sterilized stopper), otherwise known as a "bubbler," because the vodka will bubble all during the primary fermentation. Once it stops bubbling (after about 10 days), it's time to move on to the secondary fermentation.
5. LET IT SIT. After your primary fermentation it's time for - you guessed it - your secondary fermentation. It's helpful if you have an extra carboy so you can use a strainer and filter the beer from the primary through to the other carboy. Straining helps keep out the hops and other stuff that might linger in there and cloud up the beer. This fermentation period lasts another week or so, but if you're not in a rush you can age the beer indefinitely.
6. BOTTLING TIME! Pour your carboy into a bottling bucket (it comes in a basic kit and includes a spigot and a tube for bottling). Add priming sugar to a cup of boiling water and stir the syrupy mixture into the beer. This is what's going to give it carbonation. Then, fill and cap your bottles. Store in a cool, dry place and in a month ...
7. THE REALLY FUN PART. Invite some friends over, put the beers on ice and enjoy the ale you brewed.
Recipe: 'Ahh, Memories Ale'
Haggerty says his recipes look more like cake recipes than standard beer ones. He designed this peachy brew to have a peach cobbler flavor, perfect for sipping on fall evenings.
To start you'll need:
8 pounds Klages maltpound Turbinado or light brown sugar
1. Mash (heat up to temperature and leave) to 125 degrees for 30 minutes.
2. Mash 30 minutes at 154 degrees.
3. Mashout at 175 degrees for five minutes. (This is the highest temperature you will heat your grains to in order to stop all the enzyme action and preserve your fermentable sugar profile.)
4. Boil for 90 minutes, adding hops and extra ingredients at the designated times (listed below): (Haggerty said almost every beer will boil for 90 minutes. The times below count down from 90 to zero minutes. You can download a brew-day timer to make this easier at beerbelliesbrew.com.)
- 2 ounces Saaz hops, 60 minutes
- 1 ounce Hallertauer hops, 30 minutes
- 1 ounce bitter orange peel, 30 minutes
- 1 ounce Cascade hops, 15 minutes
- 1 ounce coriander seed, 15 minutes
- Add a cinnamon stick (10 minutes) and some nutmeg and one ounce of Cascade hops (10 minutes).
5. At primary ferment, add:
White Labs Trappist Ale Yeast, a strain of yeast that should be available at Beer Crazy.
6. Add at secondary ferment:
Four bags frozen peaches, two cinnamon sticks, one vanilla bean
7. Add at kegging:
- 10 millileters of 88 percent lactic acid (a chemical that will add a little sour flavor to your beer)
- One package of priming sugar
