It's All About "Style"
Brewing beer has plenty of room for exploration. The possibilities are as infinite as the universe itself. Having said that, it all starts with learning what already has been laid. Having worked as a brewer for so many years, I regularly see beginner brewers making a common mistake: designing their recipes by throwing in anything they think should taste good. Unfortunately,"Sugar, spice, and everything nice" doesn't always work.
Any cicerone knows how difficult it is to come up with a good recipe. It takes multiple batches and attempts fine tuning ingredient selection and process steps before one can create a good recipe. Following established guidelines for approaching beer, is a good starting point to understanding beer itself.
Beer style guidelines do matter, is a key point to take home here. There are over 70 well defined beer styles (and hundreds of substyles if not many thousands) that came into existence over thousands of years of human experiment-based knowledge passed over generations. Basically whatever bright ideas about brewing we have in our mind may have been most likely, already explored. Especially since beer is such a popular commodity.
The non profit organization BJCP is a good place to learn about beer styles. You can download the BJCP Beer Style Chart in .pdf format for free by clicking here.
Balancing Your beer
River is a champion dog, when it comes to balancing beer cups on it's snout, you might require a different strategy to accomplish that with your brews
Balance in a style is, right combination of flavor, aroma, mouthfeel, color, IBU, ABV and even serving temperature of a particular beer. In the words of Master Cicerone Rich Higgins, "Contrary to common assumption, you never taste balance in a style, it's the imbalance that you do." The combination of above factors should correspond to the style you are brewing in right amounts. That is all balance is about and its important.
BJCP has defined each style with choice of ingredients and methods for brewing it. Even though the style guideline stats that, "it is not exactly a rulebook but rather a guide which points you in a direction where you can start with a clear mind frame and have less chance of producing terrible beer," I'd suggest following those guidelines religiously in your initial phase as a brewer. It helps a great deal understanding beer as we know and love.
Designing a Recipe
Right Malt – Choice of malt combination should be based upon the amount of mouthfulness, sweetness, color, head retention and other factors such as roastiness, smokiness or spiciness (in case of rye) you project in your beer. Other adjuncts such as corn, rice and oats also contribute differently to ABV, flavors and mouthfeel. Anything you choose should be in accordance with the style of beer style you are brewing.
Malts come in mindboggling varieties but to keep it simple, all malt fall into bellow two categories.
i. Base Malts
ii. Specialty malts
Amounts of adjuncts such as corn, rice and unmalted oats should be kept in check in relation to the amount of base malts used and their diastatic capabilities to make sure most starch is converted to sugars. High amount of unconverted starches usually contribute to haziness and a chance of contamination by mold or bacteria.
Base Malts: All malt types including barley, wheat, oats and corn that have diastatic power (enzymes to convert starches to sugar) to convert at least themselves to fermentable sugar fall under this category. ie: Pale ale, Pilsner, Munich, Vienna, 2-raw/6-raw (malted), Maris otter, Most smoked malt etc.
Speciality malts: Malts designed specifically to add body, sweetness, head retention, color and flavor, deprived of diastatic strength mostly, fall into this category. ie: Black, Brown, Chocolate, Crystal, Caramel, Melanodoin, Flaked (or Torrefied) and unmalted grains.
Mash Temperature – Thanks to highly modified modern malts, acid and protein rests have become a thing of past. Hitting the right temperature in saccharification rest is usually your prime goal during mashing. Also hitting mashing pH (pH 5.2 to 5.4) matters, but let's save that discussion for another day.
Both Beta Amylase and Alpha Amylase enzymes responsible for saccharification are more or less active in the temperature ranges of 61°C to 71°C. Deciding on what body and mouthfeel you look for in your beer is a starting point. Higher mash temperature means more body, less ABV and more unfermentable sugars resulting in a sweeter tasting beer, lower ranges give you more dry, higher ABV and a beer with less mouthfeel. When deciding your target mash temperature, you want to consider the style of beer you are brewing.
For example, most Barley wines, Imperial Ales, Brown Ales and big beers are mashed at the higher spectrum of the temperature range (above 65°C).
For many Pale Ales, Pilsners and Lagers you may want to mash under 65°C. However, for most styles, 65°C is a sweet spot, since both enzymes are at their prime at this temperature. You get a relatively good balance of body and fermentable sugars mashing at 65°C.
Right Hops and Boil Addition Schedule – Choosing hops that favor your style is a task easier said than done. This is where even many seasoned brewers fail. Although even at their failing rates, they seem to get many things right and come out with an acceptable beer but not a great kind. Which, some of them like to cling on to like holy grail. Hop potential was largely misunderstood until lately when brewers started experimenting with hopstands and dry hoping.
Most beer styles apart from Pale Ales are not hop centric. In the past, hops were more commonly utilized for increasing bitterness resulting in a longer shelf life. More attention is paid to flavor and bitterness compared to aroma, fruity hop flavors and dankness. The amount of time you take to boil and chill your wort also impacts the bitterness and flavor you retain.
Longer the hops are boiled, they tend to produce higher amount of bitterness, grassy notes and loose flavors and aroma. If boiling time is clocked in right, hops retain some flavor and aroma. Its always about balancing these three factors. Over 78°C you denature the flavor and aroma components over longer period of time. One of the reasons why hopstands have become popular in hoppy Pale Ale style ales recently.
For Pale Ales such as IPA, APA, NEIPA, DEIPA and American Amber Ale, more often than not, multiple hop varieties are used. You'll often hear seasoned brewers talking about "hop pairing". Hop pairing is about choosing hop varieties based on how they complement each other creating a bridge of flavors and aroma that carries the beer in right direction. Based on your projection you also pay attention to aroma/flavor wagon wheel of each hop.
The common attributes of hop wagon wheel are apparent in the diagram of El Dorado hops bellow.
Aroma/Flavor wagon wheel of El Dorado hops
Right Yeast – Brewing yeast come in a wide range of variety. There are certain parameters you should take in consideration first, when choosing a strain for your job.
Fermentation Temperature Range: Each yeast brews best at it’s preferred temperature range. If you brew outside of this range, you may face troubles. If brewing under that range, yeast may go dormant or ferment very slowly. If you go over that range, yeast may start producing off flavors or may even start dying.
Flocculation: It’s the ability of yeast to clump together and sink to the bottom of the fermenter. Hence more clarity in beer and less chance of painful trots the next day. Most yeast flocculate eventually but the amount of time they take depends on the strain. If flocculation is quick, you save time waiting but also money. Since than, you don’t have to invest in additional fining agents to help flocculate yeast quicker.
Attenuation: Yeast has a tendency of leaving chewing less than available. They’ll only ferment certain percentage of sugars in your wort, and that could be desirable or undesirable according to your style. Left over sugars create rounded sweet taste depending on the amount. Over attenuation will create more of a drier beer.
Alcohol Tolerance: Believe or not but alcohol is toxic to yeast as much as it is toxic to us. How much, depends on the strain. You must consider this when choosing yeast for your recipe. Apparently, a 7% tolerance yeast strain is unsuitable to make a barely wine or an Imperial one.
Induces flavors or not: Many yeasts are capable of introducing various flavors during fermentation. Phenols and esters are most common of such chemicals. Hefeweizen, many Kveik strains and Saison strains are good examples. Yeasts are perceived “Clean” or not depending on this particular ability. Many styles may require cleaner yeast so that hop and malts notes can accentuate. Some styles may favor the flavors donated by the yeast such as Saison, Witbiers and even some Pale Ales.
Diastatic or not: Some yeast strains have diastatic capabilities. That means it can breakdown starches and unfermented complex sugars to simple sugar, which it can devour and turn everything into alcohol. Some styles may benefit from this however, there’s a well recorded case of a famous brewery suing a Yeast Lab for supplying diastatic yeast, which resulted in an extra dry beer - not suitable to the style characteristics.
Liquid or Dry: Both liquid and dry yeast come in huge variety. Having said that, Liquid yeast option is usually gifted with comparably better-quality yeast strains. Conversely Liquid yeast have shorter shelf lives, higher price tags, less yeast cell count per gram and higher susceptibility to temperature changes. Again, a simple solution to all of the problems mentioned with liquid yeast is by learning to harvest yeast. Just a one time purchase.
Bacteria and Bretts: Sourness produced by Lactic Acid Bacilli are desirable in many styles. You can either add them separately or get a combo strain. Some strains of Brettanomyces yeast are also used in brewing many Belgian and French ales. Bretts take longer time to ferment but they do create some of the most complex (not always pleasant) flavors that other yeasts can’t. Bretts are commonly used in styles such as Gueuze, Lambic, Saison and Flemish Red Ale.
What Sugars? – Using sugar in brewing beer is not uncommon and one shouldn’t refrain from it when required. Let’s briefly look at all the common sugars.
Dextrose: Dextrose or corn sugar is a popular element in craft brewing. Mostly to fuel up (increase alcohol content) the beer without introducing unwanted flavors. Also unlike other sugars you don’t need to increase hop amounts when using corn sugar. Can be used up to 25% of the total grainbill. Famously used by Vinnie Cilurzo in his Pliny The Elder recipe.
Belgian Candi Sugar/Syrup: Candi sugar is rich in complex melanoidin notes such as plum, cherry, almond, hazelnut, dark raisin, toffy, chocolate, roasted coffee and caramel. It is prepared from table sugar through Maillard reaction and caramelization by heating. A huge variety of French, Belgian, Czech and eastern European styles have some use for candi sugars. Used up to 20% of the grist.
Belgian Candi Sugar crystals
Lactose: Lactose is a milk derived sugar. Good thing about it is that yeast can't metabolize it, hence the sweetness remains in the beer. It has found good use in beers that try to resemble some milk desert, because it apparently tastes like milk. Fruit beers that benefit from sweetness to create a stage for the fruit flavors to shine, Cookie Ales and other brews that resemble a milkshake or porridge, for one example Oatmeal Stout, benefit from added sweetness. Needless to say, people who are lactose intolerant should steer clear. Used up to 20% of the total grist.
Molasses: Molasses add a robust caramel flavor more reminiscent of coffee and smoked wood depending on the variety. Light, Medium-Dark and Blackstrap are the major types of molasses, gradually getting stronger in flavor. Molasses are commonly used in Imperial ales, brown ales and some trappiest styles. Used up to 15% of total grist.
Table Sugar: Least favored by craft brewers and most preferred by commercial breweries. The most prominent reason being off flavors associated with table sugar when used too much. Lucrative fact about is that its inexpensive. Commercial lager breweries sometime use table sugar up to 80% of the grist at times and then "try to hide” the off-flavors and lack of SRM and mouthfeel is adjusted by adding artificial flavorings, dyes and chemicals. Isn't that one of the facts we like to hate commercial breweries? Having said that, its ok to add up to 15% table sugar without detecting any off flavors. It's commonly used for increasing alcohol without adding body, flavor and color.
Palm Sugar and Jaggery: That’s correct. Indian brewers have been brewing with jaggery for many centuries. Both palm sugar and jaggery contribute to similar characteristics when added to a beer. Somewhat complex caramelly and nutty flavors conjure up and then there is an increase in SRM (color) to consider. Jaggery/Palm Sugar when used, must be organically produced and boiled in wort for at least 30 minutes. Use up to 15% of the grist.
Demerara and Brown Sugar: Brown sugar contribute to similar characteristics as jaggery but much milder and more predictable. Predictable is good in brewing since you can control your recipe the way you can. Can be used up to 15% in the total grist.
Finally, percentage of grist, indicate amounts of individual sugars. If added in combination, you must pay attention to overall figures and do the math. Total amount of sugars shouldn't exceed 25% of the grist depending on the sugars used if you're planning to brew a legit craft-beer.
Wood? – You read it right. Many types of woods are used in conditioning beer or smoking malts and even for boiling wort to impart smoky woody flavors. This is because the characteristics of a wood has potential to add characteristics to a beer which can add up to the flavor & drinkability of the beer. Some of the wood varieties used by brewers are Oak, Cedar, Mahogany, Walnut, Hazelnut, Cherry and Juniper.
The most extensively used wood in brewing is Oak. Oak barrels and oak chips are still used for flavoring beers. Historically wood barrels were the only containers used for fermenting and storing beer. Back then, metal containers were impractically expensive. Its important to char an oak barrel or toast the wood chips before usage however. This is done in order to reduce the extremely tannic and plant matter flavors leeching in to beer from wood and to kill off who knows what all bugs and microbes hitchhiked their way in.
What kind of beer suits wood chips? You can oak any beer you like but through the experiences of many pioneering brewers, it has been generally settled that English and some Scotch ales such as Old Ales, stouts, porters, browns, some IPAs, and some bitters benefit from going through this process. That's not a finite grouping of beers though. Brewers have been known to successfully use oak in styles such as the darker Belgian ales, Farmhouse Ale, or even Saison. By the rule of thumb, higher the ABV, more your beer will benefit from Oaking. Since alcohol penetrates the wood nicely and imparts the flavor notes.
What is the best kind of wood chip to use with the wort? Not all oak chips are created equal. Oak usually comes in three varieties, American, Hungarian, and French. The American oak gives the strongest oak flavor, while French oak gives subtler notes with other sweeter flavors like vanilla. Hungarian oak is considered in the middle between these two extremes.
How do I add Oak chips? Do not use more than 60 gm oak chips per 20 of Liter batch. Usually only 10gm suffice in such a batch. You can add the oak chips to a hop bag and weigh it down using a few marbles. Its important that the oak chips sink to the bottom of your fermenter. Also important to gather here is that, oak chips flavor the beer fast. Usually 7 to 10 days are sufficient for oaking your beer.
Do NOT Compromise – Beginner brewers often compromise their early batches by limiting themselves with the stuff they have at hand either equipment or ingredients or both. Ultimately, they end up making a bad batch of beer which discourages them, pulling them away from the hobby.
I never believe in investing in expensive Robokettles, keg setups and automated systems from beginning (even later) but at least you should have some good fermenters, a mash tun, a chiller, a siphon, a kettle thermometer and a hydrometer before thinking about brewing. Brewing with extracts is also not a good idea living in India, due to the fact that good quality extracts are not available here unfortunately.
Brewing is a hobby of patience. You have to take your time doing choirs. Taking your time with sanitization and cleaning pays back immensely. Boiling your wort until you reach “Hot Break” is important. It helps you get rid of DMS, it breaks down certain proteins and prepares wort for better hop utilization. Taking your time with bottle conditioning is again, equally important. Apart from carbonation your bottled beer requires at least 15 days to mature. Even more so for darker ales such as stout, porter and and Imperial Ales. Stout for one example, should be left in fermenter post fermentation for at least one month, two months tops. Also left in bottle for maturation for two months. A good stout usually takes anywhere from 4 to 6 months in preparation, so do mind that fact when brewing one. If you don’t take the necessary time, instead of the rounded complex smoky toasted goodness, what you get is an acrid, tannic, astringent bite that grabs your mouth from inside, making you clench your teeth. Also discouraging you to ever try brewing a stout.
Do NOT Overcomplicate – In the beginning of this article I mentioned how newbie brewers mess their recipes up. Adding too many things and doing too much often knocks off the balance. A beer should only contain what it demands. Nothing less, nothing more. Most of the times orange peels, fruits, spices and herbs are over employed. Especially with fruits, when someone asks me if they can add certain fruit to certain style, I would answer them with a "Yes" followed by "But why would you want to?" A porter with plums may sound exciting but additional fruitiness can ruin the style completely. Excess acidity accentuates the tannins and beer tastes astringent.
Get to Know Your Ingredients: SMaSH Beer!
A SMaSH beer is a simple beer made by using “Single Malt and Single Hop”. You’ll be surprised how easy it is brew a good beer by keeping everything ultra-simple! When brewing with a single malt and a single hop you can taste their flavor and aroma transparently. It’s the purest form of unfiltered knowledge you can gain without working too hard. For any brewer seeking to sharpen his skills should form a habit of brewing SMaSH beers with different ingredients regularly. This habit helps build your confidence with your ingredient galore when designing any recipe.
Using malts: You will be using only base malts since other types of malts don’t have diastatic power. Some examples of base malts are,
2-Raw malt
6-Raw malt
Pilsner malt
Pale Ale malt
Munich malt
Victory malt
Vienna malt
Biscuit Malt
Maris Otter
Golden Promise
Using hops: All boil additions should be explored or at least most, to understand the full spectrum of flavors of a particular hop variety. Boil additions are explained bellow.
Bittering Addition – 60 min to 30 min
Flavoring Addition – 30 min to 15 minutes
Aroma Addition – 10 min to 5 min
Hopstand – 0 minutes. After reducing the temperature to 78°C. Hops mixed and left for 15 to 30 mins to soak, before chilling the wort to fermenting temperature.
Key Points
Aim for an appropriate BU to GU ratio, as described in Part-1. The typical range is 0.5 for very malty styles to 1.0 for very hoppy ones. Depending upon the kind of finish you desire, you can tweak your grain bill and hops to adjust this number.
Don’t be afraid of simple sugars, but remember that most of them ferment out almost completely, leaving behind no residual sweetness and creating a dry perception on the palate. Increasing simple sugars may require decreasing hops bitterness to retain balance.
Similarly, choose a yeast strain that’s up to the task, and make sure to use an appropriately sized pitch of healthy yeast cells. Insufficient attenuation can leave a sweeter than desired finish.
Watch out with fruit, spices, and flavorings. Unless you’re following an established recipe that you know you like, start with small quantities. These additives can deliver a surprising amount of character that the tongue perceives as completely out of proportion to what you actually added. There’s always the next batch if you want more.
Ignore fruits if your recipe doesn't require them. One more thing to consider when using fruits. Canned and frozen fruit should be consistent, but fresh fruit from market may/will vary from one year to the next. Take that into account when selecting your additions.
Be careful with woods too. I once made the mistake of using untoasted oak in an American wild ale, and the oak character was so intense that I named the beer Oak Bomb. Though over few months of conditioning it mellowed somewhat, it was still the closest I’ve ever come to drinking a tree.
Phew... There ends our blog finally.
Hope you learned something new by the end of it. If you are a newbie and made it this far, congratulations! You are officially a beer geek now! Thank you for taking your time to read it.
Happy homebrewing