Day 2 - Makin’ Beer
Beer Fact O’ The Day: Hard cider is really a type of beer (a malt beverage) that may or may not have apple flavoring in it.
Instructions, Day Two:
Compared to day 1 (which wasn’t that hard), day 2 is just a piece of cake. So - are you ready to pitch your yeast?!
1. Prepare your wort vat - sterilizing it is probably a good idea, and companies make products for this. Your wort vat can’t just be any old barrel. During this first week your wort vat will need to be capable of (a) being dark enough that light can’t affect the process and (b) able to vent the CO2 created in the process. Read-made vats are available for purchase.
2. Pour in the cooled beer.
3. “Pitch your yeast.” Actually, you’re pretty much just going to dump in about 1/16 to 1/8 tsp of yeast. No stirring necessary - the yeast will be able to find the sugar to eat it. “Pitching” is a term from larger breweries, when brewers would sort of gently fling the yeast across the top of the barrels.
I should mention here we were using Coopers ale yeast. I think I mentioned before that using bread yeast isn’t a very good idea - my dad tried it (he tries everything) and it turned out poorly. Also you’ll need to make sure your yeast is still alive (e.g. active). Keeping it in the fridge is a must.
4. Screw on the top (or close it up however) and put it away in a place that’s out-of-the-way and doesn’t get too much sunlight.
What’s so hard about this anyway?
So far the process hasn’t been too complicated, and wait until you see the next few days… makes you wonder why you didn’t try this before! So far I haven’t seen much that’s really complicated. So what’s difficult about beer-making?
In a word: ingredients. There are a dizzying array of options for your beer-making pleasure. All different types of grains in different stages of the malt process, hops to use for three different purposes, different yeasts, additives, sugars. And you’ll get a different beer with each try.
Unfortunately, even if you come up with a recipe you like, it’s still possible that because beer-making is an uncertain process that you’ll get a different beer every time.
What Is Malt? This is my quick explanation of malt. Malt is the foundation of beer - it’s what you get when you take a bunch of grain and then let it sprout (you’ve seen bean sprouts - like that). Once it’s sprouted all the way and has used up all the “food” inside the grain, you roast it to capture all the sugar.You can buy plain malt like this, or you can begin to let the “experts” take it further for you. At this point you can go on and boil the malt, which dissolves all the grain sugar into water. Once dissolved, the grain husks can be strained out. If you’re doing all this malt preparation yourself, this is the point at which you can start hopping the malt. Everything’s dissolved - you just need to bring it to a boil. (Go to Step 2 from yesterday.)
This liquid state is a malt “tea.” You can also buy it as a syrup, which is the same thing as a tea except that it’s been boiled down. It’s just thick sugar in this state and is called “malt extract.” Finally, you can purchase “DME” or “dry malt extract.” This is made by spray drying the malt syrup - spray drying being literally spraying it with air until it dries. You end up with sugary powder that can be dissolved. (The picture to the left is 3 stages - barley roasted to varying degrees, the malt extract syrup it produces, and the resulting beer. Link.)
Malt with Hops. Some DME and presumably other malt types can be purchased pre-hopped. This means that the flavoring from hops is already in it. You can either add to this flavor or just go with it.
So given the many types of malt to choose from, I asked my dad…
Q: If you could only purchase one type of malt, what would it be?
A: DME. It’s easiest.
Cheers, Miriam
