Craft Beer

[SpacemonkeyParticipant 1481]

Is anyone interested in beer? Silly question….

I was in USA the back end of October and had plenty of opportunity to sample some of the craft beer available there now. I remember my first visit to USA back in 2000 and the beer available then was frankly p~~~. In fact it was worse than p~~~ as p~~~ actually tastes of something. I think the best beer available back then was Samuel Adams with a very few micro brew pubs but only in the big urban areas, notably San Francisco.

How very different it is today, craft beer has taken off in a big way and is now available in every liquor store and gas station and micro brew pubs have sprung up all over the place, notable favorite is Banger Brewing in Las Vegas.

While its great you can get a decent pint in USA now, I have a few notes on American craft beer from a British perspective.

First and foremost, it tends to be far too strong. ABVs of 6,7 or 8% are the norm rather than the exception. In Britain we like beer, so we like to drink a lot of it. Typically UK beer is between 4 and 5% but sometimes even less than 4%. We call these session ales and are intended to be drunk in large volumes over an extended period of time or session, which can sometimes last several days. To me as a brewer the thing I’m looking to make is a beer with repeat buyability, a beer that once you have drunk one you want to have another, and another and another.

I also noticed a lot of flavoured beers, jalapeno, pumpkin, coffee, chocolate, cinnamon etc. Hey guys, great that you want to experiment but how about sticking to beer that tastes of beer?

Many craft beers seem to be over brewed, there is too much craft to them like multi temperature mashing and continual hopping. These produce beers which are unbalanced, like everything has been turned up to 11. I bought some beer in a gas station which had been continually hopped, I don’t recall the name of the beer but it had a picture of a shark or fish on it and was supposed to be an IPA. I wasn’t impressed, it was so over hopped as to make it virtually undrinkable. No repeat buyability= bad beer.

So, that is my take on the US craft beer scene, for what it is worth; make them weaker and you will be able to sell more of it; keep it tasting of beer, if people do not like the taste of beer then they have no business in a brewery; don’t over brew the beer as it will lead to an unballanced product and its bad for business.

“Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.”

[The Skank SpankerParticipant 1372]

I make my own beer in the basement. I started doing this after I got out of a relations~~~ and suddenly had loads of time for projects like these. This is my 4th batch. I have worked with pre-set malts (packages to add water, sugar and yeast) but now I want to go and try the do it all by myself including the (semi) boiling and using wort-coolers etc. The thing is that I will need much more equipment to do so. I started out with a small kit, about 100 bucks.

I have made: Yorkshire Pale Ale, Bitter Ale’s, Wheat Beer, some heavy Christmas beers and now I have a Vanilla flavored Ale waiting to get good (needs about 1 more month before I can drink it). It’s about 25 litres of beer (about 100 bottles per batch).So far all my batches were fairly decent. Making your own beer is also a lot cheaper then buying. I also give bottles to neighbor`s, friends and family otherwise I would get chubby within no-time. They love it.

I get what you are saying. I have seen an explosion in microbreweries all over the world in the last years. In our local supermarkets we not have all sorts of American Ale’s from the USA and IPA’s. Its simply awesome. There used to be 6 or 8 kinds of beers to buy, now we have 20. I’ve been in Vancouver and New York, tried some ale’s in microbreweries, it was simply awesome. Lots of creation going on everywhere.

Are you brewing yourself? It’s quite easy to start with if you begin with kits.

[SpacemonkeyParticipant 1481]

The Skank Spanker wrote:

Are you brewing yourself?

Yes, I brew at home from 100% grain but I’m thinking of buying a small professional brewery and doing it full time, I’m looking at a 4 barrel brewery which is 140 UK gallons. This has the advantage of being able to use single phase electricity but still able to produce a decent quantity of beer.

Its true the equipment can be a major investment for the home brewer especially if you are brewing from 100% grain. You need a hot liquor tank, a mashing tun, a kettle and a fermentation vessel. You will also need a heat exchanger to cool your wort down before it goes into the fermentation vessel. However, don’t be put off as the kettle and hot liquor tank are interchangeable and you can make a mashing tun easily enough out of two fermentation bins one inside the other with the base of the internal bin perforated to strain the wort from the grist. You can also make your own kettle, its a little more complicated than the mashing tun as it has electrical heating elements. If money is no object I’d get a grainfather, an all in one brewery for the home brewer but they are expensive at $900.

“Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.”

[RoyDalParticipant]

They sell beers from local microbreweries in my supermarket these days. There is even a book series devoted to the subject.

We’ve come a long way. Craft breweries have broken the stranglehold of the giant liquor monopolies. The internet has broken the stranglehold of the media monopolies. So far, so good.

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[The Skank SpankerParticipant 1372]

I see a lot of people going into brewing as a full time job. I even thought of doing it myself allthough I have very limited experience with home brewing. A friend of mine in Edinburgh is doing a Masters in Brewing at some university there, also planning to set up a brewery. I would advice making solid business care first. There are a lot of people going for professional brewing, the market and the consumers are asking for it, so demand is good, but what will make your brewery unique? How are you going to survive and be different than others? Its also good to invest if the beers you are going to produce are tasty to the general public (but only one way to find out i guess).

Im going to expand my brew-cellar soon. Getting myself a 15 little kettle to start with and wort-cooler. The rest should be OK. Do you have any good all-grain recepies you find good to try? Im looking at certain hops, spices and citrus stuff, but im not sire what would make a good recipe. It should also be simple since I have limited experience.

Im thinking of buying something like this to control my temps with:

<img src=”
http://www.homebrewwest.ie/ekmps/shops/homebrewwest/images/brewkettle-brewferm-27-liter-ss-electric-1999-p.jpg” alt=”
http://www.homebrewwest.ie/ekmps/shops/homebrewwest/images/brewkettle-brewferm-27-liter-ss-electric-1999-p.jpg” />

I think its more precise than just putting a kettle on the stove and using a thermometer…

And a small wort-cooler should do a perfect job:

PS: I added some vanilla particles before bottling (did not filter them out). Do you think that is the correct way of adding flavour? Not sure if I should have added them sooner for more taste.

[SunStormParticipant 1277]

Craft beer is pretty good, but it’s still not a patch on Real Ale.

[Silverstone the SecondParticipant]

Some craft beer is ok. There’s some that are too far out there for me, like the pumpkin s~~~. What do I look like? A basic white bitch? Please. I think people are trying to make a whole lot of things, throwing everything at the wall and hoping some of it sticks. I think time will tell what’s good and what’s not. As for me, I only drink light beer, as I don’t want to get a gut, and like you said, most of it’s seasonal. So after work or whenever I want a few I can’t get them. And a lot of places like restaurants and what not don’t have a wide selection. But, anymore I don’t really drink, I usually can’t find a good reason to.

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[SpacemonkeyParticipant 1481]

The Skank Spanker wrote:

There are a lot of people going for professional brewing, the market and the consumers are asking for it, so demand is good, but what will make your brewery unique?

Its a very good point. I have several business models in mind, one of which is making bespoke beer to order. If some one is having a big event, like a 50th birthday party, engagement or wedding they could order beer to there exact specification and give away bottles of it to guests as souvenirs.

But I think the best bet is to have your own pub and make the beer on site. Not only do you have an outlet for your beer but you also make the most profit as you are selling directly to the customer.

I met a brewer who started off making beer in his garage and bottling it in his kitchen. He sold it at farmers markets, craft fairs and garden centers. Now he has a dozen employees and turns over £2m a year. Not bad.

Here is a link to a really nice recipe which is really simple and the beer is one of my favorites.

http://www.brew.x10.mx/Journals/SummerLightningNotes.html

The Skank Spanker wrote:

PS: I added some vanilla particles before bottling (did not filter them out). Do you think that is the correct way of adding flavour? Not sure if I should have added them sooner for more taste.

I’m not sure, I don’t do flavoured beers. I know you can flavour sugar with vanilla pods so that might work or else I would probably just add some vanilla essence but I think I would do it at the bottling stage.

The plate cooler is similar to the one I use. They are far more efficient than the coiled copper tube designs and cheaper too. Cleaning them is critical though as the wort actually travels through the device unlike the tubular type. I use caustic soda which turns black in contact with organic material so you can actually see it working.

“Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.”

[Author]

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