A customer just sent us a note asking about why we recommend 1.5 cups of corn sugar for bottling on our recipes when many others say 3/4 cup or 1 cup.  Carbonation levels vary by style of beer.  They also vary by personal taste.  So determining the “right” number is a difficult thing to do.  Since we largely support beginning and early stage brewers here at One Hour Brewing, we have posted recipes that are going to be good from the first try.  We also have posted sugar levels that are likely to please on the first try.  So here’s the general logic behind the numbers.

Most people who are getting into brewing expect to refrigerate their beer.  Many brewers prefer cellar temperature, but it’s fairly safe to say that most beginning brewers are putting their beer in the fridge.  Personally I like some beers at cellar temperature and some at fridge temperature, but that’s another topic.  So for now assuming that we intend to refrigerate finalized bottles (after carbonation) we need to get a level of carbonation that will withstand the lower temperature.  That means a higher level.  We have been quite disappointed with the level of carbonation in some beers at that temperature using less sugar.  Trial and error has shown that 1.5 cups works well for this for many recipes.

Style plays a huge part in how carbonated a beer should be.  A flat hefeweizen or a highly carbonated English ale, for example would not be as pleasant as one would expect.  Hence there is no “right” number for all recipes.  The recipes we have posted so far tend to be style where decent carbonation is required.

The final variable in the equation is how long you let the bottles sit before drinking.  A longer bottling period will allow smaller amount of sugar to ferment completely and generate a good level of carbonation.  Drinking within a few weeks of brewing, however, may not allow that to happen, and the higher sugar level will get better results more quickly.  That is not to say that you will have hugely over-carbonated bottles later on, but it is to say that it helps early on.

Lastly, that number is not enough to damage bottles in our long experience.  We have had glass bottles sitting for several years at this level without any difficulty whatsoever.

As always we’re aiming for the best experience for people using our instructions and recipes.  Let us know if you have feedback!

Earlier this month we talked about the easiest of the many fining agents that can be used to clarify (or “fine”) your homebrew: Irish moss.  In the commercial brewing industry, particularly in the United Kingdom where cask ales are still produced in larger volume, the most common fining agent is Isinglass.  Irish moss works to remove proteins from the beer which may cloud it, and is added during the boil.  Isinglass is added to the beer as it goes into the secondary fermenter.  As you know, we recommend a two stage process as recommended in our guide.  As with all fining agents, this is not something a complete beginner should worry about.  Make some batches, get things working well and then play around with clearer beer.  Start with hazier styles where this is not a factor.  But back to the topic at hand.  When the Isinglass is in the secondary it helps contribute to the flocculation of the yeast the clumping helps it drop out of suspension in the beeer, yielding a clearer brew.  But what is it and how do you use it?

First lets say this is not a product for strict vegetarians or vegans.  And it’s controversial (what isn’t these days?) as some people feel adding an animal product to the process, even if it doesn’t end up in the final product, is a pollution of the beer.  But rest assured it has been used for centuries in producing clearer beer and it’s harmless.  Isinglass is basically the swim bladder of a fish.  Originally it was exclusively that of the Beluga Sturgeon, but in modern times it’s made from many different kinds of fish, largely tropical and sub-tropical.  It’s similar to gelatin, but with different amino acids that give it enough different chemical properties to work better than gelatin for this purpose.

Because this is an animal-derived product it’s more sensitive to temperature and acidity than other additives.  Generally it should be fairly fresh and refrigerated if possible.  Often it’s not refrigerated and it works just fine, but the reality is that the fresher it is kept the more effective it is.  As with everything else, there is no point worrying too much about it.  Just make sure it’s not too old and hasn’t been stored in the sun, etc.

It’s sold either as a “liquid” which is more like a jelly, or as a powder.  Really the liquid is easier to use as it’s ready to go as-is.  But in the event that you need to use the powder you need to boil about a pint (500 mL) of water to sanitize it, let it cool, then mix in the appropriate amount of powder for your batch.  The instructions on the package will tell you the exact amount.

So here’s what to do with it:

• At the coolest point in your fermentation process, usually just as you’re going to move to the secondary, you will add it to the fermenter (the secondary one).  You don’t want to significantly cool the beer after this as it can re-cloud from chilling.
• Put the Isinglass in the secondary fermenter before you start to siphon in the beer from the primary.
• Siphon the beer from the primary onto the Isinglass.  This will help it mix well into the batch.

That’s it!  Proceed as normal with the rest of the fermentation process.  When you move the beer from the fermenter to the bucket for bottling, the Isinglass will be left behind with the yeast sediment.  You will not be drinking fish bladders.

Are there any drawbacks?  The main drawback is that it can sometimes take a little longer for bottle conditioning when using Isinglass.  This is because you are leaving behind more yeast than you might otherwise and that means those that are left have to work harder and that takes longer.  This is a small difference, and the tradeoff is clearer beer.  It’s your call!

Having just been on the topic of bottling, this seems like a good time to address the age old question about which base to use for priming your bottles, corn sugar, or dry malt extract?  There are, of course, other sugars that people use for this purpose, including molasses, table sugar, brown sugar, priming drops from various manufacturers, and a whole lot more.  But the two main staples are the two in the title of this post: corn sugar and dry malt extract (DME).  To understand which is better for your purpose, you need to understand what you’re doing when priming.

Bottled conditioned beers are carbonated by the gas produced by a final stage of fermentation.  The yeast is given some sugar to eat, it produces carbon dioxide, and the close confines of the bottle force the carbon dioxide into suspension in the liquid since there is nowhere else for it to go.  We’re not trying to change the taste of the beer here, nor produce more alcohol (though a little is formed).  The chief concern is getting the yeast to efficiently generate carbon-dioxide, while not affecting the high quality of our beer.

So lets analyze corn sugar and dry malt extract for that purpose alone, initially.  Corn sugar is made of simple sugar, all of which is fermentable.  There is nothing in corn sugar that will produce additional sediment beyond the yeast cells that will form no matter what sugar you prime with.  Corn sugar is easily and very efficiently consumed by the yeast to produce carbonation quickly and reliably in all bottles.

Dry malt extract on the other hand is made of several sugars, some of which are not easily fermented (or at all in some cases) and will take longer to produce carbonation.  It also costs significantly more than corn sugar, which is quite inexpensive by contrast.  DME will leave some leftovers in the bottle.  Some people claim these help with head retention in the resulting beer, but in our experience this is not noticeable.  On the other hand, in some cases a krauzen forms in the bottle when bottling with dry malt extract and that can be undesirable for the potential drinker of the bottle.  It is also more difficult to evenly distribute the DME in all of the bottles, resulting in less even carbonation among bottles.

It’s our opinion that in nearly all cases corn sugar is superior to DME for bottling.  This is not to say there is anything wrong with using the extract, simply that we don’t believe it works as well as corn sugar for this purpose.  As with anything in brewing, people will do what they want.  But our results have always been better with corn sugar, and we believe logical analysis is on our side.

In the future we may do a back-to-back comparison where we brew a single batch of beer, divide it in two at bottling time, and use corn sugar for half and DME for the other half.  If you’d be interested in seeing that, leave a comment.

Cheers!

One of the great satisfactions of brewing your own beer (and bottling it) is to look at the final product, all neatly in a row, waiting ready for a few weeks of bottle conditioning, and tasting it as it goes into the bottle.  This weekend we bottled a batch of lager we brewed at the end of November and had let ferment in the darkest corner of the basement for the last five weeks, first in the primary, then in the secondary.

When you bottle your beer, you always have to taste it.  Sure, it’s flat, but this is the first reward you get for the labor you’ve put forth so far.  And this batch was good.  Really good.  Assuming it tastes as good carbonated as it does now, this recipe will be going in our recipes section shortly.

Here’s a little shot for inspiration.  Remember, our guide has all the info you need to get started homebrewing great beer from the very first batch!

In our guide we describe the bottling process using a capper and steel bottle caps with standard beer bottles.  This is really best done as a two person job.  But lets say you’ve decided you want to keep homebrewing and you don’t want to have to find a friend every time you need to bottle beer.  There is a pricier alternative that makes life easier and requires fewer hands to do the job quickly: the easy cap bottle.

You are most likely familiar with these bottles from beer like Grolsch and Virgil’s root beer, among others.  In fact the Virgil’s and other brown bottles work well for this purpose.  We don’t recommend green bottles because of the light damage that can skunk your beer (sometimes this is desirable, but not generally).

At most homebrew shops, you can also buy these brown easy cap bottles by the twelve pack.  They are generally a couple of dollars per bottle, substantially more than their lesser brethren.  But if you brew a lot these are worth it.  You just replace the rubber seal every couple of batches.  Follow the same sterilization procedures that you do for normal bottling.

These can really make your life easier if you have to bottle solo.  It’s not the cheapest solution, but it might be worth it if you find yourself brewing often.  Just make sure you get them back from your friends.

There are lots of things you can do to make your brew clearer when that quality is desirable for the style–and it’s not always.  But if you’re brewing a lager or pilsner and want to have the brew cleared there are a few simple things you can do that will help.  There are also additives you can put in your beer while fermenting, but we’ll save those for another time.  What we’re talking about here are things you can do whlie brewing to help out with clarification.

What causes cloudy beer?  Generally there are three main factors:

1. Proteins left from the malt and specialty grains that are suspended in the wort.
2. Small clumps of yeast that remain suspended after fermentation.
3. Yeast clumps in the bottle from bottle conditioning.

The first of these issues is most easily addressed at the time of the brewing. The simplest thing to do is to add Irish moss to your brew just about 10 minutes before the end of the boil.  This is a natural algae that grows along the ocean in Northern Europe and other places.  It attracts proteins from the brew and helps keep them clumped to the moss so that they strain out of the wort when you put it into the fermenter.  It’s called a fining agent, which is anything that is added to clarify beer. This stuff is not expensive and you only need about 1 tbsp. of it for a 5 gallon boil.

The second thing you can do about this issue is to cool the wort as quickly as possible, which helps the proteins drop out of suspension.  Fancy brewers do this with a wort chiller.  In our guide we provide some solutions that are simpler and several orders of magnitude cheaper.

So what about #2 and #3 then?  Several factors can affect that.  The primary one is which yeast you are using.  If your style is a clear one, then you ought to use a yeast that has high flocculation.  That’s a brewing term that means “high clumping factor.”  Basically the larger the clumps the yeast form, the more easily they drop out of suspension.  White Labs and Wyeast post this information about most of their strains, and some other yeast suppliers do as well.

In commercial brewing of bottle conditioned beers it is not uncommon to use a different strain of yeast to handle the bottle conditioning, one that produces less sediment.  That’s a bit extreme for home brewing, and not something we ever bother with.  If you’re hardcore you could experiment with this.  We advocate simple solutions, so we won’t go into it here.

As I said before there are other things you can add to the fermentation process to clear your beer and we’ll get into those another time.  Generally this is not needed.

Keep in mind that clearer beer is not always desirable.  Many styles look and taste better with a bit of clouding.

EDIT: Also see Part 2 in this series.

One of the best things you can do to brew great beer from the very first batch, is to skip brewing in a single stage and go right to two stage brewing. What does that mean, exactly? Instead of brewing your beer all in the same fermenter, part way through the process you move it over to another fermenter, leaving behind a thick layer of sediment in the first container. In practice it means you need little bit more equipment than you would for single stage brewing, but the payback is much clearer and tastier beer. We believe you should brew great beer to start with, not only because it tastes better, but because it’s more motivating when your final product is good. This is a good way to help insure that happens.

If you look at the kits we review, you’ll see that we specifically mention which of those kits can be used for two stage home brewing. In many cases you’re not really paying any more for a setup to do this than for a single stage setup. If you’re piecing a kit together yourself, then you really want a siphon pump (otherwise known as a siphon starter), and you need a second bucket with a lid (or carboy) to use as the secondary fermenter.

The process is not complicated. Part way through the fermentation process, you move the beer to the secondary fermenter, and let it go from there. When bottling you simply use the primary fermenter–we recommend a bucket–as the bottling bucket. That’s it!

What you get is clearer beer, with fewer particulates, and less sediment. It also helps prevent certain tastes that can form from the breaking down of spent yeast or other material left over from the brewing process.

I answered this in brief format on WikiAnswers recently, but I’ll go into more detail here. If you follow the instructions in our guides you shouldn’t have this problem.

So what happens if you pitch the yeast and nothing happens?  There are several reasons this could happen:

1. The yeast was dead to begin with.
2. Something is wrong with the conditions for the yeast (temperature, infection, pollution, under-aeration, failure to rinse out sanitizer).
3. The yeast was under pitched and is growing so slowly you can’t tell.
4. You pitched the yeast when the wort was still too hot.

First lets assume you waited 36 hours before making this assessment.  You need to wait at least that long to be sure.  Maybe give it a few more hours in case the yeast is one of the slower varieties to get started or some condition slowed it down.

The best way to tell if the beer is fermenting is if bubbles are coming out of the airlock.  I’ve heard many experienced brewers say that this is a bad measure of whether things are working or not.  Not true.  If you have set your equipment up properly this is an excellent tool.  The chemical process forms carbon dioxide.  It will come out the top: it has to.  Be sure your seals are all nice and tight.  Check that first.

But, if you have a hydrometer, it’s still a good idea to take a reading at this point to see if the beer really is not fermenting.  Some people are militant about this, but frankly this is not a requirement.  Just be reasonably sure nothing is happening before you decide to do something about it.  No one had hydrometers for centuries of brewing.  Once you’ve determined that something really, truly went wrong, you have to decide what might be the cause.

The solution to numbers 1, 3, and 4 is to re-pitch the yeast as soon as it’s apparent that the yeast is not growing.  Use a good sized yeast pack like the ones from Wyeast.  You want to give your yeast as much of a head start over any possible infection as possible.  Yes this is another $6-8 but you could lose $15-30 worth of ingredients if you throw out the whole batch.  The beer still could end up ruined in the end, but it’s worth trying to save it.

The solution to number 2 is to correct any environmental problems (like temperature, aeration) and re-pitch the yeast only if really needed. If the problem is infection or pollution, however, the batch of beer is basically done for. You may not find this out until the re-pitched yeast also fails to grow.

Yeast storage problems are usually the cause of number 1. Be sure to keep liquid yeast packets refrigerated until hours before they are ready to be used.  Check yeast expiration dates carefully before purchase.

There are those tools you need to have to get a job done, and then there are those tools that make the job just that much easier.  This one is in the second category.  But it’s so nice to have that it’s worth talking about.  When you’re saving up used bottles to use for your next batch of beer (be they commercial bottles, or your own homebrew bottles), the best thing to do is to rinse the bottles out with water at the time you use them.  But you still have to wash them out before you can bottle.  That can be a fairly laborious process if the bottles weren’t cleaned thoroughly at the time the beer was drunk.  That’s where this tool comes in.  In both cases, with clean(ish) bottles and with fairly dirty bottles, you can blast all the sediment right out of the bottom of the bottle.  It’s probably fairly self-explanatory how you use it, but just in case, here’s how it works:

• Screw the bottle washer onto a laundry sink faucet or an outdoor spigot.  It will be inverted from the photo.
• Turn the water on full blast (none will come out).
• Slide the bottle over the brass end of the washer.
• Press the bottle down against the thin rod.  That opens the internal valve, and sprays a high pressure stream of water right at the bottom of the bottle.

This can be done very quickly for each bottle and really speeds up the washing process, even for clean bottles.  Definitely not a requirement for brewing, but a really simple add-on that’s worth having when you’ve decided you like brewing and want to brew more often.

I already covered some techniques for controlling the temperature of fermentation in your home brew.  Here are some additional ideas that you can use to your advantage:

• If you need to warm the ferment up a bit, you can wrap the fermenter (bucket/carboy) in a sleeping bag or old blanket you don’t care about, or a heavy cardboard box.  The internal heat generated by fermentation will be held in somewhat.
• If you have a basement or garage with a cold concrete floor, put the fermenter on that.
• Place the fermenter in a large plastic or steel tub filled with ice to cool it.

There are varying levels of practicality to these suggestions, but in combination with the techniques we discussed in Part 1 and Part 2 these can help you get your desired temperature range.

Good luck!