first thing i dont want this thread to become a debate for the tyranical water drinker VS alcohol drinkers...OK!? thats really not the point. Thank you all in advance.
First of all i needed finely selected grain of the highest quality....in my case that would be wheat and barley drom the feed store =)
then i malted the required amount, 54 lbs in our present case, it was all malted using plastic bucket to soak it and then was moved into plastic garbage back for germination proper (higth tech!)
here you have it, in the ziplock bags you have already crushed wheat malts and unmalted wheat, and in the aluminium pan and plastic bucket what you see is crushed ligth caramel bareley malt. in the white plastic bag what you see is a cake of green barely malt
that is simply malt that i dont have dried, then i passed it in a blender until it became a past
then to acheive a good weizen you certainly need yeast to ferment all that. Only the finest, noblest breed coming directly from an european monastery would do of course.
in our case that mean what the supermarket carry, it is perfectly fine as it work very good with bavarian style wheat beer as it will turn out some funkiness, wich is benificial in that style.
so 2 days ago i made a 'yeast starter' that is letting yeast multiply in a welcoming environement before getting thrown into a 51 gallons sea of hostile beer.
the cap was open from time to time the releive the pressure building up inside.
we also need Hops, as it is the spice of the beer, in this case it require little as it is not a hopsy kind of beer, more of a grainy wheaty beer with a sligth wheat funk
in our case that will be 2.5 oz of frozen Taurus pellets
to make sure its give its all, we will make a hops tea
that is simply boiling the hops for one hour in some water.
so lets use those delicious ingredient shall we
fist of all we need to mash the grain, that is putting hot water with the grain, mixing it and letting it rest for one hour at a temperature between 140F to 160F
this whole procedure will have to be repeated 3 time because my biggest boiling pot is 80L. once the mash is finish you need to extract the water out of there, only the fanciest of the mash tun could ever make this possible of course
that is opening a sligth crack from opposite sides of the 5gal buckets , one for the wort to come out and the other to let air in.in this case it will flow more slowly than usual because the beer contain alot of wheat, and wheat is gummy
then thats what is left behind
in the old days people would mix that with honey and bake cakes wich they sold directly at the tavern or feed to the pigs or chickens. its not bad at all to eat like that, in fact it taste absolutely nothing as all the good stuff have been washed away, it have the texture of freshly boiled corn on the cobb...almost all the good stuff now i pass a second round of hot water in there to rice the grain from any remaining.
watch out if you brew in the presence of bavarian or irish babies, they may get so thirsty by the smell that they jump head first in the bucket and may drown
then all that is thrown into the boiling pot and the hops tea i spoke you about earlier is thrown into that as well. it will boil for one hour. this will have to be reapeated 3 times (remember 200l/51gal im making, cant boil it all one shot) , in the second one 1.7Kilo of white sugar will be added, that will boost our alcohol content from 3.5 to 4% as well as giving us a crisp body and will also impart some funkyness wish are wanted in this style. (the second and 3rd boil are not actually boiled it just reach 130F + for 20 minute to sterelize it)
each time we take the beer and throw it into our fermentor, that is the huge bucket in wich all of that will be let to ferment, in our case only perfectly age oaks barrell would do
blue food grade oak, one of the most renowed fermenting vessel material.
we throw the beer in there
it took serval hours to go thru this, and it get extremly hot playing with boily water for hours with the stove on the after burner the whole time, so while a go dump the spent grain in the field i decide to take a piss in the fresh nigth air. ahhh!
hélas not even one set of alt-ligth tits in that wheat field! let get back inside and see what we got
that what it look like, it have a froth on top because it got shaken alot during the transfer, but its too hot i cant pitch the yeats tonigth or they will die.good nigth beer here is a blanket i see you tomorrow
ah! you are still there you! lets go see the beer, yep just under 100F its time to pitch the yeats before some unwanted wild yeast make its nest in there and ruin it all.
lets wait a couple of our and let see if our noblest of the yeast could take a hold...4 hours laters
as you can see our yeast colonized the whole thing, if you look correctly you can see its sparling violently like a glass of angry soda...that mean our little guys are happy and they are reproducing(double the cells count every 2 hours until complete saturation of their environement, yeast is a monocellular mushroom)
later the protein of the beer will change due to fermentation and the voracious bubble emission will slow down, the top of the beer will then be covered by a thick and disgusting looking foam called krausen, once that fall to the bottom that mean our monk's obtained yeast have finish its job. we will then be ready to bottle with even more higth tech infrastructure. it should be from 3 to 6 days.
we will use 2.4 kilos of sugar at bottling time, this mini fermentation is what will give fizz to the beer. our alcohol content will also jump from 4 to 4.7%. this kind of beer is extremly fizzy, to give you an example it have 2 times the gaz volume per bottle than your average big branded beer. this depend on the style.
i will update you when bottling happen and one last time for the first pour =)
if people are interested i may start a tavern thread where i could teach you the basic of brewing in detail and the science in it, i can make easy recipe for you to make and lets see who is man enough to get on the challenge.
thank you for watching all have an excellent day
ps i forgot to mention that that the whole thing cost 35-40$ to make at big max and will yield the equivalent of 25 case of 24 bottles
after 7 days the fermentation is now finished and the great bottling begin. i have gave up a long time ago on bottling in regular glass beer bottle, simply because the amount of time and work needed to clean the 600 tiny bottles, and also because of the huge space it take.
so what i use instead? just regular 2L soda bottles (any pet bottle would work, but you need to pet bottles as they need to be able to hold pressure of carbonation), as i dont buy or drink 'soft drink' i ask people around to gather some for me and i store them.
they need to be well cleaned , and you are ready to go.
first yoy prime the bottle with sugar, thats what will give the fizz in the beer. it will take 3 or 4 days to be drinkable, 1 week better, 2 weeks you reach the finish line.
then we need to put the beer in the bottles
then you need to shake well the bottle so the sugar disolve properly. you could put the bottling sugar in the bottling bucket. but it dont work well with big batch because it need alot of stiring and if you have to refill that bucket 10 times it become vounter productive, so the sugar goes directly in the bottles.
also depending on the carbonation level your bottles will get 'tired'. regular carbonation or lower level, like stout, will let your bottle last 6 to 10 times. high carbonation beer like wheat beer will chew them in 3-4 times.
when they get tired the bottom start to loose its shape and the plastic start to appear white, this is due to micro fracture of the pet plastic. in the end the bottom will become entirely flat. the risk with that is that one day one will blow up and make a huge mess in your stash(only happenned to me once and its because i was to lazy to collect replacement bottle and used and onviously tired bottle.
here what it look like
good 'new' bottle bottom
this one start to give way, but still 100% safe. look closely at the bottom ridge they started to give way
and look on how smal a place i can store all that beer (25 case of 24 bootles, market value of 825-1000$). i used that 'corner spot' in storage place under the kitchen counter,
after a few hours
here it is 100X2L of bavarian wheat beer, fit neetly dosent it!
everyday you just have to squeeze them with your finger. once that little sugar ive added start to ferment in it they will fill up with gaz. once they are rock solid and you cant squeeze them anymore, that mean its time tu put some in the fridge, time to drink will be near!
i update you one last time for the first pour of the official beer of the daily stormer
here it is, from the grain to the glass. its now fully conditioned, extremly foamy, very smooth wheaty flavour with a bit of funk(less than i expected). easy to drink extremly quaffable during hot times. as for the color is more ligth golden than it appear in the pictures due to poor lightning.
tell me what you think and all have an excellent day
