Brewing: A photo essay

Friends often ask me if they can "come over and watch me brew" some time. I try to explain, that's like asking if you can come over and watch me mop the floors or something; it's really not very interesting to watch, although it can be a lot of fun to do it with someone.

Recently as I brewed I thought I'd document the process for those who are curious how this alchemic little process works - the conversion of water, barley malt, hops and yeast into, aaahhh, beer.

Recipe of the day: "Hallucinator" Old Ale. A Collaborator winner in 1999, served in Portland pubs in 2000 and the Brewer's Festival in 2001, and People's Choice at the 2001 Winter Beer Festival. 7.2 percent alcohol but tastes so smooth you can't tell you're getting snockered.

First, you have to crack the grains in a mill:



Mine is motorized; most homebrewers' mills, if they own one (and most don't) are hand-operated, but I'm both industrious in my love of automation and lazy when it comes to physical labor. (Note: this brew occurred before my recent upgrade to mount the mill on a permanent table, which makes it MUCH easier yet.)

After the grain is cracked it goes into the mash tun. Mine is a picnic cooler fitted with a slotted copper pipe manifold. Another aspect of the hobby that took me hours to make!



Meanwhile, heat up the water. This is my "hot liquor tank," which is heated by a blowtorch-style propane burner. Notice the thermometer hanging out front. That came from a discarded dishwasher:



When the water's hot enough (about 165-170F) it goes into the mash tun with the grain, and now we have a mash:



After that, we wait a while... about an hour to 90 minutes. Then I pump the sweet liquid from the mash (called wort) through a heat exchanger sitting in boiling water. Most homebrewers who brew "from scratch" like me don't bother with this; they just add boiling water to raise the temperature. Pshaw! Why do that when you can use gadgets? So... here's mine. At the heart of my system - the pump:



Then we rinse the grain with more hot water... which involves even more copper pipes, this time drilled with little holes to let the water gently sprinkle over it:



Meanwhile the wort is drained out the bottom into the kettle.



I like to "first wort hop," meaning I put hops in the kettle before the first wort goes in. That gives a hoppier flavor without adding bitterness, which is important for this type of beer.



Once all the wort is in the kettle, it's boiled for 90 minutes, with more hops added along the way. This style doesn't get too heavily hopped. Once the boil is done, the wort needs to be chilled. Naturally, time for more gadgets... the wort chiller - again homemade:



There's a 1/2" OD copper tube inside that hose that the beer runs through, and water flows outside of it in the opposite direction. Cold water and hot beer in; cool beer and warm water out, into the carboy for fermentation:



Then, to feed the yeast, I add oxygen.



Then and only then do we add the real workhorse of the entire process: billions and billions of tiny yeast cells. The amount I pitched is hundreds of times what many homebrewers use, because I harvested yeast from a batch I bottled yesterday, which I'd harvested from a previous batch, and yeasties reproduce like single-celled rabbits in wort. Everything below the black line (yesterday's porter) is yeast.



Then the beer goes into the cellar for a week or two to ferment, after which I will keg and bottle it. If there's interest, I'll post a follow-up about that.