Beta Ale

So our first batch of beer was born last night around 11:00pm. After hours of brewing and drinking, our team has managed to bring life into a batch of yeast and some dirt to make one of my personal favorite beverages. This is how we did it, our documented and hazily remembered process of easily creating a small batch of beer. Lot# 080001. Beta Ale, as we're calling it. It's an IPA.


Us, three roommates, an architect and two tech start-up workhorses, have begun to brew beer for our parties for our homey San Francisco flat. So after about three weeks of deliberation and funding acquisition, we went to San Francisco Brewcraft to pick up a brewing kit and supplies for our first batch of beer. We started with nothing so we had to buy equipment: a stock pot, some fermenting jars and such. As soon as we pulled up to the place we knew it was perfect. Some aging hippies and younger hippies helped us to get exactly what we needed. Our recipe for Beta Ale came off the top of the head of one of more seasoned employees who, by the way, teaches a class on Monday nights. Excellent. They hooked us up with all the ingredients too.


Next stop was the restaurant supply store for a stock pot. After a wrong turn in the ghetto and a brief drive through Pacific/Laurel Heights, we ended up in China. The restaurant supply store was amazing, with enough stuff to keep paychecks from our pockets for years. We were there for a pot and a spoon, big ones. We got the biggest pot we could find. It would turn out to be far too large to almost comic extent. We all felt like Hobbits. Anyway, after a brief stop in North Beach at Rogue Ales to get in the mood, we came back to our place, fully stocked. Temba, his arms wide.


On to what we did: First, our kit. We got a pot and spoon for boiling the beer. A brewing bucket and carboy for primary and secondary fermenting. Some malt. Brushes, airlocks, sanitizer, a funnel, a bottle capper and a siphon.



Next step was sanitization. One gallon of water to one tablespoon sanitizer. Even though it was completely unnecessary, I sanitized everything. I won't use this stuff for three weeks, but it was cleaned anyway. Most importantly, I sanitized the primary fermentation bucket. This was just sitting out in the store and any bacterial contamination is amplified as soon as you start brewing. With the oxygen bleach sanitizer we had, only contact is needed to disinfect. I swirled the bucket and ran sanitizer solution out the tap. Air dry for thirty minutes, and it's good to go. So, ingredients.



Grains, hops, yeast and a cleaning agent. Not pictured is the malt, the small bucket from before. This is all we needed to start. So we all cracked a few Rouge bombers and waited to the company to arrive. Oh, that and lugged a monitor to the living room to watch us some Star Trek. Shaka when the walls fell.

Next step was to bag the grains (they were ground for us by Brewcraft) in cheesecloth and tie it off. This is what we would steep in the pot. The recipe for the grains itself was written on a sheet of paper in some sort of scribbled code and is in no way reproducible. But it's about 2 1/4 lb of grains.

Next, we filled up the 15 gallon stock pot with 2.5 gallons of water. Why do we have a 15 gallon stock pot? Never mind. So the cheesecloth full of grains is put in the pot of cold water and the burners turned on. Now the pot needs to be heated uncovered to ~150 degrees. At this point I am several beers in and the house population has doubled. Star Trek is being overruled by Pride footage. People on Bikes I believe it was called. Well the word rhymed with 'Bike' anyway.

After about 20 minutes steam started to rise from the pot. This was the point where the grains are starting to cook. Although you can't see it here, there is steam coming off the surface of the water. The mixture didn't smell too good, but it definitely had a distinct odor of grains or a lager-y beer.



Once the mixture started to steam, the burners were turned off and the pot was covered. A towel was thrown over the contraption and the timer set for 40 minutes. At this point, the grains and the hot water created a sort of tea which was allow to steep during this 40 minute period.



After the 40 minute timer beeped, we pulled the grain bag out of solution and dunked it in 7-10 times. We were told not to squeeze the bag as this will release tannic acid which will cause the beer to taste bad.



At this point we are ready to cook. We should have heated the solution up to almost boiling temperature before adding the malt and hops, but we didn't. Instead we just threw the malt in there. 6 lbs of it.



Followed by the primary hops, 1 oz of Pearl hops. The hops were bought in 1 oz packets. The pot was thrown up to full burners and stirred. We had another packet of Willamette hops to add later. Once the pot came to a full boil we set the timer: 60 minutes.



At 30 minutes remaining we added 1/2 oz (half a packet) of our Willamette and stirred to incorporate. Also added was the clearing agent tab. Not sure the exact function of the tab, but it helps to bring out the flavor of the hops. At about this time, in the building across from the kitchen, someone turned on a porn on their big screen tv. I unfortunately don't have a picture of that.

So we boil, boil, boil until there are 10 minutes left. This is where we add the final 1/2 oz of hops. This, by the way, is what the hops look like:



They smell delicious and you can tell where the flavor of the beer comes from. They are added to the boil and stirred in. At this time the unfermented beer has gone from a slightly repugnant odor to a sweet fruity smell. It smells exactly like an IPA.

Now after the 60 minute boil is over, we needed to ice it down in a water bath. Our massive pot couldn't fit in the sink, so we just used the bathtub. Seemed to work fine for us. We clogged the drain and filled the tub with cold water. The pot was placed (covered) in the water bath for 45 minutes.



When our beer was cooling down we started to load 2.5 gallons of water into the primary fermentor. This wasn't done immediately before the beer was added. The water needs time to de-calcify before you add the beer. So I just filled up another pot and let each addition of water sit for ten minutes before I threw it in the bucket. At this point the 45 minute cool-down period was about now over.

So 1/3 of the cooled beer solution was poured into the fermentor (with the 2.5 gallons of decalcified water). The brewer's yeast was added to the fermentor. There was no need to activate it first. The remaining 2/3 of the beer was poured in to help mix the yeast. That's it. The cap was firmly placed on the bucket and the airlock installed. A little bit of water was placed in the airlock and it was stoppered on. Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.



Over the next 6 days, the yeast will start to ferment and become a great smelling batch of beer. Molecular pathways will convert ordinary sugar to ethyl alcohol at great physical exhaustion by the poor yeast and the next step will need to be taken. At this point, we are all wasted and going to the bar down the street.