Hey extract brewers! Check THIS out!
OK, the title was just to grab attention. I just wanted to share my experiences with the cold-brewing technique.
I got tired of boilovers and clumping DME, as I detailed in another thread. So, I decided to take a risk and do a no-boil brew. Now the beers are finished and have been under the gas for a week, and I must report that these beers are smashingly good! Of course, they are young beers, but they taste as they should for a young beer. I can already taste the difference between this week and last week. These are right on schedule to be wonderful beers.
The basic idea was to brew good beer without using a kettle and then having to chill the wort. No muss, no fuss. Here's how I did it:
1. Put the hops in an electric pressure cooker with a quart of water and cook for 10 minutes at 15 PSI. Then unplug and vent.
2. In the meantime, use the spray arm from your kitchen faucet to spray 3 gallons of COLD water into your sanitized primary. Then use a sanitized whisk to whisk the DME into solution, straight from the bag. It'll take a few minutes of whisking, especially for a big beer.
3. Strain the hops tea through your sanitized strainer into the cold wort and whisk to mix.
4. Pitch a 1 gallon starter, top off to 5 gallons, and whisk to mix thoroughly.
5. Lock it down and install a blow-off or standard airlock.
That's it! Brew day for me is less than an hour now for 2 5-gallon batches. Here are the notes:
Notes:
1. The electric pressure cooker is one of the handiest kitchen gadgets in existance. If you do any cooking at all, get one of these! Just Google for it. Mine gets used several times a week.
2. 10 minutes in a pressure cooker equals a 60 minute boil for bittering hops. Also, one must use 20% LESS hops for the same IBU.
3. Flavor and aroma hops come from dry-hopping, keg hopping, and the various other methods of un-boiled hopping.
4. I believe (but do not know) that a large starter is essential in case there are contaminants in the DME. Since there is no boil, a healthy yeast starter is a must.
5. Sanitation is a must. Starsan is your friend.
6. The spray arm (vegetable sprayer) from your faucet is great for supremely aerating the water. The arm aerates water as it sprays through, and the excessive splashiness in the primary vessel adds additional oxygen. So does the whisk, so whisk it violently!
7. I haven't had these beers long enough to know how they will age long term. However, the young beers done this way taste exactly like the young beers I brewed the regular boiling-extract way.
So, I hope this helps take some of the drudginess out of brew day. Less time, less stuff to clean, easier prep, and seems to be making quality beer. I hope you've enjoyed this post; please ask me anything. If I don't know the answer, I'll make something up!
-Johntodd
OK, the title was just to grab attention. I just wanted to share my experiences with the cold-brewing technique.
I got tired of boilovers and clumping DME, as I detailed in another thread. So, I decided to take a risk and do a no-boil brew. Now the beers are finished and have been under the gas for a week, and I must report that these beers are smashingly good! Of course, they are young beers, but they taste as they should for a young beer. I can already taste the difference between this week and last week. These are right on schedule to be wonderful beers.
The basic idea was to brew good beer without using a kettle and then having to chill the wort. No muss, no fuss. Here's how I did it:
1. Put the hops in an electric pressure cooker with a quart of water and cook for 10 minutes at 15 PSI. Then unplug and vent.
2. In the meantime, use the spray arm from your kitchen faucet to spray 3 gallons of COLD water into your sanitized primary. Then use a sanitized whisk to whisk the DME into solution, straight from the bag. It'll take a few minutes of whisking, especially for a big beer.
3. Strain the hops tea through your sanitized strainer into the cold wort and whisk to mix.
4. Pitch a 1 gallon starter, top off to 5 gallons, and whisk to mix thoroughly.
5. Lock it down and install a blow-off or standard airlock.
That's it! Brew day for me is less than an hour now for 2 5-gallon batches. Here are the notes:
Notes:
1. The electric pressure cooker is one of the handiest kitchen gadgets in existance. If you do any cooking at all, get one of these! Just Google for it. Mine gets used several times a week.
2. 10 minutes in a pressure cooker equals a 60 minute boil for bittering hops. Also, one must use 20% LESS hops for the same IBU.
3. Flavor and aroma hops come from dry-hopping, keg hopping, and the various other methods of un-boiled hopping.
4. I believe (but do not know) that a large starter is essential in case there are contaminants in the DME. Since there is no boil, a healthy yeast starter is a must.
5. Sanitation is a must. Starsan is your friend.
6. The spray arm (vegetable sprayer) from your faucet is great for supremely aerating the water. The arm aerates water as it sprays through, and the excessive splashiness in the primary vessel adds additional oxygen. So does the whisk, so whisk it violently!
7. I haven't had these beers long enough to know how they will age long term. However, the young beers done this way taste exactly like the young beers I brewed the regular boiling-extract way.
So, I hope this helps take some of the drudginess out of brew day. Less time, less stuff to clean, easier prep, and seems to be making quality beer. I hope you've enjoyed this post; please ask me anything. If I don't know the answer, I'll make something up!
-Johntodd
