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geniusweirdo.org
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A friend began brewing beer recently, and called to tell me the day he had sampled his first bottle (from grain and extract — ambitious! We were talking the talk, the words fell off my tongue, and I assured him I would put them all down.
First of all, my credentials:
I was always interested in learning what a "mash" was - see my series of essays on the topic at
: rapid research, barley, and distillation 101.
When I finally learned, in 1982, I immediately set about contemplating a mash of my own. This was right at the onset of the beer renaissance in the early 1980s, fostered mainly in Seattle, Washington, USA — where I happened to live. The finest beer in the state was Bert Grant's excellent Scottish Ale; arriving at the time was the bizarre banana-tasting Redhook Ale. Exciting things were happening, so I bought the necessary malt and hops and tuns and racking assemblies and a capper and got some bottles and set right to it — I acquired so much experience as a brewer at home that I filled in at a local brew pub when the brewer was away. My beer was legendary.
But being busy with kids moved me away from brewing and drinking, so I merely ponder it these days. My son is ready to move off into the world, so I need to make sure he knows how to make beer — he should at least know how to talk like a brewer, which he can, if he reads this primer first.
I must say, to my credit, that I pulled all these words and definitions out of my ultimate database, my crowded brain. Glad to see the old girl still works.
The glossary follows; items may not be cross-referenced, but that will give you something to do. I'll add more terms as I think of them, for example, that Pilsner is a type of lager, but made with Saaz hops. It's very specific, as are most styles, so we'll delve into those a bit, too.
I was always interested in learning what a "mash" was - see my series of essays on the topic at
: rapid research, barley, and distillation 101.
When I finally learned, in 1982, I immediately set about contemplating a mash of my own. This was right at the onset of the beer renaissance in the early 1980s, fostered mainly in Seattle, Washington, USA — where I happened to live. The finest beer in the state was Bert Grant's excellent Scottish Ale; arriving at the time was the bizarre banana-tasting Redhook Ale. Exciting things were happening, so I bought the necessary malt and hops and tuns and racking assemblies and a capper and got some bottles and set right to it — I acquired so much experience as a brewer at home that I filled in at a local brew pub when the brewer was away. My beer was legendary.
But being busy with kids moved me away from brewing and drinking, so I merely ponder it these days. My son is ready to move off into the world, so I need to make sure he knows how to make beer — he should at least know how to talk like a brewer, which he can, if he reads this primer first.
I must say, to my credit, that I pulled all these words and definitions out of my ultimate database, my crowded brain. Glad to see the old girl still works.
The glossary follows; items may not be cross-referenced, but that will give you something to do. I'll add more terms as I think of them, for example, that Pilsner is a type of lager, but made with Saaz hops. It's very specific, as are most styles, so we'll delve into those a bit, too.
- ale One of two types of beer, the other being lager. Primarily, the two are different because of the type of yeast used to ferment them; ale yeast works best at 60°F, while lager yeasts operates best under refrigeration. Consequently, ale ferments faster, and has a coarser palate than a crisp lager.
- barm The scum that rises to the top of fermenting wort. During primary fermentation, this is thick and foamy; during secondary fermentation, this is hardly present.
- break The state, during the boiling of the wort, when the proteins coagulate and begin to precipitate out of solution. Brewers don't want them in the finished beer (contribute to cloudiness, off-flavor, etc.).
- cask-condition The way beer was always served: a barrel of beer is kept carbonated by additions of gyle, the pressure being what pushes the beer out of the barrel and into the glass. When the pressure is depleted, more gyle is added, which ferments and produces gas, which creates pressure in the barrel, and beer can be served again, until the pressure is depleted...
- dry-hop Adding hops to the wort after the boil, so the aromatics are preserved as much as possible (long boiling extracts the acids in the hops, but like adding herbs to soup soon before serving, the essential oils remain, rather than being evaporated into the kitchen and not making an appearance at the table).
- fining Clarifying the beer by using a "fining agent;" generally, this is done to remove any albumins or other coagulates, such as precipitated protein from the malt. Isinglass, extracted from the swimming bladder of a sturgeon, is frequently used, as is irish moss (a seaweed), or even gelatin. If one achieves a successful break, fining is generally not required.
- gravity, specific gravity By far, the most important concept for the brewer to understand. This is essentially an expression of the measure of the density of the beer, before, during, and after fermentation.
- gyle Some unfermented wort, reserved for "krausening" a cask of ale, when cask-conditioning it. Gyle is also used to prime bottles at bottling time; as fermentation has ceased, a measured amount of fermentable solids are introduced to the beer right when bottling, to produce the necessary gas in the bottle.
- hydrometer The device used to assess the density of a liquid: a hollow tube, sealed at both ends, and weighted at one end so it bobs upright in a liquid. Printed inside the tube is a scale indicating the specific gravity of the solution being measured, reading off the line at the depth to which the device sinks.
- krauesen [croy-sen] To introduce gyle to unfermented wort, or to condition a cask of beer.
- lager The German style of beer, from the German word, Lagen, "to store." Lager is produced with a unique mash, generally from six-row barley, and fermented with bottom-fermenting yeast at cool temperatures. The fermentation takes longer, hence the name.
- lauter-tun A tun" is any tub, barrel, bucket, or other device that a brewer uses to hold his liquids, other than the boiler, which is never called anything but that. Fermentation vessels are seldom called tuns, but have been, historically.
- mash The porridge made from water and malted barley (see barton cole's excellent essay, barley, at a companion site, 23 crows) — hot water is necessary to encourage the enzymes in the barley to convert the starches — in the barley — into fermentable sugar.
- primary The initial fermentation vessel, which allows the release of large volumes of carbon dioxide during the onset of fermentation — so much of it is produced at first that it's dangerous to be around, the CO2 displacing the breathable air. In fact, primary fermenters in a greenhouse would be a perfect way to recycle the CO2.
- rack a verb; to transfer the wort from one fermenter to another, or from a fermenter into bottles or a cask. "To siphon," essentially, this being the standard means by which small-scale brewers transfer wort.
- secondary The subordinate fermentation vessel, into which, after the initial burst of activity,the wort is racked. The gas production goes down, so a tighter-sealed fermenter is necessary to prevent aerial contamination. Homebrewers use carboys for this.
- sparge To rinse the sugars out of the mash, after conversion is complete.
- trub [troob]The coagulated amino acids, manifesting themselves as precipitated proteins.
- tun A vessel for holding wort or mash in the brewery. see lauter tun.
- ullage The airspace above the wort in a bottle or cask. The greater the ullage, the more gas is needed to infuse the wort with carbonation. Balance is required.
- wort [wert] The unfermented beer, from the sparge right through the boiling. Only when it ferments does it become beer; until then, it's wort.
For extra credit, ponder that ale is routinely made with two-row barley (strains having two rows of kernels on the stalk), while lager is brewed from six-row barley.
The fermentable solids (the sugars) dissolved in the wort make the liquid more dense — think of floating higher in the Great Salt Lake, as there is so much salt dissolved in it. And remembering that an object displaces as much liquid as is equal to its weight... the Archimedes thing ringing a bell?
But a brewer needs to know how much sugar he started out with, which tells him, as he measures the waning of the sugar during fermentation, how much density is left when the yeast has done its work.
Brewers measure density with a hydrometer, a weighted glass tube similar to a thermometer, except it floats in liquid (bobs, like a seal), and the number read on the scale is the density, or specific gravity, of the liquid. The deeper the hydrometer sinks before it bobs, the less-dense the liquid.
As fermentation progresses, converting sugars into alcohol and CO2 (both lighter than water), the hydrometer floats deeper. When it ceases to sink any more, noting this over a day or so, the brewer knows that fermentation has ceased.
Specific gravity is considered to be 1.000 at 60°F at sea level; beer typically starts out around 1.045, and finishes at about `1.004. Knowing this difference enables the brewer to calculate how much alcohol was produced.
The lauter tun is the device used to hold the warm wet grains, at the end of the mash, so the brewer can gently sparge them, or rinse out the sugars. A lauter tun usually has a screen bottom, onto which the brewer lets the grains rest as he slowly drains out the liquid (now known as wort).
