• BeerSmith Home Brewing Software – $21.95 – Our own homebrewing recipe software
• The Barley Crusher – $109.95 – Dual roller 7lb malt mill for crushing grains
• Beer Starter Kit – $69.99 – Basic beer brewing starter kit for new brewers
• How to Brew Book – $19.99 – A great introduction to brewing for beginners by John Palmer (interview)
• The Auto Siphon – $11 – Makes siphoning from one container to another easy
• Jet Bottle Washer – $12.99 – A personal favorite of mine – fast way to clean bottles
• Home Kegging System – $99 or $159 complete with tank – Stop messing with bottles (keg article)
• Blichmann Beer Gun – $75 – An easy way to fill bottles directly from a kegging system (article)
• Designing Great Beers Book – $19.95 – Book on recipe design by Ray Daniels for intermediate/advanced brewers – a classic!
• 9″ Stainless Domed False Bottom – $24 – To convert your 5 gal Igloo Cooler into a Mash Tun (article)
• 2 Liter Growler – $32 – So you can pour kegged beer and take it to a friend’s house
• Radical Brewing book – $19.95 – Randy Mosher’s eclectic book on a wide variety of brewing topics and styles (article)
• 5.2 pH Stabilizer – $13.99 – A great way to stabilize the pH of your mash for all grain brewers (article)
• 2 liter Erlenmeyer flask – $22 – For making properly sized yeast starters (article) or washing yeast (article)
• 9 Gallon Stainless Pot – $69.99 – Large enough to do full boil 5 gallon all grain batches
• Wort Chiller – $65 – For quickly cooling your beer after boiling (article)
• Beer Ingredient Kits – $Varies – You do need the ingredients if you want to make beer
• New Brewing Lager – $19.95 – An updated version of Noonan’s classic book on brewing lagers
• The BeerSmith Home Brewing Guide – Free! – Our free online guide to brewing with dozens of articles

(Many of the links above are to Adventures in Homebrewing, a sponsor of this site, though many brewing supply stores also carry these products)

If you have your own brewing holiday gift ideas for this season, be sure to drop us a comment below.  Have a great holiday season – and thanks again for visiting the BeerSmith Home Brewing Blog.  As always, you can subscribe for regular email delivery if you enjoyed this post.

• Making a Yeast Starter for your Home Brew Beer
• How to Keg Homebrew Beer
• Ten Top Tips for Home Brewing Beer
• Cleaning and Sanitation for Beer Brewing
• Adventures in Homebrewing

Marzen has a mixed origin.  Some sources note the extremely close relationship between Marzen and Vienna beers.  Ray Daniels notes that the term Marzen was first used for beers brewed in Vienna in the 1700’s.  Marzen is also close in relation to brown beers brewed in Bavaria as early as the 16th century, though the term Marzen was not originally  applied to this style.  Most modern authors attribute the origin of the name “Marzen” to Vienna, as no references can be found of Munich Marzen’s prior to the late 19th century (Ref: Daniels), though simillar styles were being brewed in Bavaria much earlier.

Marzen, the German word for the month of March, refers to the month when these beers were originally brewed.  Summer was too hot to brew and ferment beers properly, so by a 1539 ordinance in Bavaria, beer could only be brewed between the days of St Michael and Saint George (29 Sept-23 April).

As beer was not brewed in the summer, the last beers of Spring were made with a higher alcohol content and stored in cellars, often refrigerated with ice to last the summer.  This higher gravity beer was named after the month when most were brewed – March or Marzen.

The modern Marzen and Oktoberfest styles may bear little resemblence to the early Marzen of Vienna or even Munich.  The early Marzen was described as dark, brown and full bodied.  In fact, the turmoil of the wars of the early 20th century Europe nearly brought an end to both Marzen and Vienna style beers, though the modern Marzen enjoyed a resurgence in popularity when the Munich Oktoberfest started up again after World War II.  The Oktoberfest style, a slightly stronger version of Marzen, is brewed specifically for the world famous Munich festival each year.

The Marzen Beer Style

The BJCP style guide describes Marzen as as a rich, slightly malty beer with a slight hint of toasted character from Vienna malt.  No roasted or caramel flavors are present, and the beer has a fairly dry finish.  Noble hops are present though should be only lightly perceived in the finished beer which is decidedly malty.

The original gravity of a Marzen is in the 1.050-1.057 range, lightly bittered with noble hops providing 20-28 IBUs of bitterness.  Some “fest” beers are brewed at a slightly higher starting gravity.  The beer is well attenuated, with a finishing gravity of 1.012-1.016.  Color should be golden to orange-amber with a color range of 7-14 SRM.  The alcohol by volume is 4.8%-5.7% and Marzen’s are usually fairly well carbonated.

Brewing a Marzen Recipe

Marzen is generally made from a combination of Munich, 2-row Pale Malt, Pilsner and Vienna malts.  Generally, the malty Munich malts makes up as much as half of the grain bill, with either Pilser or Pale Malt making the balance of the grain bill.  For extract recipes, a Munich based extract made from Munich and Pale malt is generally best to use as a base.  Vienna may be added to substitute for 10-15% of the Munich malt to add a slightly more toasted flavor.  A small number of homebrew recipes also add 5-10% Crystal or 5% Cara-pils malt to add body and head retention.

Hops for Marzen/Oktoberfest beers is typically of the Noble German or Bohemian variety,  and the bitterness ratio (BU:GU) is generally around 0.5-0.6.  Popular hops selections include Saaz, Tettnanger, and Hallertauer though occasionally American hops are used by homebrewers.  Generally these are added only for bittering, and aroma or dry hops are rarely used.

The mash is almost always a single infusion mash for homebrewers in the middle range of around 152-154F for the conversion step.  Purists can try a traditional German decoction mash, though in most cases it is unnecessary given modern highly modified malts.

Bavarian lager yeast or Marzen/Oktoberfest yeast is the prime choice for Marzens, with Bohemian Pilsner yeast providing a reasonable backup.  Ferment ar around 50F (depending on yeast choice) and lager near freezing (33-37F) for at least 5 weeks.

Water treatments are rarely needed, but you might want to consider alternative water sources if your water is exceptionally hard.

Marzen and Oktoberfest Recipes

Here are some selected recipes from our recipe archive.  Additional recipes are available on the BeerSmith Recipe Page:

• The Wedding March – All Grain
• Bay 13 Fiesta – Extract

Thanks again for joining us on the BeerSmith Home Brewing Blog.  I hope you enjoyed this week’s article on the Oktoberfest beer style.  If you get a chance, subscribe for regular weekly delivery via email or RSS.

• Bock and Doppelbock Beer Recipes – Beer Styles
• Balancing your Beer with the Bitterness Ratio
• Cream Ale Recipes – Beer Styles
• Brewing a Kolsch Beer Recipe: Beer Styles
• Brown Ale Recipes: Brewing Styles

For many years, I’ve wanted to do a better job of matching my beer brewing with seasons and major holidays.  But I always found myself behind.  When October rolled around it was too late to brew that Oktoberfest, and my green beer was always a bit too late for St Patty’s day.  My stouts were always finished for the warm summer months.

To combat this, I’ve assembled a brewing schedule of sorts to help me have mature beers ready for the right holiday or season.  To keep it simple, I’ve listed popular styles of beer for different seasons by quarter, and a corresponding list of which quarter you need to brew them in.  The assumption here is that 3 months lead time is enough for me to assemble the ingredients, brew the beer, and have it mature properly.  While I don’t brew all of these styles each year, it gives me a list to choose from.

Winter Beer Styles – Beers to Brew in Fall, Drink in Winter:

• Holiday Ales
• Christmas/Winter Beer
• Stouts, Porters and other Dark Beers
• Barley Wine (needs long aging – start a year or more in advance)
• Winter Wheats
• Smoked Rauchbier
• Scotch Ale
• Old Ale

Spring Beer Styles – Beers to Brew in Winter, Drink in Spring

• Irish Ale and Irish Stout
• Green Beer for St Patty’s Day
• Bock/Doppelbock
• India Pale Ale
• Fruit Beer
• Wheat Beer, Weizen and Weisse – particularly Hefeweizen
• Saison
• Blonde Ale
• Belgian Wit/White Beer

Summer Beer Styles – Beers to Brew in Spring, Drink in Summer

• Bavarian Weizen/Weisse
• Pilsner
• Cream Ale
• Steam Beer – California Common
• Kolsch Beer
• Summer Ales
• Saison
• Fruit/Wheat Beers

Fall Beer Styles – Beers to Brew in Summer, Drink in the Fall

• Marzen/Oktoberfest
• Pumpkin Beer
• English Pale Ale
• Brown Ales
• Dunkelweizen
• Harvest Ale

Do you have your own seasonal beer suggestion?  Drop a comment below for all to read.  Thanks again for joining us on the BeerSmith Home Brewing Blog.  As always, don’t hesitate to subscribe for free if you enjoyed this article and want to see more.

• Adventures in Homebrewing
• One Year of The BeerSmith Home Brewing Blog
• Growing Hops in the Garden: How to Grow Beer Hops
• So When is St Patrick’s Day Anyways?
• Brewing Marzen and Oktoberfest Beer Recipes

Image credit: http://www.o-broze.net/dave/drivel/?cat=14

Today we’ll take a look at a homebrewing technique called the “blow-off method” or Burton Union System for improving your beer. The blow-off method removes proteins, tannins, grain husks, hops and other undesirable materials that tend to form at the top of the fermenter during the early stages of active fermentation.

These materials are an undesirable byproduct of the brewing process, and float or get pushed to the top of the fermenter by carbon dioxide produced during the active stage of fermentation. These undesirables form a separate layer, called the ‘Kraeusen’ over the beer.

We wish to separate these from the beer as early as possible because tannins, proteins, and other materials will contribute to cloudiness as well as add off-flavors to the beer. Many people use a secondary fermentation or conical fermenters to separate the beer from heavy materials that fall out right after active fermentation. The blow-off method attempts to remove lighter materials that float to the top of the fermenter as early as possible.

I first read about the blow-off method in Charlie Papazian’s book “The Home Brewer’s Companion” (p 172), and have used it successfully for the last 15+ years. Commercial brewers in Burton-on-Trent pioneered the related Burton Union “blow-off” system over 200 years ago and have used it for popular styles like Bass Ale. Their system recovers some of the flocculent yeast from the top fermenting ale and reuses it for later batches. However, the blow-off method used by homebrewers merely discards the kraeusen.

To use the blow-off method, you need a glass or plastic bottle fermenter of the same size as your target volume. A 5 gallon glass carboy is ideal. Next, procure several feet of 1″ inner diameter plastic tubing. The tubing should fit tightly in the top of the carboy.

The method, as shown in the picture above, is to fill the carboy to the top when brewing and then use the large size tube to “blow off” the early foam and material that rises during active fermentation. A large container with water captures the liquid and material blown out of the fermenter and also acts as a giant airlock.  Obviously you should use a much larger container for the overflow than shown in the picture, and also you should partially fill the container with water so the end of the tube can be kept under water forming an airlock seal.

Leave this system in place for active fermentation during the first few days, and switch to a smaller airlock or secondary fermenter once activity has died down. You do need to be careful, however, as a smaller airlock will clog up if active fermentation is still ongoing. On one occasion, I switched the airlock before fermentation had completed and ended up blowing the stopper and airlock right off the top of the carboy. It was a huge mess.

If you have a suitable 5 gallon carboy, give the blow-off method a try. You will be surprised how much debris collects in your overflow tank and not in your beer.  I’ve been using this method since the early 1990’s with great results.

Thanks for joining us on the BeerSmith Home Brewing Blog.  Have a great homebrewing week, and as always please consider subscribing to the blog.  Carpe Fermentum!

• Making a Yeast Starter for your Home Brew Beer
• Chilling Your Brew: Building an Immersion Chiller
• Dry Hopping: Enhanced Hops Aroma
• Yeast Washing: Reusing your Yeast
• How to Brew Beer: 5 Steps for Making Beer at Home – Part 1

The balance between bitter hops and sweet malts has always been important in crafting world class beer.  This week we take a look at the bitterness ratio and how you can use it to improve the balance of homebrewed beer recipes.

The sweetness of malted barley and specialty grains must be offset by bitterness.  Early beers used all kinds of herbs including ginger, caraway, cinnamon, citron, coriander, juniper, mint, myrtle, saffron, hysop, dill, thistles, and many others to counterbalance the sweetness of malt.  Most modern beers use hops for bitterness, though some specialty beers like Belgian Wit still make use of other spices.

The idea of trying to quantify the bitterness to sweet malt balance is also not new.  English brewers regularly used “pounds of hops per quarter of malt” for the last several hundred years to characterize the hops-malt balance.   Modern brewers started using the modern equivalent, called the bitterness ratio or BU:GU ratio many years ago.  The measure, determined by simply dividing the number of IBUs in a beer by the number of gravity units, provides a rough estimate of the balance between hop bitterness and malt sweetness.  It is featured in Ray Daniel’s Designing Great Beers book where he lists the average bitterness ratio for many popular styles.

To calculate the bitterness ratio we start with the number of international bitterness units or IBUs.  For example, lets  say we start with a beer that has 30 IBUs.  We then take the original gravity of the beer (for example 1.048), take the fractional portion (0.048) and multiply by 1000 to get the number of gravity points.  In this example 1.048 would simply be 48 points.  Now we take 30 IBUs and divide by 48 points to get a bitterness ration of 0.63.  If you are using BeerSmith, the estimated bitterness ration (IBUs/OG points) is displayed just below the color on the recipe design page.

Obviously the bitterness ratio needed varies depending on the style of the beer.  A hoppy India Pale Ale is going to have a much higher desired bitterness ratio than a barely hopped Weizenbier.  To determine the correct target bitterness ratio, one needs to know the average IBUs and starting gravity for different beer styles.  Fortunately the BJCP style guideline provides just such a resource.   To calculate your target average style BU:GU ration, determine the average IBUs for the style guide and divide by the average OG points for the style.  I’ve calculated the bitterness ratio for a few popular styles here from the 2008 guidelines:

• American Amber: 0.619
• Bohemian Pilsner: 0.800
• Oktoberfest/Marzen: 0.449
• Traditional Bock: 0.346
• Blonde Ale: 0.467
• California Common: 0.735
• Ordinary Bitters: 0.833
• American Pale Ale: 0.714
• Brown Porter: 0.576
• Dry Irish Stout: 0.872
• English IPA: 0.800
• Weizen/Weissbier: 0.240
• Belgian Trippel: 0.375

The above is just a sampling, but gives us some idea of the range of average bitterness ratios for different styles.  A higher bitterness ratio corresponds to more bitter beers overall.  Not surprisingly many of the malty or high wheat German beers such as Weizen and Bock have low average bitterness ratios (0.240-0.345), while IPAs, Pale Ales, and those with high concentrations of dark malt such as stouts have much higher average ratios of 0.800 or higher.  Many popular styles lie in the middle range of around 0.500, such as Oktoberfest, Porter, and Blonde Ale.

The bitterness ratio does not tell the whole story, however, as it does not take into account the individual grains making up the grain bill.  For example Oktoberfest/Marzen has a malty flavor from its Munich malt grain bill base that is not reflected in its mid-range BU:GU ratio.  Irish Stout, which requires a higher BU:GU ratio to balance its high concentration of black/stout roast malt has a relatively high 0.872 bitterness ratio, but the dry flavor of the roasted malt dominates the flavor profile more than hop bitterness.

Still, calculating the bitterness ratio for a given beer and comparing it to the average for your target beer style can help to create a beer with an appropriate flavor balance, especially when traditional ingredients are used.  I personally like to do a sanity check on my bitterness ratio against the style guide to make sure I’m in the ballpark when creating a new recipe.

I hope you enjoyed this week’s article from the BeerSmith Home Brewing Blog.  Please subscribe for regular weekly delivery, and don’t hesitate to leave a comment or send this article to a friend.

• Brewing Marzen and Oktoberfest Beer Recipes
• Calculating Hop Bitterness: How much Hops to Use?
• Better Beer with Late Malt Extract Additions
• Brown Ale Recipes: Brewing Styles
• The First Wort Hop: Beer Brewing Techniques

India Pale Ale (or IPA) is a popular staple of homebrewers, microbrewers and hopheads who enjoy brewing some of the hoppiest beers on the planet.  This week we look at India Pale Ale beer recipes, how to brew an IPA recipe and its history.

History

According to Wikipedia, India Pale Ale traces its origins to the 17^th century in England with the earliest pale ales.  In fact, new malting techniques developed at the start of the 17^th century using coke-fired as opposed to wood-fired kilns enabled production of the first pale malts, and subsequently paler beers.  One of the popular pale styles was a beer called October beer, which was highly hopped and designed to be stored for an extended period.  Note that this October beer bears no relation to German Oktoberfest beer.

George Hodgson, owner of Bow Brewery brewed a version of October beer that was popular among the traders of the East India Trading Company in the late 1700’s.  East India traders subsequently started trading many of Hodgson’s beers including his October beer.  The highly hopped, high gravity, highly attenuated pale ale actually benefitted from the long trip to India and became popular with consumers there.

Other brewers, including several large Burton breweries like Bass, Alsop and Salt lost their European export market in Russia due to new high tarrifs on beer.  They quickly emulated the October beer of Bow Brewery and also started exporting to India.  The style, which now was now commonly called “India Pale Ale” became popular in England as well around 1840.

The IPA Beer Style

IPA is a hoppy, fairly strong pale ale traditionally brewed with English malt, hops and yeast.  The American version has a slightly more pronounced malt flavor and uses American ingredients.  The BJCP style guide for 2008 places original gravity at between 1.050 and 1.075, and highly attenuating yeasts are used to drive a final gravity between 1.010 and 1.018 for 5-7.5% alcohol by volume.

Multiple hop additions dominate the flavor profile in IPAs.  English IPA’s typically have 40-60 IBUs, though the slightly stronger imperial IPA versions can have hop rates as high as 120 IBUs.

Color is similar to many pale ales – golden to deep copper color – varying between 8-14 SRM for the finished beer.  Moderate carbonation is often used, though some English IPAs are lightly carbonated.

Brewing an IPA

Hops dominate the flavor of an IPA, so careful selection of the hop additions is critical to success.  Traditional English IPAs use popular English hops such as Fuggles, Goldings, Northdown, Target, though sometimes noble hops are also used in finishing.  Higher alpha English hops are also popular for bittering.  American IPAs use the rough American equivalents such as Cascade, Centennial, Williamette, though again higher alpha hops are often used in bittering.

Multiple hop additions are almost always used for IPAs including bittering hops at the beginning of the boil, often several additions of finishing hops in the last 5-15 minutes of the boil, and dry hops to provide a hoppy aroma.  In general, higher alpha hops are used for the base boil addition while aromatic lower alpha hops are used in finishing and dry hopping, though some traditional IPAs use lower alpha English hops throughout.

Traditional English 2-row pale malt makes up the bulk of the grain bill (or two row American malt for the American IPA), usually around 85-90% of the total.  Crystal and caramel malts are traditionally used to add color and body to achieve the desired overall color both in extract and all-grain recipes.

Chocolate and black malts are not often used in commercial examples though they occasionally make their way into home-brewed recipes.  Personally I prefer moderately colored caramel/crystal malt.  Occasionally you will see wheat, flaked barley or carapils malt added to enhance body, though these are rarely used and only in small quantities.

As many IPAs were first brewed in the English city of Burton, they share much with their English Pale Ale cousins, including the unusual Burton water profile which accentuates the hoppy profile.  The Burton water profile has extremely high concentrations of calcium carbonate and bicarbonate.  Depending on your local water source, a small addition of Gypsum (CaSO4) can sometimes help to simulate the hop-enhancing high carbonate Burton waters.

IPAs are most often made with traditional English ale yeasts, though care must be taken to choose a highly attenuating yeast and avoid some of the lower attenuating, fruity British ale yeasts.  Many brewers bypass the problem entirely by choosing a highly attenuating American or California ale yeast for a cleaner finish.

All grain IPAs should be mashed at a lower temperature than pale ales to achieve the high attenuation desired.  A mash temperature around 150F for 90 minutes will aid in breaking down more complex sugars for a clean finish that accentuates the hops.

IPAs are fermented and stored at the traditional ale temperatures, usually around the mid 60’s F.  Long storage periods are sometimes required to achieve the proper hop-malt balance.

IPA Recipes

Many more are available here on our Recipes Page:

• FPA – All grain
• Baby’s Second IPA – Extract
• Brew Free or Die IPA – Extract
• Exotic IPA – Extract
• Hopped Up IPA – All grain
• Inglewood IPA – All grain
• Lip Smakin’ Good IPA – Extract
• The Abyss IPA – All grain
• Unreal IPA – Extract

I hope you enjoyed this week’s article on the great India Pale Ale beer style.  Please don’t hesitate to leave a comment or subscribe for regular delivery if you enjoyed this article.  Have a great brewing week.

• English Pale Ale Recipes
• Cream Ale Recipes – Beer Styles
• Balancing your Beer with the Bitterness Ratio
• Brown Ale Recipes: Brewing Styles
• Dry Hopping: Enhanced Hops Aroma

I started brewing with honey some 24 years ago, in one of my very first batches of beer.  To be fair, my knowledge level was low at that time, so I dumped the honey directly into the boil, then rapidly fermented and bottled it.  This caused significant problems, as boiling the honey effectively boiled off much of the flavor and aroma, and the honey was not fully fermented resulting in significant instability and gushing bottles.

Honey is a very complex ingredient.  It contains a range of sugars, many simple and some complex as well as a chicken soup of living organisms including yeast, enzymes, and bacteria.  It also has a very rich flavor profile with exotic, but fragile aromas.  Unfortunately, boiling honey effectively boils off the delicate aromas and also deactivates many of the enzymes needed to break down and ferment the honey.  Approximately 90-95% of the sugars in honey are fermentable.

This leaves a dilemma for the brewer, as you need to sterilize the honey to eliminate the bacteria without boiling off the aroma oils and destroying the enzymes.  The proper way to use honey with your beer is to pasteurize it without boiling it:

• If possible, mix the honey with water to dilute it to approximately the same gravity as the wort you are planning to add it to.
• Heat the honey to approximately 176 F (80 C) and hold it for 60-90 minutes.  Ideally you would like to keep the honey under a CO2 blanket if you have a CO2 tank, but if not at least cover the pot.
• After cooling the honey, add it directly to the beer while it is fermenting.  Ideally it should be added at high kraeusen (when fermentation is at its maximum activity). (Ref: Daniels)
• Allow additional time to ferment before bottling.  Honey takes a notoriously long time to fully ferment.  At a minimum I would allow 3-8 weeks more for full fermentation, though many meads are fermented for a year or more.

The variety of honey to use depends on your desired flavor profile.  Often the types used with mead are best, depending on the style of beer you are brewing and desired character.

The percentage of honey to use should be between approximately 2-10%.  Adding too much honey will not only increase the needed fermentation time, but also give the beer a decidedly mead-like character.    Personally I recommend somewhere between 5-10% to give the beer a notable honey flavor and aroma without being overbearing.

I hope you enjoyed this week’s article from the BeerSmith Home Brewing Blog.  Have a great brewing week and don’t hesitate to subscribe for regular deliver.

• Dry Hopping: Enhanced Hops Aroma
• Wheat Beer Recipes: Weizen and Weisse Styles
• Mashing for All Grain Beer Brewing
• Steam Beer and California Common Recipes: Beer Styles
• Beer Yeast, Fermentation, and Home Brewing

Today we are going to look at how to avoid the dreaded bottle bomb when homebrewing your own beer.  I recall my first bottle bomb vividly.  It was my third batch of beer — ever.  I was not home at the time, but when I arrived back in my apartment, I knew something was wrong.  You see, my third batch of beer happened to be a stout.

The bottle exploded in the kitchen and left dark stout covering the walls, counter, floor and cabinets.  It was only a 12 oz bottle, but it looked like someone had repainted the kitchen.  Glass was also scattered as far as the living room and a small piece had even embedded itself in the drywall.  I realized at that point that this homebrewing thing was a lot more dangerous than I had guessed.  Someone could have been hurt.

In the years since, I learned quite a bit more about brewing and bottling.  I have not had another beer bottle explode since then.  I would like to share a few of my tips with you now:

1. Use High Quality Ingredients

The quality of brewing ingredients in the 1980s was nowhere near the quality home brewers have access to today.  However, you still need to be careful when purchasing ingredients – particularly those that look like they have been on the shelf for a while.  First, always use fresh malts and malt extract.  Older liquid and dried malt extract in particular will ferment much more slowly than comparable all-grain wort.   Yeast also has a limited shelf life.  Liquid yeast is generally of higher quality than dried packets, but it must be stored under refrigeration and must be used in the recommended shelf life.  Liquid yeasts are typically dated – so pay attention to the date when you purchase and use the yeast.  Old, expired yeast will ferment slowly or possibly incompletely contributing to exploding bottles.

2. Allow the Beer to Ferment Completely

One of the chief causes of exploding homebrew bottles is beer that has not been fully fermented before bottling.  Many home brewers are anxious to drink their newest brew and rush it into the bottle too early.  The beer then completes its fermentation in the bottle, producing extra CO2 pressure that can cause bottles to fail.  Malt extract based beer will ferment more slowly than a comparable all grain beer, so malt extract brewers are at higher risk.  Finally, many extract brewers use plastic buckets with covers that seal poorly.  As a result, gas may leak out the edge of the bucket rather than through your airlock.  A beginner will interpret the lack of airlock activity as an indicator that fermentation is complete, never realizing that the CO2 from active fermentation is leaking from the cover.  I usually allow a minimum of two weeks for an average beer to ferment before bottling, and wait a longer period if brewing a high gravity beer.

3. Use Good Bottles, and Inspect Them

A poor quality bottle is a recipe for disaster.  Even under normal carbonation, a beer bottle at room temperature can reach 30+ psi.  Never use a twist off bottle – they are too thin and your caps will not properly seal.  Select the thickest bottles you can find, clean them thoroughly and inspect each of them by holding them up to a light source each time you use them.   Immediately toss any cracked, chipped or thin bottles.  Consider purchasing high quality reusable bottles from your homebrew store – these are generally better than disposable commercial bottles.  If you use them several times, the cost is quite reasonable.

4. Calculate and Weigh the Right Amount of Priming Sugar

Sugar density varies tremendously depending on who made the sugar – one cup of corn sugar from one manufacturer weigh dramatically more than another.   Weigh your priming sugar – don’t just measure it by volume.  You can calculate the exact weight of priming sugar needed using a spreadsheet, online calculator or BeerSmith.

5. Store your Beer in a Cool Dark Place

Light and heat are natural enemies of finished beer.  Light and heat break down critical flavor compounds, promote additional fermentation and increase the CO2 pressure in the bottle.  As you heat a bottle of beer, it also dramatically increases the pressure in the bottle itself.  Store your beer in a cool dark place to avoid bottle bombs and preserve its natural flavor.

Thanks for joining us on the BeerSmith Home Brewing Blog.  If you have additional suggestions for improving your bottling, or ideas for future articles please leave a comment.  As always, feel free to subscribe, share this article with a friend or bookmark it on your favorite social website.

• Bottling Beer: 10 Tips for Home Brewers
• How to Brew Beer: 5 Steps for Making Beer at Home – Part 1
• How to Brew Beer – 5 Steps for Making Beer at Home – Part 3
• How to Brew Beer – 5 Steps for Making Beer at Home – Part 2
• Ten Top Tips for Home Brewing Beer

The use of soured beer is an ancient technique used to add character to many beer styles.   One of my personal favorites, the Irish Stout, often includes a small addition of soured wort.  Sour beer dates back to the ancient times, as the discovery of beer likely occurred when someone left some wet grains out and they started fermenting.  It has also been widely used in Belgian beers, where in many cases entire batches are left to sour in open vats, producing many sour styles such as Lambic and Flanders.  Flanders brown is often made with blended sour and unsoured beer.  I won’t cover Lambics in great detail here, as the methods used for Lambics vary considerably, but also often include blending soured wort with unsoured beer.

Brewing with sour beer at home involves taking a portion of the wort from your mash (or for extract brewers, a portion from the boil) and setting it aside and either adding souring yeasts such as Lactobacillus or letting it sour naturally. Personally I recommend getting some Lactobacillus culture such as Wyeast Labs #4335 “Lactobacillus Delbrueckii” as natural yeasts and bacteria can often go awry.  For Lambics, Wyeast #3112 “Brettanomyces Bruxellensis” or Brewtek’s “Brettanomyces Lambicus” are often used with other yeasts as part of the main fermentation or part of the fermentation.  The spoiled wort is then pasteurized by heating it and added back into the original beer to give a slightly sour character to the beer. This will add character and a lactic sourness to the beer, which is desirable for many styles.

The Sour Mash Method

If you are brewing an all grain batch, a portion of the runnings from your mash tun should be collected and set aside in a separate container. For something like an Irish Stout, I typically would set aside 1/2 quarts of wort from the middle runnings of the mash and set it aside for a 5 gallon batch.  A good rule of thumb is that your spoiled wort should only make up about 3-4% of your total finished volume for stouts, and up to 25% of your volume for a Flanders Brown Ale, though I recommend starting with less and blending to taste.  If you use too much you will end up with excessively sour beer.

For extract brewers, you can draw a portion of the wort near the beginning of the boil, ideally after you add your extract but before adding the hops, as hops themselves can have an antibiotic effect.

Once you have collected your wort, simply set it aside in a small closed container and continue to brew the remainder of your batch in the normal way. For the sour portion I prefer to simply add a small amount of Lactobacillus bacteria strain to the wort, apply an airlock, and let it sour in a cool, dark location.

The soured wort will quickly get a sour smell, and likely a disgusting film over the top. After a few days it should be thoroughly infested and largely fermented. At this point, carefully siphon or skim and pour the liquid, attempting to leave as much of the scum and sediment behind as possible.

Place the soured wort in a pan and heat it to 170F and hold it there for at least 30 minutes. This will pasteurize the soured wort to kill off the bacteria and yeast without destroying the sour lactic acid flavor you want in your beer.

Rapidly cool the sour portion, being careful at this point to handle it with sanitized equipment. Siphon or very gently pour the soured wort into your already fermenting main batch, and continue fermenting, aging and bottling the beer as you normally would.

Done properly, the sour mash method will produce a slight, but not overly pronounced sour edge to your beer. In styles such as classic Irish Stout, the sourness helps to enhance the overall flavor mix of stout roast barley and English hops.  For Flanders, this provides the classic sour twang.  This technique can also be used to sour some more sophisticated Belgian styles, though brewing a complex beast like a Lambic is beyond the scope of this particular article.

I hope you enjoy adding a bit of sour twang to your next homebrew. Thanks again for joining us on the BeerSmith Home Brewing Blog. Consider subscribing for regular email delivery or drop a vote on our BrewPoll news site if you have enjoyed this article.

• Brewing an Irish Stout Beer Recipe
• Beer Yeast, Fermentation, and Home Brewing
• Mash pH – Hard Water Treatment for Brewing Beer
• Brewing Beer with Honey
• Troubleshooting Homebrewed Beer

I do apologize for writing less thank normal this summer.  In addition to the occasional summer break, I’ve been working hard on programming the next version of BeerSmith.  Rest assured that I will be back to writing more as the winter brewing season approaches and BeerSmith programming winds down.  I have several great articles outlined already for the new season.

Have a great summer – I will be back next week with another great beer brewing article!

– Brad

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