Thread: Gary Foster's Beers

I like the all grain aspect, you do have more control, I too belong to a brew club and no one looks down on me. A friend lets me brew with him, and when I can't do that, I brew extract. The reason I brew is because I'm a beer snob, hate commercial pissy american beer (bud, coors). So started brewing my own. And I drink my own. IPA's are my favorite, but I want to do a hefewiezen (spelling sucks )next.

Originally Posted by mgraepel

Gary, have you thought about entering the contest that Sam Adams is running?

Yeah this is the second or third time they've done a contest like that this year. I've considered it. Might send in my cream ale if I do decide to.

-- Gary F.

OK....I am totally fascinated by this subject....would either of you care to post how the process is done...?

Colleen

Well, it's actually pretty easy. There's two different ways, one is to start with malt extract and one is to start with grain. For extract, you basically heat up some water, steep some specialty grains in a big bag in the water (different grains give you different flavors and color) for a bit, like you're making tea. Then you pull the bag of grain out, add malt extract (either syrup or powder), top up the water and boil it for an hour. You add hops at different times in the process to give you different things (bittering, aroma and flavor) and then you cool it, put it in a fermenter, add yeast, put an airlock on it and wait.

After the yeast is done (generally about 10 days or so) you will have a bunch of yeast and sediment on the bottom and clear sweet beer on top (albeit flat). At that point you siphon the beer off the sediment into either a keg and force carbonate with CO2 (that's what I do) or into a bucket, mix in a small amount of sugar to kickstart the yeast and bottle it. If you are bottling it you add a little bit of sugar for the yeast to eat so they'll release CO2 and carbonate it in the bottle and it generally takes about 2 weeks.

For all grain, you start with malted grain. You mix it with a certain amount of water in a "mash tun" (I use a 10 gallon rubbermaid cooler). You bring it to a specific temperature depending on what you want the beer profile to be (hotter mashes give you a sweeter beer and less fermentability, cooler mashes give you a dryer beer). You let it "convert" (the starches are converted to sugars by various enzymes at various temperatures) and after an hour or so you drain the water (now called sweet wort) out into your kettle. You rinse the rest of the sugars out of the grain bed with more water and top up your kettle volume, then you boil it just like you would with an extract batch. After the hops are added and the wort is boiled it becomes "bitter wort". It's not beer until you add the yeast

In fact, extract is the exact same thing as you'd get out of your mash, with some of the water removed. The thing about extract though is you can't really control the mashs (pH and temperature, thickness, etc) so you basically get whatever the maker of the extract chose to make instead of controlling it yourself.

After that, there are tons of different little fiddly things you can do to influence the process and change the taste, profile, etc. You can dry hop, you can first wort hop, you can do step mashes or decoction mashes, you can use yeast blends (the yeast is one of the biggest factors in changing the taste of the beer). You can use what's called a "secondary" (which is actually more for clearing your beer and pretty much unnecessary unless you're making a lager instead of an ale) or you can do a straight primary only (which is what I now do for 90% of my ales). You can add fruit, spices, etc and fiddle to your heart's content with ingredients and process. You can use a hopback to brighten up the hops, you can carbonate it with CO2 and dispense it with nitrogen to get a really creamy head (like boddingtons or guinness), you can go nuts and do all sorts of crazy things.

You can ferment it at different temperatures to get different flavor profiles, you can lager it, you might need to do a D-rest, etc, but that's all advanced stuff and the basic process is "mash it, boil it, ferment it, bottle it" and that basic process makes 90% of the beer you will ever run into. The rest is just fiddling

90% of brewing good beer is not about all the little fiddly stuff. 90% of it is learning how to brew *clean* and keep everything sanitary, because bugs love wort and the same medium that is so good for yeast is also really good for bacteria so if you don't keep it scrupulously clean the bacteria will "infect" it and you can get some pretty nasty stuff.

-- Gary F.

If you are interesting in beer history and how to brew, I suggest buying a book called "The Joy of Home Brewing" Great book, gives a good history on how the american beer came to be what it is now (basically brewed so women would drink it) and lots of info about the brewing process. I still use it as a reference.

Brewed so women would drink it....

Hmmm....I don't think then, that women have very good taste! Uhhh no offense to any women...But honest I've never cared much for beer....

To me it is overly bitter and dry...BUT I have had a two Micro-Beers in my life...they weren't to bad. It was a Honey Lager made here in WV...very nice and smooth with a pleasant aftertaste. They are sold at Rafting Lodge...(different county)...Where does a person actually look for a good micro-beer ?


This whole conversation is making me realize....I need to broaden my Horizons beyond Budweiser....lol

Colleen

I meant to post a detailed (for me, anyway) review of the other beer Gary sent me (Junkyard Dog, I think). Unfortunately, I drank it, and don't remember all the likes and dislikes about it...that was about 3 weeks ago. I just remember it was very good, but a bit more astringent than the 70 Schilling. I'd drink hell out of the JD, but I liked the 70 a bit more. It was smoother to me, although, the JD did, in fact, have a bit more "kick"

Originally Posted by churley

Brewed so women would drink it....

Hmmm....I don't think then, that women have very good taste! Uhhh no offense to any women...But honest I've never cared much for beer....

To me it is overly bitter and dry...BUT I have had a two Micro-Beers in my life...they weren't to bad. It was a Honey Lager made here in WV...very nice and smooth with a pleasant aftertaste. They are sold at Rafting Lodge...(different county)...Where does a person actually look for a good micro-beer ?


This whole conversation is making me realize....I need to broaden my Horizons beyond Budweiser....lol

Colleen

There is a world of difference between Budweiser and real beer, Colleen. It's kinda like comparing the bottom of a cave, with the surface of the sun. Slightly different.

In all of my travels, I have found excellent beers available from a wide variety of cultures, and none of them taste like Bud. Thank God!!

I'm a particular fan of good ales, and really good stouts. I think that if you were to try some of them, you'd be amazed at how pleasant even very stout stouts are, when compared to Bud.

I wouldn't even use Bud to wash out the glasses that I drink my stouts from!

In a trade a while ago, Gary offered to include some beers. I wasn't confident they would get through customs so I said not to send some, bugger it sounds like very nice stuff indeed.
I'm particularly fond of beers found in Yorkshire, England. Old Peculiar is one that comes to mind, just, because after a few pints the brain cells seem to vanish.

Gary

Beer lesson 101....

Would you please explain the difference between Ale...Stout...Lager....

This ole Gal...is thinking about buying some beer

Colleen