Ask the BrewmasterBefore he opened the San Francisco Brewing Company, Allan Paul was an accomplished homebrewer. Now you can take advantage of his years of home and professional brewing experience with our newest feature Ask the Brewmaster. Each week, Allan will address your brewing or homebrewing questions right here on Ask the Brewmaster. We'll publish your questions and his answers and hopefully create an interesting, enlightening, and fun forum for beer fans everywhere. Send in your question using the handy form below, or send e-mail to ask@sfbrewing.com. Remember put your e-mail address down in the form, CGoldone@aol.com asks:I recently had a batch of tripple develop some sort of growth on top of the beer after about two days of fermenting. It is a white, cottage cheese like mass that overflowed my 7 1/2 Gal. primary. The smell was pretty neutral. I dumped it. I have made two prior batches that turned out great. All three batches used 14 Lbs pilsner malt and the first two used 2 lbs corn sugar and were fermented with "Brew Tek" Belgian ale yeast stated from a slant. In the third batch I used 1 1/4 lbs rock candy and 1/2 cup corn sugar and fermented with "Yeast Culture Kit Co."Belgian ale yeast started from slant. I am assuming that my problem is stray bacteria? Allan Responds:It does seem quite unusual for a substantial, visible mass of contaminant to develop within only 2 or 3 days of pitching. My guess is that your pitching yeast had a very strong contamination. The source could have been the yeast or a problem in starting the culture. From your description of the white, cottage cheese character of the intruder, I would guess that the intruder was a wild yeast. Perhaps a call to yeast culture kit company about the problem would be useful. I recommend that you return to the brew tek culture.
neil@datacube.com asks:How much beer, in cases, does a keg, half keg, and 1/4 keg hold? Allan Responds:
US beer keg = 15.5 gallons = 128 oz/gal x 15.5 = 1984 oz
Also, Wouldn't the metric system be much easier? mwsmatt@aol.com asks:I have been homebrewing for a little over four years, it started while being stationed in europe in the marine corps. recently me and a buddy were contemplating a return to our beloved south and venture into the brewpub world.I am concerned with the prospect of making a jump to the larger systems and techniques. Do you have any recommendations? Is the beer taxed based on volume produced, amount sold or both? do you recommend any companys to purchase brewing systems from? Allan Responds:The brew pub business offers a lot of rewards. I wish you a lot of luck. I recommend that you locate a consultant familiar with your proposed scale of operations to help you. brewing quality beer requires expensive equipment and rigorous process control. consultants and brewery equipment can be located from ads in Brewing Techniques magazine, American Brewer magazine, New Brewer magazine. Univ. of California at Davis and Siebel Institute offer courses for professional brewing and offer placement services for their alumni. In the usa, beer is taxed at the point of removal from the brewery. The tax is calculated on the volume of beer removed from the brewery premises. Check out our links to Allan's references. - David
estebe@hooked.net asks:When brewing into a cornelius keg, should sugar be added for carbonation or does the CO2 do a sufficient job? Allan Responds:I think corny tanks are great. Washing bottles is just not my cup of tea. Beer in a corny tank can be primed with sugar or dried malt extract to produce carbon dioxide for beer conditioning. simply use the same amount that you used when you were bottling the beer. Artificial carbonation can also be achieved using top pressurization for a period of time. The rate of carbon dioxide infusion into the beer takes days at low pressures. Some people speed up the carbonation by injecting the co2 or by using high pressures in the headspace. A simple approach is to hook up your co2 at about 15 psi (assuming the beer is cool or cold) and leave the co2 on for the final week of aging.
pmercier@videotron.co.uk asks:I read somewhere about "Krausen-brewed". What does this refer to? Is it like dry-hopping? Do you make or do you know any good dark lagers? Allan Responds:Krausening beer, as I generally understand the term as used here in the USA, refers to a method of adding carbonation to beer. The process of brewing beer may be divided into two stages: brewing and fermentation. The brewing process produces a sugary liquid. In the fermentation process, the yeast consumes the sugars and produces beer, more yeast, and carbon dioxide. In order to add carbon dioxide to a batch of flat beer, the brewer can krausen the beer. Krausening entails adding a small portion of the sugary liquid which has very active yeast. The small quantity of very active yeast add carbon dioxide to the beer. This gives the beer natural carbonation. Krausening is a traditional method used in a small percentage of modern beer. Most breweries achieve carbonation using other methods such as bunging, adding pure carbon dioxide, and adding carbonated water. Dry hopping is a unrelated process. Dry hopping describes the general action of adding hops to the beer during or after fermentation. Dry hopping creates a definite hop aroma and other hoppy flavor characteristics. As far as good, dark lagers go, The San Francisco Brewing Company makes some great dark lagers for special brews. Look for Grace Darling Bock or our Oktoberfest Lager, for example. Pleanty of wonderful dark lagers may be found in the USA. In the UK you may have trouble finding dark lager beer. Look for beer labeled Dunkles, Bock and Dopplebock.
Greg asks:Can you e-mail me some water analysis for different beer styles? Allan Responds:If you are making beer at home I recommend that you purchase one of the extensive homebrew books, such as Charlie Papazian's Joy of Homebrewing and Brewing Lager Beer by Noonan. The books will have a lot of information on water. In general, I think that any water that is good for drinking will make excellent beer. Extreme hardness seems to be the biggest problem for brewers. I have heard of brewers diluting or preboiling very hard water. Classic India Pale Ale styles are usually associated with the hard water of Burton on Trent while a classic Pils is usually associated with the soft water of Pilsen.
An Unknown Person asks:I am tring to homebrew a steam beer. I used CA yeast, pitched at 82 degrees. The temperature of my fermentation room is 68 degrees. Will that temperature work for that style? Also, for secondary fermentation, can the beer be racked to secondary fermenter after, say, 6 days even though their is still active fermentation at 5-10 second intervals? Allan Responds:Steam beer uses a lager yeast which is adapted to warmer temperatures. A fermentation in the 68 to 74 degree range should be fine for a steam beer. However, if you pitched the yeast into the hopped wort at 82 degrees, I would expect the fermentation to blast off while the temperature is still in the or near the 80s. This will produce a overly rapid fermentation and perhaps a premature finish to the fermentation as the yeast tires out from the strain of a high metabolic rate caused by the warm temperature. Like running in the hot sun and getting sunstroke. I recommend that you pitch the yeast into wort that is at or near the target fermentation temperature. Dried yeast rehydrates best at a very warm temperature. A small quantity of boiled water or wort at about 100 degrees will rehydrate dried yeast. Once activated, the yeast can then be added to the wort. In regards to racking your beer, the main purpose of racking is to remove the yeast and cold trub from the green beer. You can rack anytime after fermentation is nearly complete and a layer of yeast and trub has settled. Generally speaking, the sooner you rack the better. As for the slow fermentation of some homebrews, I have never heard a good explanation for those fermentations that never seem to end. The only logical explanation is that a foreign organism is responsible for generating more fermentable sugar or is itself fermenting. Possibly, a shortage of oxygen or some other limiting factor creates a condition allowing the long, slow fermentation. For an ale, I recommend that you just go ahead and bottle after 3 weeks.
Bruce asks:I just started home brewing and am confused about what length of time is required for carbonation and "conditioning". I brewed a simple kit ale and let it condition after bottling for 6 days at about 72 degrees. I than chilled it for another 4 days. Although it seems somewhat carbonated, my beer doesn't really develop a head. Is this normal for a naturally carbonated home brew? Allan Responds:Glad to hear that you are learning to make real beer! For your homebrew I would recommend two weeks at your 72 degree temp before chilling. This is assuming that you are making an ale. For a lager, however, chilling is ok if the yeast originally fermented cold and is still relatively fresh. You might take several bottles out of the fridge to see if the carbonation improves. I recall using about 3/4 to 1 cup of corn sugar or dried malt extract for bottling.
mha1@pge.com asks:I like dry stout, not sweet stout. Is there a term for dry, non-sweet stouts that brewers use to label dry stout? Allan Responds:Stout, like most beer styles, suffers from an incomplete history. It appears as if a major part of beer history is conjecture, as may well be the history of anything else in the world. Seeings how some of the earliest writing known is a beer recipe, I would think the quality of the history of beer to be equally as well documented as other aspects of civilization. You already are using the most descriptive term for your preference in stout beer: dry. The other term brewers might use to collectively describe dry stout is Irish stout or Guinness-like stout. You might also ask for the most hoppy stout. Dry refers to a low quantity of residual sugar in the beer. Dry is also used by some to refer to the bitter finish of highly hopped beers. Guinness and other Irish stouts have a low residual sugar and a strong hoppy finish. Sweet stout traditionally refered to a stout that has been sweetened. Sugar or milk sugar is sometimes added to stout to produce a sweet character. Artificially sweetened stout is a rarity, at best, in the US and rare in its native state, England. At the current time, it seems as though sweet stout pretty much applies to stouts that have a residual sugar from the malt. The bitterness of the roasted black malt or barley and the hop alpha acid, combined with the the sweetness of the malt sugars, creates a complex character. When you add this complexity to the variation of people's sensitivity to sweet and bitter, it's no wonder that you have a difficult time finding the dry stout that you want. If you want a stronger black malt character, try asking for an Imperial Russian Stout. These are very strong and dark beers. dittmer.4@osu.edu asks:What's the difference between an ale, a lager, and a porter? Allan Responds:All beers are either ale beers or lager beers. There are several hybrids or exceptions, but basically consider these two families of beer to contain all the major beer styles. The difference lies in the type of yeast used. Ales use "top fermenting" yeast (saccaromyces cervisiae) which ferments warmer and faster and rises to the top during fermentation, while lagers use a "bottom fermenting" yeast (either saccaromyces uvarium or carlsbergensis) that is slower, needs a colder atmosphere and tends to sink to the bottom during fermantaton. Before the advent of refrigeration, essentially all beers were ale beers. When refrigeration became widely available, the cold-loving lager yeast became popular. Current research has muddied the clear distinction between ales and lagers. nevertheless, the lager vs. ale yeast designation is useful. Within the ale family of beers are many styles such as: mild ales, bitters, brown ales, stouts, and porters. Porter is a dark ale that is rich and full flavored. I have heard some experts say that a porter should be dry, others think it should be sweet. Some years ago the style nearly died out. In general, most agree that a porter has less dark malt character and less alcohol than a stout. brookr@sfsu.edu asks:Do you dry hop? If so, how does it add to the beer? Is there a big difference? Allan Responds:We do dry hop some of our beers. Dry hopping is a process of adding hops after the wort is run into a fermentation tank. Hops can be added to the fermenter, to an aging tank after fementation, or to a keg. Hop flowers or pellets, added to the green or conditioned beer, release definite hop flavors in to the beer. Depending on the type or amount used, these flavors can be quite strong or quite subtle. The most notable dry hop flavor component is the aroma. In kettle hops, where most hops are added, much of the volatile hop aroma compounds are boiled off and typically, aromatic hops are added in last part of the boil to regain some of the lost hop aromas. In dry hopped beer, even more of the volatile compounds are retained because the wort is not being boiled and the enclosure of the beer tank prevents their escape. As a result, the beer gains a definite floral hop character that can be very strong, as in our own ShanghaI.P.A.™. But be careful, dry hopping can also contribute a strong waxy, grassy character that can be interesting, but also overdone. rkienle@interaccess.com asks:What advice would you give homebrewer, not unlike yourself, interested in opening a microbrewry or brewpub? Allan Responds:If you want to start a brew pub, I think you need experience with both brewing and bar and restaurant operations.Since few people have both these skills, I suggest that you team up with someone who has experience in these areas. In regard to your business planning, planning is something to take seriously and to continue after business start up. I remember standing outside my desired location and counting pedestrian traffic. Think through all phases of the project and get help from any sources possible. schmibt@okstate.edu asks:What kind of yeast is used in lambics? Allan Responds:Commercial breweries use either ale or lager yeast from the Genus Saccharomyces. Some breweries have developed their own unique culture of ale or lager yeast that may include more than one pure strain and may even include other species specially adapted to the brewing process. Belgian Lambic beers, and the other beer styles based on the lambic beer, are the exception. The Belgian Lambic brewers use wild yeasts present in their environment. Some of these yeasts are from the Genus Brettanomyces. Unlike more modern fermentations, many different organisms will contribute to the Lambic fermentation. As a result, Lambic beers exhibit unique and complex flavors not found in other commercial beers. phoppe@erols.com asks:Why is your beer so opaque? I homebrew and focus on clarity (doesn't affect the taste really, but damn it looks good in a glass), and was wondering whether you worry about it at all. Is it important? Allan responds:Our beer is unfiltered and may frequently be cloudy. The amount of yeast in suspension (the reason it's cloudy) will vary in relation to many factors such as the yeast strain, settling time, and brewing process. Unlike a homebrewer, we can't afford to let a beer settle for 2 to 3 months to produce a bright beer. We serve the beer unfiltered and fresh from the aging tanks after 3 to 6 weeks of aging. I feel it is more important to serve a beer with the full flavor spectrum that comes from an unfiltered beer, than to serve a clear beer that has been stripped of certain qualities in the filtering process. I am still on the lookout for the perfect yeast that will produce a great beer and drop clear as a bell. Let me know if you find one. San Francisco Brewing |Beers |Method |History |Stuff |Food |Events |Ask |Links Last Update: March 01, 1999 © SFBC 1996 Comments to brewmaster@sfbrewing.com |