Brewery

Kitchen

The kitchen is an excellent location for a brewery since it contains a stove. It is a standard stove, so it is not possible to heat large kettles, and therefore limits the volume of a batch of beer I can brew. The advantage of a small batch is that you can easily handle the kettle.

Yeast

The day before I start brewing, I make a yeast starter from dried yeast, some sugar and water.

Grain

As an all-grain brewer I have to crush the grain. This is done with a special-purpose mill that grounds the kernel into fine grains, without grinding it to flour, while keeping the husk as in-tact as possible. The mill is adjustable in order to get the best results.

The milling is done in the garage since I store the brewing equipment and supplies there, and it has a table to mount the mill on (counter may not be too thick for the mill to fit).

Mashing

The grain is put in hot water to start the mashing. I use a large kettle for the mashing process. The kettle is brought on the right temperatures on the stove and kept on these temperatures with a self made mash tun built up from plywood and plates of polystyrene foam for isolation.

Sparging

After the mashing is finished the wort (water containing the sugar as result from the mashing) is filtered out of the grains. Hot water is used to rinse the sugars out of the grains as much as possible, where the grains themselves act as a filter bed.

Boiling

The wort is boiled in the same kettle as used for the mashing.

Hop

The hops are added to the wort (in several stages) and the boiling is continued for a while to extract all kinds of stuff from the hops.

Chilling

The wort is cooled down and water is added to get to the right volume. The extra water could have been boiled together with the wort, but the handling is easier this way.

Fermentation

When the wort is cooled down enough the yeast starter is added.

Primary fermentation is done in the kettle again which is placed in the mash tun to keep fluctuations in temperature under control.

When the thick layer of foam dissapears after a few days, the batch is transfered to a carboy with the use of a siphon, for the secondary fermentation.

Bottle

When the fermentation has stopped, usually after a few weeks, the beer is put in bottles and capped.

Ageing

After bottling, the beer is stored for at least several months, preferably longer, and of course I taste it every now and then to follow the ageing process.