Brewing an Extract with Grains Beer

This chapter builds on the basic brewing skills learned in chapter two “Brewing a No-Boil Extract Beer.” Here, you’ll learn how to use steeped grains, pellet hops and liquid yeast to modify a wort made from a malt extract base, opening up your horizons as a brewer. Brewing with specialty grains, your own choice of hops and liquid yeast takes a few additional pieces of equipment and some added work. However, using the techniques described here, you can modify an extract-based beer to brew virtually any style of beer you want. This is the way most homebrewers make their beer.

We’ll examine the recipe and procedure for brewing a West Coast pale ale or a porter. Pale ale is one of the most popular styles of ale for homebrewers. The best pale ales are refreshing beers in which the flavor of malt is balanced by the hop bitterness. West Coast pale ales have more hop bitterness and hop flavor than their East Coast (or British) counterparts. Full Sail Pale Ale and Red Seal Ale are two excellent examples of this style. Porters — such as Samuel Smith’s Taddy Porter, Sierra Nevada Porter or Anchor Porter — are dark beers with a taste of roasted malt.

In our recipes, we’ll add some sweetness and color with the use of specialty malts. In addition, we’ll bitter the beer by boiling pellet hops in our wort. And finally, we’ll use a liquid yeast strain for fermentation.

Specialty Grains

When brewing an extract-only beer, you must find a malt extract formulated to yield your desired style of beer. When brewing an extract beer with specialty grains, most homebrewers start with a base of unhopped light malt extract. From this starting point, they can add malt flavors, colors and aromas by adding one or more specialty grains. Likewise, you can add hop bitterness, flavor and aroma by boiling pellet hops.

Specialty grains are grains that add color and flavor to a beer. They also add a small amount of fermentable sugars. There are many different kinds of specialty grains and adding them singly or in combination yields a large range of possible flavors and colors. Specialty grains are steeped (soaked in hot water) to extract their color and flavor. Base grains — the grains that provide the bulk of the fermentable sugars in a beer — cannot simply be steeped; they must be mashed. More on that later. (In an extract beer, the base grains are replaced by malt extract.) Specialty grains are usually darker in color and are added in smaller quantities than base grains.

There are two basic types of specialty grains, those that have been prepared by stewing and those that have been produced by roasting. Stewing and roasting are two ways of adding heat to darken the grain. The process of heating malted grains in the malting process is called kilning. Stewed grains are heated such that the liquid inside them cannot escape. In contrast, roasted grains are heated so they are dried quickly.

The upshot is that in the center of a stewed grain most of the starch has been converted to sugar. The most common types of stewed grains are called crystal malts. Crystal malts lend the red or amber color to most pale ales. They also add sweetness with a caramel edge to it, which is why crystal malts are sometimes called caramel malts. These malts also add a small amount of fermentable sugar to your beer, boosting its strength slightly.

Different crystal malts are kilned to different degrees. The more kilned the malt is, the darker the color. The color of a crystal malt is usually expressed in degrees Lovibond (°L). Commonly available crystal malts vary from 10–120 °L. For our pale ale, any crystal malt in the 30–40 °L range will suffice. We’ll use crystal malt in both the pale ale and porter recipes.

Common roasted grains include chocolate malt, roasted barley and black patent malt. These malts give the brown or black colors in porters and stouts. They contribute a roasted flavor to the beer, ranging from the mild, “chocolatey” flavor of chocolate malt to the roasted, sometimes even burnt, flavors of roasted barley or black patent. In a roasted grain, the starch in the center of the grain has been mostly destroyed by the high heat, so few fermentable sugars are present. We’ll use chocolate malt and roasted barley in the porter recipe.

Using Specialty Grains

Specialty grains must be crushed before they are steeped. Most homebrew stores either sell crushed grains or have a grain mill and will crush the grains for you. To do it yourself, simply use a heavy rolling pin and a fairly light touch. You want to crack the grain and open the husk, not pulverize it.

Specialty grains can be steeped at a wide range of temperatures. However, to quickly extract the desired amount of color and flavor, most homebrewers steep their specialty grains in hot water around 140–170 °F (60–77 °C). If you steep the grains at higher temperatures — for example, if you boil them — you risk extracting too much tannin from the grain husks and ending up with an astringent beer.

Limiting the amount of water you steep your specialty grains in will lead to better extract beers. Many, perhaps most, homebrew recipes instruct brewers to steep their specialty grains in their brewpot as they are heating their 2–3 gallons (7.6–11 L) of brewing water. This works well at extracting a lot of color and flavor from the grains, but also extracts harsh tannins. If, however, you steep your specialty grains in a smaller amount of water, you will be able to produce a better tasting beer. Use 2–3 quarts (~2–3 L) of steeping water for every pound (0.45 kg) of specialty grain you steep. You can steep your grains in a smaller pot while heating your brewing water in your bigger brewpot.

To steep the specialty grains, place the crushed grains in a nylon or muslin grain bag. If the bag has a drawstring, close it. If not, tie off the end of the bag. Heat the water to about 10 °F (5 °C) above your planned steeping temperature, then turn off the heat. Place the grain bag in the water. (This should drop the temperature to your target.) Stir the water a few times while you steep, and stir the water one final time before you remove the grain bag. Stirring will cause water to flow through the bag and release colors and flavors from the grain.

After the grains have been steeped, pull them out and let the liquid from the bag drip into your steeping pot. Once the runoff slows, discard the grains. The grains will be hot, so be careful. It’s a good idea to take a small kitchen strainer and remove most of the “floaties” left in the water. Don’t worry if you can’t get them all; a few stray husk pieces won’t hurt your beer. The strainer should be clean, but don’t bother sanitizing it, as you will boil the wort later.

If you like, you can rinse your steeping grains with hot water (up to 170 °F (77 °C)). This will extract more color and flavor from the grains. However, as before, better color and flavor extraction may come at the price of extracting unwanted tannins. So, it’s best to either not rinse your specialty grains or to rinse with only a small amount of water — less than half the volume of steeping water. If you do rinse your grains, the easiest way to do so is to lift the grain bag out of the steeping pot with a large kitchen strainer. Lay the strainer across the top of the pot and pour your hot water over the grains.

Once you’re done steeping the grains, add the steeping water — your “grain tea” — to the water heating in your brewpot. Then heat the liquid in your brewpot to a boil.

Hop Varieties

Your local homebrew shop probably has a large variety of hops. To a beginning brewer, the variety can seem overwhelming. Hops come in three basic forms: whole hops, plug hops and pellet hops. Pellet hops are the most widely used form of hop among homebrewers (and commercial brewers for that matter). Pellet hops are made by compressing shredded hop cones into small, cylindrical pellets. We’ll use this form of hops in all of our recipes in this guide.

We’ll use Cascade hops in our West Coast pale ale. Cascade has a citrus/floral smell that is prominent in most West Coast pale ales, including Sierra Nevada (the quintessential West Coast pale ale). In our porter, we’ll use a pair of English hops — East Kent Goldings and Fuggles.

When you buy hops at your homebrew store, you will notice they have numbers printed on the bags. Hops are rated for their bittering strength and this is given in percent alpha acids. In most homebrew recipes, the amount of hops required is often given in AAU (alpha acid units) or HBU (home brew units). AAUs (or HBUs) are the alpha-acid rating of the hop times the weight of the hops in ounces. To calculate how many ounces of hops you need for a recipe, divide the value of AAU given in the recipe by the alpha-acid rating. For example, if the recipe calls for 12 AAU of hops and you choose hops with a 4% alpha acid rating, you need (12/4 =) 3 ounces of hops. You may have seen a beer’s bitterness described in terms of IBUs (International Bitterness Units). The amount of IBUs a beer has depends on how much hops were used, their alpha rating, how long they were boiled and many other factors.

Boiling Hops

Hops must be boiled to extract their bitterness. The bitterness of a beer is primarily determined by how many AAUs of hops are used and the length of time these hops are boiled. The longer hops are boiled, the more bitterness is extracted from them. Bittering hops are often boiled for around an hour. Some hops may be added later in the boil and these are often called flavor or aroma hops.

Another factor that influences how much bitterness gets extracted from hops is wort concentration. The more concentrated a wort is, the less bitterness gets extracted from the hops. Extract brewers can keep their wort concentration in a reasonable range a few different ways. One way is to boil your wort at, or near, “working strength” — start the boil at 4–6 gallons (15–23 L) for your 5-gallon (19 L) batch and top up as needed. Alternately, you can boil as much wort as your brewpot will allow, but add much of the malt extract late in the boil. Adding roughly half (or more) of the malt extract in the last 15 minutes or at the end of the boil will allow you to boil the hops at a reasonable wort concentration.

Conducting the Boil

Heat the water in your brewpot, including the “grain tea,” to a boil. Once the water starts boiling, turn off the heat and add the dried malt extract. Stir well to ensure the extract is completely dissolved. Turn the heat back on and bring the wort to a boil. Wort will foam a lot at the beginning of the boil, so always leave some room in your brewpot for this foam. A couple quick stirs with a clean spoon should calm the foaming down. If it doesn’t, lower the heat until the foam subsides. Add the first charge of hops (called the bittering hops) right after the wort comes to a boil. Throw the pellets directly into the wort. These hops will boil for an hour and add most of the bitterness to your beer.

Try to maintain a vigorous, rolling boil. If your wort is only simmering, cover the pot partially with a lid. If the wort is boiling fine, leave the cover off. Never cover the pot completely no matter how weak the boil is.

Add the remaining hops when the recipes direct them. If you are adding your liquid malt extract late, stir it into the wort with 15 minutes left in the boil. At the end of the boil, put a lid on the brew pot and begin cooling it in your sink. Once the wort is cool, use a racking cane to transfer the wort to your fermenter, leaving behind the solids at the bottom of your brewpot. Add cold water to your fermenter to make 5 gallons (19 L) of wort. Pitch your yeast and let it ferment.

Secondary Fermentation

After fermenting for a week, our procedure calls for a secondary fermentation. The term secondary fermentation is a bit of a misnomer as it is really just a settling stage. The fermented beer is racked off the layer of dead yeast from the primary fermentation. Yeast and other particles still in suspension are allowed to settle out. Removing the beer from the yeast ensures that it doesn’t pick up any off-flavors from these materials.

To conduct the “secondary fermentation,” clean and sterilize a glass or Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) carboy and a racking cane. Rack the beer from your primary fermenter (bucket) to your secondary fermenter (carboy). Splash the beer as little as possible to avoid oxidation. When racking, keep the outflow end of the cane beneath the surface of the beer in the receiving carboy. A benefit of a glass or plastic carboy is that you can see what’s going on with your beer.

Secondary fermentation takes about a week for an average-strength ale. After it is finished, bottle the beer as you did in the all-extract chapter. The only difference is that you will be bottling out of your secondary fermenter instead of your primary. Your beer should be a little clearer as a result of the secondary fermentation.

Brewing beer by boiling a malt extract wort is the way most homebrewer make their beer. Extract brewers can modify the color, flavor and bitterness of their extract wort by choosing different specialty grains and hops. In the partial mash chapter, we’ll learn how to get a portion of your fermentables from base grains. We’ll also present a slightly more advanced procedure for bottling as well as how to make a yeast starter. (Either of these two procedures can, and frequently are, used when making an extract beer with the methods used in this chapter.)

Boil Options

Extract brewers have a variety of wort-boiling methods to choose from, depending on their equipment and amount of time they want to spend brewing.

Concentrated Wort Boil

Most homebrewers add all of their malt extract to their brewpot and boil 2–3 gallons (7.6–11 L) of wort for 60 minutes. This concentrated wort is then diluted in the fermenter to 5 gallons (19 L) before pitching the yeast. Although this is a time-tested way of making homebrew, it has a few disadvantages. First, boiling a “thick” wort can lead to caramelization of the sugars in your beer-to-be, potentially making it darker than you want. Secondly, “thicker” worts limit the amount of hop bitterness that is extracted in the boil, potentially leading to beer that lacks bitterness (or requires the brewer to add more hops to reach the target bitterness).

Full Wort Boil

If you have a 7-gallon (26- L) brew pot, which will hold 6 gallons (23 L) of wort without boiling over, you should do a full wort boil. Boil a volume of wort such that you add no dilution water when you transfer the wort to your fermenter. For a one-hour boil, beginning with 5.75–6 gallons (22–23 L) of beer will yield 5 gallons (19 L) of wort after boiling and cooling. (The precise amount starting varies depending on how much water you evaporate during the boil.) A full wort boil solves the problems of wort caramelization and hop utilization, allowing extract brewers to get the same performance in these respects as all-grain brewers get. The only drawback is that you will need to get a wort chiller to cool your wort quickly enough.

Texas Two-Step

If you don’t have a large brewpot, but still want to do a full-wort boil, there is a way. If you split your brewing into two separate sessions and make half of your wort (2.5 gallons/9.5 L) each time. To do this, begin by making 2.5 gallons (9.5 L) of wort from half of your malt extract and hops. Boil it at working strength and pitch all of your yeast to this half-batch. The next day, brew the remaining wort (using the second half of your malt extract and hops), cool it and add it to the previous day’s wort. You now have 5 gallons (19 L) of wort made using a full-wort boil. (For more on this technique, see “The Texas Two Step” in the October 2003 issue of BYO.)

Extract Late

The biggest drawback of the Texas Two-Step is the extra time involved. If you’d like to get the major advantages of a full-wort boil, but without the extra time expenditure, try adding your extract late. In an extract late beer, you add 1⁄2 or less of your malt extract (dried or liquid) at the beginning of the boil. You then boil the 2–3 gallons (7.6–11 L) of wort as you normally would, making your hop additions at the appropriate time. Then, near the end of the boil, you stir in your remaining malt extract. (For best results, use liquid malt extract for late additions.) You can add the late extract with 15 minutes left in the boil or you can add it at knockout (when the boil is over and you turn off the heat) and let the wort sit for 15 minutes prior to cooling. To finish up, cool and dilute your wort to 5 gallons (19 L) as you normally would. (For more on this technique, see “Boil the Hops, Not the Wort” in the October 2002 issue of BYO.)