First all-grain batch

So much potential, just waiting...

There is a certain magic in starting with a bunch of malted grain and ending up with beer. Magic, and a fair amount of chemistry, attention to detail, and several hours of rather joyful work.

There is also a lot of pleasure. My first all-grain batch was something that I have been contemplating for quite some time; I even wrote a post about picking up the equipment to start all-grain brewing back in May. Real life has its way of running interference, so I only recently got around to brewing up this batch, an English brown ale. Figuring that my first extract batch was also an English brown and that it would be somehow fitting if my first all-grain batch was as well, I pulled a brown ale recipe out of Charlie Papazian's Complete Joy of Homebrewing; after brewing his Palace Special Bitter and loving it, I wanted to try another of his recipes. So, I found his Monkey's Paw Brown Ale recipe, got the ingredients, and now finally had a chance to brew it up.

Ah, but first, some more preparation was in order. I closely read - and re-read - and re-re-read - the incredibly helpful "First All-Grain Batch" chapter in John Palmer's How to Brew. Palmer also has a great chapter on batch sparging, and a recent issue of Zymurgy also had an article on this easy sparging method, so I read those, too. As any reader of this blog knows, every batch I've brewed has yielded not only beer but lessons - some, I can do without at this point. So, applying the brewer's version of the old adage "measure twice, cut once," I focused on preparation. It paid off.

Brewing on a gorgeous day.

On a beautiful day, sunny and clear, not too hot, I set up right in the doorway of my garage. Once the boil began, I'd be back in familiar territory, but first I had to mash the grain. I heated up water to the right temperature so that when it hit the much cooler mass of 10 pounds of grain, the net result would be right on to convert the starches to fermentable sugars. And it worked! It all worked! I'm still shocked and delighted to report that this stuff works! The pre-heated mash tun held the temperature, I stirred when it was time to stir, I measured temperatures, I added some hotter water as needed to maintain the mash at the conversion temp, and sweet heaven, it all worked! What went in as a bunch of grain and water yielded a goodly amount of deep brown, sweet wort, and a quick iodine test indicated that starch conversion was complete. In the meantime, I had heated more water to sparge with, and it all went smoothly. I ended up with about 6.5 gallons of wort ready to boil.

Spent grains: they gave all they had.

About three weeks later, it was time to crack open the first bottle. I always feel a lot of excitement about that moment, and the excitement was even greater because of this batch being a "first." Fresh, grainy, toasty-roasty, malty aroma with a whiff of floral hops. Deep brown color. Nice, creamy head. Malt forward taste mingling with earthy, floral hops. Notes of chocolate and coffee. Medium mouthfeel, which gave the brew a rich, creamy quality but avoided seeming heavy. I was ecstatic. So was the queen.

I am hooked all over again.

Growth by leaps and bounds

I've got brewing on my mind.

In fact, I find that's the case much of the time. I've caught the bug, bad, and it isn't letting go. I see that as a good thing. After all, the result is delicious homebrew.

Most recently, I brewed two batches about two weeks apart. The first was an organic Belgian-style golden strong ale based on the extract version of the recipe that won the organic brewing competition a year or two ago. After getting it into the fermenter, I had an urge to brew a good session beer for the summer and decided on a bitter, basically following the recipe for Palace Bitter in Charlie Papazian's Complete Joy of Homebrewing.

The Belgian has been bottled, and it hit the targets for original and final gravity. The sample was very promising, spicy and potent, and I'm eager to see how it matures. The bitter should be ready to bottle by about now. With every batch, I've gotten more and more relaxed about the process. In fact, I find it rather meditative, and I'm able to think more closely about each aspect of brewing. I've gotten into altering recipes to suit my tastes. I've also played around with beginning to create my own recipes. Beer is one of my favorite things; why not make it my favorite ways? I've been encouraged as well by the fact that some of the detail work has become more routine. I'm attentive to it, but I'm not sweating it as much and can really enjoy each aspect of the experience. My wife's been great about it, too. She experiences similar joys in creating fermented foods. Besides, she loves the beer, and that's best of all.

In addition to brewing more, I've started a hop garden, which now includes a few cascades and a couple of nuggets, courtesy of generous homebrewing friends. It's set against the south wall of the house, and I spent some time today running lines as high as I could get them given my ladder. Now all they've got to do is climb and produce. Thanks to our other cooking pursuits, we have a dehydrator, so any hops I don't use fresh can get dehydrated and stored. In addition to my little hop garden growing, and countless others like it, I'm excited that hop farming is catching on in Michigan! Hops grown right here in the great beer state.

Another kind of growth is on my mind as well. Until now, I've been doing malt extract brews with specialty grains. But homebrewing taps right into my creative side, and I have been dying to do all-grain. I want to experience brewing from the starting line.

After reading a wonderful post by Jon Abernathy on Hop Press about leaping into all-grain - actually, he referred to it as "stumbling," but I still see it as a leap, and a joyous one at that - I just had to do it. I couldn't not do it. So, I picked up some additional equipment from Adventures in Homebrewing over in Taylor. It's a hike from here, but man, those folks are fantastic. Going over there reminds me of going to an old-style, full-serve gas station. You know, the ones that were called "service stations" for a good reason? There was one pretty close to my house in L.A. when I was growing up, and the owner would even stop by our house to check out our car if we were having trouble with it. He and his crew seemed able to fix anything, and the folks at Adventures in Homebrewing are similar. They know homebrewing through and through. Patient and enthusiastic, they'll help with every bit of the shopping and set you up right. Well, now I'm all set up, and I bought the ingredients for a brown ale. My first extract/specialty grain batch was a brown ale, and it feels right that it should be my first all-grain batch as well.

As I've delved deeper into brewing, I've thought increasingly about what goes into the amazing commercial beers I enjoy and the folks that make them. When I'm able to do so time-wise, I'd like to write a series - probably cross-posted on my Examiner.com column - of in-depth features on each of our local breweries. We have some great ones, and I'd like to highlight the folks that make them great and the impact they have on our community.