Stan Hieronymus

A wit beer recipe for Learn to Homebrew Day

Dukes of Ale, Albuquerque“Learn to Homebrew Day” began as “Teach a Friend to Homebrew Day” in 1999. One year shortly after that the Dukes of Ale of Albuquerque, the homebrew club I was a member of, hosted an event at a local brewery that most accurately could have been called “Here Are Some Ways to Make Beer at Home.”

Several club members set up their brewing systems in the parking lot and we invited – by sending out a press release that got published or read on air – people interested in learning about homebrewing to hang out. I’m not sure how much teaching or learning about the nuts and bolts of brewing went on, but we probably managed some demystifying.

I mention this because yesterday I posted a recipe from “Brew Like a Monk” for Learn to Homebrew Day, and today I have one from “Brewing With Wheat.” Were a person to decide to start homebrewing, particularly without some instruction, these are not starter recipes. The ones Friday and Saturday also won’t be.

It is good to review the basics in a book such as Charlie Papazian’s “The Complete Joy of Homebrewing” or John Palmer’s “How to Brew” and to have one of those books on hand while brewing. For those who want to begin on a smaller scale (less equipment, less time), I suggest “Speed Brewing: Techniques and Recipes for Fast-Fermenting Beers, Ciders, Meads, and More.”

I’m not sure it is possible to count the number of witbiers that Jean-Francois Gravel of Dieu du Ciel! In Montreal has created. This is a recipe he generously provided for “Brewing With Wheat.”

“To me, wheat has a very delicate, bready flavor with some acidity or refreshing tartness. I think the barley has more pronounced grain flavor and a sweeter perception,” he said. “If you eat raw wheat and malted grain, you will see the difference of texture right away, because the malted wheat is more crumbly and easy to crush. But the flavor difference between unmalted and malted wheat is very subtle. The malted wheat will have a bit more . . . malted flavor.”

When Gravel talked about “coriander punch” he was describing impact, not the “coriander soup” that can make white beer unpleasant. However, he admitted to his affection for the spice. “I have to say that I love coriander seeds, so I use a lot. I followed the guidelines from brewing books for my first versions and increased it slowly until I had the coriander punch I like.”

Original Gravity: 1.054 (13.5 °P)
Final Gravity: 1.013 (3.3 °P)
Alcohol by Volume: 5.5%
IBU: 14

Grain Bill:
Pale two-row 50%
Malted wheat 20%
Pregelatinized (torrified or flaked) wheat 30%
Rice hulls as needed

Mashing:
Mash at a ratio of 3.1 L/kg of grist (0.4 gallons per pound)
Mash in at 124°F (51°C) for 15 minutes
Saccharification at 145°F (63°C) for 30 minutes
Saccharification at 154°F (68°C) for 30 minutes
Mash out at 169 to 172°F (76 to 78°C)

For single step hold at 145°F (63°C) for 45 to 60 minutes. Sparge with very hot water, 176 to 180°F (80-82°C) to increase the temperature of the mash up to 158 to 169°F (70 to 76°C). Then run the sparge with 169 to 172°F (76 to 78°C) water until the end

Hops: Mt. Hood, 60 minutes (14 IBU)
Spices: Fresh ground coriander 0.75g to 1.25g/L
Orange peel 0.5 g/L

Boil: 60 minutes
Yeast: White Labs WLP400 or WLP410 or Wyeast 3943 or 3944
Fermentation: 5 to 6 days at 73°F (23°C). Drop temperature to 50°F (10°C) for 24 hours, then 32°F (0°C). Lager 10 to 15 days.
Bottling: Refermentation in the bottle

A dubbel recipe for Learn to Homebrew Day

Learn to Homebrew Day is next Saturday (Nov. 4). The nationwide celebration aims to “demystify the art of homebrewing and provide valuable resources.” The American Homebrewers Association has all the details as well as two SMaSH beer recipes.

In that spirit, I’ll post recipes here the next four days, one from each of the books I wrote for Brewers Publications. The first comes from the first of those four, Brew Like a Monk.

Lost Abbey co-founder Tomme Arthur, who was at Pizza Port Solano Beach when BLAM was released, contributed this recipe for a Belgian-style dubbel.

“The depth of a great abbey beer lies in a malt sweetness, combined with an alcoholic warmth and yeast finish,” he said at the time. “All of these make a rounded product that can be consumed in greater quantities. The key to a great beer, no matter the style, is the role yeast plays in development of flavors — in lager beer, smooth crisp flavors; in Belgian styles, a wider palate of flavors but homogenized so no one completely dominates the beer.”

The malt bill leans in to that. “(It) is very complex and has specific requirements and components,” he said. When I think of these beers, I think of rich, toasted caramel with a fruity essence, and rocky head. These beers are magical in their complexity. My personal preference is to brew this type of beer without the use of chcolate (malt), as I find it more often than not is used at too high a level. Most dubbels are rich in both aroma and flavor . . . This complex grain bill with many aromatic malts ensures a killer aroma and satisfying beer.”

Original Gravity: 1.067 (16.4 °P)
Final Gravity: 1.014 (3.6 °P)
Alcohol by Volume: 6.9%
IBU: 15

Grist Bill:
Belgian Pilsener malt 58.8%
Wheat malt 8.4%
Belgian aromatic malt 6.7%
Belgian or German Munich malt 4.2%
CaraMunich 3.4%
Gambrinus Honey malt (substitute-CaraVienna) 3.4%
Belgian Special B 3.4%
Belgian Biscuit 3.4%
Dark candi sugar/syrup 8.4%
Raisins (end of boil), comparable to 4 ounces for a 5-gallon batch (113 grams for 19 liters)

Hops:
Styrian Goldings, 90 minutes (11 IBU)
Liberty, 60 minutes (4 IBU)

Mash: 152°F (67°C)
Boil: 90 minutes
Yeast: White Labs WLP500
Fermentation: Start at 64°F (18°C) and let it free rise, 5-7 days
Secondary: Cold condition for 2 weeks

Because Monday beer links always include overthinking

Patrons at a Seattle pub

When you consider it, business stories focused on the fermented beverage made with malted grain and hops are almost always about The Future of Beer. That is capitalism in progress. In that sense, they are about pleasure; what may be available to drink, what we want to drink, how much it will cost us. There seem to have been an above average amount of such stories last week, but before listing them, a few just to read for pleasure itself.

Overthinking It: PB&J Mixtape
Actually, PB&J Mixtape isn’t a beer at all. It is “totally gluten-free (on a seltzer base) and made with real roasted peanuts.” Nonetheless, Jacob Berg writes, “The aroma transported me, Anton Ego-style, to a specific place and time. Boom, I’m a latchkey kid again, getting home and opening the crinkly plastic wrap on an after-school snack.” Definitely some overthinking going on here, including about Untappd ratings.

How a Chicago Brewery’s Staff Builds Authentic Connections with Latinx Communities
“Creating partnerships with Latino-owned businesses and having them come to Marz and be here has helped a lot. When I first started here, it was definitely a way more white-centric customer base, but I have seen a super huge increase in more Latinos coming here.” Marz is located in Chicago’s McKinley Park neighborhood, which is roughly 55% Latino.

The Shirker’s Rest is “the silver bullet to the heart of” exclusion
Consider this a bit of foreshadowing to discussions about The Future of Beer, particularly the investigation (links in business section) into what the next generation is drinking. “In London you don’t get multi-generational spaces very often—apart from a Wetherspoons on a Friday night. When you get the mix right of the young, the old, the poor, the rich, then magical things are going to happen.” Related, a Q&A with David Jesudason, who wrote this article.

The Wonderful World of Women Brewers
People not males spotlighted at Shondaland. Which is great, although if you’ve been paying attention these are the “usual suspects.” There are a lot more women brewing beer who also deserve to be written about. Anyway, these names are likely new to most readers at Shondaland, and perhaps you, so this is a good thing. In it, Celeste Beatty speak a sad truth:

“There has been little change at all in terms of any significant increase in Black and brown home brewers, brands, and commercial operations. There is certainly a lot of discussion about diversity and plenty of culture incorporated in branding, but a lot of work [is] yet to be done.”

The business pages
Start with the Big Picture and that Despite ‘Sober’ Reputation, Gen Z’s Eclectic Tastes Are New Force Within Alcohol. Move on to Young Drinkers Won’t Settle for Beverages of the Past, and that this is not your father’s beer . . . or maybe any beer.

Meet people like Amanda Thomas, a 23-year-old junior copywriter in Seattle, who agrees that a person’s alcoholic beverage of choice signals something about them. “In general I feel like people my age are drinking for a personality. There’s a beer girl personality that’s pretty fun and I love meeting beer girls. But there’s also seltzer girls,” she says. “I’m a beer girl. It’s fun, it’s grungy.”

Boomers and maybe even members of younger generations may not think she has earned to the right to be taken seriously. I disagree.

In Seattle. Pike Brewing is ending their decades long in the First & Union Building attached to the Pike Place Public Market hall. The 34-year-old craft beer pioneer, Pike Brewing, moving to a state-of-the-art facility located in the SoDo neighborhood in January 2024 for beer production. The Pike Pub and Pike Fish Bar will continue to operate in their current locations. The photo at the top looks down on a bar at the pub.

Across the Atlantic. “American Craft Beer Sales — and Influence — Fizzle Out.” I’m not sure the story totally supports an assertion that beers from America aren’t influencing change. But there is no doubt “their economic power has rarely matched their cultural cachet.”

In Vietnam. “Brewers get creative as economy loses fizz.” Reading this story I learned what “Khong say, khong ve” means.

In Texas. “They’ve been dropping like flies since last summer.”

Monday beer links: Hops, pumpkins, raw beer & more

Morning in the Halltertau region of Germany. Hops and corn that will soon be harvested
Morning on a farm in Germany’s Hallertau region. They grow hops here, but also corn.

The most widely read beer related story last week was surely the one about a study published in the journal Nature detailing the impact of climate change on hops grown in Europe. No surprise, things are not looking great going forward. It seems as if every large publication in the country had a take on it. Jeff Alworth at Beervana summarized the study nicely.

I am all for anything that draws attention to what global warming is doing to the planet, although, quite honestly, there are more and larger disasters looming than the demise of certain hop varieties. Even the ones I love. But I do wish the authors had acknowledged there are more agronomically vigorous cultivars available. And that there are new ones on the way. Now is the time for brewers to consider using them. More of my thoughts in the most recent Hop Queries. The newsletter is archived here. You may subscribe here. It is free.

Speaking of hops
As well as writing about why wet-hopped IPAs went dry, Doug Veliky offers suggestions about how brewers outside the Northwest (where unkilned, or “wet,” hop beers continue to thrive) may make them more relevant.

He writes they can been good relationship builders. In fact, growers and brewers in several states have figured that out. In September, Billy Goat Hop Farm in Colorado hosted the second Southwest Freshfest. This past weekend, 14 breweries poured beers in Cincinnati that were made with fresh hops from six Ohio farms.

Pumpkins for pleasure
Sugar, Spice and All Things Nice. “Regrettably, it’s not uncommon for pumpkin beers (or really, pumpkin anything) to be mocked and feminised, written off as gross, girly, or both. And of course for a lot of people, it’s neither of those things—it’s just not to their taste. I have found, though, that there’s one consistent exception: ‘Not (Southern Tier) Pumking, though. Pumking is great.’”

The best of St. Louis. Noteworthy because Schlafly’s Pumpkin Ale is, I am told, one of the best in the country. And 2nd Shift Brewing, which when we lived in St. Louis had pledged never to make a pumpkin beer, now brews one called When Pumpkins Fly.

You might also enjoy
Raw beer is having a moment. In New Zealand. “It was the best brew day ever. It was incredible. Hard work, but I loved it.”

19th century Bavarian beer halls in Berlin. “Some contemporary publications commented on this as a ‘Bier-Kulturkampf’ (beer culture war) between the classic Berlin beer culture of top-fermented white and brown beer and the newfangled Bavarian beers that made an impact on Berlin architecture.”

The allure of Guinness. According to the World Travel Awards, a gala that has annually celebrated the best of travel, tourism and hospitality since 1993, The Guinness Storehouse in Dublin is the leading tourist attraction in Europe. Other nominees included Buckingham Palace in London, Sagrada Familia in Barcelona and the Acropolis of Athens.

The beer can as a canvas. “Is the chicken being hypnotized or is the chicken doing the hypnotizing? That’s the question.”

Your taste buds at 30,000 feet. Alaskan Airlines had created a blend intended to prove airlines coffee does not need to taste bad. “Taste buds react differently at high altitudes, and this blend was crafted with this in mind. Specifically, in an arid and pressurized environment, our palate’s ability to perceive nuance is diminished.” What might that mean for beer?

TikTok at its best. Jon May, a 25-year-old from Britain, plans to drink 10 pints of beer a day for 200 consecutive days. “On the one hand, you’re essentially killing your liver, and on the other, you’re doing something mildly impressive.”

Brewing with rice, the A-B way

Budweiser beer truck

(A quick warning: This post quotes a 19th century newspaper article that includes racist language.)

Here is a truck that last week was parked at the entrance of the King Biscuit Blues Festival in Helena, Arkansas.

Anecdotally, it wasn’t necessarily helping Budweiser sales. When I asked a woman at one of the beverage stands if more customers were buying Budweiser or one of the beers from Lost Forty Brewing in Little Rock 120 miles away, she quickly answered, “Lost Forty, the (Rockhound) IPA. I don’t think we sold a six-pack of Bud all day.”

Nonetheless, I give Anheuser-Busch credit for putting “rice” in big letters on the side of trucks that deliver beer. Some things about Budweiser may have changed since the 19th century, but rice is not one of them.

Founder Adolphus Busch, who ultimately had made the decision to brew Budweiser with rice, spoke often and bluntly about his distaste for beers made with corn. “Our main argument must be the quality of our product, that we do not use any corn,” he said in 1895. “While nearly every other beer brewed in this country, with hardly one exception, is made of cheaper material, viz: corn; that such a beer is not as wholesome or digestible as pure barley malt beer, the small addition of rice only improving it, and that the use of corn makes a very inferior article. The difference in the cost of manufacture between a barley malt and rice beer and corn beer is one dollar per barrel in favor of the latter, as a matter of course.”

Busch was not alone. On January 30, 1881, a full-page article about beer in the Chicago Daily Tribune stated, “Corn beer is not a drink for Americans or Germans. It is good enough for the Spaniards, Greasers, Indians, and the mongrel breeds of South America.” Instead the author lauded the exceptional crisp taste that resulted with rice, and added, “for years the ‘blonde,’ or light colored beers have been fashionable and grown into public favor in America.”

In 2015, when I was researching Brewing Local, A-B was the largest buyer of rice in the United States, and using about about 8 to 9 percent of the total crop annually. I was told that in some years, depending on both the barley and rice crops, that rice ended up costing A-B more.

On any given day, their St. Louis brewery took delivery on about two million pounds of grain—malt, corn grits, and rice arriving in railcars that held about 200,000 pounds, depending on their cargo.

The process was repeated daily in 56 breweries around the world that were brewing Budweiser in December of 2015.

First thing after arrival, a worker would take a composite sample out of each compartment in a rail car. “If there is a taste issue we will reject the whole car,” said David Maxwell, then brewing director at Anheuser-Busch InBev.

“We don’t want grassy (like fresh-cut grass),” Maxwell said. “Mold will jump out at you, like walking into a basement.” They are looking for a starchy taste. Rice has a higher starch content and lower protein content than any other cereal adjunct. “We want quality starch,” Maxwell said, and freshness is the key. A-B has strict guidelines for transit times; 21 days from milling until it is in silos ready to use. “It’s all about time. After you mill it time and temperature are the enemy,” he said

The recipe for Budweiser must be adjusted based on the specifications of the current crop of barley, malted of course, and rice. The rice is milled to break it down into the smallest starch particles so it easily liquefies. It makes up about 30 percent of the Budweiser recipe. The rice is added to the cereal cooker with about 7 percent malt, enough to kick off enzyme activity and gelatinize it. It is brought to a boil, and then boiled for 15 minutes. “You really want to break it down. You can see it gelatinize,” Maxwell said.

The barley will be mashed in at the same time the cereal mash begins, sitting basically long enough for a protein rest before the cereal is pumped in. That will bring the mash to conversion temperature, and conversion could take 30 to 50 minutes depending on the crop year. When a new crop comes in brewers at the pilot brewery evaluate it, then provide the parameters for a blend.

“They’ll say it is in this window,” Maxwell said, rather than specifying an exact amount of time. “Then we’ll lock it in the brewhouse.” There will continue to be variables. For instance, long grain and medium grain rice gelatinize at a different rate. “We’re trying to hit a (gravity). I know where I have to be at. How do I get there?”