Understand craft beer
What is craft beer? Craft beer is called "craft beer" abroad, and its literal translation should be understood as "craft beer". This kind of beer is usually a characteristic beer with relatively small brewing volume, but its core value lies in innovation rather than in small quantity or good quality. The key point is the spirit of technology represented by technology. If brewers and wineries focus on making efforts instead of catering to the public's tastes, such beer can be called craft beer.
The rise of agitation: Fine breweries rose in Britain in the late 1970s, referring to small wineries with limited production capacity, and paying attention to the spirit of multi-style brewing, which is different from large commercial wineries that only brew a single product; In recent years, fine breweries around the world have risen rapidly.
Development status: technological brewing has broken through geographical restrictions, for example, Brazilian wineries can brew classic German Lager beer; Japanese wineries brew Belgian-style beer. Some winemakers even want to recreate the beer flavor of Egypt and Greece. "Some beer types that have disappeared for a long time have returned to the stage, which not only retains the flavor that is worth cherishing, but also restarts the public's imagination of beer. 」
Four main brewing raw materials of craft beer
Water: Brewing good beer requires good water, and water quality is the key factor. Soft water with less minerals is suitable for brewing refreshing beer, such as Pearson beer; However, the high mineral content of hard water will highlight the characteristics of hops, such as English malt beer.
Malt: Malt is one of the most important raw materials for brewing beer. Malt provides sugar for fermentation, which is also the key to beer taste and color. Although most beer is brewed from barley, wheat, oats, rye and chocolate wheat are also used to make wine. The color of beer depends on the degree of malt roasting, which can be divided into deep roasting and light roasting.
Hops: hops that give beer bitterness and aroma, officially named "hops", mainly grow at 35? 55 degrees, there are different varieties of hops, flowers and fruits, grass and tropical incense all over the world. Hops are usually divided into flake and granule, which not only endows beer with wonderful aroma, but also has antiseptic function.
Yeast: Yeast ferments wort to produce alcohol and carbon dioxide, and different yeasts have different flavors. Duan said that due to the characteristics of different yeasts, Al beer fermented in the upper layer and Lager beer fermented in the lower layer were developed. The fermentation period is short, the temperature is high, and the yeast will gather at the top of the fermentation tank, which is characterized by rich fruit fragrance; Lager yeast, however, has a long fermentation period and low temperature, and the yeast will gather at the bottom of the fermentor, which is characterized by refreshing taste. In addition, wild yeast is floating in the air, which can give beer a special sour taste.
Understand the brewing process
Barley malt and water are mixed and saccharified into wort.
The brewing method of beer is to crush germinated dry barley malt, add water to mix, and saccharify in a saccharifying pot. The temperature of the malt porridge in the saccharification pot is about 65 ~ 70℃, which will make the enzymes in the wheat bran convert starch into sugar, soak it for 1 hour, and then it will become clear sweet wort after saccharification. Then it will be transferred to a filter tank for filtration to separate wort and wheat residue; The winemaker will stir the filter tank according to the situation so that it will not be blocked.
The second step is to boil wort and hops, and then add yeast after cooling.
Then, the separated wort is pumped into a boiling pot and heated to 100℃. After boiling, add bitter hops and roll 1 hour to make the beer bitter. Aromatic hops are added before turning off the fire to make the beer produce various hops. Immediately after that, the hot wort is pumped into a vortex tank to precipitate hops and impurities, so that clean wort can be obtained, and then cooled by a plate cooler to instantly turn the hot wort into iced wort, and yeast can be added into the fermentation tank to start fermentation.
Wait for the fermentation to mature.
Good beer takes time to ferment and mature, which takes about 1 month, and some even longer. The fermentation temperature of Irish beer is about 20 ~ 22℃; Lager beer 7 ~ 13℃.
Fourthly, filtering yeast impurities, and then packaging.
Finally, yeast and excess impurities can be filtered out and bottled into cans of beer. In some craft breweries, wine is unfiltered. For example, the secondary fermentation technology in the malt bottle in Beitai, the advertisement says that yeast can be drunk to enhance fragrance.
The key to brewing is:
Other raw materials: In addition to the four main raw materials, other raw materials such as tangerine peel and coriander seeds can be added to brew beer, which can increase the depth and flavor of beer.
Brewer: Some people say that there is no beer without a brewer, because apart from controlling the technology and determining the flavor of beer, they will also try to invent a new formula with the four main raw materials of brewing and other raw materials, which can be said to be a masterpiece of technology.
Brew your own beer
Do you also want to own your own craft beer? Since Taiwan Province Province joined the WTO, you can also make your own wine at home! As long as the total capacity of finished products and semi-finished products does not exceed 100 liters and they are not sold, it is not illegal! Coupled with the combination of materials, tools and teaching, it is no longer difficult to brew beer at home!
Materials: malt powder 1.3kg, haletao bitter hops 10g, haletaoxiang hops 12g, 75% alcohol 60g white sugar;
Tools: 45x45cm laundry bag, 20L and 50L 1 pots, spatula, thermometer, 50ml measuring cylinder, hydrometer (or sugar meter), 15L medicinal liquor jar, water seal, WB-06 wheat beer yeast 1 1.5g, etc.
Brewing steps:
1. Put the malt and barley malt into the laundry bag, put them on the edge of a 20L pot, pour in 72℃ water 19L, stir them evenly with a spatula, check with a thermometer, keep the temperature at 67 1℃, and then let them stand 1 hour. If the temperature is too high, add 100 ml room temperature water 1 time; if the temperature is too low, heat it with low fire.
2. Lift the laundry bag, drain the water and put it aside. Take out 50 ml wort from the measuring cylinder and put it into the hydrometer at room temperature. Confirm that the specific gravity reaches 1.048 10%, or it can be measured with a sugar meter. If the sweetness reaches 12. Wheat residue can be recycled as kitchen garbage. If the specific gravity of wort is slightly lower (1.048- 10 ~ 30%), the next heating time can be slightly extended, for example, in the unit of 10 minute, so that the water can be evaporated. If the specific gravity is slightly higher (1.048+ 10 ~ 30%), about 100ml of water can be added.
3. put the lid on. Heat all the wort in the pot to boiling with strong fire, then turn the fire down, lift the lid, turn on the exhaust fan to add bitter hops, continue heating for 1 hour, and add fragrant hops for the last 5 minutes, then turn off the fire and cover the lid. When boiling wort, you should pay attention to the fact that wort may pop out of the pot when boiling. After turning off the fire and covering the lid, you must avoid pollution, such as repeatedly lifting the lid to talk.
4. Put the pot in step 3 into a 50L cauldron filled with half a pot of ice water and let it stand and cool to 20 ~ 25℃, as long as it feels cool when touching the pot body. At this time, you can drill a hole with a diameter of 1cm with an electric drill. You can also use ice cubes to cool down quickly, and the beer flavor is better.
5. After disinfecting the medicinal liquor tank and water seal with alcohol spray for several times, pour the wort in step 4 into the medicinal liquor tank, if there is hops residue such as mud, don't pour it again, then pour in yeast, cover it, insert the water seal, inject alcohol into the water seal, isolate it from the outside, and ferment it in the shade for 2 weeks. Avoid sunlight, otherwise it may produce skunk smell. Adding alcohol to the water seal can discharge the fermented carbon dioxide; Don't let outside oxygen in. If the fermentation environment is 28℃ in summer, for example, you can wrap the pot with cloth, soak it in a large pot filled with half a pot of water, and blow it with an electric fan all day, and the temperature can be slightly reduced by 3 ~ 5℃.
6. Beer bottles and funnels should be disinfected with alcohol first. Add 2g white sugar into the beer bottle, ferment, pour the liquid from step 5 into a funnel, seal the bottle with a bottle press, put it in the shade at room temperature, ferment for 1 week, and then refrigerate for 12 hours. You can put 100ml of water in the pot, insert the beer bottle upside down and boil it for 5 minutes for sterilization.
Beer tips
The cooler the beer, the better?
Although the cold temperature will enhance the sense of dryness, it will also mask other flavors. Generally speaking, the suitable temperature for wheat and beer is 4? 7 degrees; British Aier Beer 12 degrees Celsius? 14 degree, while the old brown beer like Lyman black cherry in Belgium needs to be drunk while it is hot, and the flavor is better.
The fresher the beer, the better?
Usually, beer is the best when it leaves the factory, but some beers with high alcohol concentration need to be fermented twice in bottles, and the flavor is better, such as Belgian monastery beer and British highland barley wine, which are all delicious. It is suggested that the best temperature for storing beer is 10? 12。 C, and stand upright in a dry and dark corner, which is less prone to deterioration.
Why do you have a beer belly when drinking beer?
1 bottle of beer has the same calories as 1 bottle of coke. If you drink too much, you will naturally have a beer belly. It is suggested that when drinking craft beer, we should savor the unique styles and flavors of different countries in order to feel the charm brought by different craft beer.
Is beer bitter?
The bitterness of beer comes from hops. Without this element, it is like drinking sweet wort. Bitterness gives beer different flavors and aromas, such as citrus and Chinese fir. Even some beers are bitter, pleasant and memorable. If you want to drink high-quality craft beer, don't be afraid of suffering!