ingredients for this RED beer: 1 oz. Irish moss for clarity, 1/2 lb.
crystal malt, 60 Liemens (color: higher no. the darker.), 9 lbs. Maris
Otter (base grain), Flaked Barley, yeast: an Irish Red yeast. Hops:
Kent Goldings.Brewing Beer
Red Beer Heffeweisen IPA StirPlate
RED BEER photos by Susan Stanek
This red beer had a rich red color, and was very sweet and malty. It aged for about a week to balance the complex flavors, and was therefore a delicious brew. A red beer would be like Killians, but this home brew was definitely a mark above because of it's full body.
ingredients for this RED beer: 1 oz. Irish moss for clarity, 1/2 lb.
crystal malt, 60 Liemens (color: higher no. the darker.), 9 lbs. Maris
Otter (base grain), Flaked Barley, yeast: an Irish Red yeast. Hops:
Kent Goldings.
Making
the mash tun, which is infusing the grains. Must get temperature to 153
degrees F. for about an hour. A simple infusion mash.
Checking
the temperature, making sure it is 153 degrees.
Adding
hot water to raise temp to proper degrees.
Sits
for an hour, infusing, which extracts the sugars out of the malted grains.\
Lautering: letting out the mash. Extracting the clean liquid from the
grains.
Pour a few times into a container to see if it runs clear. The first pour
is never clear.
Sparging technique: washing grains of excess sugars: pour back in on top.
Pour again, and repeat until it runs clear.
sparge sparge sparge: achieve six gallons of wart, about an hour boil will
evaporate into a standard five gallon beer brew. Once it runs clear you
can lauter about six gallons into the fermentation bucket.
Boil in a 7.5 gal turkey fryer. Boil for an hour. Hops have to be
added at specific times. One addition of hops, the first hopping at
beginning of boil. The second hopping, the final hopping is 15 min. to the
end of boil, at which time the Irish Moss is added as well to clarify the brew.
Meanwhile: clean out spent grains from the mash ton. It makes for great compost.
continue to boil: hops make the brew greenish at first, and smell
wonderfully aromatic.
...and
boil, stir regularly.
Adding the Irish Moss near the end of boil.
Wart
chiller: cooling tub. Ice cold water instantly stops the process.
The longer the brew sits, the greater risk of contamination from natural air
born particles. Cool off the wart as soon as possible. The sooner
yeast is added, the smaller the risk of contamination.
chill wart to 68 degrees F.
transfer wart into sterile fermentation bucket.
check temp. and aerate the wart to get oxygen in it for the yeast.
pitch
yeast, seal fermenter and ferment for fourteen days.
taking a gravity reading to test if there is yeast activity. There is but
not much. We have to aerate and continue the fermentation.
top fermenting yeast works on the surface. This is half way done.
When the fermentation process is complete the yeast will fall to the bottom.
You will see no yeast on top like this, and then you can rack it. We put
it back to continue fermenting.
Aerating the beer helps the yeast to produce alcohol.
This
is a plastic devise called a burper is filled with sterile water, or clear
alcohol. When yeast is active, it converts sugars into CO2 (carbon
dioxide) and alcohol. The alcohol remains in the beer, while the CO2 gas
must escape. By using a burper like this, the gas can escape with out
random air and bacteria getting in. The bubbles indicate release of CO2 by
the yeast. This is sufficient bubbling.
Partially through the fermenting process, we checked the beer, it's color, yeast cake, and aerated it for further fermentation.
The gravity reading is lower here than it was before the fermentation was
complete. This means that the yeast did it's job. As the yeast eats
the sugars, there are less sugar solids to hold up the buoyant hydrometer.
The fewer the sugars, the more the hydrometer sinks. Because it sinks
lower, we can see that most of the sugars have been consumed. If the
sugars are consumed that means that the yeast converted them into alcohol, and
therefore the fermentation process is complete.
Checking for color. A good color for a red.
The beer is racked, which means it is poured from the fermentation bucket, into a sterile CO2 filled corny keg, leaving the sediment behind. Pop with fizz and serve.
This beer in particular needed to age for about a week before it became truly delicate. It is a delightful red to serve and enjoy.
This German style beer was absolutely delightful, fresh, clean, and a joy to drink, even if it got warm in the sun. "Heffe" means yeast, while "weisen" means wheat. So this beer should have a specific yeast flavor, and is brewed with a wheat grain as opposed to rye or other grain types used for other beers. This brew had a fruity, banana flavor from the special type of yeast, and also had a touch of clove spice in the flavor, which is difficult to achieve when brewing. Everyone enjoyed this beer including those who normally don't like to drink beer, and those who have an educated pallet.
This beer fermented so much that it did blow out the top. Our next heffeweisen we used a blow tube, and kept it real cool. It too fermented a lot, but it didn't blow out as much as this one did. The yeast activity was just crazy, and we were worried about it being too warm and active, but the beer turned out just wonderful.
Imperial Pale Ale means that it is an ale with extra hops. Here the hops takes center stage, whereas with a heffeweisen the yeast does. Hops add flavor and aroma. There are two categories that hops fall under. One is flavoring hops, and the other is bittering hops. Hops are added in small amounts in different times of the brewing process to achieve certain characteristics. After the beer is done fermenting, and racked into the corney keg, we put a tea ball of flavoring hops so that when you pour, the beer passes through the hops for even more aroma.
Brewing an IPA style beer
end