Recipe: Blackberry Ale

I just ordered the ingredients to brew my first fruit beer. Since we have an abundance of blackberries in the garden, I decided to try a blackberry ale. It's relatively lightly hopped to allow the blackberry to come through. I brew extract beer, so that's what the recipe calls for. I hope this will be a nice fall beer.

Here's the plan so far (comments welcome - I won't brew this for at least another week):

Grain / Fermentables:

• 1 lb Caramel 10L
• 1/4 lb Victory malt
• 6 lb Briess Gold Liquid Malt extract
• 1 lb honey
• 5 lb blackberries (fresh frozen, thawed, then crushed)

Hops:

• 1 oz Cascade @ 60 min
• 1 oz Cascade @ 5 min

Yeast:

• Wyeast Irish Ale 1084

Instructions:
Steep grains in 2-3 gal water for 30 minutes at 155F. Remove pot from burner. Add malt extract while stirring. Bring wort to a boil and add first oz of hops. With 5 minutes left of 60 minute boil, add the second oz of hops. Remove pot from boil and add crushed blackberries and honey. After 15 minutes, poor into sterilized fermentation bucket. Aerate wort. Add yeast, and ferment at 70F for 7-10 days. Rack to secondary for 2-3 weeks. I'm still considering dry hopping with some of the hops from the garden (will have to taste it to see if that makes sense).

According to Beer Calculus, this should give:
O.G. 1.052-1.061
F.G. 1.014-1.017
Color: 7º SRM
Bitterness: 21.2 IBU
Alcohol: 5.6% ABV, 192 cal/12 oz

Recipe: Spent grain bread

Here's the recipe we use for our Spent Grain Bread. It is adapted from Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads (if you like whole grain bread, this book is great!). It takes two days, but it is really simple stuff on both days. It uses 'spent grain' which is the grains that are left over from brewing beer. In the homebrewing process we use, these grains are steeped for about an hour in 68℃ / 155℉ water. Normally they would be discarded (we'd composted them before we started baking them). The taste, texture, and color of the bread will vary considerably with the type of grain used for the beer (big difference between a stout and pale ale grains). If you're not a homebrewer try asking your friends - I'm often surprised at how many people are homebrewers - youought to find someone who knows someone who brews. You could also ask a local microbrewery.

This recipe makes two loaves, or about two dozen rolls.

Day 1:
About 20 minutes of work.
Soaker
The soaker works to hydrate the grains in the whole wheat by mixing it with water and salt and let it sit overnight. This makes the grain softer but also enhances flavor and makes the bread a little sweeter (check Reinhart's book for the whole explanation).
Ingredients:

• 454 g / 1 lb whole wheat flour
  
• 1 tsp (8 g) salt
• 1½ cups water
  

Mix all soaker ingredients until flour is fully hydrated, then cover and let sit at room temperature for 12-24 hours. Can be refrigerated up to 3 days.

Biga
Reinhart uses the term 'Biga' for an overnight starter that uses a small amount of yeast and also soaks the whole wheat flour to increase flavor and acidity.
Ingredients:

• 454 g / 1 lb whole wheat flour
  
• 5/8 tsp active dry yeast (1/2 tsp instant dry yeast)
  
• 1½ cups warm water
  

Make a well in the flour. Pour the water into the well and then sprinkle the yeast in the water. Mix the water, gradually drawing in all the flour until hydrated. Once you have a ball of dough, knead in the bowl using wet hands for about two minutes. You may need to wet your hands again, but be careful not to add too much water to the dough.
Let the dough rest for five minutes, then knead again with wet hands for about one minutes. This time, the dough will be easier to work with, although it will still be tacky. Cover and refrigerate for at least 8 hours.

Day 2:
About 2 hours de-chill, then 20 minutes mixing followed by 2-3 hours fermentation. Baking takes 45-60 minutes.
Now we make the bread. Remove the Biga from the refrigerator about two hours before starting to mix the final dough.

Ingredients:

• Soaker
• Biga
• 225 g spent grain
• 113 g whole wheat flour
• 2¼ tsp (10 g) salt
• 2 Tbsp + 1 tsp active dry yeast (1½ Tbsp instand dry yeast)
• 85 g (4½ Tbsp) honey
• 2 Tbsp vegetable oil (optional)
• Extra whole wheat flour for adjustments
  

Chop the soaker and biga into 10-12 smaller pieces each - sprinkle some extra flour to keep them from sticking to each other. Hydrate the yeast in a little warm water (just enough to form a thick paste). Add to biga and soaker pieces along with the remaining ingredients except extra flour. Mix with a spoon or knead with wet hands for a few minutes to evenly distribute all ingredients. Take the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Knead for 3-4 minutes until dough is soft and tacky but not sticky. Form the dough into a ball and let it rest on the counter for five minutes.

Knead the dough again for about a minute. The dough should feel soft, supple, and very tacky. Place the dough into a lightly oiled bowl, covering it in oil on all sides. Cover the bowl and let the dough rise at room temperature for 45 to 60 minutes.

Form the dough into two loaves or smaller rolls. Cover loosely and let rise an additional 45 to 60 minutes.

Preheat oven to 425℉/218℃. Add a steam pan to the oven and a hearth stone. When you put the bread into the oven, pour a cup of water into the steam pan and spray several times with a water mister inside the oven (not on the bread). The purpose is to create steam that will produce a crusty crumb on the bread. Lower the temperature to 350℉/ 177℃and bake for 20 minutes. Rotate the bread 180°and bake another 20-30 minutes until the bread is done (thump the bottom to hear if it sounds hollow).

Cool on a wire rack and enjoy! Leave a comment if you try it out and let us know how it went.

Beer = Liquid Bread...

This weekend is shaping up to be an interesting joining of good things!

I will brew Java Coffee Stout on Saturday, and then we will use the steeped grains in a bread following a recipe from Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads.

Part of the beer brewing process is to steep about a pound of crushed grains in warm water (155F/68C) for about 30 minutes. These grains would then normally be discarded (I usually compost them, but some will feed them to the birds), but this time we'll use them as the grains in a whole wheat bread.

The bread will be started tonight with a starter to soak the whole wheat flour. The bread will then be completed tomorrow after brewing the beer and adding the grains and other ingredients.

Beer Brewing update

Just racked the Big River Brown ale that I brewed last weekend. It will now sit in the secondary for a couple of weeks before bottling. Gravity was 1.020, which when combined with the original gravity of 1.040 means an ABV of about 2.5%, which is disappointing, but it may of course attenuate a bit further in secondary.

The sample tasted quite good, though, so it should probably work out Ok in the end...

Now I get to relax and enjoy the fruits of a previous batch - the Winter Ale, which has turned out very well indeed, and is the perfect end to a hectic day.

Homebrewed Beer

I have been brewing beer since last October, and it's been a lot of fun. And the beer hasn't been half bad. In fact, of the five batches we've tasted so far, all have been praised by those who tasted them.

The work involved isn't too bad. There's work on each batch three times over the course of 3-4 weeks. I have so far been using pre-measured kits from Midwest Supplies in Minneapolis. First, on brewing day, you actually make the beer, which involves steeping grains for about an hour in a couple gallons of lukewarm water, then bringing the water to a boil, and adding malt extract and various hops. This process takes another 1-2 hours, after which the wort (beer without yeast) needs to cool down before the yeast can be added along with extra water to make about five gallons of beer. Then the beer sits for about a week in a food-grade pail after which it gets transferred to a glass carboy for conditioning. The transfer and cleanup can be done in about 45 minutes. Two weeks later the beer can be bottled. This takes 1-2 hours depending on the size of the bottles (less work with larger bottles - 5 gallons needs about 50 regular 355 ml (12 oz) bottles). Then the beer sits for 2-4 weeks before it can be enjoyed. So, it doesn't take that much effort, but you have to be patient.

The initial equipment purchase was around $100, and the ingredients for each batch will run around $30-$40 including shipping. The cost per beer is definitely higher than regular canned beer from the grocery store, but only about half the cost of specialty and imported beer, which is what it should be compared to. If all you want to do is drink Miller Light, then don't worry about making your own beer, but if you enjoy Bass, Newcastle Brown Ale, Guiness, and any other great tasting beer (especially ale), then you should give homebrewing a try.

Right now, I have two carboys in the basement. I'm hoping to be able to bottle the Fuggles brew today (we need it ready before we run out...). The other is a Holiday beer that was brewed back in June and will need another month or so before bottling. Then it will sit about 6 weeks in the bottle before it is ready in time for Halloween. It should be a Happy Holiday this year!

When you brew your own beer, there are two environmental benefits: First, you can reuse the bottles, which is far better than recycling (it takes quite a bit of energy to turn glass into glass...). Second, only the ingredients need to be transported (10-15 lbs), and in my case only from Minneapolis, as opposed to shipping both bottles (40 lbs), and water (42 lbs) from a brewery that's much farther way. Some of the styles of beer you can make with homebrew, could otherwise only be obtained from imported sources, so the transportation would add significantly to the equation.