Merry Christmas!

Hello beer lovers! Welcome back to Barely Brewers!

Almost three weeks ago I brewed my first attempt at a gluten-free beer for a friend of mine. The gluten-free pumpkin spice ale has now been racked to the secondary fermenter, moving it off of the huge quantity of trub this brew produced. Much of the trub was, as usual, coagulated proteins, dead yeast cells, and hop solids but having forgotten to add the clarifying whirlfloc tablet near the end of the brewing process led to a lot more suspended matter in the beer. The beer has been sitting in the secondary for a week and a half and some of the cloudiness has settled out, particularly near the top of the carboy. I'm hoping that a few more days will allows some more of the suspended particles to precipitate out but I have a back up plan!

There is a process called 'cold crashing' that helps to clarify beer. Prior to bottling (or kegging) a brewer can chill the beer to somewhere about 40°F for a day or two. Before launching into the scientific reason for how this works, there's an important distinction to be made: that between particles existing in suspension and those in solution. A suspension is composed of a liquid medium and particles small enough to appear 'dissolved' but large enough to eventually settle out. A solution is defined by a homogenous mixture of a dissolved substance in a liquid medium that will not eventually settle out. From a scientific point of view, there are a number of reasons this helps to clarify the beer. First, colder temperatures force yeast in suspension to enter dormancy, slowing cellular respiration and causing yeast cells to flocculate (clump together) and settle out. The cessation of respiration also slows the motion of particles and medium in the carboy, allowing additional sedimentation to occur. Cold liquids, with slower-moving water molecules, are less soluble than warm liquids because there is less available 'space' between water molecules in cold liquids. So cooling the beer forces some of the larger soluble molecules to precipitate out as the cold beer no longer 'has room' for the exotic particles.


The only problem with my brilliant cold-crash back-up plan is that we don't have a dedicated fridge to keep our fermentation temperatures constant so I don't really have a way to cool the beer cold enough over a long enough period of time. Fortunately, mild winters in Northern California may save the day! My plan is to fill a large tub with water, put the carboy in it, and leave it outside for a couple of days. The reason islands like Hawaii have such nice climates year-round and day and night is because water has a high 'specific temperature' and doesn't change temperature easily. During the day, water around the island slowly heats up and evaporation keeps temperatures relatively cooler. At night, water slowly cools, releasing the heat it accumulated during the day and keeping the temperature from dropping precipitiously. With temperatures at night in California dropping to the mid-30s, I figure the beer in a tub of water will get cold enough during the day and stay warm enough at night to accomplish my goal.


The final update for this post is significantly less technical! My dad and I brewed another batch of a Boont Amber clone as soon as the GF pumpkin spice ale was out of the primary and it is bubbling away in the living room right now. We drank our whole first batch of this beer in a couple of weeks last time so we're very much looking forward to this beer!


Until next time, faithful readers! Cheers!

The Return of Barely Brewers!

So I kind of let the blog go for a while... I've been traveling in Asia for the last 2 months and am excited to be back and brewing! I was traveling with a good friend of mine, Caitlin, who was teaching in Thailand for the last year. She also happens to be gluten intolerant. While Asia is great in terms of gluten-free (GF) food options, it's not really possible to get a GF beer over there. I pledged to try to brew a GF beer for her when we returned and after a couple weeks of jet lag, I got right on it! A few friends, including Caitlin, were interested in participating in the brew so we all got together for a fun-filled evening of brewing.

I'd done some research on GF brewing and the base is nearly always malted sorghum or malted sorghum extract. I decided to use the extract, having malted sorghum replace malted barley extract as the main source of fermentable sugars. In addition, some molasses and raw turbinado sugar will provide the rest of the fermentables. 

I also bought some roasted buckwheat, kasha, and roasted it further to darken it and bring out some more caramel-y flavors and colors. While the buckwheat will provide very few fermentable sugars, I'm hoping that the nutty flavors I read are associated with brewing with unmalted buckwheat come through a bit.

After giving Caitlin some options on styles and components of the beer, she settled on a pumpkin spice ale. So I we used the flesh of 5 sugar pumpkins, roasted to bring out the flavors and sugars, as well as the usual suspects of pumpkin pie spices: cinnamon, all-spice, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves.

I grated whole nutmeg

The pumpkin was integrated into two different stages of the brew: the mini-mash and the boil. It was mashed slightly for the mash, allowing more surface are in contact with the wort. The hop schedule was very simple, only Northern Brewer.

Adding the pumpkin to the boil

The whole process was incredibly smooth with so many hands on the brew pot it was really fun to brew with friends, teaching them a little bit as we went. The only thing that went wrong I didn't realize until much later: I'd forgotten to add the whirlfloc tablet, a clarifying agent made from refined Irish moss, a red-algae sea weed. So the beer may be a bit cloudier than our usual output but hopefully with a good long rest in the secondary fermenter it will clear up on its own.

My buddy Jack pouring the wort

The beer is bubbling along now though the process is certainly playing out differently than with gluten-full beers. For one, there is no krausen, the foamy yeasty layer formed at the top of the beer during rapid fermentation. It does indeed smell like delicious beer and I'm excited to see how it winds up!

Sam aerating the beer