Serious Homebrew Part 1 - The Recipe

One of the reasons I'd been excited to come to BC was for the chance to brew with my uncle Fred, who over a decade ago was a champion homebrewer and has a 35-gallon custom-built three-tier gravity-fed propane-fired stainless steel system in his garage. He's been out of the game for a long time now, having turned his focus to work, winemaking, and other hobbies, but it didn't take much pushing to convince him to break out the old equipment and brew up a batch with me.

So I read up on all-grain brewing (bearing in mind the lessons from my own Half-Wit experiment), picked a style, and set to work. A few weeks ago I put together a recipe. Fred got in touch with some friends who were interested in a share of the product - you can't do just five gallons on a system this big. Then we picked our supplier, bought an amazing set of ingredients, and then last week, we brewed.

There's a lot to talk about for this first batch, so I've broken it up into a few posts. Here's Part 1: The Recipe.

All-Grain for Beginners - What NOT to Do

Since I began brewing three years ago, I've mainly brewed with an extract base and steeped specialty grains for colour, flavour, and complexity. Only once have I ventured as far as partial mash (extract base + a small infusion mash), when I made an oatmeal stout and read that the oats needed to be converted before they could be used. But truly advanced brewing means dumping the extract and going all-grain - making your own wort by mashing your malt at specific temperatures to allow the enzymes therein to convert starches into tasty sugars that the yeast can munch on. This requires some specialized equipment, and living in tiny apartments without much space for hobby stuff has always meant that I couldn't take that leap.

But while I'm a patient man, I can't wait forever. So on Monday, without any of the proper equipment and only a copy of John Palmer's How to Brew to guide me, I improvised a mash tun and filtering system and embarked on my first all-grain brew. 

The beer is coming out nicely. But the process was.... a mess. Here's how not to do it.

Granville Island Brewing

Grandville Island is one of Vancouver's biggest destinations, for tourists and locals alike. It has a huge market, a harbour, fishermen selling their salmon right off the boat, an arts college, and of course, the Granville Island Brewery. Sunday was a warm, sunny day, so Darrell and I hopped on our bikes for an afternoon of fish and chips, gelato, and shopping at the farmer's market for dinner.

I'd known since my first visit that the Granville Island Brewing taproom was there, and had always meant to visit, but I had never got round to it. Since we were passing by, we decided to talk to the woman under the tent outside the building, and by sheer luck we learned that it was the brewery's Customer Appreciation Week, and they were promoting it with free brewery tours.

Their taproom and retail store
right in the busy part of the island

Spring beers: Howe Sound "Rail Ale" Nut Brown

Spring has sprung, although in Vancouver it doesn't spring so much as gently creep along uphill, with the occasional 20-degree sunny day followed by a week of rain and hailstones. (Apologies to my friends and family in Ontario, who had a blizzard the other day.) Still, the season is here, and as seasons change I find my beer tastes change right along with them.

Spring is a time of transition between winter and summer, and for me, spring beers play that same role. A good spring beer should help drinkers transition between the big, malty flavours of winter (stouts, porters, etc.) and the lighter, more refreshing beers of summer (hefeweizens, light lagers, witbiers, pale ales). So as if by instinct I've lost interest in imperial stouts and spicy pumpkin ales, and find myself loading up my fridge with brown ales, doppelbocks, and flavourful Belgian treats.

I'm trying to acquaint myself with the beers produced in my new home, so I've been making selections from an assortment of regional breweries. And I'll be sharing here anything I particularly like. So, today's selection, from Howe Sound Brewing, is their Rail Ale Nut Brown.

Perspective hides the fact that this bottle
is friggin' enormous.

Introduction to Homebrewing (Recommended Reading)

I started homebrewing back in 2009, when I was entering a high-priced Master's program at U of T and couldn't get a student loan. I realized that I wanted beer, but had no budget for it. Getting 60+ bottles with a $20 beer kit and a bit of effort seemed like a better deal than a 24 of crap for nearly $40. So I recruited my cousin, my sister, and my dad's winemaking equipment for an experiment in getting cheaper, better beer.

We had a lot of trouble with the siphon.

Just couldn't get it working.

 Our first try turned out surprisingly well, and I was hooked. Not long later I met my future wife, Darrell, who really sent me down the homebrewer's path by buying me my first set of brewing equipment for Christmas and has not yet told me she regrets it. (It's almost incredible how well she tolerates my beer obsession.)

Once I got more into serious craft beer (for which I partly thank a trip to Chicago's Half Acre brewery and my first taste of a seriously good IPA, Daisy Cutter), I knew that kits wouldn't cut it any longer. I wanted to make beer as good as the stuff I had drunk in the States, and the stuff I was now discovering coming out of Ontario. Dogfish Head, Flying Monkeys, Great Lakes, Avery, Goose Island, and all the rest. So I did what comes naturally to me as a librarian... Research.

Storm Brewing

Yesterday my uncle Fred and I visited Storm Brewing ("Get it?"), a tiny, eccentric hand-built microbrewery in the bad part of town. And I do mean eccentric.

Note the rats on top of the fermenter. (They're
not real.) Representing the Black Plague Stout.

A new beginning

These past few months have been a critical mass of new beginnings. It started off in January, when I finally proposed to my longtime girlfriend Darrell on at sunrise on top of Mount Phou Si in Luang Prabang, Laos. (Not as romantic as you might think.) We spent all of February trying to plan two weddings - one in Canada and one in Malaysia - and at the same time, planning to uproot our comfortable lives in Toronto and move to Vancouver. With my contracts finished, I'm having to get serious about the job hunt, and I'm about to start studying for the BJCP certification. Now I'm sitting in my uncle's living room in Coquitlam, a week before we move into our apartment in the city.

I could go on about everything we had to do to get to this point, but this is a beer blog. So it's time to talk beer.

I've been into home brewing and craft beer since 2009, when I started working on my master's degree with no money in the bank, no student loan coming, and thus needing to secure a cheap source of decent beer. Recognizing my passion, Darrell got me a set of brewing equipment for Christmas (probably one of the reasons I'm marrying her now). Once I secured a part-time job and a scholarship, I was free to start exploring commercial brews, and got really into the offerings of Ontario's craft brewers.

I went to quite a few of the Great Lakes Project X events, and I attended the pre-opening at Bellwoods. I visited the LCBO weekly to see what new stuff had come in. I even stood in line for the tiny Westvleteren XII release (twice, before I finally got some of it). For more than three years I got to know Ontario beer intimately, along with everything else the LCBO brought in. I knew which breweries to expect good things from, and which to approach more cautiously. It was easy to walk into a store and see exactly what was new, what was familiar, and what to avoid. This background knowledge is something you come to rely on.

Now I live in BC, and everything's changed.