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