You can go all grain: or.... How to rule the world from your stove top:

If you brew on your own, how should you brew?  What is the most fun?  What makes the best beer? and what can you do on your own to make the very best beer with the most affordable equipment? Well if you are like me, you have an enthusiasm for brewing, you would literally brew 3 or 4 times a week.  Brewing is not a chore that you enjoy occasionally, brewing is your relaxation.  Cleaning doesn't bother you.  Bottling doesn't bother you.  It is all an escape from other pressures in your life, and the end result is hand crafted delicious beer.  And I am here to tell you the most affordable way to brew, and the most efficient, is to do small batch all grain BIAB no sparge on your stove top.  If you've been brewing extract, you probably own everything you need.


When I brew on my own, I brew small batch.   I brew 2.5 gallon batches of beer.  Usually I brew 2.75 gallons and try to bring 2.25 gallons to package. So calling it 2.5 gallons is a misnomer.  It packages 2.25 gallons.  That is a case of beer.  I try to use minimal equipment, the less equipment, the less cleaning.  I brew in a bag utilizing the no sparge technique, When the grain bill is high OG, I generally partigyle my batch. That means I get 5 gallons of beer from a single brew day.   I use a small stainless wort chiller, in an ice bath. I bag my hops to reduce trub space. My fermenters are cake icing buckets I got from the bakery at Walmart. There is a bulb seal in the lid, so they are air tight. They are FDA approved and BPA free. To aerate I pour the batch back and forth between the kettle and the fermenter 3 or 4 times. To ferment I choose forgiving yeast, or I choose a yeast that benefits from higher temperatures. I do not generally control fermentation temperatures on small batches.  I probably should, but I have 1 small refrigerator/fermentation chamber and it is used for lagers.

Batch one boiling, Patigyle mashing away!
Two 2.5 batches from one grain bill!

Once I started brewing small batch, I found that I brewed a lot more than most people, usually 2x a week.  That is a huge reason my beer is so much better than most home brewers.  I brew more often.  I have more practice.  And I started producing more beer, with less stress,  Bottling became easier.  It is no big deal to bottle one case of beer.  Sanitation became no big deal,  I can easily lift and clean any of the things I use to brew small batch.  I can easily carry the fermenters around and place them on the counter.   I find that I can brew any style of beer easily at 2.5 gallons without any loss in quality.  One gallon batches of beer are not nearly so forgiving but I make them too sometimes for recipe development and to brew something fun or weird.

To keep costs down on small batch I look for style appropriate bittering hops that have high alpha acids.  (Example when I brew my English IPA I use Admiral or Target for bittering).  I think about the cost and expense of brewing a lot. I often brew batches that feature high alpha acid hops.  like my Two Hearted ale clone, or my Zombie Dust Clone.  These hops save you money by the very fact that they are higher in AA%.  My local home brew store sells hops by the 1/10th of an ounce.  So, I buy them there.   I adjust them up a bit because they are exposed to oxygen at the LHBS.  If it is a special hop centric beer, like my dIPA I order pre packaged hops in 1 ounce packages.  These are flushed with nitrogen and provide you the very best freshness.  I like BSG, they have been good to us, but I am also a fan of YCH Hop Union.  Both companies offer pre packaged hops.


I often re use my yeast cakes by planning several brews on one yeast cake, increasing the OG with each batch.  I do not truly wash yeast. I do a modified wash where I collect some of it in a mason jar, I let it settle. Alternatively, I pour off almost all of it into the new batch leaving behind only the chunky gross stuff in the bottom.  I get crazy fast and complete fermentation using this method.  An example, With Safale S04, I make a Centennial Blonde followed by an English IPA and finally by a Scottish Ale. With Safale US05 I make a Cream Ale, followed by a Bells Two Hearted Clone, finally a double IPA.   This saves you a lot of money. Specialty beers are made with yeast harvested from our larger batches of beer.  Learn to wash yeast, it will save you a lot of money.   There are so many videos on yeast washing.  Here is my favorite.  His approach is very similar to mine.

Crushing your own
malt saves you a lot.
And improves your
beer dramatically.

I get my grains in bulk,  We brew a lot. So grains don't last forever, and I brew a lot on my own, but if you search around at your local home brew stores, you will find that you can get a bag of two row for about $35.00 to $40.00. Even a bag of Munich or Vienna will only be about $50.00 with no shipping. I also have been known to toast my own grains and make my own crystal malt.  But for small batch there is really no need, it is so affordable to grab the specialty grains at the local home brew store.  I like Rahr, Weyermann, Cargill, and Muessdoerffer, oh and Dingeman and Warminster... and and and...

The process is straight forward.

• The day before brew day 
• I dechlorinate the water with 1/2 of a  Campden Tablet.
• That is all you need for de chlorinating your water
• I crush the grains
• On brew day
• All of the water goes in the pot
• Every recipe is different use your brewing calculator to determine your water needs.
• If you don't have a brewing calculator, Here is a simple water calculator.
• The water is treated to adjust the pH.  
• I am a fan of Five Star 5.2 stabilizer for small batch
• I am a fan of Acidulated malt for small batch pH adjustments
• The water is heated lid on to strike temperature
• My false bottom/cake rack is put in the kettle
• The grains are placed into the bag and lowered into the water
• After 5 minutes I check my pH, if it is too high, I add some acid malt to lower it.
• I don't even crush the acid malt.  I just add .1 to .2 lbs to get the pH corrected.
• The heat is turned off once the grains go in.
• I step mash a lot, but that will be handled in a later post.
• I also have a valve on my kettle, so I can recirculate with a pitcher if I want. 
• The grains are recirculated or stirred every 15 minutes, and the lid is left on during the mash.
• I don't care if I lose a couple of degrees, and you shouldn't either.  
• It really doesn't matter if your mash falls from 152 to 146 F. 
• If it falls too much, turn on the heat and stir, but undershoot your target temp. 
• At the end of the mash it is just like any other batch of beer. 
• Bring to a boil
• Add hops
• Add extras
• Chill (ultra fast on a small batch)
• Aerate 
• I aerate small batches by pouring them back and forth between the fermenter and the kettle (which I rinse out first)
• Pitch yeast
• You may not need an entire package of yeast. 
• You can seal up the rest and use another time. 
• Ferment -  if I need to keep a small bach cool, I ferment it in a laundry tub. 

The ubiquitous brown ale... still a favorite!

The hop series will continue this week, and the yeast series will also get going strong again later this week or next.  When you are working with experts, you work with their time lines.  And not surprisingly, they are busy people.

Brown Ale.   Simple Malty brown ale.   A wonderful beer for every day consumption.  There was a time when brown ale was all the rage.  Every where you would go, you would see brown ales.  But with the growth of the home brewing scene and the craft brewing scene many of the old classic styles have gotten put on the back burner.   Shoved aside for the newest taste explosion.   Forgotten for the latest double India chocolate nib saison aged on bourbon barrel chips in a chardonnay barrel and fermented with Saccharomyces eubayanus.  In the quest to capture market share craft breweries have looked to make more and more interesting, and hoppier, beers.  This trend has even perverted the simple brown ale.   It is hard to find one now with out coffee, or peanut butter.  Overall, this trend is a good thing.  None of us would have ever enjoyed so many of the great beers of the last 10 years with out this trend.  But,can we still enjoy beers that skinny jean wearing, self absorbed, sycophants would turn their noses up at?  Can we just have a simple well crafted malty brown ale?

Brown ale is one of the best styles for home brewers to brew.   It is medium OG, malty, complex, not too bitter, and easy to brew with success.    This is a beer you can enjoy at any time, even in the summer.  It is malty, but not too roasty.  It is balanced but not overly hoppy.  There is a residual sweetness but it isn't cloying.   If you have a friend, or a loved one, or a SWMBO that doesn't like dark beers, this is the beer to give them.  This is the beer that can help them understand that a dark color does not always mean overpowering roasted flavor.

 I really enjoy Fat Squirrel by New Glarus, and Moose Drool by Big Sky.  But my favorite brown ale, is made in my kitchen.  So today, I will give you my Northern English Brown Ale recipe that I have been brewing forever. I have probably brewed this beer more times than I have brewed any other beer.  If you were to survey friends of mine who have tried my beer, this is probably the beer they would conjure in their minds.  It has converted many muggles to craft beer.   I hope you will try it and enjoy it.  Wimpole Street Brown Ale.  Wimpole Street is in London.  It is the home of Professor Henry Higgins, Eliza Dolittle, and of the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning.  Wimpole street is 2 blocks from Baker Street home of Sherlock Holmes.

Wimpole Street Brown Ale.
All Grain
5 gallons
1.053 OG
1.016 FG
27 IBU
18 SRM - Brown not black, it's not a porter
4.7% ABV

7.5 # of 2 Row, or pale ale, or if you want to be fancy Maris Otter
0.7 # of  Caramel/Crystal 80
0.7 # of  Biscuit Malt
0.5 # of  Brown Malt
0.3 # of Chocolate Malt
1.4 Ounces of East Kent Golding at 60  (5% AA,  7 AAU)
0.6 Ounces of Fuggles at 10 (4.8 % AA,  2.88 AAU)
0.6 Ounces of Fuggles at 5  (4.8% AA, 2.88 AAU)
Safale S-04, or Nottingham Ale yeast

Mash grains at 154 F for 60 Minutes.
Ferment Cool,  64-67 Fermentation chamber.  (the yeast is very forgiving and you want some esters so if you cant control fermentation temperatures you'll be OK fermenting in a cool dark place)

With a simple change of hops and a quick wort souring, this beer makes an amazing base beer for a sour.  It becomes an Oud Bruin.  (Old Brown)   Another style that I love.   I'll post about that soon as well.   If you can make 10 gallons of beer at a time you can easily make enough wort for both styles.

I will be brewing the brown ale this weekend.  And as we go into the fall the counterbrew team will be brewing the base wort and splitting the 10 gallon batch into a brown ale, and an Oud Bruin.

Your First All Grain.. Learn to Mash Grains STEP BY STEP

This is the first blog in a series of blogs on "your first"  Designed to help newer brewers try brewing techniques for the first time.

So as most of you know I am a fan of partial mash.  I can argue, quite compellingly that partial mash is the best method for most home brewers to follow.  With nominal equipment you can make excellent beer by using partial mash. To make a good partial mash, you have to learn how to mash grains. I also realize that many of you are intimidated by partial mash, and large all grain brewing.   You read the forums, and you hear us talking. It all sounds so foreign.  Vorlauff, sparging,  Mash pH,  Equal Runnings....So...with out further adieu... I present "Your first all grain"   A step by step approach to your first grain mash using small batch BIAB.

The whole idea here is that you probably have everything you need to make a 1 - 2.5 gallon batch of beer at home.   You might need a paint strainer bag,  you might need a 2 gallon bucket.  If you have a Mr Beer LBK, you are fine.   The pot you use for extract is fine.  (4 to 5 gallons).

In this recipe we're making a 2 gallon batch Bell's Two Hearted Ale. of Here is a list of what you will need;  if you've been extract brewing you probably have most of this stuff.

The Equipment

The pots you use for extract are big enough for a 1 gallon,
All grain batch of beer.

• 5 gallon bucket
• 4- 5 gallon kettle
• 5 gallon paint strainer bag
• a large spoon
• brewing thermometer
• a colander that fits on your kettle, mine doesn't fit so i put a spoon next to it!
• a 2 gallon food grade bucket (They're about $6 to $7 at your LHBS)
• an air lock 
• Hydrometer or Refractometer - not strictly necessary but nice to have.
• A spray bottle full of clean water
• A Volume dip stick... wait what?   What the heck is that?  
• Simple take a wooden spoon and put one gallon of water in your kettle,  mark the spot where one gallon is, then two gallons, mark the spot where the water is, then repeat to volume of the kettle.

For now Camden
and 5.2 stabilizer
are your only
water adjustments!

The Chemicals

• OxiClean Free - Good general purpose cleaner
• Star San
• Camden Tablets - buy the small package
• 5 Star 5.2 pH stabilizer - yes there are other ways to adjust water, you dont need to worry about them for now.

The Ingredients - This is for a 1 gallon clone of Bell's Two Hearted Ale

• 2# of Two Row Base Malt,  any two row or pale ale malt will do,
• But not Pilsner, Vienna, Golden Promise, or Munich.  They are all wonderful base malts, just not right for this style.
• If they don't have two row, or pale (and why the hell wouldn't they?)  My next choice would be Maris Otter. 
• .2# of Caramel/Crystal 40
• Ask your Home brew store to crush the grains fine, or crush them 2x for you.  
• 1 Ounces of Centennial Hops, 
• if you don't have a scale have them package for you;  just show them this recipe and they will know what to do.
• 1 Package of Fermentis Safale US05, or BRY97
• Why not liquid yeast?  Why not Wyeast or White Labs, or Imperial?  Well because this is a 1 gallon batch.  No reason to spend that kind of money on a liquid yeast.
• Further dry yeast comes pre packaged with nutrients and oxygen (bound to the nutrients) and gives newer brewers the best chance of success. 
• Irish Moss
• Yeast Nutrient

The process.

Camden Treated water
Ready for brew day

The Afternoon, or Night before brew day;

• Clean the 5 gallon bucket and rinse thoroughly
• Add 1/2 a crushed camden tablet to the bucket
• Fill with 3 gallons of water, this is your brewing water, stir thoroughly
• The camden will take any chloramine out of the water.  It will also remove chlorine, but so would the boil.  If you know for a fact that the only chloride in your water is chlorine, you can skip this step.  But most municipal water supplies are a mixture of the Chlorides.
• Do not put a lid on the bucket

Brew day morning

• Make some coffee  RDWHAC  (Relax Dont Worry have a coffee)
• The golden rule of drinking a beer or two while you brew is for more experienced brewers.  



Im really lucky, SWMBO often
cleans the brewery before brew day

• While Brewing Your safe zone is coffee, or soda until you really know what you are doing.
• Organize your brewery, you can not brew good beer amidst chaos.  So if you need to clean your area first,  please do so, I'll wait here...
• Organize your brewing Chemicals and Ingredients
• Clean and inspect all equipment.

The Mash

• Put 2.29 Gallons of your brewing water into your kettle.



A clone of Bells Two Hearted Ale
mashing away on the stove.

• "OK WAIT  Why 2.29 Gallons?"
• It's really not complicated.  The Grains will absorb some of the water.  When you remove the grains you'll have about 2 gallons of wort for the boil.  You'll loose about .5 gallons in the boil   So 1.5 Gallons will go into your fermentation bucket.   When you transfer to the 1 gallon jug, you will leave behind about.5 gallons of trub. 
• Add 1 teaspoon of 5.2 pH stabilizer and stir
• Heat the water to 157
• "OK WAIT  Why 157?"  
• Again it is simple,  the grains are at about 65 F.  When you lower them into the water, the water will come down in temperature to 153, which is where we want to be.
• As the water is heating put your grains into a Bag.  



put the bag in the
bucket then put
the grains in the bag

• the easiest way is to do this is to put your bags in the bucket so that the  bottom of the bag is in the bottom of the bucket and the elastic is around the top.
• When the water is stabilized at 157 (here's a tip turn it off at 155 -156 it will still rise to 157)
• Add the grains to the water, fasten the elastic around the top of the kettle.  
• if it wont fit all the way around, clip it on. 
• Give it a thorough stir, no dough balls should be present in your wort. But you also do not want grains getting out side of the bag.  
• Set a timer for 15 minutes When the timer goes off remove the lid and stir.  Set the timer for 15 minutes... repeat....Do this for 60 minutes total.  check the temperature every time  you may have to turn the heat back on to keep  the mash between 150 and 155 F.   Don't stress if it falls over time, it will.  But do not let it get above 160.  Add ice water if you have to.  My thermometer has a clip and stays on during the mash. 
• Congratulations you are now Mashing Grains in an all grain batch of beer!
• At the end of the mash, pull the bag and set it on the colander.  Let it drain into the wort.
• Check the volume, use the dip stick you made,  it should be about 2 gallons, if it isn't then squeeze the bag until it is at 2 gallons.  
• You will not extract tannins by squeezing, you are not that strong.  
• Tannins are extracted by incorrect pH levels, and by heat!

The Boil

If your stove has a
ceramic top, put the
kettle over 2 burners!
Both set to high!

From here on it is just like an extract batch.  The only difference is you are boiling the entire volume of wort, There will not be an addition of water into the fermenter.

(.1 ounce First Wort Hop; .2 ounce 25 mintue;  .4 ounce 5 minute, .3 ounce 7 day dry hop)

• Immediately Add .1 ounce of Centennial Hops to the wort as soon as you pull the bag and are draining. 
• This is called first wort hopping.  Some recipes will want you to do this others wont. 
• Bring the wort to a boil When it has been boiling for 35 minutes add .2 ounces of Centennial Hops to the wort  (25 minute to go addition)  
• With 10 minutes to go in the boil add your Irish Moss (1 teaspoon) 
• With 10 minutes to go in the boil add your yeast Nutrient (1 teaspoon)
• With 10 minutes to go in the boil add your wort chiller if you have one.  
• if you do not have a wort chiller,  put a stainless steel spoon in the wort at this time to sanitize.
• Clip your thermometer to the kettle again, it also needs to sanitize
• Allow the wort to boil for another 20 minutes then add .4 ounces of Centennial Hops to the boil. (5 minutes to go at this point)
• At 60 minutes turn off the heat and move the kettle off of the burners.
• Chill the batch.  If you don't have a wort chiller, you can use ice water in the sink, it will still chill in short order, remember it is only a 1 gallon batch.  
• put the kettle full of wort into a sink that has 2" of ice water.  use the sanitized spoon to stir the wort. do not take the spoon out of the wort, you could contaminate it.  
• When the wort is at 65 to 70 degrees you are done chilling.
• Sanitize the 2 gallon bucket; use star san and a soft sponge if necessary.  Do not scratch it!
• Aerate: pour the wort into the bucket vigorously. (you may want to leave behind the break material.  If you do, pour all but the break material into the bucket, dispose of break)
• The pour the wort vigorously back into the kettle
• Then back into the bucket.
• During one of these pours catch some of the wort in a sanitized small plastic cup.  This wort will not return to the batch ever.  It is for your gravity reading
• Take a gravity reading. 
• Pitch your yeast 1/2 a package of US-05 - 
• Do NOT pitch it all.  You want the colony to grow and expand. More is not better!
• Place the fermenter in a cool dark place for 14 days, leave it alone. 
• On day 15 Wash your hands.  Then carefully open the fermenter.   
• It is a good idea to have a spray bottle with some StarSan solution with you when you do this.   It allows you to easily sanitize everything!
• Set the lid onto a sterile surface - like aluminum foil that you have sprayed with starsan.
• Put the dry hops into the fermenter.

• Be careful not to splash or create foam.  You do not want oxygen at this point in the fermentation process.  Just gently put in the dry hops.
• Allow the beer to age for 1 more week before packaging.  

That's it.  You did it, you made all grain beer. It really isn't that hard.  And if you can make all grain beer, you can certainly make partial mash.

There are many many more things to learn about home brewing.  That is what makes it fun.  Over the years you'll learn to do step mashes, re-iterated mashes, partial mashes, decoction mashing, turbid wort extraction.  Eventually you'll learn about water chemistry, and the kind of oils that make up a hop flavor profile.  If you are wise you will learn to keep things simple, not to over complicate things. As you might suspect I field a lot of questions on this blog.  Most of them come as private messages. It also wont surprise you that most of the questions are either from new brewers who don't quite get something, or they are from experienced brewers who read something somewhere and they have now complicated the crud out of everything.  Remember brewing is just cooking.  Seek to understand why things happen and you don't need a recipe!

Eventually,  You'll learn your system and what really works well on your system.  All kinds of fun stuff.  But you'll always remember the first time you made all grain beer.