Rich Red Ale Part I

Brewing your own beer is one of those things that is often though to be confusing and hard, but in reality is extremely simple and rewarding. All it takes is a little patience and a small investment. There isn't a much more rewarding thing than cracking out a beer that you brewed and taking a sip and finding out that not only did it work, but it actually tasted good! Of course, there is the flipside where you open up either your fermentor or bottle after 2-6 weeks only to find out it is contaminated and ruined. But that shouldn't happen if you take a few precautions!

I've brewed one beer before this one that was an extract beer, which is the simplest you can make. This recipe, the Rich Red Ale, will build upon that by steeping various grains to add more flavor. Malt? Grain? What is he talking about?

Malt: Without getting to much into it malting grain allowing you to get a combination of enzymes and starch from grains that, when heated, will activate the enzymes turning the starch into fermentable sugars for the yeast to live on. A lot of recipes called for malt extract (including this one) which is the sugars already converted from starch by the enzymes.

Grain: Malt comes from grain, but if you add grain (without malting it) directly to your brew then you're providing the yeast with unfermentable sugars that will simply add flavor to your beer rather than be converted into alcohol like the malt extract discussed above.

Hops: Hops are basically flowers. They provide the beer with a ton of different flavors depending on the types and how much you use, along with preserving the beer. They contain two different types of acids that act as antibiotics to keep out bacteria (and preserve the yeast) along with adding bitterness and a variety of flavors. These are typically added during the boiling process of brewing (what one is making here is called "wort"). If hops are added after the wort is taken off heat or while the beer is actually fermenting then they are called aroma hops and are typically just adding oils for flavor.

Yeast: These are what makes wort into beer. They take the fermentable sugars and metabolize them into Co2 and alcohol. What type of yeast you use will change the flavor profile of your beer. You can use dry yeast or wet yeast. I think most brewers prefer wet yeast since it gives you more versatility.

Water: Relatively obvious, but what you add all of the above to is water. Simple enough.

The ingredients for my Rich Red Ale includes:

-Light dry malt extract

-Belgian Weyermann Melanoidin malt, Belgian Caravienne, and British Crystal Malt (these are the grains mentioned above....not extract so they won't be fermented and will impart flavor)

-Cascade hops

-Kent Golding hops

-Priming Sugar

-Wyeast Scottish Yeast (wet yeast)

I'll make another post about the process of actually turning this into beer later on!

For more information and and the actually recipes I'm using click here.