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I've made several Belgian Dark Strong Ale recipes over the 8 or so years I've been home brewing. That's because the style is by far one of my favorites.  I enjoy its malt-forward, complex, and dark fruit flavors and the warming note from the high alcohol content. However, I've been disappointed with most of my brews to date (despite some competition-winning versions) because the dark fruit flavor just doesn't "pop" to the front of my palate.  This, for me, is one of the most enjoyable flavor elements of both the Dark Strong Ale and the Dubbel. During a live chat with a far more knowledgeable and experienced brewer, he suggested that I try experimenting with increased amounts of Special B Malt (up to 15% of the grist) and Dark Candi Sugar.  Today, I've decided to brew a fairly traditional Dark Strong style recipe but to include an extremely generous proportion (around 10%) of Special B malt.  I'll also be using D-90 Candi Syrup and Wyeast 1762, whic...

In the previous posts, I've talked about The Grainfather in general, then about mashing and sparging with it. This time, I'm going to talk about the boil and post-boil steps. The boil process in all-grain brewing is intended to accomplish several things: Extract the bittering, flavor, and aroma compounds from the hops Sterilize the wort by destroying any bacteria or wild yeast that may be in it Concentrate the wort to original gravity level Remove dimethyl sulfide (DMS) from the wort, which would impart a cooked corn, cauliflower, or parsnip aroma and flavor in the beer Stop the enzyme activity that converts starches to sugars during the mash Remove proteins that can cause a chill haze to form when the beer is cooled to serving temperature Darken the beer to the level required by the style though the caramelization or Maillard reaction of sugars The least you should boil a beer to ensure sterilization is ten minutes. Typical boil times are 60-90 minutes, depending ...

In the last post, I shared an overview of The Grainfather, recommended equipment to use with it, and an overview of the brewing process.  In this installment, I'm going to talk specifically about mashing and sparging. Having brewed over a dozen batches with it, I'm finally becoming very comfortable with the device, the mash process, and how to get what I want out of it. I don't consider myself a "master" of it yet, though. For those who have never done all-grain brewing, I want to provide a quick overview of the mash process itself. Mashing - With or Without The Grainfather The goal of mashing is to turn the starches in the grain into sugars. More specifically, you want to turn the starches into a mix of fermentable and unfermentable sugars that provide the flavor profile associated with the beer you are brewing. A sweeter beer might warrant more unfermentable sugars. A more dry beer will demand few unfermentable sugars. To a great extent, controlling the...

Late in 2015, I made the switch from extract brewing to all-grain. I had made some really good extract beers prior to that switch. Switching to The Grainfather and all-grain brewing at once was like learning to brew all over again. All-grain brewing is different from extract brewing up to the point at which you start boiling the wort. Brewing in The Grainfather is different from brewing with other equipment. I'm not saying that either is necessarily better or worse, just that it's all different. Any time you introduce a change into your process, you introduce a need to learn and experiment. I'm hoping in this post to share things I've learned about brewing all-grain beers with The Grainfather so that the rest of you won't make some of the mistakes I did. Note: This post refers to the US model of The Grainfather and may not apply to non-US versions. Let's start with things about The Grainfather itself: What else do you need?  Although The Grainfather is ...

Recently, I've been trying to "dial in" settings in BeerSmith and Beer Tools Pro so that I can do a better job getting my actual brewing results to match up to the figures in the software. Below are some of the figures I've worked out with my US Grainfather. Given manufacturing variances and possible measuring errors on my part, these might not match exactly to yours, but hopefully they're close enough that it will help you. BeerSmith Equipment Profile: Brewhouse Efficiency: 83% (based on my experience, yours may vary) Mash Tun Volume: 8 gallons Mash Tun Weight: 8.82 pounds Mash Tun Specific Heat: 0.12 Cal/gram-deg C Mash Tun Addition: 0 gallons Lauter Tun Losses: 0 gallons Top Up Water for Kettle: 0 gallons Boil Volume: 6.25 gallons Boil Time: 60 minutes Boil Off: 0.40 gallons per hour Cooling Shrinkage: 6% Loss to Trub and Chiller: 0.53 gallons Batch Volume: 5 gallons Fermenter Loss: 0.40 gallons (yours may vary) Whirlpool time: 0 minutes B...

In extract brewing, there is no mash step. The brewer may choose to steep some specialty grains to grain the flavors they offer, but the mashing was done by whoever created the malt extract used to produce the beer. The benefit of extract brewing is that you save time and don't need as much equipment. The down-side is that you have less control over the flavor of your beer. For all-grain brewers, it's all about the mash. This is analogous to extract brewing's steeping and stirring in of malt extract, but is considerably more complicated. I won't go into all the complexities here, because to be quite honest I doubt I know or understand them all. There are a number of ways to perform a mash. These include: Decoction mashing: A portion of the mash is drawn off and boiled in a separate vessel, then added to the mash tun to heat it up. In this style of mashing, there's no heat applied to the main mash vessel - only to the portion drawn off and heated separatel...