↣ What is beerstone (and how to remove it)?

Saturday, May 26, 2018
 'calcium oxalate' - beerstone buildup

Beerstone is a silent but deadly beer gear killer


It creeps in slowly, like a silent assassin and you might not discover their presence until its too late...

Beerstone


The scourge of brewing kettles and kegs everywhere, beerstone can be a key element in causing off beer.

What is it?


Beerstone is a kind of scale known as 'calcium oxalate' (C2CaO4) in the brewing industry. 

This precipitate is largely due to a reaction between alkaline cleaners (e.g. caustic soda), hard water minerals (think calcium and magnesium) and protein in the form of amino acids.

It affects both the home brewer and commercial operations. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly once you've learned about the science, the milk industry has similar problems with buildup on milking machinery and milk vans.

That industry calls it, yes you guessed it, milkstone!

How does beerstone ruin beer?


The development of beerstone leaves an unsanitary surface on the keg or kettle or other brewing equipment that offers an environment that can harbour microorganisms. 

At it's most minor interference with the beer, beerstone can cause those classic "off flavors" or even shorten the shelf life of your batch.

In the worst case scenario, unwanted micro-organisms can wreck an entire batch of beer which is a waste of good beer, a waste of money and a loss of your precious brewing time.

How does beerstone form?


The organic compounds found in the wort and beer will combine with metals in the water - usually calcium and magnesium for the oxalate. It is a white, crystalline precipitate - which makes its initial appearance hard to detect with the naked eye. 

Beer bugs will then find a home in the calcium oxalate - and here's the kicker - this environment allows the microorganisms to avoid contact with your cleaning regime and, believe it or not, sodium hydroxide (NaOH) can then help form a cover by creating additional precipitate because the caustic agents react with the CO2 (given off by the fermentation process).

It's almost like you can't win!

So how do you remove beerstone?


The pros at Birkocorp have offered a pretty handy 5 step method for removing beerstone build up:
  1. Rinse out beer and yeast with ambient temperature water.
  2. Use a 1-2 ounce per gallon phosphoric/nitric acid mixture (140°F maximum temperature) for 15-30 minutes.
  3. Do not rinse the solution out.
  4. Use a noncaustic alkaline cleaner at 1-2 ounces per gallon of warm (120-140°F) to start. CIP for 15-30 minutes depending on conditions.
  5. Rinse with ambient temperature water until the pH of the rinse water is neutral (same pH as the tap water coming in).
If it's not clear, you'll need to fire up up your gas burner to get the solutions to the correct temperature.

Any residual 'soil' adhered to the metal can be removed with a high-pressure hot water rinse or simply wiped off as it should now be quite soft. If you need to do a scrub, use a sponge or scrubber that will not scour the metal. 

The entire method should be followed. This is because the acid mixture does not remove the stone, it softens up the scaling so that the alkaline cleaner has the chance to do its magic. 

Beerstone Prevention is beer than cure


If it's so easy for brewers to not notice that beerstone is 'scaling up' how can it be prevented from occurring?

The key is to mix up your cleaning method by using strong acid solutions are the quickest and most effective way to remove beerstone from stainless steel surfaces. Hydrochloric acid is a popular choice but you should not use it every time as it could cause pitting.

When using strong acids, be wary of their corrosiveness on metal.

Brewclean is a product that can help prevent the buildup of brewstone. Specifically designed for cleaning homebrew kegs and brewing equipment, it is non-corrosive so it will not cause rust on kegs or other homebrew equipment.

The wetting agent (surfactant) helps remove beerstone and other 'soils'. It's a good alternative to using sodium hydroxide.

You should be quite careful when using these kinds of acids and alkaline solutions as they are pretty potent and can do some real damage if you come into contact with them.

 A splash of chemical cleaner in the eye is pretty damaging and painful, trust me I learned this lesson some years ago and it cost me a trip to the hospital!

How to sparge your mash to collect the wort

Friday, May 18, 2018
how to batch sparge

Sparging


A lot of beer brewing is intuitive, you know you need malt and grains and you need to cook them up and you can sort of follow your nose from there.

But when I came across words like sparge and lautering I had no idea what on earth that means.

Once you know it's as simple in concept cracking open a well-earned beer.

Sparging is the process of separating the wort from the mash. Hot water is rinsed through to that as much of the sugars can be removed from the 'grain bed'.

And lautering? It's the same concept but is more a reference to the whole process itself and the movement of water. How about that eh?

While it is a simple idea, it's actually a three-step process if it's to be achieved properly.

Get ready to fire up those BTU on your gas burner!

But first, how do I know if my mash is ready to be sparged?


Your mash should have rested for an hour. This is so that the malt enzymes have had an opportunity to digest the starch into sugars. And Iodine test can be done for this. Take a sample from the mash and add a drop of iodine. 

If it goes black or purple, your mash needs more time.

If the iodine stays the same colour, your mash is ready.

Step 1 -  The Mashout


This is when you raise your mash to 170 degrees Fahrenheit or 77 Celcius. The reason for this temperature is that both stops the enzymatic conversion of starches to fermentable sugars, and makes the mash and wort more fluid and thus easier to sparge. 

To set this up, one pours the heated water into the mash tun. Slowly add the grist (crushed grain) to the water in the mash tun. You'll need to stir well the mash to prevent clumping. The temperature should stabilize at around 153 degrees.

You should then let the mash rest for an hour as the sugars are released from the grains and your wort forms.

If you undershoot the target mash temperature by more than 5° F, you may raise the mash temperature by adding heat. Stir the mash constantly while you are applying heat to avoid scorching.

Step 2 - Recirculation of the wort


The idea behind recirculation of the wort is to clear it of debris.

At first, it may seem odd that the idea is to put this cloudy liquid back into to the mash - well this is the beauty of recirculation,  the grain bed will begin to act as a filter and reduce the cloudiness of the runnings. This is why proper milling of the grain is so important so the husks can perform this task.

You may find your initial drawings from the lauter tun are cloudy and filled with what's known as  'draff' - these are small solid grain particles but repeated filtering through the grain will clear the wort.

To recirculate, your lauter tun should have a handy valve. Use it to collect the runoff in two clean intermediate vessels of say 1 quart or more in size.

As you are filling one vessel,  you are pouring the other gently down the side of the lauter tun. Keeping switching back and forth until the wort appears clear of debris.

This can take some time and you need to be patient and pour slowly.

You can now drain the wort into your kettle.

This process is sometimes called vorlauf.

Step 3 - The actual business of sparging


You can now 'rinse' the grain with fresh boiling hot water to collect any residual sugars. The water should be no more than 170°F to avoid tannins being released by the grains.

The trick is to work out the water required for the boil that matches your recipe.

Carefully add this second round of water to the grain mash and slowly drain it into the first wort you prepared.

Once fully drained, you are now ready to boil the wort as per your recipe.

This instructional video by the American Homebrewers Association is really well done and shows how straightforward the process is:



Do I have to sparge?


You do not, however, you will miss out on some efficiencies - a good deal of the potential fermentable sugars are not extracted from the mash,

If you are not sparging, you can simply drain the grain bed and get it ready for boiling by adding the required water.

Why should the sparge water temp not be higher than 180°F/82°C?


This is in order to avoid the extraction of tannins from the grain which is a chemical you simply do not want in your beer. Tannin can give your beer a kind of astringent taste and it simply ruins the drinking experience.

That said, a large factor is the ph level of your wort (which many suggest should be in the range of 5.2-5.8) as to whether you're gonna have a bad time with tannins or not.

Here are some ph meters that you may want to consider using.

Does milling grain technique affect the sparge?


A well milled and crushed grain will give you a good extraction efficiency.

A fine, but not too fine crush will offer more surface volume for the mashing process to release the sugars from the grain. If grains are crushed much then the grain bed can compact during the sparge which just disrupts the whole process.

If it's done just right, the grain better will act like its own filter and the lautering process should be straightforward. 

Can I simply cold water sparge?


Yes, you can. There are many brewers who swear that hot water sparges offer no greater utility than cold water efforts. Some brewers have done identical brewers, save for a hot or cold sparge and found when offering punters a blind taste test, they were unable to determine the difference. Go figure. 

I have also seen brewers suggest that a lower temperature will result in a lower body beer. Given body is quite a crucial party of the drinking experience, this is probably why most brewers sparge with hot water. 

I'd also suggest a higher temperature will mean you wort is more fluid and thus is more easily extracted from the grain bed - certainly, it will be a quicker process if your wort is not so viscous.

Your personal safety


When lautering and sparging you are using a lot of hot water, gas burners, mash tuns and kettles.

There are plenty of means and avenues for things to go wrong and you could literally end up getting burnt or scalded by hot water or wort.

Be careful. It's best to do your beer making in an area that gives you enough space. This is why many brewers often like to brew on an outside deck or sturdy table.

It's, of course, handy to teach children about the dangers of getting too close to gas burners and hot kettles. Better yet, you might want to keep the little ones away while the boil is on and when you are pouring hot water.

You yourself may wish to consider using some protective gloves and perhaps wear a waterproof apron and shoes!

While this may be teaching you to suck eggs, a new first-time brewer should be very mindful of these things. 

And for goodness sake, if you do burn yourself, get some cold water on the burn site pronto! Your skin is more important than your beer!

If I am doing a boil in a bag, do I need to sparge?


If you want to get all those sugars that might still be lurking in the bag, then it's wise to sparge.

Help, my mash has got clogged!


You may have over milled your grain and now the grain filter is too compact. This can also be caused by running the water off too fast. If this happens 's stop what you are doing and give the grain bed a gentle stir. Adding sum sparge water may help.

If things have gone really wrong, you may have to remove the mash, clean your tun and start again.

>> How to do small batch brewing

Monday, May 14, 2018
small batch brewing one gallon

Small Batch brewing - why do brewers even bother?


"Small Batch Brewing" sounds like one of those fancy brewing terms like 'attenuation', IBU or the line 'makes a great session beer'.

After all, when you're brewing 5 gallons of beer, that's just a small batch, right?

And that's kind of fair.

Some brewers like to go big with their batches or they go home.

When going in large (or even often) a key factor is that the brewer knows they have a tried and true recipe, one they themselves may have made many times before.

They might even have a sweet shed out the back where they can line up a row of conical fermenters, store their malt and condition their brewers. There might even be a keezer standing proudly in the corner.

And that's all good stuff as a dedicated beer maker - but if you want to experiment with your ingredients and hops and get some spice in your life as the Spice Girls suggested, then small batch brewing is a way to achieve that in terms of beer economy.

There's no point in spending plenty of your hard earned money to make 5 gallons of beer when you are only experimenting with some random chocolate raspberry stout with some random Yugoslavian yeast. If it turns out poor, who is going to drink it all?

So what level of volume are we talking here?


The common philosophy (brewlospophy?) of brewers is that a smaller batch of one or two gallons offers enough room to produce some good beers, that is worth the time and effort but also gives one the leeway to experiment by trying new ideas, timings and the like.

Small batches are also a great way to get some mastery over all grain brewing at a smaller scale.

For some beer makers, the cost of spices, fruits and fancy yeasts or hops can be out of reach or unjustified when brewing at scale, but at the smaller volume, it's worth it to try and see if the beer 's concept is worth pursuing.

Small batch brewing is also really useful for those without space.

Apartment dwellers across the world do not have sheds or garages they can pursue their hobby in. They are actually lucky if they have a dark wardrobe in which they can store their beer!

They also do not have space for 30 litre kettles, fermenters, mash tuns or wort chillers!

That way, that can get away with doing a wort boil in a small pot on the stove top or gas burner.

Things to think about when small batch brewing

Correct ingredient measurement


Correct measurements of your ingredients are extremely important. When brewing at scale, a little bit extra malt or a little less hops will not affect the beer too much but at the small scale, the differences can be quite notable which means that the beer you are intending to make, might not be the beer you produce.

You may wish to use a set of scales to measure out your ingredients and if you are converting from a larger 5-gallon recipe, make sure you get your conversion maths correct! E.g. if your 5-gallon recipe calls for 5kg of Gladfield Ale Malt but you are making one gallon, you need only one kilogram of the malt. 

Pot size


Small-scale mashing can easily be done in the typically small pots one has around the home. For every 1 gallon of space you have in your mashing vessel, you can mash 2.0 lbs of grain and collect about 1 gallon of precious wort.

A watched pot boils quicker


A smaller sized pot will get to the desired boiling temperature much quicker than normal, so to avoid boil overs, you'll need to be vigilant and eagle-eyed to catch it early.

You'll also want to make sure the wort doesn't get scorched or even evaporate too much!

If you are using a gas burner, we suggest you don't max out those BTU until you have a good feel for the timings of the wort coming to the boil.

Chilling the wort


You probably don't need to get your Copperhead out if you are doing a small brewing. You totally can of course if you kettle can accommodate the size of your chiller but you can also get away with an efficient ice bath. 

With a bag of ice in a sink or large bucket, you can reduce the wort temp pretty quickly - the smaller the wort size, the quicker it will be.

Pitch less yeast


Given the reduction in scale, it makes sense that you can pitch less yeast into the wort - same temperature rules apply though - only pitch when the wort is cooled to the appropriate temperature. 

We'd suggest that you actually use a yeast calculator to because that stuff can be expensive - if you can some yourself for the next brew, why not?

Another sweet benefit is that if you are a fan of liquid yeast, you may not need to use a yeast starter. 

What do I ferment the wort in if I'm doing a small batch?


You can totally use your standard sized carboy or plastic drum fermenter to do your micro batch.

A lot of brewers like to use 1 or 3 gallon glass carboys as well.

However, if you are microbrewing due to space restrictions, you can use anything smaller such as a bucket with a lid. I've even seen people use Coke bottles for small brews!

Whatever fermentation mechanism you use, you still need to apply standard cleaning and sanitization methods - bacteria doesn't give two hoots how big your unit is, they just want a space to do their thing. 

Small Batch Brewing is not Pico or Nano brewing


Pico is a little-used term is applied to breweries with systems 3bbls or smaller who produce less than 600 barrels of beer per annum. There is also a brand of beer brewing machine called a Pico, which frankly just seems like a waste of time as it reduces the brewing experience to effectively that of making filtered coffee.
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