Most of the time I write music, specifically organ music and the scores I create from manuscript sources. However, music is only one hobby. Another is beer, specifically Belgian beer. My fwvorites are Westmalle Triple and Duvel Triple Hop. Phenomenal beers to taste and savour. The only draw back is that they don't go well with playing the organ. After the first bottle precision and toucher are gone.
Basically brewing beer is done in four steps:
- malting
- mashing
- boiling
- fermenting
Perhaps I should add a fifth step: put the result in bottles and lager them for an appropiate time.
Of these 4 (or 5) stept, malting is the most difficult one. Perhaps in due time I want to learn that part of the proces as well, but luckily one can buy the result of this first step in handy brew-it-yourself-packages all over the internet. As I am Dutch,I use the products of http://brouwbroeders.nl. They have several nice starter packages, with all the stuff you need to brew your first (or second, or third, etcetc) beer. Warning: the site is in Dutch...
We started with one of their packages for a Belgian Triple, with the malting step already done. The package contains the malt, hops and yeast.
The mashing consists of several stept of heating to 65°C (1 hour), 73°C (10 minutes) and 78°C. It is difficult to control the temperature. Heating must be done slowly or lese the temperature overshoots, reaching the higher temperatures far to early.
When the mashing is done, the grains are filter out. The resulting liquid is called "wort". This is what eventually is becoming our beer.
When the filtering is done it is time to add the hops for extra flavour. And the liquid is boiled for about 60 minutes.
After the boiling is done the result must be cooled to about 20-25°C. If we were to add the yeast now, it would be dead instantly because of the high temperature. When te liqiud is cooled, we put it in our fermentation bin, add the yeast and some sugar.
And then the yeast has to perform it's magic. For two weeks the temerature in the fermentation bin is kept at 20°C with the aid of an aquarium heater. You know the yeast is doing is magic when the carbondioxide escapes from the fermantation bin through the water seal.
When the fermentation period is over it is time to add again a little sugar to provide the carbonation. And then the result is put into bottles.
And now it is time to wait for at least another four weeks, while our bear matures and develops it's taste. The result is best after two months of waiting. Fact of out live is though, that most of the beer is already gone by then...
Cheers!!