Brew and Smoke Day

My husband has been a hombrewer since before I met him.  One of our first dates we made beer together on his stove.  I don’t remember what we made but it was a 5 gallon batch brewed with malt extract.  Fast forward a year or so and we were regularly brewing 5 gallons at a time on an upgraded, all grain system that my husband designed and built.  Fast forward another year and a half to when we got married and my parents got us a Sabco Brew Magic for our wedding present. 

The Brew Magic is designed as a pro-level pilot system for recipe development that includes all three brewing vessels, the hot liquor tank, mash tun, and the boil kettle, along with all the hardware, tubing and pipes to connect and transfer liquid between the vessels.  The system was designed for more precise brewing in all aspects including temperature control and repeatability. 

Rich and our new brew system

This is probably a good time to explain how beer is made.

1. Select/create recipe, and buy grains, hops, yeast and anything else you want to add to the beer
2. Mill/Crush the grains
3. Mash: add hot water to the crushed grains, and steep them in the water to release certain sugars which the yeast can consume
4. Sparge: the liquid from the mash is drained off of the grains into the boil kettle while hot water also rinses them to remove as much sugar as possible
5. Boil: the hot liquid, called ‘wort’ is boiled for a certain amount of time, usually around 60min where hops are added at different intervals for bittering
6. Chill: the wort is cooled relatively quickly, usually through a chiller, and placed in fermenters where the yeast is pitched
7. Ferment: the yeast consumes the sugars and produces the alcohol, giving you beer in a few weeks!

We decided to make a Saison which is a farmhouse style of beer originally brewed in Wallonia, Belgium.  The beer was brewed near the end of spring to last through the warmer months since it’s not too strong and can be refreshing in the summer.  The flavor profile is a combination of fruity and spicy flavors and can have a slight tartness, and dry finish.  I wanted to do a variation on the beer so out of the 10gallons, 5 of it will be just the normal Saison, and the other 5 gallons I split into two and added mango and strawberries, creating a fruit-Saison.

We got started by heating up the water for the mash, which took about an hour since the ground water was chilly to start with.  We slowly added the grains to the hot water, breaking up all the chunks but not disrupting the grain bed.  We mashed for 75min at 150deg.  The Brew Magic has a pump to circulate the liquid in the mash along with a heater to keep it at temperature.  If extra heat is needed there is a burner under the mash tun as well. 

Mashing in the grains with hot water

While we were mashing, it was a great time to eat!  We prepared a beef brisket for everyone to enjoy and all of our guests brought wonderful sides to go with it.  Making a brisket takes quite a bit of prep work ahead of time.  Wednesday night I created a beer brine and brined the brisket for 24hrs.  Thursday night I put a rub all over the brisket and covered it back up to sit for another 24hrs.  Late Friday night I injected the brisket with a mix of sugar and peach nectar while we fired up our Big Green Egg Smoker to 225deg.  We placed the brisket on the smoker at about 3:30am and let it smoke, spritzing it with the same fluid used for the injection every so often until taking it off the smoker around 12:30pm.  We covered it up with tinfoil and let it sit in a cooler until around 4pm.  It turned out wonderful, and everyone enjoyed it.

Racking the beer onto fruit

Back to brewing, next we had to transfer the wort into the boil kettle by draining all the liquid off the grains and using sparge water to rinse the grains.  We then did a 60min boil adding hops at the beginning of the boil again at 50min and the final addition at flameout.  We chilled the wort through our chill wizard, to cool it to about 65deg before it goes into the fermenters.  The last step was to pitch the yeast, we used a French Saison yeast.  The last part of brew day is the extensive cleanup to get all the sticky gunk out of the brewing equipment which helps to keep it in good working form.

After everything was cleaned up we headed to our rooftop deck and enjoyed a nice evening with a campfire, more drinking, s’mores and cards against humanities.  It was a successful brewday with lots of good company and even some learning on the brewing process took place.  Stay tuned to see how our beer turns out!