HBK #4, Day One, Part One: The Grain

First thing's first:  the beer that I selected for brewing (and for the blogging inaugural) was a smoked porter.  Beermaster Tim and his Yoda Chris discussed how best to accomplish this in terms of different malt styles to blend.  This discussion drew from their shared base of knowledge regarding malt varieties, the styles of beer that each is generally used to produce, and the flavors that might result from combining them.  This, of course, is all knowledge that they've gathered after having each brewed dozens of beers in the past, and I therefore can't report too heavily on all the ins and outs of their ultimate decision...but I sure can try to sum up the process and experience of selecting and preparing grain, plus share a few pretty pictures along the way.  First, though, some basics...and some science, if you can stand it:

Beer is, quite basically, made from water, yeast, flavorings (like hops), and grain.  Lots of grains can be used in brewing (and I fully intend to request something weird for my next pick--millet beer, anyone?), but barley is the most common by far.  Wheat, rye, and oat are common secondary grains, as they add flavor and color, but barley is the most common base grain because its husk contains high levels of amylase, an enzyme that converts starches in the germ (i.e., the non-husk portion) into sugars.  Most of that sugar, in turn, becomes "yeast food" in the fermentation process, which creates alcohol.

In order to maximize the amount of potential sugar that can be extracted from the barley, it's first subjected to a process called malting.  Basically, the barley is soaked in water and allowed to germinate - to begin the very first steps of growing into a plant - then dried in a large and relatively low-temperature kiln before the sprouted grains are allowed to mature into full plants.  Without malting, barley grains don't contain the correct proportions of starches (complex sugars) to enzymes (to break down the starches), and therefore wouldn't produce enough sugar during extraction to ferment a good beer.

Different malting processes produce different malts, and we therefore end up with a wide variety of colors and flavors of malted barley, each of which can be used to produce different kinds of beers.   A light malt results in a light color; a dark malt results in a darker beer.  Likewise, malts have different enzymatic contents, and therefore require different lengths of time for their starch content to fully convert to sugars.  There are numeric scales that rate each malt by its color and enzymatic content (called its "diastatic power") respectively, and while getting into those scales in depth is probably beyond the scope of this blog, suffice it to say that a good brewer is familiar with each rating system and knows how a malt's number on each scale will effect his or her beer.

Enough Already, How About Some Pictures?

So, for this particular beer, we used:

 1.  A base malt - a requirement for every beer...this is a malt with a balanced enzyme-to-starch ratio which breaks almost entirely down into sugar and therefore makes easily fermentable malt extract, or "wort."  Tim's standard base is a pilsner malt, light in color and easily overwhelmed in terms of flavor by other secondary grains.

2.  A smoked malt - this Rauch malt is kilned over an open flame rather than on a heated surface (which is how most malts are made), which gives it a strong smokey character.  Since Tim wanted to beat people over the head with its smokiness, our porter is roughly equal in proportion between the base malt and this Rauch.

3.  A roasted wheat - even though it's only a minor ingredient compared to the first two, a relatively small amount this intense grain (which tastes burned when sampled in its solid form) lends the beer its dark color, as well as a bit of acidity and bitterness.

The grain is weighed out in proportion (a sum total of about 12 pounds of grain went into our six gallons of beer), mixed together, and ground in a mill.

...okay, admittedly the picture on the left is of a different mix of grain post-milling.  (You're not crazy; the roasted wheat didn't suddenly disappear).  But the other pictures didn't turn out, and I wanted to share a shot of the texture:  grinding the grain, obviously, turns it into a bunch of tiny pieces easily permeable by water, thus shortening the amount of time it takes to extract the sugar in a process called "mashing," which will be the subject of the next blog.  'Til then, I hope everyone is excited about the soon-to-be-bottled "Char-Cole Porter".

What is the BeerShare?

Given that this is the first post of our blog, and that probably the only people who will bother to read it are already members, it seems a little redundant to explain what exactly HBK is.  But, damn it, I'm going to do it anyway.

Started at the end of 2011, The HBK (Home Brew Kimener) Beer Co-op is nothing more than an excuse for founder/brewer Tim Kimener to show off his affinity for making beer, and to get the people around him as excited about the process as he clearly is (just ask him a question about malted barley or IBU ratings and you'll see what I mean).  His passion for brewing seems - at least to me, a largely uninitiated nonbrewer - to exceed that of a typical beer nerd or hobbyist DIY-guy...I have it on good authority that he harbors hopes of some day brewing beer professionally, and this wouldn't surprise anyone who has ever shared a pitcher of a good IPA with him.

"The whole idea is to get people into it," he says.  "My Yoda passed knowledge on to me, and I want to pass what I know onto the HBK."  (He's always saying shit like this.)  "But it's fun, it's not too hard, and you get beer at the end of it.  Why wouldn't people want to do it?"  Plus, he says, the beer co-op will encourage him to research methods of making beer styles that he's never attempted before, and force him to innovate new techniques and broaden his horizons.  "Then I can become a BEER MASTER!"  (See what I mean?  Always.) 

"If people want to be a part of it, they have to help out with the batch."  One of the requirements of membership in the co-op is that you help him out with some step of the weeks-long brewing process:  help bottle the beer (save your bottles so he can re-use them!), provide ingredients (one member volunteered a pound of chocolate after suggesting that Tim brew a chocolate stout), or write a blog about the whole HBK concept (cough, cough).  This plus a small membership fee to offset the cost of production makes you a bona fide HBK member.  Your reward?  A growler full of the finished product.  Not to mention each member's right to choose a beer for the group (i.e. Tim) to brew.

The membership fee, for the time being at least, should not be viewed as a purchase price for beer.  It's more a product of Tim's altruism and his lack of attention to mathematical detail where money is concerned.  "It would be awesome if I were breaking even.  I'm pretty sure I'm in the negative.  But I don't care too much for now.  I just want to get people into it."  And that's why helping out with the brewing is the crucial part of membership:  HBK is not a brewery, or a liquor store, or anything along those lines.  It's a collective of people who are interested in making and sharing a product.  If it ultimately ends up serving as a platform for a future brewery, then we'll all have had the pleasure of being a part of it from the beginning.

In the process of helping him make a beer, Tim hopes members will become inspired to take up the hobby for themselves, and use his counsel and advice to establish a strong start.  And trust me, there's a lot of advice.  Even asking him a three-word question (e.g., "What is 'sparging?'") will result in twenty minutes of unsolicited pointers on minutiae like heating temperatures, pouring techniques, and specific gravities.

So, that's sort of where I come in...with the three-word questions.  Tim said he wanted to start a blog to follow the HBK Co-op, and I thought it would be a good chance for me to throw myself head-first into a new hobby...and not a fruitless hobby, either, but one that results in alcohol!  Taking up the responsibility of the blog would mean that I would need to learn all the ins and outs of the process, to take detailed notes on his rambling about wort boil-overs and glass sterilization, and would therefore know my way around a...brewing...set-up...place.  (See?  I don't even know enough yet to finish that sentence smoothly.)

So, the goal of this blog is to follow each beer that Home Brew Kimener produces from its inception.  With half-assed photography, and as much information about each step of the process as I'm able to retain from Tim's ramblings, I hope to post enough updates to guide people (myself included) in the brewing process.  Conveniently, the next beer to be brewed, and the first to be blogged, is my pick.  (Smoked porter?  Alt?  Scotch ale?  Or maybe something with a weird ingredient...pistachios?  Cardamom?  Avocado?)  So I'll get to see how Tim decides to go about meeting my weird demands.  And my only contribution is to write about it.  And photograph it.  And be there for every step of the production of every beer so I can keep up with all of the important details.  You know, easy stuff.

So, if you care, keep checking in here.  Barring disaster (or disastrous laziness), we'll have plenty to talk about.  And, provided I understand this blog platform as well as I think I do, we can all have an open discussion in the comment threads.  (First suggestion for a comment topic:  "Why the hell would Justin want an avocado beer?")