The Beer Thread

[33anda3rd]

Most brewers who are running nanobreweries in Chicago now came from one of two places--Goose Island or Homebrewing. The GI family tree is staggering and reaches all the way to California with Matt at Firestone. There are good homebrewers making fine beers. Jerry at Une Annee, Jay at Arcade, the Begyle guys, the Rude Hippo guys, the Ale Syndicate guys, BeeJay and Gerrit at Pipeworks, Drew at 18th Street in Gary IN, they're all making good beers and were all good homebrewers.

Coffee is arguably past beer. It's the most traded commodity in the world. There are so many variations, farms, etc. Try to get some of Aida Battle's Finca Tanzania, whether it's roasted by Blue Bottle in CA or Stumptown in OR, and you're going to have to get it quick and pay an arm and a leg for it, much like Goose's BCS or FFF's Dark Lord or Russian River's Pliny the Younger. The ship has sailed on coffee being a one-note thing, and you have everything from bad gas station coffee (which was maybe 1-2 clicks from the norm 30 years ago) to Intelligentsia using high-end carefully calibrated pour-over devices in their newest Chicago store. 24 years ago coffee was 35 cents a cup and there were not many options other than what you see in gas stations and low-end diners now. Now, it can be $7 a cup. It's insane. Beer is catching up with coffee, and coffee has a far greater spread of quality and style than beer.

I also don't think craft beer drinkers have bailed on mass-produced beer. I'll gladly crush a bunch of PBRs or Hamms or Old Styles at a ballgame or a barbecue. I've knocked back plenty of PBRs with people who own craft breweries at their breweries, like, plural. I know a guy, a Cicerone, works in distribution now but used to run the beer program at a couple notable places in Chicago (like, really notable places) and his favorite beer is Old Style. The perception of that crowd as a bunch of snobs who turn up their noses at mass-produced American adjunct lagers is unfair IMO. To me the real beer snobs are: "my dad drank MGD, and I drink MGD, and I don't really drink anything but MGD." That's a beer snob.

Craft beer people are far more likely to get their feathers ruffled over the stupidity and arrogance of one of their own than they are big beer.

[Freed Roger]

Coffee is arguably past beer. It's the most traded commodity in the world. ....Beer is catching up with coffee, and coffee has a far greater spread of quality and style than beer.
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Oh I'm sure there are vast variations in coffee, and I'm guessing it's more refined. But it's like eskimos with numerous names for snow - it's still snow. Coffee- it's just beans and hot water. Even Reinheitsgebot has more ingredients than that. The process - with a Keurig is different, but not that drastically different -hot water over grounds, than what a good barista would do.

Brewing beer, a lot more to it, I suspect. I am starting to like better coffee, but I haven't noticed difference so great that I can't drink the Bud Light of coffee anymore.
I currently don't buy it 33rd, though I have a whole lot more coffee and beer to try.

[33anda3rd]

Since there's some question about if the Pico is "push button brewing"* I'll type here as I watch their 8-minute "How to brew on the Pico Brew Zymatic" video.

Hi, I'm master brewer Annie Johnson. ::googles annie johnson...:: 2013 Homebrewer of the Year. Homebrewer does not = "master brewer." Jared Rouben is a master brewer. Matt Brynildson. Jim Cibak. Nick Floyd. She's a homebrewer with an invention calling herself a 'master brewer.' Whatever.

We measure our grains and our water and put them in the appropriate places on the system.

We put a parka on the keg. It's unclear why. We seal the keg. We put a foam trap on with some anti-foaming agent, then hook the keg up to the Zymatic. (I can tell from here the water is going to go from keg to machine, then wort from machine to keg. This is problematic. Later for that.)

Now there's a thing that looks like a crisper drawer from a refrigerator. You have to put screens on the hop compartment, the grain compartment, and the top. We put in hops in a thing that looks like a lantern but with screen filters, then we put the grains in the other compartment, cover, and "now we're ready to brew." The crisper drawer thing goes in, you pick a setting and the machine starts.

The wort is in the keg when the brew is done. We take a bucket of ice water and set the keg in it (after taking the parka off). Push a button on the Zymatic, the wort will pass through and chill. Now we need to pitch our yeast.

(First mention of sanitation) We put an airlock on the keg. You can use dry or liquid yeast with the Zymatic. The yeast goes into the keg, which is then sealed, and the beer ferments in the keg. "You're ready to drink in two weeks."

You attach a couple tubes, put one in a bucket of water, then hit the clean button and it cleans itself.

Basically, what's involved is
1. find a recipe on your computer, buy the stuff you need
2. measure grain and water and hops, put them in
3. push a button
4. put the keg in a cold bucket and push a button
5. put some yeast in
6. hook up two tubes and hit the 'clean' button

So, basically, all the real hands-on work of brewing is eliminated. Also a couple things seem omitted. Aerating wort when moving it from the mash tun to the fermenter is a very important step in brewing. That doesn't appear to be happening here, unless it's automated and she's not mentioning that it happens. There's no mention from the top about sanitizing equipment, which is probably the most work in brewing and the thing people should be most conscious of--any hoses, that keg, the ball locks on the keg, the machine, any buckets being used, etc., it all needs sanitized. Sanitization is a major concern for all home and pro brewers. It's the biggest pain in the butt of the whole process.

"Your beer is ready in two weeks." Really? What if it's a lager? What if it's a sour? What if you pitched in some brett yeast for giggles because you wanted a wild ale? Those all take way longer than two weeks.

Can someone make ok beer on this? Probably. But, again, they're not 'brewing' beer, they're just measuring out ingredients and pushing buttons. The person using this isn't going to learn how to make beer--they're not going to get concepts like aeration and fermentation/yeast and so on. I think about when I started cooking. I was a really good cookbook cook for maybe 7-8 years. I could find a recipe that looked good and follow instructions. But I wasn't really a 'good cook' yet because I could not go to the market, see what was there, and think in my head what they could make together. I was a good recipe follower. That's what someone using this would be. A good recipe follower.

*Which, like that's the marketing pitch, the home page says: "Brew perfect craft beer at the push of a button." Which is itself a come-on. Perfect craft beer? Push of a button? Let's get 25 craft brewers in a room and ask them if someone can "brew" "perfect" "craft" beer at the "push of a button." They'll probably to a (wo)man laugh that question out of the room. Especially the 'perfect' and 'craft' parts.

[33anda3rd]

The process - with a Keurig is different, but not that drastically different -hot water over grounds, than what a good barista would do.

Here's what's going to happen with a Keurig. It's going to brew exactly the same every time until it gets dirty and clogged and old and then it's going to brew different an then it's going to go in a landfill. If you're lucky you'll get to use it daily and it won't be in a landfill within 18 months because either it broke or a new model came out and you wanted that one. It costs $120-200, and each cup of coffee is like 67 cents.

Here's what happens at my home. I have a glass Chemex that cost $35 and that I've had for four years, and once every 100 days or so I pay $9 for 100 Chemex filters. Then I pay about $20 for a 12oz bag of beans that lasts 8.5 days at 40 grams/day. So in a year I pay about $858 for beans (that's assuming I make coffee at home every day, which I do not) and $31 for filters. Let's call it $900. It's about 3X the cost of amortizing a Keurig plus the coffe that goes in that, but it assumes you have just one cup of Keurig a day, where my Chemex brews 2.5 cups per 40g of coffee. The price, then, is maybe me paying $100 more/year.

I weigh out exactly 40 grams of coffee, which I have ground by hand in a little Japanese mill my Mrs. got me for Xmas a few years ago. It's weighed on a drug scale that works to the tenth of a gram for exactitude.
I heat the water to exactly 202F.
I complete the pour-over process. It takes about 5-6 minutes and I have to be attentive.

If the coffee tastes over- or under-extracted, I can adjust my grind. I can do other stuff to control the flavor of the coffee every time. In my process, I'm controlling literally everything from 1/10 of a gram of coffee to one degree of water. With a Keurig, you can't do that. So, at risk of sounding like an elitist snob, someone making coffee on a Keruig is not doing the same thing I'm doing. They're getting a faster, slightly cheaper alternative, but they're not doing the same thing I'm doing even if it is all "water over grounds."

[Jocephus]

often i can't sleep because my coffee was 1 degree off. also, i think my keurig has lived for about 4 years now. it can be cleaned.

[33anda3rd]

Jo, you know that's not what I'm saying.

[Jocephus]

obviously this is all about preference but im not sure how else to "take it".

you seem to insinuate that convenience is bad and/or those that choose it are doing something wrong, or missing out on something. i would agree with everything you said regarding how you prepare yours and how my cup might go if im using a keurig. and perhaps your version truly tastes so much more wonderful and life affirming.

but when it comes to nut cutting time, its coffee. or its beer. the way one chooses to go about acquiring that doesn't negate anything. i feel like you try to put analytics to something that is subjective to each person.

[jim]

I am the opposite -- I won't even use the little scooper at work to measure out the coffee and I sure as hell don't pay attention to the little note the secretary put that says 2 1/2 - 3 scoops per pot. Just pick the can up and pour some in until it looks about right and brew it. I do the same with soap in the laundry, milk in my cereal, chemicals in my hot tub. If I get itchy, I cut a back a little. If the water clouds up, I add a little. When I'm tying flies, a few extra raps, a little dubbing ... whatever. Close enough.

I'm not a directions person at all. The idea of brewing my own beer sounds like it's probably not going to work out well for me. Especially since I know my brother is a big time directions person and all of his beer is terrible. If I had a machine where I could pour some stuff in and be in the ball park by eyeballing it and press a button and beer came out? [expletive] yeah I'm buying that.

[Arthur Dent]

"Your beer is ready in two weeks." Really? What if it's a lager? What if it's a sour? What if you pitched in some brett yeast for giggles because you wanted a wild ale? Those all take way longer than two weeks.

So then you wait longer than two weeks. How is this any different than less automated home brewing?

Can someone make ok beer on this? Probably. But, again, they're not 'brewing' beer, they're just measuring out ingredients and pushing buttons. The person using this isn't going to learn how to make beer--they're not going to get concepts like aeration and fermentation/yeast and so on. I think about when I started cooking. I was a really good cookbook cook for maybe 7-8 years. I could find a recipe that looked good and follow instructions. But I wasn't really a 'good cook' yet because I could not go to the market, see what was there, and think in my head what they could make together. I was a good recipe follower. That's what someone using this would be. A good recipe follower.

Or they could be designing their own recipes with a custom and repeatable brewing process. There's no reason you have to stick to pre-defined recipes any more than with the old school approach. And you get much better control and the ability to do things like multi-step mashes that would be extremely difficult with standard homebrew gear. The thing comes with software to control the brew program. Here's a snapshot. I think most homebrewers would love to have this kind of detailed data and control over their brew.

Spoilered for size:

[SHOW]

Basically, what's involved is
1. find a recipe on your computer, buy the stuff you need
2. measure grain and water and hops, put them in
3. push a button
4. put the keg in a cold bucket and push a button
5. put some yeast in
6. hook up two tubes and hit the 'clean' button

So, basically, all the real hands-on work of brewing is eliminated. Also a couple things seem omitted. Aerating wort when moving it from the mash tun to the fermenter is a very important step in brewing. That doesn't appear to be happening here, unless it's automated and she's not mentioning that it happens. There's no mention from the top about sanitizing equipment, which is probably the most work in brewing and the thing people should be most conscious of--any hoses, that keg, the ball locks on the keg, the machine, any buckets being used, etc., it all needs sanitized. Sanitization is a major concern for all home and pro brewers. It's the biggest pain in the butt of the whole process.

Now let's do the traditional home brewer process assuming a water cooler mash and batch sparge:

1: Measure out milled grain mix into mash tun
2: Heat water to strike temperature that is an unknown and variable amount higher than your desired mash temperature.
3: Add heated water to mash tun and stir (also adding any mineral adjustments either now or before in the hot liquor pot)
4: Measure the temperature of the mash. It will inevitably miss your target by several degrees and will be difficult to measure until the heat diffuses evenly.
5: If you miss, attempt to adjust by adding additional hot or cold water. This may help or cause overshooting especially if your temperature hasn't settled yet. These adjustments will be different every time your brew and the different temperature profile will alter the chemistry of the sugar (and other substance) extraction and the character of the final beer. You should probably also sample the pH at this point.
6: Let sit for ~1 hour, and then top off mash with hot water, consider stirring and rest a few more minutes.
7: Drain through your outlet tube into boil pot. Good idea to check pH and gravity of runnings.
8: Add more heated sparge water to the mash tun, with the water heated above 170 F in hopes that when mixed with the somewhat cooler grains, the temperature will settle at just under 170F.
9: Consider stirring and let sit a few minutes
10: Drain again again checking pH and gravity of runnings.
11: Lug incredibly heavy pot full of hot wort to your burner and light
12: Monitor/stir wort as it comes to a boil and possibly reduce temperature at the initiation of boil to avoid a boil over.
13: Start boil timer and add bittering hops slowly again to avoid a boil over
14: Add flavor and aroma hops at the appropriate time again being careful to avoid boil over. Sometimes add clarifiers late in the boil, also if using an immersion chiller place this in the pot a few minutes before the end of the boil to sanitize.
15: Lug giant heavy pot back inside or wherever you have access to water for cooling.
16: Cool wort to ~70F checking temperature with a carefully sanitized thermometer.
17: Transfer cooled wort to fermenter, hopefully using some technique to avoid transferring hop sludge, hot/cold break material etc.
18: Wort can be aerated by pooring, shaking the fermenter, bubbling, or perhaps some other means.
19: Pitch yeast. If using dry yeast, it should be hydrated first. (Actually, I aerate after pitching to mix and wash down yeast stuck to the sides of the fermenter.
20: Seal fermenter with airlock and move to (hopefully temperature controlled) fermentation space.
21: Fermentation steps and beyond omitted as there is no difference here anyway.

Ok, so that's a lot more work than Picobrew, and there are number of steps that are tricky to do well or repeatably, but where exactly is the value added? Does my beer come out better because I lug a heavy pot around? Because I have honed the art of dialing in temperature by adding just the right amount of water at the right temperature?

There are some missing things from the Picobrew presentation like the importance of aeration, but there's no reason this can't be approached in exactly the same manner that an old school home brewer would handle it. Similarly, cooking with a ice bath is slow and annoying, though it probably works better for the small batches here, but again, there's no reason you can't, for example, rig up a counter-flow chiller to the device, to improve this step.

And you're right sanitation is a big pain, and not particularly interesting. Wouldn't it be awesome if your brewing equipment could be put in the dishwasher and/or run through an automated cleaning program, to avoid this boring but necessary work? I think so too!

Don't get me wrong, I love the more old school process, and have enjoyed developing my skill at it and thinking of ways to improve. The fact that it is challenging to get right might lead to a better feel for just how finicky the whole process is, but it also just not that well controlled and difficult to achieve consistent results. With a "push button" system, you can improve on some of more difficult steps in the old school approach, and eliminate some of the non value-added labor like lugging things around and hand cleaning. You can be content to just follow recipes or branch out to learn the detail of the process and make tweaks either in software or by augmenting the equipment in ways not all that different than the options you had with the old school approach. Everything once you get to the fermenter is unchanged. I really don't see what great craft is lost to the automation other than some idea that making things hard is inherently better or because the old school approach is more transparent, and that this transparency somehow gives you a better feel. Perhaps there is something to the latter, but the main change is better control and reduced rote labor, which are both good things.

[33anda3rd]

It's not about value, and it's not about better. It's not about any of the things you guys are assigning falsely to what I'm saying, like that my coffee is "life affirming."

It's about this.

Manual coffee/beer brew: You are brewing. You control the process.

Keurig/Pico: The machine is brewing. You control only the materials that go in.