Here are some nice one liners and notes from Charlie Papazian’s book “The Home Brewer’s Companion”. Many of these are useful if you homebrew. All of us benefit from sharing information.
Work is Work…Play is Play…Beer is Beer… BUT -HomeBrew is the Best.
A knowledgeable and well trained Brewer will brew beer under controlled conditions.
Many specialty malts must be fully mashed with the rest of the grist, but there are exceptions. Black patent malt, chocolate malt, brown malt, various crystal and caramel malts and roasted barley are the principal malts available to homebrewers that do not require a mashing regimen to convert nonfermentable carbohydrates to fermentable cabohydrates.
Soluble protein is a measure of proteins that act as a yeast nutrient.
Malt is simply a grain that has been allowed to germinate following wetting and then allowed to dry. This process degrades proteins and develops starch to sugar converting enzymes.
Bitterness and Hop flavor are relative and the brewer needs to focus on these flavors in beer.
Hop resins are made of both hard and soft. Hard resins contribute little. Soft resins include alpha acids and beta acids. In a boiling wort the alpha acids isomerize and thus cause bitterness. Remember, one bitterness unit is equal to 1 milligram of isomerized alpha acid per liter of wort.
Disolved Minerals in water influence the flavor, aroma, color, head retention, clsarity, alcohol content and stability of beer.
The role that experience and experimentation have in helping develop the art of choosing yeast is absolutely essential.
It is the nature of homebrewers to increase their respect and enjoyment of beer. In the end you will holding a glass of the best beer in the world- YOURS.
A mash at 158 degrees F is complete in 20 minutes.
During the chilling process (wort), precipitation of additional tannin-protein trub occurs. The precipitate is called the cold break. The more quickly the wort is chilled the greater the amount of cold break.
If you are going to discuss beer fermentation with any degree of authority, there is only one definitive statement you can make about it ” It all depends”.
Reading a recipe and assuming things are supposed to happen a certain way is not homebrewing. HOMEBREWING is what you do and how your beer behaves.
my favorite bit of advice from Charlie: Technology offers the brewer the opportunity to assess specific attribute of a beer’s profile in accurate detail, but human senses also are versatile tools for assesing qualities of beer. The combination of human senses and technology is synergistic. Both complement each other and serve to enhance or confirm assessments that can be used to describe a beer’s style. Roger adds “organoleptic characteristics rule the art of beermaking and thus the enjoyment”
Empty Nest Brewing 