Milling Your Way To Fresh Beer

Good morning. It’s officially the holiday season in New York - we’ve had our first flurries of the season, the Rockefeller Tree is up in all it’s glory, and the temperature has been hovering around freezing for the last week.

This also means its prime brewing time - make sure to have something on tap for the holidays to share with family and friends.

-Brandon Copeland

Milling Your Way to Fresh Beer

Most homebrew shops, online or local, will mill your grains for you so that you don’t have to mill them yourself. This can be key just starting out - you can get them delivered directly to your door, and you can jump right into brewing.

However, grain does not store well once it has been milled - there are all sorts of problems that can impact your finished beer. The grain can become oxidized, potentially causing off flavors. It also loses it’s enzymatic efficiency over time after milling, which can greatly impact your brewhouse efficiency. Overall, this makes sense - if you want fresh beer, use fresh ingredients, and in this case freshly milled grain.

Getting a grain mill was key for my brewing journey - in the beginning, I used the mill for specialty grains that I would add for steeping in my extract brews, in small quantities. This was nice because I could buy grains un-milled, and they would keep for a long time so if I only used a small amount for an extract recipe, I could save it for a future brew.

I have been using the same grain mill for around 10 years - it was a hand crank mill that has to attach to a table, and could only hold about a pound of grain at a time. It did it’s job, and built serious character in me over the years, however it was finally time for a change. Milling grain for an all grain IPA could take an hour of hand cranking and I would create a complete mess.

I have mentioned a couple times that I would like to upgrade, and I finally have - I purchased the Hullwrecker Grain Mill by Norther Brewer, which holds 7 pounds of grain. It took about 30 minutes to get it assembled, but what a beauty it is. It has a base that attaches to a 5 gallon bucket, and you can hook up a drill to it to mill the grain quickly and efficiently.

I haven’t used the mill yet, but I celebrated by buying a 55 pound bag of 2 row grain, and have some upcoming brews planned. Can’t believe it took me this long to upgrade…

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Beer Trivia Question

🍺 Why is barley primarily used for brewing beer?

Read to the end to find out if you're right!

Brewgr Recipe of the Week

American Foxhound - Sierra Nevada Clone

The picture for this recipe caught my eye, and the recipe delivers in it’s simplicity - majority pale ale malt, with Simcoe and Columbus hops. This is guaranteed to be solid beer - sometimes it’s nice to stick with simplicity rather than through everything but the kitchen sink into a recipe.

Credit: leomoreira

Poll Results: Do You Have a Favorite Local Brewery?

Overwhelmingly, people wrote in that they have either one or several favorite local breweries in their area, and that they like to cycle between them to share the love. Being homebrewers, some people also wrote in that their favorite brewery is right there at home, and that the only downside is the waiting for fermentation to complete. I feel that….

Flash Brewing Taste Update

If you thought I forgot to provide an update on the Flash Brewing experiment, you are mistaken! With Thanksgiving, I got delayed with my transfer to the keg, but I have finally had a taste and I have to say I’m pleasantly surprised. My kit was the Citra Session Pale Ale, and I have to say the aroma of the beer is incredible - you can smell the Citra right out of the glass. However, the flavor was a little lacking - all around a solid beer, very drinkable, and no off flavors, but not as flavorful as I would expect from the nose.

Suffice it to say, this will not be a drain beer, and if MoreBeer feels inclined to send me another kit I would readily make it all over again.

And the Answer Is...

🍺 Barley is perfect for beer brewing because of it’s diastatic power (high enzyme content, namely amylase), high starch content balanced with enough protein to support yeast health, and it’s well suited for malting (germinating and kilning). Hops and yeast get all the credit, but malted barley is the cornerstone of what makes beer great.