Brew by James Morton

Author:James Morton
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Quadrille
Published: 2016-05-16T16:00:00+00:00

STEP 7: PITCH

What you actually need to do:

• Use the tap to transfer your beer into your bucket (or pour it)

• Aerate the cool wort

• Add the yeast and combine

‘Pitching’ means to add the yeast. But before you can pitch, you need to make sure your wort is prepared for the yeast. This involves the following steps:

1. Cool down the wort to the right temperature

Before your yeast can be added, your wort must be cooled to an exact temperature depending on your recipe and your yeast strain.

For standard ales, and thus most beers you’ll be making, this temperature will be 16–20°C (61–68°F). For most lagers, you’ll be fine at 8–10°C (46–50°F). Below these temperatures, your yeast will remain dormant for longer. You’ll notice less krausen (foamy head) forming. The lag time will be increased, which will cause an increased likelihood of infection in your beer. The beer will not attenuate quite so well.

Above this temperature and you’ll have rapidly growing, stressed yeast producing lots of questionable flavours. If you fail to maintain a higher temperature, your yeast will flocculate early and you’ll get pretty poor attenuation.

2. Check the original gravity

Doing a check on the original gravity is essential at this point. This is your last chance to liquor back (dilute) with sanitary water until you hit your numbers. If you’ve not quite reached your intended gravity, I’m afraid there’s nothing you can do now – you’re going to end up with a slightly weaker beer than you’d planned. It’s a lesson to brew slightly stronger next time, because you will always have the opportunity to dilute at this point.

When checking your gravity, do not add the wort from the hydrometer jar back into the main batch, as this is an infection risk. Drink the wort – it’s quite nice. It’s especially nice with good Scotch whisky.

3. Transfer and aerate the wort

Right before pitching the yeast is the one time in brewing that you want to get as much air into your wort as possible. Yeast need oxygen in order to grow, so we want to oxygenate the wort before adding the yeast. You can do this whilst the wort is still in your pot, when it’s in your bucket or on the way in between.

Make sure your bucket, tap, lid and airlock are disassembled, cleaned and sanitised before thinking about transferring.

To transfer a small batch, the easiest way is to pour wort directly from your small pot into your bucket. You’ve got to do this in one harsh movement, to stop drips down the side of the bucket reaching your beer. As a precaution, you should clean and sanitise the side of your pot too.

For larger volumes, or if you have a tap on your boiler, you should sanitise the tap thoroughly and attach a piece of sanitised silicone tubing to it. You can then direct the other end of the tube into your bucket – it’s best to do this from a height for aeration. The more splashing, the better.

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