CCHBS News for July 2004
- Fourth of July and Summer Party Hours
- July Recipe Specials
- Soda Extracts in Stock
- New Wine Books
- Zymurgy and Brew Your Own Magazines
- Spotlight on Ingredients - Malt Extract
Fourth of July and Summer Party Hours
We will be closed on Sunday, July 4th to celebrate Independence Day. We'll also be closing at 3 PM on Saturday, July 17th so we can attend the Pacific Gravity Summer Party. If you're not a member, you're missing one of the homebrewing events of the year.
July Recipe Specials
September's Pacific Gravity style of the month is Wheat beers. Since these beers are also great for summertime brewing (and drinking, we're putting 3 of our most popular Wheat recipes on sale - Yellow Brick Road Wheat Beer, Wit Men Can't Jump Belgian Wit and Wizard of Oz Weizenbock.
Yellow Brick Road Wheat Beer is our single most versatile recipe. Why? Because you can brew it using a German wheat beer yeast and make a Hefeweizen, or brew it with American Ale yeast and make an American style wheat beer. Finally, you can add some fruit or fruit extract and make a fruit beer. Consider the possibilities for $22.
Wit Men Can't Jump Belgian Wit may have a long name, but if you brew this beer you'll make short work of it. This style may be the perfect summer beer - light and refreshing, but with plenty of flavor. Try it for $22 during the month of June.
Wizard of Oz Weizenbock is a great recipe for people who usually find wheat beers a little on the wimpy side. 9 full pounds of extract give this beer plenty of body, flavor and... alcohol. And at $30 for the month of July, the price isn't over the rainbow.
Soda Extracts in Stock
Summer's a great time for making soda, and we're ready for the season with a full complement of great extracts. We've got the very popular Gnome Rootbeer extract, along with the Rainbow line of Cola, Birch Beer, Sarsparilla, Ginger Ale and Cream Ale extracts.
New Wine Books
For you winemakers who've been asking for books, we've got not one, but two new volumes to choose from: "First Steps in Winemaking" and "The Home Winemaker's Companion".
Zymurgy and Brew Your Own Magazine
We're now carrying the two leading homebrewing magazines: Zymurgy and Brew Your Own. OK, they're the only two homebrewing magazines but they're both great resources, so why not buy a copy of one or both and see what you think?
Spotlight on Ingredients - Malt Extract
Virtually every brewer uses malt extract in one form or another, but how many know how it is made? For that matter, how many know about its composition? Read on and we'll try to shed a little light on this essential product.
Broadly speaking, malt etract may be divided into two categories, liquid and dry. Each of these can be generally broken down into unhopped or hopped varieties, although we rarely carry hopped extracts at Culver City Home Brewing supply. After that, there are a myriad of different variations. CCHBS typically carries the following varieties of unhopped extract: liquid pale, dark, Munich and wheat; and dry extra-light, light, wheat and dark. Some of these are seasonal. For example, you're more likely to find wheat extract available during the summer months and Munich in the fall and winter.
All malt extracts are manufactured in the same way, initially. Malted barley is mashed, lautered to separate the grain from the wort. The grain bill and mash steps may vary according to the particular type of extract being made, but the main difference takes place after lautering. Liquid extracts are heated under a vacuum in order to reduce the water content to about 20% of the total. Dry malt extract may have some of the liquid reduced in this way, but is also sprayed into a super-heated room. The heat evaporates the water out immediately and the extract is converted into a fine powder.
As you might expect, the manufacturing process also accounts for the difference in potential extract between liquid and dry malt extracts. Since liquid extract consists of 20% water, it is 20% "weaker" than dry extract. This make it easy to convert between liquid and dry extracts in a recipe: to convert a recipe calling for liquid extract to dry extract, reduce the amount called for by 20%; for dry to liquid, incread the amount by 20%. If you like to calculate your recipes from scratch, that's easy too. For a 5 gallon batch, each pound of liquid extract will contribute about 7 points of gravity, while each pound of dry extract contributes 9 points. As an example, let's look at one of our typical 6 lb. recipe kits. 6 lbs. of extract times 7 points = 42, or a gravity of 1.042 (without any conribution from specialty grains). By contrast, the same recipe using dry malt extract would need only about 5 lbs. of dry extract because 5 X 9 = 45.
One final note. It's should be obvious by now that it's possible to combine various amounts of liquid and dry extracts to hit a particular point of gravity. For example, let's say you want to make a beer with a starting gravity of 1.050. A standard 3 lb. jar of liquid extract plus a standard 3 lb. bag of dry extract will give a gravity of 1.048. (3 X 7)+(3 X 9) = 21 + 27 = 48. Or, you could combine a 6 lb. jar of extract with 1 lb. of DME for a starting gravity of 1.051 (6 X 7) + (1 X 9) = 42 + 9 = 51.