Dr. Strangebrew Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Force Carbonation

So it's been awhile since my last entry, but please do not mistake my textual negligence for inactivity.  Buddha Brew has been busy, mostly preparing for future batches, but active nonetheless.

Had a hard time waiting to take the picture...

The Bourbon Vanilla Porter I wrote about in my previous entry turned out to be a far greater success than I could have imagined -- hands down the best beer I've brewed since I began roughly three years ago.  This was the first beer to go on tap in my kegerator so, being the pessimist that I am, I'm overcome with worry about the quality of the beer I put in to replace its now-empty keg shell.  I'm good at brewing beer, but it would be difficult to replicate that sort of success batch after batch.

My successful previous batch marked an important milestone for me in the homebrewer's world; it was the first beer I attempted to carbonate using only my CO2 tank, not priming sugar -- a concept known as force carbonation.  The idea was daunting.

Let me backtrack and run through a beer brewing crash course to hopefully illuminate some of the more scientifically cryptic parts of my entries.  Beer essentially has four main ingredients: water, a starch source (in most cases, malted barley), hops, and yeast.

Recirculating during the mash process

The malted barley is submerged in water ranging from 148-156ºF and soaked for 60-90 minutes in a process called mashing.  The goal here is to extract as much fermentable sugar from the grain as possible.  More malted barley = more potential alcohol in the final product.  Think of a teabag (no, not the teabagging incident of 2003) -- similar idea.

Once the liquid (now called "sweet wort") is drained from the mash, it's added to the brewpot and boiled.  This is where the hops come into play.  Depending on the desired characteristic (i.e. bitterness, aroma, flavor), hops are added at a specific part of the boil.  Next time you see a Miller Lite commercial touting that their beers are "triple-hopped", please contain your strong desire to micturate on the television (it really does tie the room together) because I'm going to let you in on a little secret . . . ready for it?  All beers are triple-hopped.  Bitterness.  Aroma.  Flavor.

After the boil, your "hopped wort" is cooled as quickly as possible to around 70ºF and transferred to your fermenter where yeast is added.  This is where it gets really interesting.  The yeast perform their two-part prestidigitory act and beer is formed.  See, this magical organism (yes, yeast is alive) eats the fermentable sugar and excretes alcohol and carbon dioxide.  More technically, it poops alcohol and farts CO2.  Yum.

Science class is dismissed.  Now that I've hopefully demystified the process a bit, let's return to force carbonation.  So, normally during the bottling process I'd add a small amount of dextrose (corn sugar) to the beer and fill each bottle with this new solution.  Once they are capped, the leftover yeast -- yes, sadly their army does greatly deplete during the epic sugar war -- eat the newly introduced dextrose.  But . . . where does the CO2 (yeast flatus) go?  Nowhere.  Since the bottles are sealed, the CO2 builds up, creating the characteristic beer effervescence.

Now that I'm kegging, however, it seemed beneficial to force carbonate my beer.  Instead of using dextrose and yeast to build carbon dioxide, I now use an external CO2 tank to pump the desired amount of gas into my beer.  Seems easy, and it is, but it's new, and I don't do well with "new".  I guess I'm mostly worried about overcarbonating my beer because apparently once CO2 gets in, it's Herculean to get it out.  In fact, I think that's the phrase's etymology.  You heard it here -- Hercules got his strength from the beer he brewed.

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So this entry turned into more of a science lecture, and for that I apologize.  I do think, however, that it gives you an idea of just how engrossed I can easily become in this craft.  Remember that happy place Chubs always wanted Adam Sandler's character to go to in "Happy Gilmore"?  That's me in my basement with my brewing equipment.

I'll close with a recent anecdote.  I've just transfered an IPA I recently brewed (a Green Flash West Coast IPA clone) to my kegerator, which should be consumable in a few days.  I've got high expectations, as I damn well should; I've given flesh for this batch.  Literally.  Funny story actually.  I was brewing by myself (never a good idea) and I was preparing to pre-heat my mash tun with three gallons of boiling water.  Now don't let the italics misguide you.  As I lifted my 60 quart stainless steel brewpot from the 60,000 BTU propane burner, I felt the pot's sheer dimensional awkwardness take over -- or maybe it was my shameful muscles giving out -- and I had to do something drastic to prevent the water from creating the "Massacre at Buddha Brew".  I kicked my left leg forward to create more leverage and disaster was averted . . . or so I thought.  Once I silenced the heartbeat in my ears, another sense took over -- smell.  It was the smell of burned flesh.  Apparently my left leg had chosen an inopportune spot as it kicked out, namely the side rim of my 60,000 BTU propane burner that had only been turned off seconds ago.  Whoops.  No worries -- chicks dig scars.