Izett - Speed brewing : techniques and recipes for fast- fermenting beers, ciders, meads, and more

TECHNIQUES AND RECIPES FOR FAST-FERMENTING BEERS, CIDERS, MEADS, AND MORE

MARY IZETT

I USED TO BE a traditional homebrewer. I brewed a lot of beer and made the occasional cider and I loved every part of the processfrom planning my recipe to smelling the sweet aroma of grain being mashed to hearing the sound of the airlock bubbling away as my beer fermented. And who doesnt love drinking and sharing the finished beers? Yet if beer brewing has one downside, its this: it takes a good amount of time. Like most other brewers I know, I had to dedicate a precious weekend day to brew and then more time to monitor the fermentation and bottle the beers.

As weeks turned into months, and months turned into years, my life continued to change and I didnt always have a full day off to brew, so I started looking for ways to brew the same high-quality beer in fewer hours. Around the same time that I started seeking maximum brewing efficiency, I also started exploring a variety of other alcoholic beverages that not only took significantly less time to make, but also finished their fermentation faster.

My first success off the beaten path came with short meads. They were fast, easy, and (most importantly) delightfully tasty! I could brew them whenever I didnt have time to brew beer, when all of my carboys were full, or when I just craved a little something different. They were also fun to bring to festivals and other beer-centric events, since they stood out from the other beverages.

Soon I was receiving more requests for my short mead recipes than for my beer! Nonbrewers wanted to know if they could make one, and even die-hard beer brewers were interested in making a batch of their own. As youll see in this book, short meads were just the beginning. I went all the way down the rabbit hole and learned how to make unique ciders as well as boozy versions of sodas, kombucha, water kefir, and more. While the flavors vary wildly, and while each lets you play with ingredients and process in a different way, these beverages have one thing in commonthey all take a minimal time investment on brew day.

The other part of my speed brewing philosophy is optional, but I highly recommend trying it before you dismiss it: brew small batches, from a half gallon to two and a half gallons depending on the beverage. Brewing at half the conventional batch size (or less) cuts down on time for the rest of the brewing process. Fermentations tend to finish faster, or at the very least your beverages will taste great and be ready to drink sooner. Smaller batch sizes also allow you to have a greater variety of beverages on hand with the same amount of equipment and space. And if something doesnt turn out exactly as you pictured it, youre not too crushed if youve only made a gallon!

I find that experienced homebrewers are often skeptical about these easy, fast fermentations. I was, too, at first! If you had told me ten years ago I could add champagne yeast to sweet jasmine tea, ferment it for a mere seven days, bottle it, and then drink a freaking fantastic beverage two days later, I would have laughed. It just doesnt seem right! But let me assure you, it works. If it helps you get over the mental hump, remember that humans have been making fast-fermented beverages with whatever weve had on hand and drinking them fresh for thousands of years.

If nothing else, keep an open mind as you explore this book. Make a gallon here and a gallon there and find out what flavors work for you (and for your family and friends, of course). You may find you dislike meads of all kinds but love herbal sodas with a kick. Or as a sour beer drinker, you may quickly become obsessed with SCOBY fermentations. Whatever the case may be, I hope that this book helps you keep brewing no matter how busy life gets.

Mary Izett

I N BROAD TERMS, this book is all about fermentation. To be technical about it, fermentation is the process of converting sugars to alcohol, gases, and organic acids. Organisms such as yeast actually ferment in order to produce energy for themselvesalcohols, gases, and acids are merely byproducts of the fermentation process. But what splendid byproducts they are!

On the pages that follow, well cover the basic brewing ingredients and equipment youll need for most of the fermentations in this book. Well also cover the basics of bottling. However, because each chapter deals with a different class of beverages, each chapter has its own unique brewing process. That means youll find your basic beer brew day in .

Between this basics chapter and the beverage chapters that follow, you will be able to brew and bottle anything in this book. However, if you get bitten by the brewing bug, I highly recommend you read a more comprehensive brewing book or two, such as How to Brew by John Palmer, The Complete Joy of Homebrewing by Charlie Papazian, The Compleat Meadmaker by Ken Schramm, and The Everything Hard Cider Book by Drew Beechum.

INGREDIENTS

Yeast

In this book, we will be taking advantage of the magical power of yeast (okay, mostly yeast) to ferment sugar into carbon dioxide and alcohol. So lets look a little closer into that process.

Yeast are relatively simple organisms in the biologic worldsingle-celled fungi that reproduce asexually by either mitosis or budding. We primarily will be using a species of yeast named Saccharomyces cerevisiae. S. cerevisiae are found in nature on the skins of grapes and other fruit and are used to make alcoholic beverages such as beer, wine, cider, and mead and are also the most common species used in bread making. They can consume a variety of sugarsincluding glucose, sucrose, maltose, and fructoseto produce not only carbon dioxide and ethanol but also a wide variety of other compounds that contribute to the aroma and flavor of the finished beverage. These yeast need certain environmental conditions and nutrients in order to exist and thrive. Controlling and manipulating the food source (type, or types, of sugar) as well as the environment affects the resulting level of alcohol and carbon dioxide, the aroma, and the flavor of your finished beverage. One might compare creating an alcoholic beverage to building a house for your yeast from start to finish: youre the architect, contractor, builder, electrician, plumber, and interior designer all in one. In brewing terms, youre designing the recipe; building a desirable substrate, or food for your yeast; and providing the proper environment through controlling the temperature, oxygen, light, and nutrients.

There are many different yeast strains under the