Hopped Cider

I'm going to celebrate hops for a moment.

*sip*

Ahh, hops!

There's a definite lack of hoppy gluten free beers. Sure most gluten free brewers use hops in their beer. But as you walk through the beer aisle you see brews like "Hop Head" and "Hop Stoopid", you start to feel like you're missing out. Your section is over there off to the side. Three beers to choose from, never on sale, never different, never distinct. But your happy because you're craving beer and you have an unfortunate circumstance that requires you drink special beer. You're special.

Last November I was at the Ballard Farmer's Market and saw that Rockridge Orchards made a hopped cider. I bought a bottle. I was a little worried it'd be too sweet but it wasn't. The hops were faint but they were there. It's really good stuff.

Washington is the number one producer of hops and apples in the United States, so when you live here, these two things should be combined...often.

So when the brew store was out of sorghum malt, I thought I'd give hopped cider a try. I bought some Hallertauer Hops, two cinnamon sticks, gluten free champagne yeast, and some pectic enzyme.

I don't own a cider press but I've had a lot of luck in the past just using a food processor. To do this, you'll need at least 20 pounds of apples. Core the apples, boil them down, let them cool, run through a food processor, boil again with about a gallon of water, and then run through a strainer. This is time consuming but, cheaper than renting or buying a cider press.

But this time, I didn't have to use a food processor. It was December and cider was on sale. I bought five gallons of Columbia Gorge Organic Cider. When you buy cider, the key is to make sure the ingredients are just apples. Some people think pasteurization ruins the flavor of your cider. I have no idea if this it true or not. The cider I used was flash pasteurized and it tasted great.

So I did boil the cider for about 15 minutes with 1 oz of hops. I added four cups of sugar to the boiling cider, let it cool to about 100 degrees fahrenheit, then funneled it into a sterilized carboy. I added 2 cinnamon sticks and about a tablespoon of pectic enzyme at this point. Then I pitched the yeast.

The cider took about two weeks to become bottle ready. I boiled one cup of plain sugar with two cups of water and added that to mixture so it would be come carbonated in the bottle (bottle conditioning).

The cider turned out great. It's not as dry as I had hoped but that's not to say it isn't dry. Much like Rockridge Orchard's hopped cider, this has a faint hoppy flavor. Next time I think I'll try using the whole two ounces of hops. Maybe one ounce of hops in the wort and one ounce dry hopped.

Inaugural Boring Beer Post

So here it is, my first post. Use this first post as a guideline to help you get started brewing. This is definitely a beginner's post. Brewing is an exciting way to experiment and take off where a lot of the commercial beers end. The variety for people who are on a gluten free diet is slim, and it gets even slimmer when you drink beer. I've been a home brewer since before I had to discontinue gluten and it pained me to not be able to brew. My goal is to share my brewing successes and failures with you and I hope you'll do the same. I hope to inspire a community of gluten free brewers.

So this wasn't by any means a boring beer. It's gluten free but not unlike a lot of the gluten free beers already sold. You'll need the supplies that usually come with a home brew starter kit (5 gallon carboy, big spoon, plastic food grade hose, sanitizer, bottle caps, bottles, bottle capper, 5 gallon bucket with a spigot, airlock, and a metal pot large enough to hold 5 gallons)

The ingredients for this recipe are:
1 pound of powdered rice extract
7 pounds of medium malted sorghum extract syrup
3 ounces of cascade hops
One packet of gluten free yeast

Fill a large pot with 4 gallons of water, bring the heat up to about 160 degrees (fahrenheit), add rice and sorghum extract. Let this boil at 180 degrees for about 45 minutes. Add the hops to the wort (your water/extract is called wort).

Sterilization is key at this point. You'll want to sterilize a glass carboy with one of the many products at your local home brew store. Everything that touches the beer from this point on should be sterilized following the instructions on whatever food safe sterilization product you buy.

From here, you'll want to pitch your yeast. Boil a cup of water and let it cool down to about 100 degrees, mix it with your dry yeast and let it sit for a 10 minutes.

Now, before you can put your hot wort into the carboy, you'll want it to cool down considerably (100 degrees is good). You can do this by either letting it sit or running it through a wort chiller. I don't have a wort chiller but it's a good investment if you want to get serious about brewing.

Once your wort is cool, use a funnel to pour it into the carboy. Add the yeast to the carboy. Celebrate with a beer. Put your air lock on top of the carboy. Make sure you're using your airlock correctly, there are several different kinds and almost all of them require you to add water to them. Your airlock should allow air to get out of the carboy but not allow it to get into the carboy. This will allow the gasses that the yeast creates to leave but not allow new airborne bacteria to get into the carboy. If you do not use the airlock correctly, the carboy could become pressurized and the airlock will likely shoot off spraying beer everywhere, or even worse, your carboy could break open.

You'll need to wait probably a week before you can bottle. Watch the airlock, if it's still releasing gas (you can see air bubbles coming out of the airlock) then your beer is not ready to bottle.

Bottling is another process where everything must be sterilized before the beer touches it.
You need enough clean bottles to hold all 4 to 5 gallons of beer. I usually recycle beer bottles for this. You can use any of the pop off beer bottles for this (as opposed to the screw top).
Transfer your beer into your clean 5 gallon bucket (make sure to sterilize the spigot). The best way to do this is by siphoning from the carboy to the bucket. Obviously, you don't want to use your mouth to siphon, you can siphon by filling a clean hose with water, plugging one end with your thumb and putting the other end in the carboy. Letting go of your thumb on the free end of the hose should draw the beer out into the bucket.

You'll be bottle conditioning which means that your beer isn't carbonated yet. It is drinkable though, you should have a little glass at this point! In order for your beer to bottle condition, boil one cup of sugar in about a cup or two of water. Let this cool a bit, not scalding, but hot is fine. Dump this into your bucket with your beer.

Now fill your clean bottles. I have a wand to do this and I prefer it to just using the spigot. Some people prefer the spigot. Cap your beer and wait another week (or as long as you possibly can - if you don't wait the full week, it might be flat). Do not refrigerate while your beer is bottle conditioning.

Now your done and you have 4 gallons of beer! Always open your homebrew over a sink. I've found that homebrew has a tendency to spill over when opened.

I did a little bit of googling and found this article on wikihow. Although it suggests more specialized ingredients and equipment than I've ever used, it still goes over the basics of gluten free brewing.