Brewing Hoppyness

After making first contact with a brewing kit in lovely New Zealand, I took a new hobby home to Germany.
Once back and settled, I obtained the all-grain brewing hardware shown in the background:
A programmable 35 L malt-pipe kettle (kettle right, malt pipe left) and a 30 L fermenter (middle).
With these helpers, I process up to 8 kgs of malt into 30 L of beer (wort) in one ~6h brewday.

Why would one take on homebrewing in the land of the Reinheitsgebot?

Several good reasons:

  • It’s fun! Maybe it’s because I’m a chemist, but driving an extraction of several kgs of solids (malt) with tens of L of water (mash) has something inherently satisfying to it. Playing around with the parameters (temps, volumes, timings, stirring) to maximize the yield and to have a clean separation during lautering… love it!

  • It provides fresh and hoppy beer! 1-4 weeks after a typical 6-hour brew day (both depending on the style), I can “harvest” 20-30 L fresh hoppy beer. This stuff is surprisingly tricky to find in the land of the Reinheitsgebot (at least compared to NZ). I have a theory as to why that is.*

  • It’s practical chemistry! Apart from planning recipes (see below) and programming the kettle, brewing does not involve computers. Instead, there are heaps of manual labor and chemistry (taking pH values, refractive indices, adjusting salt contents), making it mainly orthogonal to my computer-laden workday life. I enjoy the change, and being a chemist helps rationalize and appreciate what’s happening in the brew.

  • It’s creative! After ~20 brews following recipes, I started building my own, iteratively refining them, and eventually publishing them (two so far on MaischeMalzundMehr). This is not too different from publishing research articles: After submission, it takes the “referees” a while to “implement the approach” and complete their “review”. Eventually, you get their feedback (which is typically much nicer than what you get on research articles :).

    On the right, I have placed a couple of pictures from a typical brewday, starting with the milled grains (Malz) at the top, the mixing step “mash in” (Einmaischen), and lastly at the bottom the cleared mash at 78C, just before the mash is lautered (Läutern) to remove spent grains and begin with boiling the wort (Würzekochen, 30-60 minutes).


    *I think this is because of habits: Beer in Germany is generally handled like Pilsener and Helles (no cooling, shelf-life of 6-12 months). While those styles can easily take this punishment, hoppy styles like NEIPA want to be treated like fresh milk (essentially a princess). Without refrigeration, hop-forward beers in normal bottles lose their punch within a few days/weeks. Hence, most supermarket “craft beers” in Germany - even well-known and highly regarded brands - are disappointing.