As many of you know, using the infusion mashing process is just one of the ways that grains can be used to make wort (which is then turned into beer by yeast). In this article, we will go over the basics of the infusion mashing process, followed by step-by-step instructions for a single infusion mash.

The Science of Infusion Mashing
For the starches in malted grain to be converted into fermentable sugar, they must be mixed with water and held under certain conditions. This process is called saccharification.
Four main variables affect how much of the available starches are converted during the infusion mashing process: time, pH, temperature, and mash thickness. The ideal values for each of these variables are as follows*:
Time: 30-60 minutes
pH (acidity): 5.4
Temperature: 149°F. (65C)
Thickness: 1.5 qts. water/lb. grain
In theory, it should only take about 30 minutes for saccharification to complete, but many brewers employ a 60-minute mash just to be safe. Conversion will take place at a pH between about 5 and 7, but 5.4 is the ideal target. Finally, conversion will happen at temperatures ranging from about 148°F. to 158°F., but if there isn’t enough heat the starches won’t convert. If there’s too much heat, the enzymes that are responsible for conversion will become less active and possibly denatured.
Further, brewers can raise or lower mash temperatures within a given range to control the amount of fermentable sugars in the wort. A mash around 148°-150°F. will create a more fermentable wort and result in a drier beer. A mash around 154°-158°F. will create a less fermentable wort. This will result in a higher proportion of unfermentable sugars in the wort, meaning a sweeter beer with a heavier mouthfeel and body.

Single vs. Step Infusion Mashing
Grains that have been “well-modified” (i.e. malted to maximize their conversion potential) usually just require a one step mash, which we call a single infusion mash. Grains that are less modified may require additional processing in the mash tun.
If brewing with a high proportion of less modified malt, the brewer may choose to add an additional step in the infusion mashing process. Before the saccharification step, they may want to do a “protein rest”. This simply means mashing the grains at a lower temperature (~122°F.) to help proteins break down and makes starches more accessible, then raising the mash temperature for the saccharification rest (~149°F.). Because modern malting practice has made most malt well modified, a single step infusion mash is usually sufficient.

Instructions for the Single Infusion Mashing Process

1. Crush malted grains.
2. Fill mash tun with 1.5 qts. of clean water at 165°F. for every pound of grain.
3. Mix crushed grains with the water and stir.
4. Hold mash temperature between 148°F. and 158°F. If too low, add hot water, if too high, add cold water.
5. Check pH using a digital pH meter or pH test strips.
6. If above 5.5 add ¼ teaspoon of gypsum and stir. If below 5.0, add ¼ teaspoon of calcium carbonate and stir.
7. Hold mash for 60 minutes.
8. Raise temperature to 170°F. and slowly begin to draw off wort into brew kettle. If needed, recirculate wort through the mash until it comes out clear.

When it comes down to it, the single infusion mashing process is very simple. It’s something that anyone can do if they have a mind to. Are you ready to give it a try?
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David Ackley is a beer writer, brewer, and self-described “craft beer crusader.” He holds a General Certificate in Brewing from the Institute of Brewing and Distilling and is founder and editor of the Local Beer Blog.
*Source: Institute of Brewing and Distilling

As homebrewers, we spend lots of time cleaning and sanitizing our home brewing equipment to make sure nothing will ruin our beer. I often joke that our job is essentially that of a glorified janitor.
But for all the effort we put into caring for our beer and the items it touches, it’s important to never overlook the small details that can ensure a well-made beer. Among the finishing touches of our brew days, as we push, pull or gently place our carboys and buckets into a resting spot for fermentation, is popping in that airlock.
It may seem trivial, but how we care for our beer’s ability to “breathe” during its fermentation can be the difference between beer in our glass or down the drain. That is essentially what an airlock does. For that reason here’s some info on choosing the right type of homebrew airlock and using a homebrew airlock.

Choosing the Right Home Brewing Airlock
Whether at your local store or online, you’ve probably noticed the array of airlocks available for brewing. Here at Adventures in Homebrewing, there are six home brewing airlocks to choose from! They all perform the same essential job – acting as a barrier between the air and your beer – but they can also serve different purposes. Just make sure you’re filling your home brewing airlock up with sanitized water or a strong alcohol like vodka to act as a barrier against airborne nasties.
A three-piece airlock can be ideal because it’s easy to clean. Disassembling this type of airlock means rinsing or hand washing is simple. It’s also ideal for primary fermentation because if you’ve got an overly active brew during the first few days and some wort “overflows” into the airlock, you won’t have to worry about buying a new one. Different versions of these brewing airlocks are useful for batches all the way up to 50 gallons.
The s-shape airlock or triple ripple airlock can’t be taken apart to be cleaned, but are still handy for small batches during primary fermentation and are ideal for secondary fermentation because of the decreased risk of heavy fermentation. Both these types of airlocks are also great for tracking slow-moving fermentations, so as your beer nears its final gravity, you’ll have an easy time following the escaping CO₂ so you know when to pull a sample to see if your beer is done. For this reason I have both types of brewing airlocks on hand.

Protecting Your New Beer
One extra precaution I like to take after filling up my carboy with fresh wort is using a blow off tube for the first few days before using a homebrew airlock. It gives me peace of mind know that there’s very little risk of a strong fermentation causing an airlock to fly off the top of my carboy.
I sanitize my blow off tube just as I would any other airlock and after placing one end in the carboy, put the other end in a container of sanitized water. After the most active first few days of fermentation, I’ll take off the blow off tube and pop on an s-shape airlock until I move my beer to a secondary carboy.

Troubleshooting with Airlocks
One important step to remember when making homebrew is to cool your wort to its specified temperature after boiling. For lagers, that may initially be around 60° F. and around 70° F. for ales. If you don’t get the wort down to its correct temperature and slap a home brew airlock on your carboy, the difference between CO₂ trying to escape, volume of liquid and temperature will create a pressure difference and cause reverse suction – meaning the carboy will start sucking liquid from your airlock into the wort.
Always make sure to cool your wort to its suggested temperature. This is one little tip on how to use an airlock that I learned the hard way.
Another common issue when using a homebrew airlock is having an airlock or bung fall into a carboy. If this happens, don’t worry. As long things are sanitized correctly, your beer will end up just fine nearly every time. It’s one of those “Relax. Don’t worry. Have a homebrew.” moments which Charlie Papazian’s quote helps us get through.
If properly sanitized, just leave the airlock and/or bung in the carboy and fish it out after you’ve racked your homebrew out of the vessel.
This is the basics of choosing an airlock and the “how-to’s” of using a homebrew airlock. As you can see it’s fairly straight forward. There are different home brewing airlocks to use for different reasons, and keeping them sanitized is a must.
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Bryan Roth is a beer nerd and homebrewer living in Durham, North Carolina. You can read his thoughts on beer and the beer industry on his blog, This Is Why I’m Drunk, and send him suggestions on how to get his wife to drink craft beer via Twitter at @bryandroth.

I made a batch of Mexican beer that I primed with 1 tsp. per 16 oz. bottle. After 45 days, but the beer is flat. The taste is OK, but no bubbles. Can I reprime it? Why is my beer not carbonating?
Name: Bruce
State: Montana
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Hi Bruce,
As you probably know, beer carbonates in the beer bottle when the yeast in the beer is given an extra dose of sugar (known as priming sugar). The yeast then converts the sugar into CO₂. Since the beer bottle is sealed, the CO₂ has nowhere to go besides into solution, thus carbonating your beer. This is called bottle conditioning.
If your homebrew beer is flat, it likely means one of three things:

1. The beer yeast is not consuming the priming sugar due to lack of time or cold temperature,
2. The beer yeast does not have enough sugar to convert into CO₂, or
3. The beer bottles are not thoroughly sealed.

If you used 1 tsp. of corn sugar per bottle, that should be sufficient. However, if you primed with dried malt extract, this may not be enough to produce the desired carbonation level.
Either way, before you re-prime the flat beer bottles, I would recommend troubleshooting this flat beer in the following order.

• First, ensure that your flat beer bottles have been sitting in a room with a steady temperature of 70°-75°F. Temperatures lower than this could cause the beer to carbonate very slowly or not at all. Keep in mind that certain closets and storage areas may not be as warm as the rest of the house. If you suspect that the beer bottles were in a cooler storage room, move them somewhere warmer and wait another two-three weeks. By the way, when someone ask: “why is my beer not carbonating?” this is by far the most likely the solution to the problem.

• Second, check that all of the bottles of flat beer have been capped securely. If there’s any kind of leak, the CO₂ pressure may be escaping. This could be happening if you’re using twist-off beer bottles instead of pop-off beer bottles. Maybe it was just the first bottle you opened that didn’t have a good seal?

If the first two actions didn’t fix the problem, then you can re-prime the bottles of flat beer. I would only do this if you are certain that the bottles have had at least six to eight weeks of conditioning time in a room at 70°-75°F.
Consider this carefully – if you add too much sugar to the bottles, you run the risk of bottle bombs. Keep in mind that beer bottles primed with honey or DME may require more time than bottles primed with corn sugar.
Here’s how to re-prime beer if you decide to do so: open each bottle and add half as much priming sugar as you did the first time and reseal with sanitized bottle caps. Move the bottles to a safe location where they won’t make a mess or hurt someone if they explode.
Chances are high that all you need to do is give your bottles adequate time at the appropriate temperature. For more ideas about carbonating your homebrew, consider this blog post.
So, if your homebrew beer is flat can you re-prime? Yes. Should you? Maybe, but not likely. Remember re-priming a flat beer is a last resort. Troubleshooting flat beer can be tricky. Just remember, it is only after you have tried to keep the flat beer at a reasonable temperature first, that’s how to re-prime beer.
Thanks again for your question and good luck!
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David Ackley is a beer writer, brewer, and self-described “craft beer crusader.” He holds a General Certificate in Brewing from the Institute of Brewing and Distilling and is founder and editor of the Local Beer Blog.

Over the past several years, IPAs and Double IPAs have been all the rage in the craft beer scene. Heady Topper, Pliny the Elder, and others have put hops in the spotlight. Though the term “hop bursting” has only just gained some notoriety, the technique could be the secret the success of these massively popular beers.

So what is hop bursting?
Hop bursting is simply adding massive amounts of late addition hops to the boil. Instead of early additions for the bulk of a beer’s bitterness. These late additions supply most of the IBUs.
Let me explain.
In a standard beer recipe, you may have an ounce of bittering hops, an ounce of flavor hops, and an ounce of aroma hops. Seems pretty balanced. However, since more bitterness is extracted the longer hops are boiled, the majority of the IBUs in this scenario come from the first addition. Just play around with an IBU calculator to see what I mean. With hop bursting, the first addition will be very small or even nonexistent, which means that most or all of the IBUs come from the later additions.
You’ll find that to achieve the same level of IBUs, hop bursting will require significantly more hops in total. However, this technique can help the brewer to achieve very intense hop flavor and aroma without overpowering bitterness.
If you’re a fan of massive hop flavor and aroma, try the hop bursting recipe below!

Hop Bursted Amarillo IPA
(partial mash recipe, five gallons)
Specifications
OG: 1.064
FG: 1.016
ABV: 6.3%
IBUs: 64
Boil time: 60 minutes
Ingredients
6.6 lbs. Light LME
1 lb. Amber DME
1 lb. Caramel 20L malt
1 lb. Carapils malt
.5 oz. Amarillo hops at :30
1 oz. Amarillo hops at :15
1 tsp. Irish moss at :15
2 oz. Amarillo hops at :10
1.5 oz. Amarillo hops at :5
Yeast: Safale US-05
3/4 cup priming sugar

Directions
Steep the crushed Caramel 20L and Carapils malts for 30 minutes in one gallon of water at 152°F. Strain the grains and rinse them with 1 gallon of water at 170°F, collecting the runoff in the boil kettle. Mix in the liquid malt extract and top off to 7 gallons of wort. (To get 64 IBUs, you will need a 7 gallon boil. If using a 5 gallon kettle, top off to 4 gallons and increase the first hop addition to 1.5 oz.)
Boil for 60 minutes, adding the hops according to the schedule. Add 1 teaspoon of Irish moss with 15 minutes left in the boil. Whirlpool, chill, and transfer to a clean, sanitized fermenter. If needed, top off with enough water to make five gallons. Ferment at 66°-70°F for seven days. Rack to secondary for ten days. Bottle or keg as you would normally.
Are you a fan of the hop bursting technique? What’s your strategy? Do you have a hop bursting recipe or schedule you’d like to share? Put it in the comments section below…
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David Ackley is a beer writer, brewer, and self-described “craft beer crusader.” He holds a General Certificate in Brewing from the Institute of Brewing and Distilling and is founder and editor of the Local Beer Blog.

Beer blogger Bryan Roth explores the subtle differences between two classic beer styles: stouts vs. porters.
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Brewing up a variety of beer recipes is one of the reasons why many get into the hobby of homebrewing. While you may be excited about creating something experimental (watermelon wheat, anyone?) honing base beer recipes is important, especially if you want to better understand the beers we love so much.
You may enjoy extra hoppy IPAs, but porters and stouts can offer tons of complex, malt-forward flavors. But what exactly are the differences between the stouts and porters? Sure, they both look dark, but there are plenty of slight differences that go into each beer. But what makes both beer styles different. What is the difference in taste?
Here’s a helpful history lesson: stouts came into existence as a descriptor for a stronger version of a beer style. A “brown stout” in the 1700s was simply a porter with higher alcohol content. Changes to brewing and brewing laws over the next 200 years eventually made way to how we recognize these beers today.
The most important change from the 1700s? The use of roasted barley.
While the BJCP outlines various styles of porters and stouts, here are basic characteristics of what you should aim for when crafting your next version of either, courtesy of Randy Mosher’s Tasting Beer. These are the basic characteristics that define the difference between stouts and porters:

These are slight differences, but important if you want to nail your next batch.
Another tip to consider when creating your recipe is the success of others. According to Ray Daniels’ book, Designing Great Beers, the key difference between the winning porter and stout recipes from the National Homebrew Competition was – no surprise – the use of malt.
The average grain bill of well-performing homebrewed porter used 80 percent pale ale malt while stout beer recipes used an average of 61 percent. The other big difference was the use of roasted barley, which was twice as much in stouts (8 percent) compared to use in most porters (4 percent).
Generally speaking, pale ale malt would supply a beer with more “toasty” flavors. Roasted barley, of course, would impart flavors closely associated to coffee.
That is important, because roasted grains were widely used in successful competition homebrewed stouts (90+ percent) compared to porters, where roasted grains appeared in 30 to 60 percent of “robust” porters, but not at all in brown porters.
All those numbers are to say, for homebrewers, “roasted” is to stouts as “toasty” is to porters.
If you plan to enter a stout or porter into a judged homebrewing competition, these slight differences will be important to your success. But even if you’ll just be enjoying your creation at home, a better understanding of these two beer styles can help improve your palate, make you a better brewer and give you some extra tasty homebrew to drink! And, that is the difference between stouts and porters in a nutshell.
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Bryan Roth is a beer nerd and homebrewer living in Durham, North Carolina. You can read his thoughts on beer and the beer industry on his blog, This Is Why I’m Drunk, and send him suggestions on how to get his wife to drink craft beer via Twitter at @bryandroth.