Open Source Craft Brewery Shares More Than Recipes

Jason Hibbets writes An open source craft brewery in Saint Paul, Minnesota is taking open source beyond sharing recipes. The goal for Tin Whiskers Brewing Company is to "engage and give back to the community by sharing an inside look at opening and operating a craft brewery." In this interview with co-founder George Kellerman, we learn a little more about why the trio of hobbyists who started the brewing company took the path to becoming professional brewers and why they decided to be more open. "The brewery community was extremely helpful and open, so being open ourselves seemed like a great way to honor that," Kellerman said.

Comments

Free as in

[Anonymous Coward]

BEER!

Re:Free as in

[xevioso]

Why is this even an article? The local brewcraft shop down the street has dozens of great recipes, and they will even make one up for you on the spot when you order the ingredients for a 5-gallon batch of beer. They have a small area where you can grab a copy of many of their past recipes for beer as you walk out the door. Big deal. It's my understanding this is quite common. Why is this an article again?

the

[Ahnahmoley]

More the recipes. Really?

Re:the

[Chocolate Teapot]

All yours beers are belong to us!

Not really open source

[Anonymous Coward]

The recipes lack IBUs as well as grain percentages which are needed to actually produce one of these "recipes". Sure a good brewer could pretty easily guess for basic styles but is still a far cry from open source. Its like having a specification for an engine be "iron, steel, gaskets, crankshaft"

Re:Not really open source

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe it is traditional for "free beer" to not compile properly on the first version.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Beer

Re:Not really open source

[Anonymous Coward]

The "Open Source" part is complete bullshit. There is tons of freely available information about brewing, recipes and how to start a brewery.

http://www.probrewer.com

They are doing nothing new except being pretentious about it.

This is not new

[MpVpRb]

Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River published a homebrew recipe for Pliny the Elder along with a detailed description of how he designed it

Mitch Steele of Stone wrote a book on IPA which included recipes for many of Stone's beers

Craft brewing and homebrewing have a long and interconnected history

Many craft brewers started as homebrewers and many craft breweries own homebrew supply stores and support homebrew clubs

The craft brewers I have visited freely answered any questions I asked

Re:This is not new

[xevioso]

You will note that Mr. Cilurzo has not published recipes for Pliny the Younger, which causes people to foolishly camp outside the brewery and go on ridiculous searches for the beer as soon as rumors abound that it is in season.

--Jeremy

The real trade secret is the yeast

[schneidafunk]

From my understanding, the most successful breweries are not as concerned about their recipes being stolen because they have a proprietary yeast strain that they own and no one else can get.

For example: http://globalnews.ca/news/1542...

Re:The real trade secret is the yeast

[QRDeNameland]

From my understanding, the most successful breweries are not as concerned about their recipes being stolen because they have a proprietary yeast strain that they own and no one else can get.

Not to mention...not all breweries are the same. For instance, many German brewers use a traditional method called decoction mashing where portions of the mash are drawn off and boiled and then returned to the main mash to raise the temperatures for various enzymatic reactions, which will yield malty flavors that are difficult to achieve otherwise. Very few breweries outside Europe have this capability, in fact many smaller US craft breweries only allow for one step infusion mashing (hot water added to grain where the mash can only have one temperature stage) which limits the kinds of malts that can be used as the lightest and least modified malts require multiple stages of temperature rests. This is why it is exceeding rare for N. American breweries to be able to fully reproduce the flavors of e.g., a German Pils.

So much of brewing relies on process that just knowing the "recipe" (i.e., just the specific ingredients) is not a guarantee of being able to reproduce the beer.

Re:The real trade secret is the yeast

[Anonymous Coward]

Not the OP, but am a brewer.

There are 3 ways to conduct a decoction mash: single, double and triple. You start the mash by adding milled grains to hot water, as you would with a regular step or single infusion mash. Then, after a certain period of time (say, 30 minutes), the brewer removes a portion of the grist (wet, soggy grains) from the mash tun and places it into a kettle, where it is then heated until it boils. This is then returned to the mash tun to continue mashing. Part of the effect here is that the boiling grist raises the overall temperature of the mash*. The portion of the grain to remove varies based on the malt profile you wish to achieve from the mashing process. If you do this process one time, it is a single decoction; twice a double and thrice a triple.

Decoction mashing can certainly be done in North America, even on a homebrew scale, but is often not done because it is extremely labor intensive. A traditional triple decoction mash can take 6 hours, just for the mashing process. For comparison, a regular, simple single temperature infusion mash generally is conducted for 60 minutes.

Back in the day, when decoction mashing was invented (by the Germans), grains were not as well modified as they are today and as such, had a lower (sugar) yield compared to today's grain. So, decoction mashing was a way to increase grain yields out of the same amount of grain.

Opinions on it today are varied, with some folks thinking that there is no use for it anymore because of the highly modified grains that we enjoy. Other folks opine that the malt profile that a decoction mash achieves is unique and particular and the only way to truly produce a German-style beer.

* When you mash grains, temperature affects the molecular structure of the extracted sugar. Lower temperatures result in shorter chain sugars, which are more fermentable. Higher temperatures result in longer chained sugars, which are less fermantable and leave more un-fermented sugar in the beer; this unfermented sugar contributes to the 'body' of a beer.

Hope this clears things up a bit :)

More hops

[Anonymous Coward]

The secret to craft brewing beer?

1. Take any beer recipe.
2. Add additional hops!
3. Add even more hops!!
4. Oh so much more hops!!!
5. Profit!!!!

The website states exactly what yeast

[Ellis D. Tripp]

strains they use to brew each beer:

Short Circuit Stout--Wyeast 1084 (Irish Ale)
Flip Switch APA--Wyeast 1272 (American Ale II)
Wheatstone Bridge--Wyeast 1010 (American Wheat)
Ampere Amber--Wyeast 2112 (California Lager)
Schottky Pumpkin--Wyeast 2035 (American Lager)

All commercially available to anyone who wants them:

https://www.wyeastlab.com/