1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to methods and apparatus for brewing beer at home. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method and apparatus for automated home brewing of beer, which requires much less labor and time than conventional home brewing, and which also frees the home brewer of much of the folk-art traditionally attached to home brewing.
2. Related Technology
A conventional way to brew beer at home involves the use of labor-intensive apparatus and techniques passed down through the years. Because of the long tradition of home beer brewing, a considerable art has attached to this activity. Generally, this art of home-brewing beer is an adaptation or extrapolation of from large-scale brewing techniques.
Traditional brewing of beer at home requires considerable dedication and care from the home brewer, especially in view of the tradition attached with the making of good beers at home. This brewing process requires tedious preparation and assembly of the equipment coupled with precise addition of ingredients under carefully controlled conditions. Such rigors are not easily followed by the average home brewing hobbyist, and this can lead to the production of batches of beer with inconsistent and poor quality, spoiled beer, and other failures of the process.
Beer, ale, and other fermented malted grain alcoholic beverages generally consist of four ingredients: water; fermentable sugars (usually derived from malt or malt extracts); hops for flavor, bitterness, and aroma; and yeast (both for flavor and for the fermentation used first to produce alcoholic content, and which is then used also to provide carbonation in bottle-conditioned beer). In this disclosure, the term "beer" is used inclusively to encompass all of these beverages. In some cases, part of the sugars and carbohydrates consumed by the yeast in the fermentation process are acquired by steeping grain in hot water.
The traditional home brewer may use a wort pot, and bucket fermenter with a gasketed lid and a fitting for a water-filled fermentation lock. Also used in the process are a bottling bucket, bottling siphon, hydrometer, wort chiller, bucket brush, and sanitizing chemicals so that all the apparatus can be sanitized before use. A starter of a good live brewer's yeast is also necessary. Careful sanitizing and particular procedures carried out in a particular order are generally necessary in order to make good beer, and to prevent spoiled beer. Spoiling of beer happens, for example, when microbes from the environment get into the wort and grow instead of or along with the working yeast (i.e., the "wort" is the weak solution of sugars and organic ingredients from grains, malt, and hops which will become beer after a first fermentation at ambient pressure to produce alcohol, and a second fermentation in a pressure vessel [i.e., in a beer bottle] to provided carbonation). Understandably, wort is both a fermentation medium, and also provides a fertile culture medium for undesirable microbes from the environment.
In the brewing of beer at home, after all the equipment is sanitized the brewer does not touch certain parts of the equipment, and is even cautioned against breathing on the equipment. The actual process of home brewing beer involves making and fermenting "wort". The usual home brew recipe makes about five gallons of beer. The wort is made, for example, by putting five gallons of water into a stock pot, adding malt or malt extract to the water, crushing grain, placing the grain in a fabric bag (a muslin bag, for example), and adding this bagged grain to the hot water, heating the water and grain bag toward but short of a boil, holding the water at about 160.degree. F. to steep the grains for a period of time, increasing the heat and removing the grain bag before the water boils, and then bringing the water to a boil.
After the water reaches a boil a liquid malt extract is added and stirred into the mixture. Spray-dried malt extract may also be added. Again the wort is brought to a full boil, a first addition of hops (bittering hops) is carried out, and the wort is held at a boil for 60 minutes, with care being exercised to not boil the pot over. Next, a second addition of hops (flavoring hops) are added. In the last 5 minutes of this boil, irish moss may be added to clarify the wort. The last addition of hops (aroma hops) are added and heating of the wort is stopped. A wort chiller or ice packing of the stock pot is used to cool the wort as quickly as possible to about 90.degree. F. or less.
Next, the yeast is added to the bucket fermenter. Various strains of yeast are used to modify the flavor of the beer. This yeast is added to the bottom of a fermenting bucket, and the wort is poured carefully from the stock pot into the bucket fermenter using care to maintain the pre-sanitized condition of the vessels. The temperature of the yeast and wort should not to differ by more than 15.degree. F., in order to avoid shocking or killing the yeast. Next, the fermenter is capped, and water is added to the fermentation lock to allow carbon dioxide produced by fermentation to escape, while preventing the introduction of ambient air and microbes. The total time requirement for the home brewer to this stage of the process is from a minimum of about 2 hours and 40 minutes to as much as 8 hours of time.
After a number of days have passed (usually 8 to 10days) and the bubbling at the fermentation lock has ceased, the bucket fermenter is opened and the hydrometer is used to check for an appropriately low sugar level and desired level of alcohol. Next, priming sugar is added to a bottling bucket, and the wort is poured into this bottling bucket without allowing aeration. Care is taken to see that the treppe (i.e., the residue and fermentation by-products in the bottom of the fermentation bucket) does not pour from the fermentation bucket into the bottling bucket. The wort and sugar are carefully stirred, and the bottling syphon is started. With the bottling siphon the sugar-primed wort is transferred to bottles, filling them from the bottom to the top--again to prevent aeration. Some bottling buckets have a spout to which a filling tube is connected, so this arrangement avoids the need to start a siphon. The wort is transferred in this case from the bottling bucket to the bottles by gravity. Next, the bottles are capped and aged. After five weeks or so, if everything was done properly, the home brewer hopes to have good tasty home-brewed beer. However, failures do occur.
In view of the mess and difficulties, excessive time and labor requirements, and frequent failures of traditional home beer brewing methods, attempts in the past have been made to ease the burden and improve the product. For example, a conventional home brewing apparatus is seen in WIPO publication WO 92/18606. This publication appears to depict and describe a product known in the commercial market as the "Beer Machine". Generally, this "beer machine" product seeks to achieve a closed, single-vessel brewing process which protects the fermentable product from oxidation and microbial contamination. Chemical sanitizing of the apparatus is still required. The "Beer Machine" also seeks to practice a cold/pressurized fermentation. This product requires pre-formulated mixes. Also, many of the traditional beer brewing processes are not possible with the "beer barrel". For example, hot-wort grain steeping is not possible with this product. Also, the addition of bittering hops or finishing hops at a particular time in the brewing process is not possible.