Welcome to Braukaiser.com. This site is dedicated to brewing science and topics that are mostly related to brewing German style beers and it is not intended to be a complete reference for the home brewing process. It is a rather loose collection of various articles.

Philosophy

I enjoy the scientific and technological aspects brewing, which shows in the articles, and want to promote a better understanding of them as well as introduce the advanced brewer to various brewing techniques. Being an engineer I like to know what is happening and how I can control the final product and fix problems when they arise. Despite what many readers would think, I'm a fairly relaxed brewer. Some of that relaxation comes from knowing the process and knowing where attention is necessary and where not.

For questions and suggestions contact kai at braukaiser dot com

Blogs

There are also two blogs that I'm maintaining

My Brewing Log is a convenient place to report about experiments and ramble about random subjects	Commercial Beer Reviews started as a tasting report of almost 80 different beers that I had on a trip to Germany

Icons

More recent articles on this site use symbols on the right margins to indicate the type of content and allow readers to skip possibly uninteresting or complex part

	Brewing Basics: The building blocks stand for basic stuff that is important for the understanding of further discussions and elaborations.
	How Things Work: the cogs mark sections that detail how a particular process woks
	Practical Brewing Advice: The pot stands for practical brewing advice that will help you in home brewing. Oftentimes a conclusion that is drawn from preceding, more complex, content.
	Geeky Stuff: The test tube stands for geeky content. Something that is cool to know but has only little importance in practical home brewing.

What’s New

• Jan 2011 - added A simple Model for pH Buffers
• Jun 2010 - published NHC 2010 presentation about efficiency and how to keep it predictable
• Jun 2010 - added documentation for the Batch Sparge and Party Gyle Simulator
• May 2010 - added How to read a water report
• Mar 2010 - released Alkalinity reduction with slaked lime
• Feb 2010 - released Beer color, alkalinity and mash pH
• Jan 2010 - added Museumsbrauerei Schmitt, Singen, Germany

• Jan 2010 - revised and updated Kraeusening
• Dec 2009 - added Building brewing water with dissolved chalk
• Dec 2009 - added At home water testing
• Oct 2009 - Published The effect of brewing water and grist composition on the pH of the mash
• Sep 2009 - Released How pH affects brewing
• Sep 2009 - The content on braukaiser.com is now licended under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.
• Sep 2009 - Released An Overview of pH

Preparation

• Keeping Log
• Carboy Washer

Basic (Brewing) Science

• Everything you need to know about pH in brewing
  • An Overview of pH
    • A simple Model for pH Buffers
    • pH Meter Buying Guide
  • How pH affects brewing
  • Beer color, alkalinity and mash pH

Ingedients

• Water
  • How to read a water report
  • At home water testing
  • Building brewing water with dissolved chalk
  • Alkalinity reduction with lime

Wort Production

• Evaluating the Crush of the Grain
• Malt Conditioning
• Understanding Mash pH
• The Science of Mashing
  • Enzymes
  • Carbohydrates
  • Starch Conversion
• The Theory of Mashing - revised and largely replaced by The Science of Mashing
  • Experiment: Mash Time Dependency of Wort Fermentability
  • Experiment: Effects of mash parameters on fermentability and efficiency in single infusion mashing
• Infusion Mashing
• Decoction Mashing
• Batch Sparging Analysis
• Iodine Test
• Understanding Efficiency
• Troubleshooting Brewhouse Efficiency
• Batch Sparge and Party Gyle Simulator

Boiling and Wort Transfer

• Whirlpooling

Fermentation

• Understanding Attenuation
• Fast Ferment Test
• Fermenting Lagers
• Drauflassen
• Carbonation Tables
• Kraeusening
• Accurately Calculating Sugar Additions for Carbonation
• Yeast Culturing
  • Yeast culturing gear
  • Making Plates and Slants
  • Inoculating Plates and Slants
  • Growing Yeast from a Plate
  • freezing yeast (not yet available)
  • Yeast Bank contents
• Experiments
  • Pitching Rate and Oxygenation

Bottling/Kegging/Serving

• Kompensatorzapfhahn

Breweries

Germany

• Museums- und Traditionsbrauerei Wippra (museum and traditonal brewery Wippra), Germany
• Museumsbrauerei Schmitt, Singen, Germany

History

• German Brewing between 1850 and 1900
  • Part I: Malting and Wort Production
  • Part II: Fermentation and Beer

Literature

Misc

• Links
• Recipes
  • Various water recipes
  • Obergäriges (Ales)
    • Kaiser Alt
  • Untergäriges (Lagers)
    • Dunkel
    • Schwarzbier
    • Maibock
    • Imperator (Doppelbock)
  • Food
    • Treberbrot
    • Brezels and other Laugengebäck
• Glossary of German Brewing Terms
• Tables for Conversions and Calculations
• Foreign Content
• Podcasts