Using stuff up

We did our first all-grain brew on 20th June 2010 – a Boddingtons recipe, although as I remember it was far from close to Boddies (too bitter). Since then we have done a further 42 all-grain brews, so you can imagine we have amassed a large stock of ingredients over that time.

In fact, it’s gone a bit crazy. We have 21 different types of malt, from a sack of maris otter pale ale malt (that gets used nearly every time), to some melanoidin malt and flaked maize that I bought on a whim and have so far never used.

Hops aren’t much better. There are 19 different types of hops in my freezer, including 267g of Citra hops which I bought for a laugh to wind up Andy (he hates citrus American hops). We have 267g left because the online retailer mistakenly sent me FOUR 100g packs instead of one. (I gave one to my other brewing friend Andy – have you used them yet Andy??)

So this brings me to the issue of shelf life. Let’s deal with malt first. Generally when you buy malt it has a best before date of one year hence. You need to keep malt in an air-tight container and in a cool dry place, or it tends to absorb moisture from the atmosphere. The brewing term for this is slack malt. Obviously this is best avoided because its provides an opportunity for bacterial growth. But it also means the malt contains a greater water to starch ratio, so the same weight of slack malt will produce less fermentables than fresh malt – meaning your recipes don’t work quite right.

As for hops, they tend to have a best before date of two years hence, although I tend to worry more about hop aging than malt aging. Why? Well hops impart a lot of important flavour to beer, and as they age these flavours and aromas disappear and oxidise into compounds you don’t want. (Very aged hops can go a bit “cheesy” apparently). So I keep all our hops tightly clipped shut and in the freezer.

So, what to do about the mountain of aging ingredients? Use them up! Recently I have been looking for opportunities to use up older stock, either by choosing recipes that use them, or by careful substitution. For example, we have a plan to brew a Light Spring Ale next. The recipe calls for a little Caravienne malt, which surprisingly we don’t have any of. But we have a little Carapils (slightly lighter) and a little Caramunich (slightly darker). I reckon we can substitute both of those, thus avoiding buying anything new and also using up two malts in the process.

On the hops front, we have taken to substituting the bittering hops but staying faithful to the flavour and aroma hops. So we tend to use up older hops for bittering and just try to substitute a similar variety. But for the favour and aroma we stick with the recipe and fresher hops.

An added bonus to all this is that adjusting recipes slightly makes them yours, rather than borrowed from someone else. So you win all round.