See What Launch is Brewing…Literally.

Yes, that’s right Launch has been hard at work staring at our computers all day and in our down time homebrewing!

During a company lunch with craft beers on our minds and in our glasses, a Launch homebrew discussion was almost inevitable. With a few employees experienced in the joys of homebrewing, the debate and contest of style and naming began even before the recipe did! You can even view our naming debate here.

After we decided on a final style (Vanilla Porter) and voted on a name (Page Rank Porter) the brewing starting!

We followed these steps for brewing our recipe:brewing

  1. Mashing- The grains are soaked in hot water for an hour to release the fermentable sugars from the grain. The yeast will later eat the sugars, fermenting the beer in order to produce alcohol. No sugar means no alcohol, which means no fun. The different grain used produces the different flavors and style of beer.
  1. Sparging- Rinsing the grains with hot water to extract as much sugar from the grain as possible. The resulting liquid is called wort.
  1. Boiling the Wort- The wort is then moved to a boiling pot, which will boil for typically an hour. This step will kill any bacteria. The hops are added at different stages in the boil depending on the desired aroma and bitterness characteristics. The hops will add the final characteristics (aroma, bitterness, etc.) of the beer.
  1. Cooling – After boiling, the wort needs to be cooled rapidly. This is when sanitizing is essential, since it is no longer at a temperature high enough to kill bacteria. Once the wort reaches the right temperature (70-65 degrees) the yeast is added. This is typically the last part of your brew day!
  1. Fermentation- The hard work is done, now it is the yeasts’ turn! The yeast consumes the sugars and converts them into alcohol and carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is released into the air through the air lock while your alcohol will remain within the beer. This takes about 1-2 weeks depending on the style of the beer.Jamie Clark Brewing
  1. Carbonation- The beer is now ready to be carbonated! You can consume it now, however it will be tremendously flat. In order to add carbonation, we employed a method called force carbonation, which essentially consists of overfilling the keg with CO2. The excess CO2 is then absorbed into the beer.
  1. Bottling & Labeling- Now it is complete and ready to bottle! You push a bit more CO2 into your keg for bottling and then cap it off and label as we did.

Below is the final product of the hard work invested by Launch, the Page Rank Porter!

The Vanilla Porter sits at about ABV: 6.2%, with a nice smooth finish and the subtle aroma and taste of vanilla . This one ranks highly, just as our clients do. 😉

 

 

Launch Page Rank Porter

 


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Stay tuned for more details on our next batch!

**Special thanks to Kyle Miner, Fred Shramovich for aiding in the brewing. Many thanks to Dan Schroeder for the designing the labels, and Joe Chura for funding such a great hobby. Also to the entire Launch Team for the very difficult task of sampling. **

 

 

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Launch Digital Marketing is a Chicago based digital marketing agency specializing in helping businesses grow their online and web presence.