Choosing Malt & Hops when Brewing Barley Wine

"Hi I'm Mark Emiley on behalf of Expert Village. In this next segment we are going to go over the ingredients used in brewing. There are four main ingredients in brewing. There's malt, hops, yeast and water. Malt is usually going to come in two different forms. You have your malt extracts, you can get a dry version which is a little more concentrated than the liquid versions but a little more expensive. Or, you can get the liquid extract which is like a very, very thick syrup. The other form of malts that you are going to be adding to really kind of flesh out the character of the beer that you are making are specialty grains. These are grains that have been roasted somewhat differently, maybe steeped for a little while. And basically they are going to add some of your more complex flavors. When you get your specialty grains, you're local home brewing store will help you mill them like this. This will open up the grain allowing extraction of the sugar and the color. Next we have hops. And there are two major forms of hops that are available. There is whole hops, which you can see right here. This is actually just the cone of the hop. And then there is also pellet hops which is basically all of your whole hops crushed up and then put into a condensed form. The differences between the two: whole hops tend to have a shorter shelf life where pellet hops will last longer. You will also get a slightly better extraction out of pellet hops than you will out of whole hops. However, for today's purposes in our brewing session, we are going to be using whole hops because they are a little easier to get out of the wort. Hops can add three things to your beer. First, they can add bitterness, then they can also add flavor and finally, they can add aroma. Hops, which are added early into the boil for around a sixty minute time frame will add bitterness as the flavor and aroma components are boiled off. Hops that are added in at a twenty to ten minute time frame will add flavor. They also add a little bitterness, but mainly flavor. And finally, the aroma hops which are added usually in the ten and under time frame down to actually just steeping will add mainly aroma characteristics."