Local homebrewer shares his ‘craft’
FRANKLIN — Since he retired, Franklin resident Mike Orloski has been able to devote extra time to one of his most enjoyable passions — brewing his own beer.
Orloski, who retired from the City of Newark’s Fire Department in 2005, has been interested in the brewing process since he was introduced to the hobby by a cousin in 1980. He began to take the hobby more seriously in 1986, when he and a few of his fellow firefighters began to regularly brew their own drafts.
“I knew the science behind it,” Orloski said, explaining how his B.S. in Biology helped him understand the complex series of chemical reactions among starches, sugars and yeast which result in the perfect beer.
During those college years, Orloski also made ice cream — which, he says, parallels the brewing world almost perfectly.
“It’s a very similar process,” he said.
It starts with raw ingredients and mixing before being pasteurized, all the while monitoring temperatures and times. In fact, Orloski noted, the “American Revolution of craft beer” started in California in the early 1970s, when dairy farmer and cheese maker Fritz Maytag purchased Anchor Brewing and began producing Anchor Steam beer.
The biggest change Maytag brought to the Anchor Brewery is one Orloski also prides himself on — cleanliness.
“Making beer is actually only a small part of the production of beer,” Orloski said while concocting a batch of American pale ale in his backyard on a sunny Wednesday afternoon. What most beginner brewers don’t realize, he added, is that brewing is all about cleaning and sanitization. The smallest microbe of bacteria or particle of dust could be the contaminant that throws off the chemical reaction and ruins the flavor of an otherwise perfect batch.
The Process
Most of Orloski’s brews follow the ‘German beer purity law,’ or Reinheitsgebot.
The law, originally put forward in 1487, states that the only ingredients allowed to be used in the production of beer are water, barley and hops. The law was amended in the 1800s when scientist Louis Pasteur discovered the role of microorganisms in the fermentation process and yeast was realized to be an integral ingredient of beer.
The purpose of adding yeast to the wort — the liquid extracted from the barley during the mashing process — is to consume the leftover sugars and microorganisms and produce alcohol.
The final consideration for homebrewers is water chemistry, which “is more important in beer than people realize,” Orloski said.
Orloski uses two different sources of water, depending on the type of beer he is making. For lighter colored beers, he uses water pumped from Stokes State Forest and adjusts the pH with brewing salts to achieve the required level of acidity. To increase the pH, he adds calcium carbonate, and to decrease, calcium sulfate.
For darker beers, he runs his tap and uses filtered Franklin water, where the alkalinity and carbonates present make for nicer “head retention,” which means the foam stays on top of your beer longer, he says. For a medium body or amber beer, Orloski uses a calculated mix of the two water sources.
The Result
From beginning to end, the brewing process takes Orloski about six hours. He weighs the barley and prepares the grains the night before, then works from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. mashing, boiling, cooling and oxygenating the wort. After the yeast is added to the pasteurized wort, the fermentation process takes about 10 to 12 days for ale and “much longer” for a lager. Once the fermentation process is complete, the wort becomes beer and is ready to be bottled or keg carbonated.
This particular batch of American pale ale cost Orloski about $30 and will result in about five gallons, or about 53 twelve-ounce bottles, of beer. With a roughly $250 start-up cost for supplies, Orloski said the average beer lover will be saving money in no time. More importantly, though, Orloski said the quality is the biggest difference.
“You know what you’re getting,” he said. “You can assure you’re drinking quality ingredients because you know what you’re putting into it.”