It’s the 11th hour and I need to get this beer carbed up for Thanksgiving. I’ve basically got about 20 hours to get this stuff to a decent level of gas. So I’m going to force carb them. Force carbonating is a black art, elusive and highly subjective in it’s execution. I’ve tried several techniques, [...]
Tag Archives: Homebrewing
Gordon Strong’s Technique for Force Carbonating Homebrew
Posted in Beer, Instructional Also tagged Brewing Better Beer, force carbonating, Gordon Strong, Thanksgiving Leave a comment
Put Thanksgiving In My Face & Then Leave Me Alone.
Our country of fat fucks are about to hit their annual apex of indulgence and I couldn’t be happier. You see, I fancy my self a fairly learned sensualist. Certainly, at times, my adventures slant nearer towards escapes than escapades, but I’m comfortable with my batting average. And what kind of sensualist demands perfection anyway? [...]
Posted in Beer, Event, Instructional, Recipes Also tagged Aleister Crowley, Brewing Network, Lemmy, Maggie Thatcher, Michael Rulhman, Thanksgiving, white labs Leave a comment
A Mash/Boil Screen Has Made Homebrewing Much Easier
I’ve slowly come to realize while building our brew system that the tools and techniques compiled to create our beer are as much a part of us and our creation as the finished beverage that comes out of it. And, like every good work of art, this one, too, will never be finished. Transcended, maybe [...]
Posted in Beer, Gear, Instructional, Review Also tagged bazooka screen, mash/boil screen, northern brewer Leave a comment
Finch’s Giving Yeast to Homebrewers This Friday 10/14
Between 5p-7p this Friday, October 14th the nice folks at Finch’s Beer Company will be giving out their American Ale yeast that was used to make their Blonde Ale. Bring a sanitized container to carry your yeast in! View Larger Map
More Homebrewing with Fenugreek
My water extraction experiments were vaguely successful last week, but didn’t yield anything I felt would be worth jamming up a whole batch of homebrew on. With the water extraction I found that the whole seed, untoasted and cold steeped for a day, offered the best results. I put 1 tblspn in 4oz of water. [...]
Posted in Beer, Health, Recipes Also tagged breast milk, extraction, fenugreek, Outsider's Almanac Leave a comment
Experimenting with Fenugreek to Replace Maple Syrup
I wrote about using fenugreek in homebrew to replace maple syrup last year about this time. I’m finally getting around to trying this out. I had hoped initially that a cold steep would be my answer for extracting the maple flavors and tastes from the fenugreek. Several experiments with that have proven that unhelpful. Instead [...]
Using Fenugreek for Maple Flavoring in Homebrew
When we were sipping on our brown ale at the farm over thanksgiving I felt our flavor profile was not fully complete. I sat there enjoying our dark crystal and cascade combination, but realized that with just a kiss of maple syrup this beer would be transformed from good and serviceable to something far more [...]
2 Beers, 1 Grain Bill… Use Those Second Runnings, Bubba!
The smells of the brew house are one of my favorite parts of making beer and spent mash ranks towards the top of my olfactory hit list. Normally, after we dump our used grain into the garbage can, I’ll find myself spending most of the boil time hovering over the can, breathing in the nutty, [...]
Posted in Beer, Instructional, Recipes Also tagged 2-Row, Bitter, Black Patent Malt, Chocolate Malt, Crystal Malt, McSorley's, Munich Malt, Porter, Second Runnings, Sparging Leave a comment
Fixing Crummy Attenuation in Our Beers
For the first time in several brews we’re finding ourselves up on a stuck fermentation with both our Brown Ale and our Egg Nog Milk Stout. I wasn’t terribly surprised by the Stout getting stuck, it’s a higher ABV beer than we’ve brewed before and I was curious to find out if my brute force [...]
Posted in Beer, Instructional Also tagged attenuation, beano, Brown Ale, BYO.com, Egg Nog Milk Stout, Stuck fermentation, Washing Yeast, yeast starter Leave a comment
Racking With CO2
We brewed our porter on Saturday. It was great to be brewing again – I just love the smell of wort boiling – and we actually had our best brew time, doing 10 gallons in just about exactly 5 hours. One thing that became immediately clear as we worked to rack and inoculate our beer [...]
Posted in Beer, Gear, Instructional Also tagged CO2, keggle, Maltose Falcons, Racking Leave a comment