A Dunkel to be: new crop year Mittelfruh, floor-malted Bohemian dark, yeast propagation, Wookiee co-pilot.
Will report with notes and results in a few weeks.
prep day
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Monthly Archives: November 2012
bubbles in my beer
Last week there was a spate of social media posts and articles in the national media about the state of craft beer in America. I’m just now getting caught up on my reading because I was brewing a bunch. Continue reading
zeit für brauen: 21st century American amber lager
Beer style guidelines: some homebrewers I’ve encountered in the past two decades don’t want to brew anything that can’t fit into an established category (or even deviate from a fixed recipe), while others hate them with an ad-hoc and improvised passion (and can’t or won’t stick to a recipe no matter what). Continue reading
basecamp sour 2012: the Brettcurrant edition
Truth in advertising – deep down, I really only truly love a fruit beer if it’s also sour or wild or Brett-influenced, something more than just a fruit beer. That’s just the way Crom made me.
Which isn’t to say I can’t appreciate a well-made straight-ahead fruit beer, but, sour or not, I do feel that the fruit should reflect the beer’s provenance – the fruit adds another layer of reality to beer as an agrarian product and an extension of its time, people, and place.
Every great meadmaker I’ve ever met, from Ken Schramm to Curt Stock, has espoused the use of high quality, local fruit when making melomel, and that philosophy translates very well when brewing sour and wild ales.
With all that out of the way, this, then, is the story of what happened to the B portion of Basecamp Sour 2012. Continue reading
let’s cook with beer again: steak
Other working titles: “Have Porter, Will Beef” and “Porter: It’s What’s for Dinner. This may seem familiar, but for as long as this keg of porter lasts I’m eating red meat, dammit. Continue reading
brainhurter RIS: a recipe
sours in the night
Giving it both barrels: five gallons of 2011 sour (really, really sour … plus dark and oaky) red comes off the wood and onto 5 pounds of rhubarb, five gallons of Basecamp Sour (alcoholic fermentation complete, sir) begins its oak nap.
Like ships in the night, these two separate but similar beers pass each other so closely but never quite manage to hook up. They would be so good together, but it’s like they just can’t see it because they’re at such different stages in their lives. Will they ever meet again and, you know … consummate? I hope so – I like brewing stories to have a happy ending.
guess that fruit
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lessons in patience, part 2
I’ll save you the trouble of reading a long post: don’t be in a rush to drink Imperial stout. Now you can get on with your day – cheers!
But, if like me, you’re just noodling around waiting for sparge water to finish heating or some such, here are more words: Continue reading
the beer engine 