Between propagation and family get-togethers, this batch has been a long time coming. I enjoyed the numbered digressions so much last time, I’m going to indulge in it again. Sorry. Continue reading
brew day: Cerny 13°
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Category Archives: homebrew
reader question: finings
A bit ago, Clint wrote in with this question:
Would you consider a short post/tutorial on finings? Essentially just the what/when/how to use, or at least your recommendation.
I am in the process of setting up a keg system and should be kegging a double IPA within the next 2 weeks, or so. Crystal clear beer has not been a matter of great importance to me, so far, but it would certainly look nice, in a glass.
We drink beer first with our eyes, and I think appearance can definitely enhance or detract from the (aesthetic, non-analytical tasting) experience. Haze is expected in some styles (Hefeweizen, Witbier …) and may be to some extent unavoidable in highly dry-hopped beers like Double IPAs, but for everything else, there’s finings. Continue reading
2014
Happy new year, citizens. My last beer of 2013 and my first beer of 2014 were both homebrews. Standard gravity, mishmashed ingredients and of no particular style, brewed just for the sake and love of brewing. I have a German Pils conditioning in a keg and the grist for a Czech dark lager measured out and waiting for the hopper.
I did OK with my resolutions – how about you? What was your last/first beer of the years? When’s your first brew sesh?
brew day: Schäferpils Zwei
Partly because I’m a sentimental git, but mostly (I tell myself) because the selected Czech strain was still a couple propagations away from prime time, and also because there was a raging pitch of 2042 just sitting there with a gleam in its collective eye, this – and not the forthcoming Czech dark lager – was the first batch with Brew Dog 2.0.
It’s a revisit to, and slight revision of, the first recipe brewed in the absence of Brew Dog 1.0: a straight-up north German-style Pils with a blend of noble hops. Continue reading
prep day: dog food and dark lager
Citizens, it’s a bittersweet thing to get a new dog after the loss of a good one. It’s sweet, because it’s a new dog – not the same as Brew Dog 1.0, but good in her new individual way. It’s bitter because you have to hustle and scoop the last of your sack of Weyermann Bohemian Floor-Malted Dark out of the Vittles Vault like a sucker so that it can be re-filled with Nutro Lamb & Rice Large Breed Adult formula instead of artisanal European malt.
This can only mean decoction-mashing an export-strength Czech dark lager with that displaced malt: it will be a bin-cleaner in the truest sense of the word.
First, it will be necessary to rifle through the Library of Ancient Yeast, sunken lo these many moons below a fabled five-pack of New Glarus Staghorn … uh, four … three-pack of New Glarus Staghorn, and find the cache. See what might be under there in the way of out-of-date smack packs for me and Brew Dog 2.0 to work with.
But in the event that the cache comes up empty and I gotta go buy yeast, pop quiz for you: what’s your favorite strain for Czech lager?
brew day: Inevitable Conclusion Double IPA
Oh no, my hops are out.
(video is NSFW, and not likely to make sense if you’ve never rolled a D20) Continue reading
TMBR: John & Mark’s B to tha Fizz-our Rye Saison
My profuse thanks to John Rawlinson and Mark Orndorff for sharing this very tasty beer with me! They relate that it’s their variation on a recipe from The Mad Fermentationist. Continue reading
TMBR: First Gold IPA
We’re back, with a bigger beard, a dog, and tasting notes on First Gold IPA.
Nota bene: this beer was indeed kegged, as specified in the original post – but the time came when I needed a keg pronto, so the last bit got cpf’d, hence the bottle.
I kegged an IPA today, oh boy
It was a lucky ale with EXP 5256; and though the beer was rather flat, I still had a draft. I took this photograph.
brew day: Get The Acorn
It will probably be the last brew day of October, and it may well be the last brew day under the open sky before the looming winter of 2013/14 ushers operations into the garage and kitchen. It will be a day to play hooky and eat lustily of the tacos of bachelorhood, even if only for an afternoon, and over the sink so I don’t have to wash dishes later.
It will be a west coast IPA with West Coast IPA, riffing on the recipe for Russian River Blind Pig in Mitch Steele’s IPA. It will have some well-loved old friends – Rahr 2-row, Amarillo, Simcoe – and some new blood too: Polaris for the bittering power, EXP 5256 standing in for CTZ and Cascade where called for in the Blind Pig bill. Continue reading
the beer engine 