Beer Diary...

I taught a class in extract homebrewing recently and took the opportunity to try an experiment when it was time for the bottling process. I filled several 2 litre plastic soda bottles with the beer we were bottling and screwed the caps on excessively tight. 5 gals. will fill 8.5 plastic soda bottles My concern was that the bottles would not seal tight enough to contain the co2. Well, as it happens, the plastic bottles of beer carbonated perfectly and were ready to drink in two weeks after bottling, just like 12oz glass bottles. I was very pleased with the results which has encouraged me to move forward with my plans to use this idea while in Mexico this year. Saving bottles can be problematic down south as all glass bottles are worth money and require a deposit, so people return them to the store where they were bought. This means that it's difficult to collect enough for re-use in beer making without having to buy and consume large quantities of light Mexican lagers(not my favorit...

Editors Note: This is guest post writer "Mom" who gives her review of the "Suds On The Bay". Ludington, Michigans first brew festival. If you have never been to a beer festival now is the time to put it on your "to do" list. My friend Judy and I went Saturday night to "Suds by the Shore" in Ludington, Michigan. The crowd was a bit slim due to rain and cold weather. The ones of us brave enough to attend had such a great time. Spirits were high. Everyone was friendly and anxious to compare beers and discuss the making and adding flavor to the sudsy stuff. Mom and Judy tasting beers There were several bands (which were very good) adding joy to the occasion and there were even a few of us ventured to dance. There were 18 vendors. Each booth was decorated to attract our attention. Judy and I started with the light beers as Mark suggested. Schmohz Brewing: "Pale Ale" (very good) and "Amber Teas" (somewhat bitter) Kuhnhenn Brewing...

I was half way through my work day and just happen to be in close proximity to Seabright Brewery . It was a warm clear day and I was a little hungry and needed a break. I walked through the restaurant and headed directly to the patio area and had a seat at a table in the sun. I order the calamari and a pint of cream ale. When my beer came, I took a long drink and sat back to enjoy this satisfying event. I got to thinking about this mid day break and appreciating the freedom of working for myself. Wieland's Brewery Survived the 1906 quake but brought down by prohibition Soon my mind wandered back to the days when I worked for 'the man' in the construction industry and I recalled a time when the boss generously took several of us out to lunch. We all sat together and I scanned my menu and my eyes locked on to the beer selection. I looked over the top of the menu and gauged the others. "Would anyone dare order a beer?" Not likely, not with the boss present. The fact...

This is my typical Dunkelweizen recipe that I went a step further with by performing a single step decoction mash in order to improve on the malty/caramel flavor component. After tasting the first sample of this revised brew, the results of the additional efforts were evident. Improved malt flavors with a smooth creamy mouth feel. The following is the recipe and the steps I took to brew it. This Dunkel looks lighter because of back lighting 10gals. all-grain recipe. efficiency 77% attenuation 78% abv 5.3% ibu's 25 o.g. 1.050 f.g. 1.011 8lbs. 2-row 10lbs. malted wheat .5 lbs. crystal #60 1.5lbs. aromatic 4 oz. chocolate 1 oz. black patent *2 tsp. gypsum in mash mash in 5 gal. h2o @120f. for 20 min. pull 1/3 volume of mash and heat to 160f. rest for 20 min. next, boil this portion for 20 min.then add back to mash tun to bring full volume of mash to 154f., let rest for 30 min. then sparge until you have 13 gals. liquid to begin boil. 60min boil 1.5oz. hallertau @ 7aa for 45min. 1.5oz...

In the northern California town of Guerneville , Stumptown Brewery hosted another great beer festival, the Russian River Beer Revival and BBQ Cook Off , with over 30 breweries present and as many booths dispensing BBQ ribs and chicken. The weather was hot and clear as I made my way around to many of the food booths early on to get my belly full and ready to sample the wide selection of craft beers on hand. Here's to beer! Wine dipped BBQ oak chips One of the BBQ booths that stood out, roasted their meat over oak chips salvaged from a local winery. The chips were used in the conditioning of a red wine and consequently had a dry purple powder coated on the exterior, residue from the process. The chef claimed the chips imparted the flavor of the wine into the cooking meat. I tried a piece and agreed although the flavor was subtle. The crowd Head brewer Alec Stefansky for Uncommon Brewers (far right) Uncommon Brewers and Santa Cruz Mountain Brewing (a couple of my local brewe...

Random Selection I randomly reached for a glass from the crowded shelf to draw myself a pint of beer from my kegerator. I looked down at the glass tilted under the tap and saw that it was a Manny's Pale Ale glass from Georgetown Beer and a flood of memories came through that made me smile. I made a couple of friends after moving up to Whidbey Island, Washington awhile back and taught them how to brew. We became good friends and over the year that I lived there we brewed and drank many good beers. We fished the banks of the Sound for salmon and laughed until the middle of the morning around the bonfire in the back of the house. Later, I remember sampling beers with them at Georgetown brewing in Seattle one warm spring day. We were heading back to the Island after a run to Larry's Brewing Supply in Kent for homebrew ingredients (they wanted to jump right into all-grain brewing) and took advantage of our proximity to Seattle to stop in for some samples. As we entered the brewer...

If you live in a part of the country (or world for that matter) where the winters are mild and the summers can get quite warm, like here in Santa Cruz, Ca., then you may be struggling with cooling water that is not cold enough to do the job, especially during the summer. There have been times when my tap water was 70f., causing not only the expense and waste of huge amounts of water to cool the wort, but the best cooling I could expect to get down to for the start of the fermentation was 70f. I had a small immersion chiller laying around in my pile of abandoned brewing gear from earlier days and decided to put it to use to further chill my already cooled wort. By simply continuing the already cooled wort through a copper coil that is immersed in an ice bath, I can reduce even further temperature of the wort. I refer to this devise as a post-chiller. As you can tell from the images, I pump the hot wort through a brazed plate chiller. I purchased the smaller version from Morebeer.com an...

Try some of these Mom I've convinced my Mom to check out the upcoming beer festival in her home town of Ludington, Michigan. This event will be going on in August and I can't get out there at this time. So I thought, what better way to get a unique take on a beer festival than by having someone unfamiliar with this kind of event but excited to learn a little more about beer, check it out and report back their findings in their own words. Bless her heart, my Mom is not the heavy lifter when it comes to alcohol and except for when trying my homebrew, doesn't risk drinking anything more complicated than the familiar light American lagers (not that there's anything wrong with that). But she loves an adventure, and in fact has, at the age of 79 just learned to fly an airplane. When proposed as a challenge, she was more than willing to be part of this experiment. Attending in my place, she will be fresh eyes (just recovered from cataract surgery) into what for me has become...

I normally don't bother filtering my beer. It usually clears nicely in the keg after a couple weeks of sitting under cold conditions in the kegerator. I add Irish moss in the last 15 minutes of the boil and with the aging in the keg, the beer is very clear after the first pint is drawn off, taking with it some yeasty dregs that settle near the pickup tube. However, because the hobby of homebrewing for me is about trying different techniques and equipment, I decided to filter a couple of kegs to have the experience and witness personally the results of filtering. I chose a beer that was relatively young and one that I inadvertently forgot to add clarifying agents during the boil. It had some haze, more so than what I'm used to so this was a perfect candidate for my filtering project. The process I used was typical, force the beer out of the keg through the filter and into a clean, sanitized and pressurized keg using c02. I attached output ball lock connectors to the hoses that r...