Beer Diary...

I've gotten into the habit of relying on Safale US05 to ferment several of the ales I like to have on tap at all times. This is a work horse of a yeast that attenuates in the low 80 percentile with a clean profile (minimal phenol and ester by products) and performs well in temperatures in the low 60's f. I normally use it for several of my pale ale recipes, along with my India pale ale, imperial pale ale and American brown. Having said that, though I'm not real strict about this, I think it is important to use the proper yeast for the style of beer you're brewing. As homebrewers we now have available to us a multitude of yeast strains that are specific for the numerous commercial beer styles. Using the proper yeast is important if you want to call the beer 'to style'. If you use US05 for you're German hefeweizen it won't taste like a hefeweizen but will fall into the american hefeweizen catagory which is fine but shouldn't be considered or refered ...

I happened to have come across this beer after standing in front of the extensive beer selection at the local supermarket. I didn't have anything specific in mine, just browsing, scanning the display and wondering why beer seems so expensive these days. Soon my eyes locked on to a new one for me, Moinette Blonde in an 11oz. bottle. To be honest, I probably would have passes on buying this beer simply because the cost was something like $3.99 a bottle. Too rich for my blood even if it was a new find and on it's own merit as a Belgian, deserved some consideration. But, it was a 'close out' item and was relatively cheap(?) at $1.99 so I bought the last two. This beer is brewed by Brasserie Dupont which also brews one of my favorite saisons and so I had high expectations. I wasn't dissapointed. The aroma is an immediate fruit basket and at the first sip my palet was awash in assertive fruit flavors, mostly pears and apple along with a spicyness that reminded me of hom...

I like to salvage and re-use yeast especially the Whitelabs liquid yeast that I prefer. Some of this yeast may cost me six or seven dollars a tube from my local homebrew store. Salvaging the yeast or brewing a new batch of beer and racking directly on to the yeast cake from a previous batch are two options for making the most out of the money I spend on an ingredient in homebrewing that tends to be the most expensive when it comes right down to it. In this post I thought that I would elaborate on one technique that I've been using successfully over the years and which I also teach to the new students in my brewing classes . I wrote about it here in one of my 'brewing tricks' segments and I refer to it as 'fermenting in a bag'. The following photos demostrate how it's done. To begin with, I line the inside of my open fermenter with a food grade plastic bag, taping the top edges to keep the bag from collapsing into the fermenter. I then transfer the freshly aera...

there seems to be a few schools of thought on how to impart coffee flavor to your beer. most popular is the cold press using lkjlkj type coffe you can also do this and this I have found that this works just as well

show the process sanitation first pull a sample fill the hydrometer flask dump the results.

Here's an excellent beer tool/device I found at Orchard Supply recently that I think is worth sharing. Since I'm not fermenting my beer at home now, I can't monitor the temperature obsessively like I normally(?) do. So, I was looking to put in some type of thermostatic control installed in a box I built to place my fermentation vessels. The room (storage unit with a roll-up door) I ferment in stays cool (65f.) during the day which is perfect for ales but at night it gets pretty cold, I would say somewhere around 50ish this time of year. This cold environment can cause the yeast to become inactive and essentially prevent them from fulfilling their responsibilities, they will go dormant and settle to the bottom of the fermenting vessel, resulting in an under attenuated beer. Not good. Line voltage thermostatic control My idea was to have a thermostat inside an insulated box big enough to contain two fermenters. The device would control a 60 watt light bulb inside the box to ...

Because of the popularity of Google searches for my home made keggle sight glass , I have made this video to show how to make the extruded portion that supports the rigid plastic tubing. This length of copper pipe works as a sleeve to keep the plastic tubing from bending over time because if its exposure to the high temperature water. Also, go here to see my example of a home made counter pressure bottle filler , and here for more tips and tricks. Let me know if this was helpful.