Beer Diary...

Out of nowhere I received a letter in the mail, you know, those paper things that pass from hand to hand until reaching it's destination in far off lands. In this case traveling from Michigan to California. I'm always a little surprised when I get something in the mail that isn't a bill or and ad. It restores in me a sense of hopefulness that is often obscured by the grind of daily life. This letter came to me from contributing writer and loyal Beer Diary... reader 'Mom'. Yeah, when you think that nobody reads you, there's always Mom. Turns out that she was doing a favor for a friend by forwarding a newspaper (South Bend Tribune) clipping that her friend Anne had asked her to give to me. Apparently, Anne shares an interest in brewing and beer because of the influence of this blog, or more likely because of the bragging my mother does about her children. By the way, for you young'uns not familiar with this cultural imperative, saving and passing on clippings...

I began my day with plans to brew a big beer, an all-grain Belgian Tripel , one of my favorite styles and worthy of having a keg on tap at all times. But in the brewing process, I ended up with about a gallon of additional running's at the end of the sparge. I didn't plan for this extra project when I started out this morning brewing my take on a Belgian tripel. I simply went about my business as usual but was unaware of the gallon or so of additional water in my hot liquor tank or it could be that I just didn't care that much, once the water was there. Normally I'm careful to calculate the amount of sparge water I will need in order to run all of it out of the HLT, through the mash, and finally end up with thirteen gallons of wort to begin my boil. This time, when I got to thirteen gallons in the boil kettle, my mash tun was still flowing and so I diverted the flow to a separate vessel and waited to see how much I would collect. I eventually ended up with close to a...

If you keg your beer, here's a effective and simple way to add extra hop flavor/aroma to those beers that benefit from the additions. Specifically pale ales, India pale ales and Imperial India Pale ales. I recently used this technique with my Cascadian or black IPA with great results. It's an easy process and not only can you infuse any desired level of hop flavor/aroma, you also get another thrifty benefit, the used hops can be bagged and set in the freezer for future use as bittering hops in your next brew because this procedure simply removes the aromatics that you want and leaves behind the alpha acids necessary for bitterness. If you want an even bigger impact, use this process and also dry hop with another charge of hops. In my case, I used a stainless steel tea ball with half an ounce of pellet hops suspended in the keg for several days. This time I just dropped them in without any further processing like I've done in the past, which you can read about here . Here is...

I helped judge beer for the Santa Cruz County Fair and learned the procedures and etiquette for the process. In my case as a new (non-bjcp) judge, I was assigned to a table with a couple of more experienced judges to guide me in my efforts to provide honest and accurate critiquing. We were judging ten beers total with the majority of those being in the brown ale catagory. Concerted effort It was a little intimidating judging others homebrew because I didn't want to be critical and at the same time honest criticism is what the entrant is looking for in order to improve their brewing. I had the BJCP guidelines opened up to the page that described the style I was judging and used it as a reference to make sure the flavors and aromas I detected were appropriate or not for the style. I tried to be thorough and accurate and I learned as the judging progressed that I will need to develop not only my palette but also my vocabulary if I am to continue judging in the future. This is serious...

Here's a video of my version of making your own hop bag device for the brew kettle. I used this for the first time when making this video and brewed a black IPA 'Cascadian'. My concern with using this technique is whether I'll get the hop utilization I would normally get with my tried and true system of seperate hop bags for each addition and if the flavor/aroma qualities will come through. I'll report back here in a couple of days when this brew is finished fermenting. In the mean time, enjoy the flick and I'll see you on the flip side. If you use this type of system, please leave a comment telling how you like it. Thanks from all who read Beer Diary...