Beer Diary...

I created my own homemade keggle sight glass a few years back. Since then it has performed pretty good with the exception of a single flaw. There is a plastic compression washer installed that forms a water tight seal around the ridged plastic tubing that you can see in the pics here. The original gauge that broke under pressure Because this area of the sight gauge is heated to sparge water temperatures (170f) and then cooled to room temperatures, the washer gets soft and a small leak (drip) occurs during my brew session. Not enough to be a problem but enough to annoy me. After multiple brew session, I end up over tightening the compression nut to solved the leak and as you can see in the picture, this practice eventually ended up breaking the tubing. I came up with a solution to this problem while I was in Mexico this year. The fact is, I was trying to come up with an alternative to the ridged plastic tubing since I couldn't locate any in San Miguel. What I could ...

The best thing about returning from Mexico is access to the unbelievably large selection of the best beers in the world. While I applaud Mexico for taking its slow but tenacious initial steps towards breaking out of the dualistic stranglehold that is Modelo and Cuauhtemoc Moctezuma breweries, they have a very long way to go compared to the available beers here in California.  My head spins as I walk the isles of Whole foods or BevMo, overwhelmed with the plethora of stellar beers found locally and imported  from around the world. I'm like a man dying of thirst when I return from San Miguel and realize how limited I've been for the past few months. The first thing I reach for on the shelves of my local beer store is a double India pale ale. My desire for hops is a need that must be satisfied to fill the bitter (pun intended) void left by most of the Mexican beers I've been drinking. What caught my eye was Knee Deep's Hoptologist DIPA and although I'd n...

Before saying our sad goodbyes to Mexico and returning to California we made a plan to fly out of Mexico City (D.F.) and I made further plans to visit a couple of the local breweries while we were there. The last time I was in D.F. I did a whirlwind tour of the Modelo brewery and since then the craft beer movement has accelerated and the chance of drinking some flavorful small batch beer was at hand. I was going to take advantage of this new opportunity. La Belga beer store Staying in the Roma neighborhood of D.F. afforded me two breweries within walking distance of the hotel and after settling in and getting my bearings, I headed in the general direction of craft beer. Walking down Orizaba Street I took note that a number of the local drinking holes were offering a number of Mexican craft beers in bottles along with some imported beer. I even found a beer store that specialized in Belgian imports call La Belga . This was encouraging considering San Miguel has ...