Beer Diary...

This beer turned out pretty good. I'm not a big pumpkin beer fan but took a stab at it for the gente. It has a clean crisp caramel maltiness with subtle pumpkin pie spices added at the end of the boil. Easy to drink at 5.5% abv. and the best part is that no actual pumpkins were harmed in the brewing of this beer. Seasonal beer from Cerveceria Dos Aves

Yes, alive but barely. This beer is helping! Cheers all.

a quick wikipedia scan gives some clues of the origin of the doctoring of mx. light beer. Evidently it dates back to the 40's where at the prestigous club Deportivo Potosino lime, salt and ice were added. But, no reference as to why? I imagine that the light beers in the 40's were probably much better and more flavorful than they are today but who can say for sure. Could have been crap back then too. My beer ice or " mi chela helada ". An alternate theory that predates the wiki proposal: Brought to you by Don Roberto' michelada mix website states - The “Michelada” was first created in Mexico during the Mexican Revolution of 1910. As legend has it, the infamous military leader El General, Don Augusto Michel, would lead his battle hardened soldiers to his favorite cantina in San Luis Potosi to enjoy Mexican beer with lime and added hot sauce for character. Who's to say they aren't both correct or fictitious and really who's to care? Is there a ...

My day begins with the mile or so walk to the brewery. I follow a series of roads that run alongside a shallow river that skirts the center of town. Now, during the rainy season this river is brown and moves quickly towards the reservoir that spreads out past the old train depot. Discarded litter, plastic bags, dirty diapers and rotten vegetable matter all get transported by the rush of the tainted water along with voluminous amounts of dog shit that joins the parade as run-off from the cobbled lanes. But during the dry season it's tepid flow slows and turns to the neon yellow/green color of radiator fluid and emits a smell that can only be described as a combination of swamp gas, raw sewage and burning hair all of which it may actually consist of in part. San miguel is built in a canyon and I navigate to avoid the steeper hills but the last few hundred yards to the brewery can't be avoided and I labor to finish my walk. Once I ar...

sabor sma served the session beer we brewed 2 kegs with brett mixed it up with release of our others equip. needed energy expended feed back garnered only brewery in attendance better than a beer fest future events exhausting satisfying tricks I learned more?

  Is it wrong that I'm getting all of my calories from beer? I'm learning very quickly that when you're brewing beer in large quantities on a daily basis, you drink way too much! Session Beer Let me re-phrase that... you're tempted to drink too much but because all of the beers that are on tap are 6% abv. or more you have to monitor yourself to the point of it being uncomfortable. That's no fun. The solution, a delicious session beer to quench the thirst while the low alcohol allows for focused attention on the brewing task at hand. Case in point, the new Cerveceria Dos Aves Session Ale. Classically speaking it fits into the English ordinary bitter category. This beer is only 4% abv. but with a nice maltiness balanced well with a moderate bitterness that satisfies the craving for an easy drinking malt beverage and doesn't weigh you down. I designed this recipe to brew my last Beer School class and found the results so profoundly delicious and...

I can bottle 5 or 6 kegs (12 cases of beer or 288 bottles) in one session before my mind breaks from the tedius boredom. These are fully carbonated beers and so I can't fill too quickly without creating a foamy mess resulting in a flat beer. So it takes about an hour per keg to complete the job. Anyway, since misery loves company I'd thought I'd share a short video of me filling a corney keg worth of bottles. The beer is carbonated to 2.5 volumes is chilled down to 35f., run through 12 feet of 3/16" tubing to a cobra tap with bottling wand attached with a cork on it. You can see a close up of that system here. See all of my YouTube brewing videos here. You may not learn a lot but it's a good way to kill some time while the boss isn't around. Cheers!

Brewing beer for the public is way different than brewing for myself. Even though as a homebrewer I brewed a lot of beer for personal consumption (over the legal 200 gallons per year, don't tell anyone) it's no where near what I'm brewing now. Our new label design and brand logo A typical volume per month at this time of the year is 120 gallons, with the trend and current production capacity at 160 gallons. But we still don't have a lot of history to use as a compass, and I'm still in the process of determining how much beer is needed in inventory based on the demand from month to month. Our current standard line-up is: Pale ale, Belgian tripel, Dry stout and Imperial IPA. I've tested a couple other styles over the last year and they didn't receive the high praise that our current four beers get. My plan is to brew our same seasonal beers again this Summer to be released in the late Fall which are the Barley wine and Russian imperial stout. I may bre...

There are a couple new pieces of equipment in the brewery worth mentioning here. As you know, I run our brewing water through a reverse osmosis filter because of the high level of hardness and collect the r.o. water in one water tank and run the brine water into another.  Water 'tree' 1/2 hp. pump   I was using a small magnetic pump for moving this water around and this small pump was just too slow and weak. So, I purchased a 1/2 hp. drive pump and a system of plumbing and valves to direct it where I want. The first valve located at the bottom of the 'tree' leads to a hose for discharging excess brine water down the drain which is located in the very back of the brewery. The second valve I use for directing filtered water to the mash tun and hot liquor tank primarily. I also run some into carboys for drinking water. The valve at the top I have for use with my pressure sprayer that is used to clean out my fermentors and other ...

One of the greatest challenges I'm finding as I grow my small brewery is consistency in the product. Producing beer of high quality that tastes, smells, looks and feels the same from batch to batch keeps me vigilant in my efforts. The grain bill is easy because I have access to all I need, but the hop schedule sometimes has to change occasionally because of the difficulty in getting hops here. So, I find myself adapting recipes based on what I have on hand at the time. The same can be true of yeast. But the hardest part of staying consistent for me is that I can no longer experiment with my beers like I've done in the past as a homebrewer. I like changing up the yeast for instance to see what the results are simply to try something new that could possibly 'wow' me. Case in point. In the recent past I'd been brewing my Belgian Tripel for sale here which is quite popular. I always use my favorite tripel yeast Whitelabs WLP500. I've been making ...

That's right. I'm at the top of the list with Beer Diary... I did a search and was surprised, shocked, embittered to find that Beer Diary... was not on the first page of my google search. What the??? The Mad Fermentationist I'm adding getting grist because he seems like a normal homebrewer that just wants to share his process and recipes.