Adventures in cleaning and sanitizing
For the past year I've given all of my spent grain to chicken-owning friends. It takes the grain off my hands, the chickens love it, and sometimes I get free eggs. Everyone is happy. But then I found the Spent …
May 12, 2012 | Posted in Assorted Beer Geekery
I've gotten to drink much more of my 2nd attempt at this English IPA than I did of the first, and I'm glad for that. I kegged this just over a month ago and at the time the beer tasted …
May 8, 2012 | Posted in Tasting
Recipe Recipe, fancy Recipe, Hopville This is the second novelty beer that I'm making for this year's Vice City, so I was free to go a little crazy with ingredients. I wouldn't ever make a batch of this myself because …
May 1, 2012 | Posted in Brewing
The second beer of mine to get the hop stand treatment is drinkable, that means it's time to see how the hop stand technique worked for this beer. As with the first experiment, I was cautious in the amount of …
April 15, 2012 | Posted in Assorted Beer Geekery, Techniques
I'm a few days late for Session Beer Day, but I haven't had much time to sit down and take notes on this beer, even though we've been drinking it for most of the past week. As I said when …
April 10, 2012 | Posted in Tasting
Recipe Recipe, Hopville Recipe, Fancy The first of the five batches -- and one of the two 'novelty' batches -- I'm making for this year's Vice City. This recipe is a bit more than 'novelty' as it's also an offshoot …
April 6, 2012 | Posted in Brewing
Earlier this year I heard about a technique that could supplement -- or possibly replace -- dry hopping as the best way for adding hop aroma to a beer. The technique is the hop stand, and I heard about it …
March 28, 2012 | Posted in Techniques
After yesterday's overly trub-laden brew I spent some time thinking about possible causes. Initially I blamed the fine grind of the grist, but that explanation never seemed quite right. I wondered if perhaps Whirlfloc was the culprit. And, indeed, that may be it. …
March 25, 2012 | Posted in Assorted Beer Geekery, Techniques
Recipe Recipe, Hopville Recipe, Fancy I've stuck to the original idea of Rājasthān as a light, caramel-free English IPA with a focus on floral hop aroma. The initial batch was good, but had too much hop flavor and people kept suggesting …
March 25, 2012 | Posted in Brewing
One of the first commercial beers I tried to clone was Flying Dog's Raging Bitch. I never came close to brewing it, but I learned a lot about brewing, so in that way the attempt was a success. The most …
March 19, 2012 | Posted in Assorted Beer Geekery