2013: Thoughts for the New Year

Yes, that's really me.

I've had a lot of fun writing this blog for the last eight months or so. A lot of ground has been covered, but there's much left to do. My New Year's resolution is to take my brewing to a new level (which I imagine is the goal of all homebrewers).

Drew Beechum's "Brewing on the Ones" article in the November/December 2012 issue of Zymurgy has inspired me to start experimenting with the SMaSH (Single Malt/Single Hop) brewing technique. My goal behind trying SMaSH is to get a better handle on what impact individual ingredients have on my beers. This is because it can be challenging for me to tell exactly what's doing what in a beer with six grains, six hops and a blend of yeast strains. Of course, I'll also pop out the more adventurous brews too. But my focus will definitely be on doing more with less this year.

In addition to the new beers, you can expect more brewing advice gleaned from my experiences and those of fellow brewers. I'll also be exploring more advanced yeast culturing and making my own specialty grains. Finally, my hope is to start exploring ancient brewing techniques and beer styles, so I have Sahti and Gruit in the pipeline. I also hope to take a stab at brewing Steinbier, if I can find a safe outdoor place to do it.

Here's to 2013 and many happy brews.

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Kitchen Brewing Part 3: Sparge and Boil

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A few members of the family I just finished racking my English IPA to a secondary fermentor. As part of the process, I saved some of the yeast in the primary for future use. Here then, is the start of a series of articles on yeast culturing. Back in the "good old days," homebrewers didn't have a ton of yeast choices. In some cases, brewers would even use bread yeast from the baking section of the grocery store. In practice, you hydrated the packet of dry yeast you got at the homebrew or grocery store and pitched it. The packets were cheap and worked, but there wasn't much variety to be had. Nowadays, there are several dozen strains available. While a few strains are still dry , most are liquids that come in pitchable tubes , or smack-packs . The liquid yeasts give consistent results and provide tremendous variety to finished beers, but are pricey. If you only use each pack, or tube once, you will quickly discover that yeast makes up 15%, or more of the cost

Colorado Kitchen Brew

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