Skip to main content

I'm Back!


It's been five years since my last blog post. I had no idea so much time had passed. It's almost shocking that this site hasn't been turned off by Google to free up server space. 

Being laid up at home with a certain thing that made 2020 pretty much the worst year ever is what inspired me to hit the restart button and bring this blog back to life. It's time for more brewing articles that people will hopefully find interesting, helpful, or both. Plus the occasional article that has nothing to do with beer.

A lot has changed in five years. 

I moved from the mountains to the city, which caused me to drop my old tagline about brewing at 7,734 feet. One kid is in college and the other will be soon, meaning my wife and I are about to become empty nesters. There's also an '81 Chrysler project car in the garage that has a very interesting backstory. My brewing setup also got a bit fancier, although not too fancy. This blog did start out focused on brewing without a huge investment in equipment. I didn't want to go too far off the rails from that.

My actual inspiration; however, was the desire to share some successes from the last five years, while also brewing outside my comfort zone.

Going forward, I might brew beers that are awful. Others might be awesome. Yet others might be perfectly acceptable representations of their style, as defined by the Brewers Association Beer Style Guidelines. I'll even post a couple of beers that won awards and stuff, as well as two that were brewed and served by an actual brewery

Since I don't like being stuck at home, I figured my first post should be about a style I don't particularly like. They seem to go hand-in-hand. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

In the Fermentor: Kitchen Sink Barleywine

The Leftovers It's time for a cleanup of leftover grains and partially used packets of hops from 2012. With the exception of the 2-Row base malt, everything in the recipe below has been sitting on the shelf, or in the fridge waiting to be used. I had several open hop packages, some leftover toasted malts and a half-full bottle of malt extract too. I also had yeast cultured from my White House Honey Porter . My decision was to use almost all of my leftovers and make a partial-mash Barleywine. The finished beer will be quite strong and quite bitter. A toasted malt backbone should nicely complement pine, spice and citrus hop flavors. Because of the beer's strength, it will not be ready for at least three months and should improve with age. The recipe has been scaled up to five gallons from the 2.5 gallons I actually brewed: Grains: 9 lbs Rahr 2-Row 8.5 oz Victory 7.5 oz Brown Hops: Bittering: 0.75 oz Chinook (11.1% a.a.): 60 min 0.5 oz Colum...

In the Fermentor: Flaming Pumpkin

I'll admit that I'm not a huge Pumpkin Beer fan. I didn't have one on my brewing calendar for this year and didn't have my sights set on one for next Fall either. Then my niece came along and threw down the gauntlet. She asked me to brew her a pumpkin beer and I accepted the challenge. I did a lot of reading to see how to best go about using pumpkin in beer. Some people mash it with the grains. Others add it to the brew kettle during the boil. Some add it to the primary or secondary fermentor. The consensus from professional brewers appears to be adding it to the mash, so I took the same approach. The pumpkin was cooked ahead of time by my girlfriend to soften it, convert some of the starch and help release some of its sugars. It then joined the grains in the mash. I really want the pumpkin pie effect here, so I've thrown in all of the requisite spices toward the end of the boil. I've also gone with just enough bitterness to balance the sweetness of the ...

Out of the Bottle: Flaming Pumpkin

It's Halloween night and Flaming Pumpkin is ready to frighten away the ghosts and goblins. Hopefully it won't also frighten away the people who drink it. This is my first Pumpkin Beer, so I was flying blind outside of doing research and trying commercially available brews. I basically cobbled together suggestions I thought were the best approach to the style, with a vision in my head of what the finished product should taste like. So how did it turn out? Pretty good. My goal was pumpkin pie in a bottle. What I got is more spice than sweet, but I still like it. The pie spices are right out front, with clove and cinnamon leading the way. The sweeter flavors are muted and focused toward dark sugars from the brown sugar and dark crystal malt. Bitterness is just enough, with no hop flavors competing with the spices. And what about the pumpkin? You can taste it. It's subtle. But you can definitely tell it's there. Overall? I'm quite happy and hope that my niece l...