Happy Learn To Homebrew Day today as it is on every first Saturday of November.

I am usually not a fan of made up holidays but I don’t have to buy flowers or gifts for today so it’s a-ok in my book.

Plus, this is a day to support homebrewing as a hobby and culture. I can’t be against something that is intended to inform the uninitiated.

Through the years, these Brew Dudes have taught a few friends how to homebrew. Well, maybe not teach them. Many of them haven’t brewed their own yet but we’re glad they tagged along on brew day.

Also, we hope this site has helped out a homebrewer or two. We do put time into the thing and write posts that are informative, honest, and easy to understand.

Thanks for reading. I raise my pint glass to you.

The New England Regional Homebrew Competition is coming up on October 29th.  I think between the two of us, Mike and I have 8 beers to submit. 

I think that’s a good number.  I guess the goal is to submit beers to every category.  Until then, I think increasing the number year over year is good progress.

This year they are accepting two bottle per beer entry.  I set at least three 12 ounce bottles aside for the competition so it might be good to drink along when I get the scoresheets back.

Submissions are due on the 14th by 5PM at one of the dropoff locations or to the mailing address.

Good luck to all.  Brew on.

Yep, this Sunday I put a little mead together.  I don’t really know how else to put it.  I didn’t brew at all.  I mixed some ingredients together and pitched some yeast.  It was pretty quick and easy.  It is easier than extract brewing.

For this Raspberry mead or melomel, I really focused on cleaning my fermentation bucket.  I hadn’t used it in a while and I wanted to protect my mead from infection, so I washed it with a cloth and some Oxyclean solution.

Then I repeated the process with Star San solution.  I put a little elbow grease into it, trying to get into any little scratches that may be in the bucket.

I choose to use the bucket because of all the raspberries I was using.  I just didn’t want to have to deal with the cleaning of a carboy with pounds and pounds of raspberry goo left over.

I sanitized everything else using solution in a spray bottle; the yeast pouch, the bags of fruit, the honey bottle, etc.

I poured everything in together, mixed it well with a power drill and paddle set up, and pitched my yeast.

I didn’t take a gravity reading because I forgot.  I did put in the yeast nutrient and energizer and have been following the schedule pretty closely.

This mead could turn out fine or a complete disaster.  It should be fun to find out.

Support your local homebrew shop (or LHBS).  That is a common statement I hear sometimes.  I like the spirit of the saying for sure, but I think I have met the end of my time at my local shop.  Wednesday I went to my local shop and I was pleasantly surprised.  Usually, they are missing several ingredients that I’d like to put into my recipe.  (To make it worse, they often suggest things as substitutes that personally I don’t think will really work.) 

 Two things they came up short on.  I wanted some Crystal 80 for an Oatmeal Stout recipe.  They don’t carry C80, they had some sort of C150 (cara-red I think?, so its not even a crystal malt).  I looked in there little malt guide they have hanging on the shelf and they closest thing I could find to it LISTED was a Cara-Munich III 65-75L.  But when I picked up the one pound bag of the stuff, it was 53-63L.  Well, I have never used Cara-Munich so I figured I’d suck it up and use the Cara-Munich III in place of C80… ugh.

The second thing they didn’t have was American 2-row malt.  This they normally carry but they were out of it at the time.  She said it would be in the next day…but I was there now.  So instead I went with something they called Pale Malt.  I don’t even know if it’s an English Pale Malt or Briess’s Pale Malt. 

On the ride home, I started thinking about this more.  Why don’t they put the origin of the malts on the bulk grain bins?  They have bins labelled Pilsner, 6-row, 2-row, Wheat, and Pale Malt but what does that mean?  I know I could have asked but they are super busy with Grape season and no one was coming out from behind the counter as I scratched my head in front of the bins. (I should mention the bins are right in front of the counter where no one was spurred to help me. I know I should have asked!)

I did actually get someone’s attention and asked about the “2-row” situation.  When I said I would just sub the other malts for my needs, I asked if they had any pre-bagged 5lb lots left. She said “No, but there is plenty of 1lb-ers available.” 

I said I was looking for 16 lbs of 2-row, again she said there’s plenty of 1lb bags if you want.  When I asked if there was a price difference she said, “Well the self service stuff is cheapest of the 1lb, 5lb, bulk options.”  Congrats on trying to up sell me to the bags at $0.30 more per pound or whatever it is.

At least they had all the hops I wanted, but they were out of WLP002 and like the 2-row I won’t hold it against them - I just went for WLP005 (same flavor a little more attenuative).  I picked up some tubing and caps as well. 

All said I spent just over $98.00 (I got ingredients for a wheat beer as well, so two beers total).

So here is the local part:  I know I can get all the ingredients I want the first time if I ordered online at one of the big online guys.  Then factor in my drive time and gas money…shipping is actually cheaper. Not to mention my local has prices about 10% higher then anywhere else.  Depending on where I order from, shipping might even be free!  Oh well.  The local shop is nice to have mainly in the summer when shipping yeast across the country isn’t a good idea but for the most part doesn’t this global-internet economy make any shop my local shop???

Stay tuned for an Oatmeal Stout Brew log and a Wheat beer brew log from me… and maybe a few online orders as well.

BREW ON!

I have started brewing a little more regularly lately.  Now that the weather is cooling off finally, I have several brews planned before the year taps out.  While pulling gear in and out of crates and bins I keep stumbling and moving back and moving back and forth boxes of brewing magazines and books.  I started to look through some of the books during the mash of my last brew session.  I found a couple great books that I used to really admire.  I thought I would put them here for show.

Now, everyone always talks about Palmer’s “How to Brew” and Jamil’s “Brewing Classic Styles“.  Ray Daniels “Designing Great Beers” is a favorite too for anyone that has a few years of brewing under their belt.  However, these books may be ones that you haven’t seen, but if you have them let us know.  I wonder if anyone else references these books are part of their growth process as a brewer.  Anyway, check these out.

“The Brew Masters’s Bible” Stephen Snyder.  This book is a great book with simple recipes for inspiration.  The main reason I really like it is that its filled with good tables and reference charts.  It has recipes compiled form many , many homebrew shops all over the country.  Its a little dated, but the reference material is still valuable.

“The Homebrewers Recipe Guide” Higgins, Kilgore and Hertlein.  This book is full of recipes, as the name implies.  Many of the recipes are extract bases, but each covered style section ends with a handful of all grain recipes too.  The book covers converting to from extract to all grain.  It also has many little highlight sections with tips on things like bottling, aeration, fruit additions and more.  I like to flip through this book when I am looking for inspiration on what to brew next.

I present these as just some option if you are browsing for a new brewing book sometime and you want something different than the big three I mentioned above.

BREW ON!

I have been cruising the blog-o-sphere and some recipe database sites recently.  For some reason, my mind started to focus on the alcohol content rating for recipes and brewed beers.  Some sites list alcohol as a % by volume or a % by weight, some places even both.

I don’t think I have ever really paid attention to the alcohol level in my beers.  I know how to calculate it, even though I use BeerSmith and it will tell me instantly once I put the FG data in.  However, I have never been concerned about it I guess.  I see forum posts and questions that pop up occasionally with a dude asking how to increase his alcohol.  Also when I serve homebrew to people they occasionally ask me how much alcohol is in there.   I usually just say “5.5% give or take”.

If you follow the site regularly  you’ll notice that John and I don’t brew too many big beers, so maybe that has something to do with it.  The Baltic Porter I brewed is really my first significant big beer at 1.080OG, and I have been thinking of doing an English Barleywine too.  I am certainly thinking about alcohol with that porter as I think I should get to at least 9-10%.

How often do you care about alcohol levels?  Do you prefer to see it posted as ABV or ABW?  Does it matter?

Here is the quick calculation for ABV if you are interested and an Article at Beer Advocate about the matter:

(OG-FG)*131=%ABV  your gravity #s should be in the format of 1.040, for example.
(1.045-1.008)*131=4.8% ABV (See, I didn’t even use a high gravity example!!!)

BREW ON!

It’s September! In September I always start thinking about how I am going to wrap up the end of the year as a brewer. Also, for most of us the extra warm temps of the summer are starting to slip behind us and there is a limited window of opportunity to brew in some ideal temps if you don’t have an active temp control set up for your brewing. There are only a few short months left to brew what you want to brew before the year ends. I start thinking about the Fall beers I want, and any holiday beers I may want to lay out. The latter is certainly important to think about now as these beers tend to be a little bigger and will take more time to mature.

So as my brew kettle starts to ramp up here is my short list of things to try and knock out before the year is out:

1. Oatmeal Stout- I want to try a new recipe concept with some Munich and Crystal 15
2. Cherry Wheat- This one is just a fun beer. I didn’t brew any wheats this summer, to the chagrin of my wife. That and I told John I would give him this pound of lactose I have in my supply closet. He wants to make a sweet chocolate stout. I figured blending some chocolate stout and cherry wheat might make some really cool black forest beer. So yeah, I am putting John on the spot for this one.
3. Sweet Potato Beer- A fall beer recipe I have had kicking in my head for over a year. Its time to bring it to life.
4. American Cream Ale- My inlaws have really taken to this beer, we have been working on a keg of it I have for most of the summer. I like the ego kick it gives me as they salivate over pitchers of this beer. With family get togethers coming from Thanksgiving to Christmas, brewing up this one before then will keep my ego pumped through the new year.
5. Holiday Ale- I have a beloved recipe that I haven’t made in a couple years for this one. Its a real winner and I won my first competition medals with this many years ago. I might increase the OG 10-15% so I can age it a bit as well.

The list could have easily been longer than that but I have to draw the line there somewhere. On top of that as a blog we are still covering kegging for newbies, I have a baltic porter and a pale ale to write up, we are still working on some more regular video logs as well. I am building a new keg mash tun, I have placed a pump in my process now, and I need to finish off my kegorator. So there is much for us to do and write about.

We’d love to hear what’s on your year end brew sheet!

BREW ON!