Brew Dudes Homebrewing Blog

Maibock Brewing Update

On January 6, 2010

Ok – we have a brew date. Sunday, January 17th is set for the Maibock brew session. This is going to be my first attempt at a lager brew.

Feeling like I don’t want to delay my brew session any further, I am taking a pass on getting a false bottom or T-shaped bazooka screen and I am going to try to make my mash tun work.

Not sure what ‘making it work’ means just yet, but I will keep you up-to-date with that decision when I have made some progress on it.

So, I am buying everything for the session this weekend. I hope to put this gift certificate to good use:

Hey, it’s like Christmas in January or something like that.

For the lager brew, it’s pretty sweet that we have a foot of snow outside. It should come in handy cooling down the wort to fermentation temperatures quickly.

Brew On.

Brew Year’s Resolutions 2010

By John Krochune

On January 4, 2010

In General

The start of a new year can give one time to pause and set some plans for the next 12 months.

For 2010, my goals are as follows:

Brew 3 styles that I have never brewed before. That goal should be pretty easy to meet.
Brew my APA again to test if I can brew with consistency.
Smooth out all the issues in my all grain system – looking for not stuck sparges in 2010.

That’s about it. I am going to keep things simple. Keeping these resolutions should be easy.

Happy Holidays From Brew Dudes

By John Krochune

On December 23, 2009

In General

We are winding things down for the year so we just wanted to post something to wish you a good end of the year holiday season.

Hopefully you get to have to time off with your family and friends.

May you all have a great 2010!

(We’ll get that Maibock brew session posted soon)

John and Mike

Brew-Dudes.com

Homebrew Tradition

By John Krochune

On December 18, 2009

In General

As a part of December 2009’s Fermentation Friday, Adam at Beer Bits 2 wants us to discuss our favorite holiday homebrew or homebrew tradition.

I think our favorite holiday homebrew tradition is to brew up a number of different varieties and label them up. We make a homebrew holiday variety pack of sorts. We give them out to friends as gifts to celebrate the holidays.

Unfortunately, we haven’t had time to get this tradition going lately. Other priorities (read: kids) have taken up some of our time…but once they get older, we’ll get the holiday homebrew a-going again.

Diastatic Power

By John Krochune

On December 16, 2009

In Malts

Since we were investigating the subject, I thought it would be cool to have a chart for some common malts’ diastatic power.

This list in not complete so I will probably add to it as time goes on.

Malt Type	°Linter (approx)
American 2-Row	140°
American 6-Row	150°
German Pilsner (2-Row)	110°
Vienna Malt	130°
Munich Malt (German)	72°
Honey Malt	50°
Dextrine Malt	0
Crystal 60 Malt	0
Brown Malt	0
Special B Malt	0
Chocolate Malt	0
Black Patent Malt	0