Notes on a Brewday: Harvest Season

We are in the midst of harvest season. In Minnesota, it comes earlier than elsewhere. Hop cones are flourishing, grapes are ripening. For us homebrewers, it means one last big warm-weather brew day.

Notes on a Brewday: Northwoods Double Porter

Seven grain mash, roasted grains ground in coffee grinder

Black ales are the adopted bane of homebrewers. It seems like from one's inception into homebrewing, the popular camp means to get us started on the campaign to disassociate dark ales from the idiom that these black liquids are 'thick and highly alcoholic'. Each of us is given that old Guinness recipe for Dry Irish Stout, with it's high percentage of flaked barley, and made to adhere to the gospel fermentation time frame that produces an opaque black refreshment that never fails either adjective.

Notes on a Brewday: St. Edhar 8

Ah, the middle ages.

What is it about monastic beers that's so evocative of older times? The time capsule-like nature of Old World breweries in cloistered communities? The romance of a religious order living outside the flow of secular time, preserving the traditions of brewing, manuscript illumination, healing, and so on and so forth, intact through the centuries?

Whatever.

Notes on a Brew Day for Someone Else's Wedding, Pt. 2: Marie avec Visage-Sale

Rub some dirt in it
and get back out there.

Sometimes, when you wake up with the flu but you've already measured out and acidified the strike water and weighed the grain the night before, and you're now at zero hour for bashing out a biere de garde commissioned for your cousin's wedding reception, well sir ... sometimes you just gotta start heating the water, go puke, wipe your mouth on the brew sheet, and then mash in.

Notes on a Brewday: Eye of the Sun Winter Ale

I'd like to toast homebrewers in the southern United States. I have too much skin to haul full liquor kettles across my backyard or stand over a 200,000+ BTU propane stove when the summer swelter gets angry. My desire to brew suffers under an oppressive 86 degree dewpoint & 116 degree heat index. Such afternoons signal it's too late to brew any lawnmower beer that isn't already sweating in hand; it's time to get a winter ale brewing.

Notes on a Brewday: John Ireland Blvd. Bitter

I was brewing on a Wednesday. It was the third batch outside on the Banjo Burner, a wind screen fashioned with Aluminum foil. It seems like a bitter northwest wind swept around St. Paul on that otherwise fair summer day. I woke up to that wind spreading word of the newest tent in the ongoing Minnesota state government shutdown circus: media outlets were warning Joe Six-pack that MillerCoors' MN state seller's license couldn't be renewed & their M-C brands were to be pulled from liquor store shelves.

In any other year, the expiration of a state license would set into motion the process of a renewal. This year, the civil servants that process state license renewals at the commerce department were laid off along with thousands of other state employees when elected officials couldn't come together & draft a state budget.

Induction Brewing

Brewing all grain, in a sub-600 Sq Ft apartment, without the use of a stove?

Yes, it is possible, as I found out the other night.

I have a rather small apartment, and as such, I try to do all of my brewing outdoors on a propane burner. That leaves me limited to brewing on nice days, or watching wistfully from inside as my wort boils all alone in the elements.

Being the nerd that I am, I looked into getting an induction cooker. Induction cooking is an electromagnetic process which transfers heat energy directly to a ferromagnetic kettle, like Northern Brewer's Megapot kettles.

Mash Tun Time Machine

All that's old is new, and I for one welcome our Victorian throwback overlords. There seems to be a developing trend in the world of IPA: a hearkening back to the days of yore with ultra-traditionalist rebrews of 19th century export ales from the days of the Raj.

Thunderbolt Pale Ale: Hop Substitution Experiment

So far, it's been a hot summer and a short summer. And that's to say summer hasn't officially yet begun. As manic as winter had been, summer crept around the Twin Cities like a lurking radioactive monster. From windy to above average hot, that was only after the tornado season began in north Minneapolis.

Notes on a brewday: Warminster Standard

Technically, it was a brewnight.
Waxing moon over boiler.

My wife likes English bitters, her birthday is coming up, and she wants to throw a party with lots of beer. She also owns a rhinestone-encrusted switchblade with which she makes sure I understand the things she says. Fortunately I happened to have the last 10 pounds from a sack of Maris Otter laying around and a raging propagation of Wyeast's Thames Valley II with no place else to be. I also had the urge ... the urge to sparge. To the backyard!

Brew like a Homebrewer

This is a concept that has been expanded upon by the likes of Jamil Zainasheff in Brewing Classic Styles, page 244 - suffice it to say, it is very easy to get carried away when you've got some 80 types of grain to choose from. Different maltsters, base malts, "specialty malts," even malted oats. Sometimes you really just have to brew like a homebrewer.

Brewer's Log: Kansas City Lager

Occasionally, I find myself & the wife in a type of restaurant that repeats itself across the country. These aren't the eateries that entirely play off some combination of fries and fried-meat-patty-on-bun as an excuse for wining & dining; rather, these are the places that have a signature appetizer, followed up by gastric proportions of steak, salad with shrimp, & the like. And it's often the case that the best pour these same chains offer is Sam Adams' Boston Lager.

Coffee Beer Collaboration

Coffee beer: it just sounds right. Like when you hear "oatmeal stout", you know that it will be good, even if you've never tried one before. Deep down inside, every brewer wants to be eating oatmeal and drinking coffee and stout at the same time. It is a fantasy that largely goes unspoken, but search within yourself and see if it isn't true.

Notes on a Brew Day: Helles VII

House beer: do you have one? A brew that you always keep on hand, or at least return to frequently? Perhaps it's a seasonal feature in your homebrewery's lineup? And, in a world where change is the only constant, is the recipe static? Or do you, like me, succumb to the urge to fiddle?

Tasting: Twa Oats Roastie

Hello, stout ... nice to see ya. It's been a long time; you're just as lovely as you used to be.

I'm sorry, Conway Twitty - that's your song, and this is an oatmeal stout.

How to Plan a Rebrew: Part Two

This saga began with a recipe I created for an oatmeal stout. The first round of triple oat stout was a decent success, but I wanted to make some improvements to get the beer more where I wanted it to be. Things that I attempted to correct in the second version were color, hop selection and yeast selection.

Here is the recipe for version two:

Rye Wine (a parti-gyle experiment)

I stumbled across the idea of making a rye wine in early 2010. I imagined the next winter would be much better with a silky, dark, garnet beer full of booze and character in my mittened hand.

Brewer's Log: My Comeback

First thing: clean all these!

Now two months after my wedding, my wallet has restored its modest dripping of funds, enough to get brew back into both fermenters & kegs.

I came into the wedding plans with the fervor to supply all my reception's beer intake. But, thanks to MN liquor statutes, I am left with a complete glass carboy & plastic bucket army. As I get back onto my feet, here's a rundown of my exploits in stocking our home with the gift of grain:

Brewing to the occasion

Every year since we were our in our twenties, some good friends and I spend a few days each fall and spring to fish the runs of Lake Superior trout as they migrate up their home rivers. Every fall and spring I brew a batch or two of beer for the trip.

Notes on a brew day: Old Golden and DSB (Dawson's Special Bitter)

What's better than ten gallons of homebrew? Not much.

Ah, but what if there were some way to  achieve two different kinds of beer from one batch? Pitch two different yeasts, you say? True. But I was thinking of parti-gyle.