Makin' Cidah

Apples are coming in and the cider is flowing. I happened to get a gallon of fresh squeezed cider from a friend of mine whose mother in law has a few trees up north, or "up nort" as some say in these parts.

Brewing TV - Episode 42: King's Coolship

The King is in the building! NB soldier and determined yeast junkie Jeremy King (you remember him from Episode 4, right?) is back with yet another twisted yeast experiment. This time he's trying wrangle wild yeast from his environs in Milwaukee, WI for eventual commercial use. He's got a very interesting way of going about it - utilizing a coolship. Wild yeast, microscopes, fire, and fermented fish. You never know what you're going to get when you're hanging out with J-King. Prepare to be - KING'D!

Related Blog Posts by J-King:
2 Things Literature Says You Shouldn't Do That You Shouldn't
Better Brewing Through Chemistry
Beer and Your Body: The Alcohol Hangover
Eat Your Beer Like a King

Warmer Days Call For Ice

These are the days where us folks from temperately chaotic climates start declaring "Warmer weather has finally arrived!!" to either the rolled eyes or dismissive guffaws of those lucky enough to live where freezing is something that happens in appliances & cryobanks. My appreciation for the seasonal change aside, these months do call attention to one of the few caveats of buying live yeast cultures via the internet: shipping & outside temperature.

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.

Yeast Experiment Round 3

A while back I posted about a yeast experiment that used 6 different ale yeast strains to make mead. Preliminary tasting results from five Northern Brewer employees are in, I've summarized them below.
Some things I've taken away from this experiment: phenolic yeast strains really don't do well at all in mead, just changing yeast strains can create unbelievably different mead, and lager strains may be a better match for meads than ale strains. Three of the five people enjoyed the Wyeast 1272 the best, and two of the five liked the Wyeast 2112.

The scent of a carboy

I have an olfactory compulsion which you may find weird. Perhaps deviant. Here goes:

Notes on a Brewday: Scum and Villainy IPA

S&V IPA: Sorachi Ace, homegrown Centennial, staggered dry hopping with Glacier and Columbus, blah blah blah. That's actually not what I want to talk about.

Do you like to brew? Do you brew ... frequently? Do you often find that there's still a beer actively fermenting even while you're boiling a new wort?

Beware the Ides of Märzen

Or don't beware, that's cool too. Amber lager is delicious, whether you call it Oktoberfest or Märzen .

Short on Supply, High on Concepts

I've had a couple years' run wherein my brewing has been a gently purring animal.

Tastes have become recipes. Those recipes have met practices on brewdays, and then found their way through the cell membranes of various yeasts, until the whole was poured into pint glasses. Those glasses were emptied into dozens of parched mouths; occasionally, a few of those mouths gave coherent, positive feedback. My three & some odd years of homebrewing have led me to a fine place where the only limits have been my imagination, palate & budget.

Yeast (the book)

Yeast! It's wonderful, and now it's available in dry form, liquid, and paperback. The new book version by Chris White (of White Labs) and Jamil Zainasheff (of homebrewing) is out now. I recently gave it a read and was very pleased.

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.

Call for submissions/Yeast Experiment Round Two

Well, I was pretty excited about the mead yeast experiment, but unfortunately the results were not very illuminating, with one startling exception:

Notes on a Brewday: Hopbursted Clustercream

Does everything happen for a reason? Does every batch of homemade beer have something to teach us, as brewers and as people? Must every accident be an unhappy one? Must every forgotten hop addition be ... oh, nevermind.

Now let's meditate on these mysteries and watch some yeast floccs swirl in that video up there.

Yeast Experiment Round One Results

First round results are in for the yeast experiment! On a Friday afternoon several of us Northern Brewer folks sat down for a unique wine tasting. Some of you folks probably took a look at my previous post, The Grand Yeast Experiment, in which I described the set-up.

The Grand Yeast Experiment

Fourteen batches of wine and mead. A bevvy, nay a slew, of yeast. Which will take home the gold? Only time, and a lot of drinking, will tell.

How to plan a re-brew

So as a home brewer develops his or her brewing skills, the natural tendency is to start developing recipes. This task can be a little more nebulous than cooking, where results can be measured instantaneously. I decided to try my hand at creating a recipe for a stout that was somewhere in between a breakfast stout and an oatmeal stout, two of my favorite beer styles.

Pretty fly for a Weiss guy

... or "Everything I needed to know about open fermentation I learned from NB Milwaukee."

The Importance of Being Hydrated

A trivial blog for serious brewers.

Be Cool

Ladies & gentlemen brewers...

This is your mail order captain speaking. Northern Brewer has a brief announcement concerning today's flight through our yeast section.

Double drop fermentation

So I've been reading some books about British pub beers and, in particular, the vaunted British Bitter. Needless to say, I was inspired to recreate the technique of the Brakspear brewery, which produces some of the finest brews in the UK. They use an interesting technique known as the double-drop fermentation and claim it produces unique flavors, especially in their Bitter.