Posts
Sunday, May 11, 2014
Sugar and Home Brewing
This guy's got it right. I'd add, however, that he has only touched on the basics. There are many other forms of sugar available to the brewer than just the ones he mentioned. Maple syrup, honey, and fruit juices are all popular choices, and they contain the sugars he mentions. There also unfermentable sugars like lactose, which add body and mouthfeel to your beer when used in proper amounts. I've only got a few minutes, but I'll expand more on this next time!
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Conversations With an Idiot
Ok, I know this blog is supposed to be about beer and brewing, but I just had to share this. It shouldn't need a full blog posting, because it's not an epic smackdown or anything. But I still think it's amusing and I want to share.
The following is a composite of screenshots I put together detailing a short conversation I had over Facebook with someone who clearly didn't agree with me. About anything. The conversation started under a post by my local Maine State Representative about Maine's Governor Paul LePage. This guy sounded pretty intelligent at first, and I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt until I read his private message to me--then I decided it was my civic duty to rip him a new one. You know--for the good of all humanity! I wasn't too brutal or long-winded. To date, he has never responded.
I tried just posting this on FB, but the image, when fit to a screen, made the words too small to read comfortably. I decided to take the gentlemanly route and obscure his name and face. To protect the innocent. Or something.
The following is a composite of screenshots I put together detailing a short conversation I had over Facebook with someone who clearly didn't agree with me. About anything. The conversation started under a post by my local Maine State Representative about Maine's Governor Paul LePage. This guy sounded pretty intelligent at first, and I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt until I read his private message to me--then I decided it was my civic duty to rip him a new one. You know--for the good of all humanity! I wasn't too brutal or long-winded. To date, he has never responded.
I tried just posting this on FB, but the image, when fit to a screen, made the words too small to read comfortably. I decided to take the gentlemanly route and obscure his name and face. To protect the innocent. Or something.
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
REVIEW: Terrapin Hopsecutioner IPA
Greetings Alehounds!
I love the holidays, and sharing good times and gastric excess with good friends and family from far and wide is one of my favorite parts. This year, with the new baby in tow, we made Thanksgiving a whirlwind tour on four wheels, visiting my lovely wife's family in south Georgia, mine in Pennsylvania, and then back to our home in Maine. I'll admit, that was a lot of driving, but it was a fun trip in beautiful weather, and as an added bonus I got to stop along the way and pick up some regional beers to bring back with me. Now, with the holidays behind us, it's time for a few reviews! Now, where did I put those tasting notes...
Today we're reviewing Hopsecutioner India Pale Ale (IPA) from the Terrapin Brewery in Athens, GA. One of the things I love about regional breweries is the variety of label artwork. This one features a cartoonish critter reminiscent of a certain teenage mutant ninja variety wielding a headsman's axe--sorta jumped off the shelf at me!
For this tasting (as with many of the tastings I do) I used a Chimay goblet
, which has a nice little raised emblem inside the bottom of the glass, which acts as a nucleation site for carbonation bubbles to form as the gas comes out of solution, with the result being a steady stream of bubbles coming up through the center of the liquid and releasing the beer's locked-in aroma. If you've never tried beer out of one of these, I highly recommend it!
In the glass, the beer was a light coppery-orange color, and a little hazy. There was about a finger's thickness worth of head, slightly off-white, which disappeared rather quickly and left a nice coat of lace on the glass and a thin foam from the constant bubbles coming up in the center. There was quite a bit of haze in the beer too.
Smell
Not strong at all. I had to really struggle to find any hops aroma at all, which surprised me given to the hops content of a typical IPA and the purpose of my special glass. Oh well. There was a lot more malt aroma than I would expect in an IPA, with bread caramel dominating and a hint of toffee.
Taste
Found the hops, sorta. Floral and grassy with a dull lingering bitterness after swallowing. Pretty sweet--pale malts and caramel with some honey in the background. The taste experience doesn't seem to match the nose very well at all, which is unfortunate since smell plays a huge part in how things taste. The sweetness does seem to hide the 7.3% ABV pretty well.
Mouthfeel
Medium body with low to medium carbonation. Creamy and comfortable, it goes down smooth without a scratch in the throat.
Overall
As a beer--not too bad. As an IPA--a little disappointing. Middle of the road at best. They say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover; nor, apparently, should you judge a beer by its label. Based on the name and the label art, I expected a slightly whimsical yet sharp IPA that assails the tastebuds like a big burly man with an axe, but sadly, this was not so. They could have put a lot more hops in the aroma, and sharpened the hop bite in the flavor. While the caramel sweetness does a lot to mask the alcohol, the lack of balancing hops results in a beer that reminds me more of a extra light-ish ESB than an IPA. As for the nose not matching the taste, sometimes it's fun and instructive to trick your senses this way, but I don't generally find it useful with a beer, especially when that beer fails to match the profile typical of its purported type.
I've read good things about the Terrapin Brewery, and Hopsecutioner IPA in particular, so I'm thinking perhaps the beer I tasted was past its peak of freshness when I got around to trying it, and unfortunately I didn't check for a date on the label. It's also possible that it lost some of its proper character due to being transported for several days without refrigeration, although it was mighty cold in the back of my truck by the time we got back to Maine! I've found, too, that southern-fried brews sometimes tend to be lighter on the senses than their northern counterparts, which sorta makes sense because of the warmer weather. Still, to this northerner, Hopsecutioner seemed like it would be more aptly named as a lawnmower beer.
All this being said, I will definitely try Terrapin Hopsecutioner again next time I visit my in-laws!
Tune in next time for my review of Terrapin Rye Pale Ale.
Sunday, January 6, 2013
How Clear Is Your Beer?
Beer is more than just a great tasting beverage. While many choose not to partake, beer is a large part of the American--indeed, even the human--experience. Benjamin Franklin famously said "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." The fact that a culture has grown up around the joy of making and enjoying fine beer testifies to how much beer has become part of our culture. Enjoying beer is about far more than just the taste of the brew itself. Beer is an experience, very much about where you have your beer, the company with whom you drink it, what you drink it out of, and how the beer looks in the glass. And while you as a home brewer cannot control many of those factors, you can control the quality of the beer you make so it not only tastes great but is visually appealing as well.
If you pour a commercial beer from a bottle or a can, you may not be aware of how much those beer makers put into not just the taste but the affect your other senses have on the beer drinking experience. The way the beer pours. The aroma as you pour it. The head of foam that wells up in your mug. How the beer looks in the glass. These are all just as important as the beer's flavor. The emphasis the big beer producers put on ascetics is so extreme that they even make the sound the can makes when you "pop a cold one" to be unique because they know that sound alone can prepare you to receive the taste of a great beer drinking experience.
The truth is none of that will change whether the beer itself is of high quality or is good to drink, but visual appeal matters. One area of visual appeal that you have some control over when making your own beer at home is clarity. Clarity simply refers to how the beer looks in the glass. If you can see through the beer and it is a consistent beige or amber color, that is visually appealing. But if things are floating around in the beer, even if they are perfectly harmless byproducts of the brewing process, that can diminish how inviting your beer is to enjoy and even diminish how enjoyable the beer is to drink even if the beer itself is of high quality.
A lot of the "stuff" that floats around in beer comes from the yeast that is crucial to the fermentation process, which makes beer beer. Some yeasts are better than others about settling out of the beer during fermentation. Another source of visible material in the beer comes from what is referred to as non-microbiological particles or NMPs which are a byproduct of the brewing process. Again, none of these visible materials are harmful to consume nor do they reduce the value of the beer. They just look bad and hurt the clarity of the beer which is one way beer is measured for quality.
Many of the NMPs are introduced during the initial creation of the wort which is phase one of any brewing operation. The wort is boiled at a high temperature for a significant enough period of time to cause the proteins in the ingredients to break down and become part of the fluidity of the wort rather than remain in a substance state or a "floc" which remains visible in the finished product. To avoid this make sure your boil sustains a temperature of 215F for 60-90 minutes to assure complete processing of the proteins.
Another important brewing step that you can do to reduce visible agents in your beer is to cool the wort very quickly. It is, of course, advisable to cool your wort quickly anyway in order to get the yeast working as soon as possible and avoid hang time that allows bacteria and wild yeasts to contaminate your brew. But by bringing the temperature down rapidly, the clarity is vastly enhanced as well. When you transfer the cooled wort into your fermentation vessel, be sure to leave behind the debris that is in the bottom of the brewing kettle--in addition to spent hops, there is what is called "cold break," which has a lot of solidified proteins that lead to cloudy beer. As a beginning home brewer, I used several methods to cool my wort--ice baths in the kitchen sink, leaving the wort in a sealed fermenter outside overnight, and even sinking the hot kettle in a snowbank for an hour or so, but by far the best method, for a minimal investment of money, is an immersion chiller. This is a simple apparatus made of metal (usually copper) tubing coiled up so it fits into your brewing pot, and some rubber hose or tubing. Cold water flows in one end, takes on heat transferred from the hot wort liquid, and comes out hot on the other end. A simple wort chiller can bring five gallons of boiling wort down to yeast pitching temperature in ten to fifteen minutes. A scaled-up version of the wort chiller is the counter flow chiller, but while highly recommended for being faster and more efficient at chilling your wort, a regular single-direction immersion chiller is certainly sufficient and gives you plenty of bang for your buck.
Finings, or additives, are another option for keeping your beer clear. Irish moss, isinglass, gelatin, and bentonite are all products added either during the boil or after fermentation that clear your beer (or wine, in some cases!) at the microscopic level.
If you want to get really involved in clearing your brew, there's always filtration, which we'll talk about in more depth another time.
Seeking beer clarity can become a major passion of yours as a home brewer and there is a whole science to using clarifying agents such as Irish Moss to enhance beer clarity without diminishing beer quality or taste. Learning good techniques for making your beer clear and appealing is just another step in your ongoing quest to become the best amateur beer maker possible. And that is a quest worth pursuing!
If you pour a commercial beer from a bottle or a can, you may not be aware of how much those beer makers put into not just the taste but the affect your other senses have on the beer drinking experience. The way the beer pours. The aroma as you pour it. The head of foam that wells up in your mug. How the beer looks in the glass. These are all just as important as the beer's flavor. The emphasis the big beer producers put on ascetics is so extreme that they even make the sound the can makes when you "pop a cold one" to be unique because they know that sound alone can prepare you to receive the taste of a great beer drinking experience.
The truth is none of that will change whether the beer itself is of high quality or is good to drink, but visual appeal matters. One area of visual appeal that you have some control over when making your own beer at home is clarity. Clarity simply refers to how the beer looks in the glass. If you can see through the beer and it is a consistent beige or amber color, that is visually appealing. But if things are floating around in the beer, even if they are perfectly harmless byproducts of the brewing process, that can diminish how inviting your beer is to enjoy and even diminish how enjoyable the beer is to drink even if the beer itself is of high quality.
A lot of the "stuff" that floats around in beer comes from the yeast that is crucial to the fermentation process, which makes beer beer. Some yeasts are better than others about settling out of the beer during fermentation. Another source of visible material in the beer comes from what is referred to as non-microbiological particles or NMPs which are a byproduct of the brewing process. Again, none of these visible materials are harmful to consume nor do they reduce the value of the beer. They just look bad and hurt the clarity of the beer which is one way beer is measured for quality.
Many of the NMPs are introduced during the initial creation of the wort which is phase one of any brewing operation. The wort is boiled at a high temperature for a significant enough period of time to cause the proteins in the ingredients to break down and become part of the fluidity of the wort rather than remain in a substance state or a "floc" which remains visible in the finished product. To avoid this make sure your boil sustains a temperature of 215F for 60-90 minutes to assure complete processing of the proteins.
Another important brewing step that you can do to reduce visible agents in your beer is to cool the wort very quickly. It is, of course, advisable to cool your wort quickly anyway in order to get the yeast working as soon as possible and avoid hang time that allows bacteria and wild yeasts to contaminate your brew. But by bringing the temperature down rapidly, the clarity is vastly enhanced as well. When you transfer the cooled wort into your fermentation vessel, be sure to leave behind the debris that is in the bottom of the brewing kettle--in addition to spent hops, there is what is called "cold break," which has a lot of solidified proteins that lead to cloudy beer. As a beginning home brewer, I used several methods to cool my wort--ice baths in the kitchen sink, leaving the wort in a sealed fermenter outside overnight, and even sinking the hot kettle in a snowbank for an hour or so, but by far the best method, for a minimal investment of money, is an immersion chiller. This is a simple apparatus made of metal (usually copper) tubing coiled up so it fits into your brewing pot, and some rubber hose or tubing. Cold water flows in one end, takes on heat transferred from the hot wort liquid, and comes out hot on the other end. A simple wort chiller can bring five gallons of boiling wort down to yeast pitching temperature in ten to fifteen minutes. A scaled-up version of the wort chiller is the counter flow chiller, but while highly recommended for being faster and more efficient at chilling your wort, a regular single-direction immersion chiller is certainly sufficient and gives you plenty of bang for your buck.
Finings, or additives, are another option for keeping your beer clear. Irish moss, isinglass, gelatin, and bentonite are all products added either during the boil or after fermentation that clear your beer (or wine, in some cases!) at the microscopic level.
If you want to get really involved in clearing your brew, there's always filtration, which we'll talk about in more depth another time.
Seeking beer clarity can become a major passion of yours as a home brewer and there is a whole science to using clarifying agents such as Irish Moss to enhance beer clarity without diminishing beer quality or taste. Learning good techniques for making your beer clear and appealing is just another step in your ongoing quest to become the best amateur beer maker possible. And that is a quest worth pursuing!
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Getting That First Batch of Beer Brewing
Beer is such a popular beverage because it has such a deep earthy flavor and because the variety of flavors, brands, colors and textures of beers is so diverse that you can explore a new brew each and every time you want a beer and never get bored. And yet most of us pretty much settle on one taste and stick with it. That is until we discover brew pubs. That is when our eyes are opened to the idea that we don’t have to depend on Budweiser and Miller for good beer. It can be made right at home.
Some of the finest beers you could hope to taste are not made in the big commercial factories but in small brew pubs all around the country. So if you have discovered some particularly flavorful home brewed beers, it isn't long before you might decide to take a stab at brewing a batch yourself. Be careful because once you start experimenting with brewing your own beer, you may become hooked into an addictive hobby that will provide hours of fun as you tinker with your recipes, get new and better equipment and become a true beer expert in brewing your own custom blends for the best flavored beer.
But it all starts with that very first batch. You might approach that moment when you decide to make your first batch of beer with some fear and trembling. But keep your spirit of adventure and experimentation because, after all, if you bought good equipment, you will get the hang of it. As the wise man said, that the journey of a hundred miles begins with the first step. So too your journey toward becoming a master brewer starts with your first batch.
The process of brewing that first batch is pretty simple actually. Here are the steps to go through to get your first brew underway.
-Gather the ingredients to have them on hand as you step through the brewing process. You don’t' want to have to stop and go dig something up so have them ready to go when they are added in as the brewing process is underway.
-It all starts with water. One gallon of good water will do. You don't need specialty water as tap water in most areas of the country does well due to a good combination of minerals that actually makes the beer taste better. So get a gallon of water boiling in a large pot capable of holding 2-3 gallons of water. You need that extra space for adding ingredients.
-The first ingredient to add to the boiling water is the brewing yeast that you bought just for this purpose. The yeast will have specific instructions but in essence you will mix the yeast with piping hot tap water and stir it in a separate pot or pan until it becomes a thick paste.
-You can prepare the yeast while the water boils and when it's ready, add the mixture to the water.
-Once the yeast is mixed in well, add the malt extract that you bought for this brewing process. Make sure the malt is mixed in well and dissolved before moving on.
-Hops will come as pellets when you bought them from the supplier so add them when the water is boiling again and allow the entire mixture to boil for another five minutes.
-During this preparation time, get your fermenting equipment sanitized and ready to go. As the brewing process approaches completion, fill the fermenter about three quarters full with cold water from the tap.
-The strong beer you have boiled is called the "wort" which is now ready for fermenting. Pour the hot wort into the cold water in the fermenter. What you are looking for is an end result of five gallons of mixture in the fermenter so if you don't find you are at that level, add more water.
The brewing process is done and you can follow the directions for fermenting that are provided with the equipment or that you learn from other resources about the fine art of fermenting beer. Now it's just a matter of letting nature do what it does to ferment your beer. Enjoy the anticipation as you allow the fermenting to continue and then enjoy the flavor of your very own first batch of home brewed beer.
Some of the finest beers you could hope to taste are not made in the big commercial factories but in small brew pubs all around the country. So if you have discovered some particularly flavorful home brewed beers, it isn't long before you might decide to take a stab at brewing a batch yourself. Be careful because once you start experimenting with brewing your own beer, you may become hooked into an addictive hobby that will provide hours of fun as you tinker with your recipes, get new and better equipment and become a true beer expert in brewing your own custom blends for the best flavored beer.
But it all starts with that very first batch. You might approach that moment when you decide to make your first batch of beer with some fear and trembling. But keep your spirit of adventure and experimentation because, after all, if you bought good equipment, you will get the hang of it. As the wise man said, that the journey of a hundred miles begins with the first step. So too your journey toward becoming a master brewer starts with your first batch.
The process of brewing that first batch is pretty simple actually. Here are the steps to go through to get your first brew underway.
-Gather the ingredients to have them on hand as you step through the brewing process. You don’t' want to have to stop and go dig something up so have them ready to go when they are added in as the brewing process is underway.
-It all starts with water. One gallon of good water will do. You don't need specialty water as tap water in most areas of the country does well due to a good combination of minerals that actually makes the beer taste better. So get a gallon of water boiling in a large pot capable of holding 2-3 gallons of water. You need that extra space for adding ingredients.
-The first ingredient to add to the boiling water is the brewing yeast that you bought just for this purpose. The yeast will have specific instructions but in essence you will mix the yeast with piping hot tap water and stir it in a separate pot or pan until it becomes a thick paste.
-You can prepare the yeast while the water boils and when it's ready, add the mixture to the water.
-Once the yeast is mixed in well, add the malt extract that you bought for this brewing process. Make sure the malt is mixed in well and dissolved before moving on.
-Hops will come as pellets when you bought them from the supplier so add them when the water is boiling again and allow the entire mixture to boil for another five minutes.
-During this preparation time, get your fermenting equipment sanitized and ready to go. As the brewing process approaches completion, fill the fermenter about three quarters full with cold water from the tap.
-The strong beer you have boiled is called the "wort" which is now ready for fermenting. Pour the hot wort into the cold water in the fermenter. What you are looking for is an end result of five gallons of mixture in the fermenter so if you don't find you are at that level, add more water.
The brewing process is done and you can follow the directions for fermenting that are provided with the equipment or that you learn from other resources about the fine art of fermenting beer. Now it's just a matter of letting nature do what it does to ferment your beer. Enjoy the anticipation as you allow the fermenting to continue and then enjoy the flavor of your very own first batch of home brewed beer.
Saturday, December 29, 2012
Getting Set Up to Make Beer
The hobby of brewing your own beer at home is growing steadily as more people discover how much fun they can have making their beer at home and how great absolutely fresh beer can be. There may be no more gratifying moment for a home brewer than to serve your own fresh beer to your guests iced down in your favorite beer mugs and hear the rave that your beer is as good as the store bought beer they like best or maybe even better!
Part of the reason for the huge popularity is that getting set up to make beer and finding good supplies and equipment is neither difficult nor overly expensive. You can find or create the equipment fairly easily or get it discounted from others who have retired from the brewing business. And right now there is probably a home brewing store in your town ready and able to provide you with the ingredients as well as instruction books and recipes for all kinds of wonderful tasting beers you can make right at home. And with the explosion of web sites, ebooks and articles out there on the internet about home brewing, all the help you could ask for is at your fingertips to help you get started.
The reason different people get into home brewing vary. Some love the social aspect as you join a large local and international community of brewers. Another reason is that it is just great fun to assemble the equipment, learn the recipes and take a stab at making your own home grown batch of tasty beer. Even if you "botch" a batch of beer, its all in the spirit of learning and it just drives you on to learn from your mistakes to make even better beer next time.
A third great reason is you have so much more control over your beer when you brew it yourself. Because you are not dealing with a beer that is mass produced and shipped from hundreds of miles away, you can control the taste, the consistency and even the level of alcohol to make your beer as strong or mild as you want it to be. And you can make changes with each batch with virtually endless variations on the recipes that are available to the home brewing community.
The supplies you will need to get started are easy to find and not very expensive either. Probably the best way to get a feel for what the best equipment is and who are the suppliers to favor would come from becoming a regular at home brewing clubs and gatherings and making some friends there. If you make it well known that you are a "new recruit" and need some mentoring in how to get set up, you will be overwhelmed with offers for you to sit in on a brewing session or two to get a feel for the process. If you take advantage of their zeal to help you get started, you will be way ahead on the game when you go shopping for the stuff you need to get set up to make your own beer at home.
The equipment you will need is pretty much only used for brewing beer so you will need to think of storage. The pot for boiling your initial wort and the equipment to handle the beer, filter it and ferment it are all made in sizes and at prices to encourage the home brewing markets. You can find them at retail prices at your home brewing retail outlet in town. You can use the internet and shop second hand shops to get better prices. But many like to patronize the home brewing store that helped them get their start just to make sure they stay in business to keep selling you great fresh ingredients.
That same retail outlet will be a good source for the grains, yeasts and hops you need for the actual production of beer. Freshness is the key so communicate with the management of the store to learn of just how fresh those things are. As with the equipment, you can buy these things from the internet and that is fine. But get to know your supplier whoever you use and make sure you are confident you are getting the highest quality materials to make your home made beer. It will make a big difference.
Part of the reason for the huge popularity is that getting set up to make beer and finding good supplies and equipment is neither difficult nor overly expensive. You can find or create the equipment fairly easily or get it discounted from others who have retired from the brewing business. And right now there is probably a home brewing store in your town ready and able to provide you with the ingredients as well as instruction books and recipes for all kinds of wonderful tasting beers you can make right at home. And with the explosion of web sites, ebooks and articles out there on the internet about home brewing, all the help you could ask for is at your fingertips to help you get started.
The reason different people get into home brewing vary. Some love the social aspect as you join a large local and international community of brewers. Another reason is that it is just great fun to assemble the equipment, learn the recipes and take a stab at making your own home grown batch of tasty beer. Even if you "botch" a batch of beer, its all in the spirit of learning and it just drives you on to learn from your mistakes to make even better beer next time.
A third great reason is you have so much more control over your beer when you brew it yourself. Because you are not dealing with a beer that is mass produced and shipped from hundreds of miles away, you can control the taste, the consistency and even the level of alcohol to make your beer as strong or mild as you want it to be. And you can make changes with each batch with virtually endless variations on the recipes that are available to the home brewing community.
The supplies you will need to get started are easy to find and not very expensive either. Probably the best way to get a feel for what the best equipment is and who are the suppliers to favor would come from becoming a regular at home brewing clubs and gatherings and making some friends there. If you make it well known that you are a "new recruit" and need some mentoring in how to get set up, you will be overwhelmed with offers for you to sit in on a brewing session or two to get a feel for the process. If you take advantage of their zeal to help you get started, you will be way ahead on the game when you go shopping for the stuff you need to get set up to make your own beer at home.
The equipment you will need is pretty much only used for brewing beer so you will need to think of storage. The pot for boiling your initial wort and the equipment to handle the beer, filter it and ferment it are all made in sizes and at prices to encourage the home brewing markets. You can find them at retail prices at your home brewing retail outlet in town. You can use the internet and shop second hand shops to get better prices. But many like to patronize the home brewing store that helped them get their start just to make sure they stay in business to keep selling you great fresh ingredients.
That same retail outlet will be a good source for the grains, yeasts and hops you need for the actual production of beer. Freshness is the key so communicate with the management of the store to learn of just how fresh those things are. As with the equipment, you can buy these things from the internet and that is fine. But get to know your supplier whoever you use and make sure you are confident you are getting the highest quality materials to make your home made beer. It will make a big difference.
Monday, December 24, 2012
Going to the Source to Learn About Home Brewing
I know from experience that the time between when it first dawns on you that you could start learning to brew your own beer at home and when you actually take a stab at it is often a long one. For one thing, it takes a pretty significant learning curve to even begin to visualize that it possible to make beer at home. Sure, you may have heard about home breweries but to think of doing it in your own home setting is a leap of understanding that takes some time to get through.
The internet is often a source of information that we go to start learning more about a new area of life like home brewing. Perhaps that is how you found this article and that’s good. That means you are off on the right foot and using free information from people who have already learned a few things about brewing at home to get your orientation to what it would take for you to learn to brew your own beer at home.
As often happens with any new area of interest, if your fascination with how to brew beer at home starts to get some momentum, it’s a good way to go to log on to the major home brewing web sites and begin to get oriented to the methods, the equipment and the process of brewing beer at home. Do be aware that some of these sites get very technical and it's easy to get intimidated.
But if you can just get an understanding about the equipment and the ingredients and some basic ideas of how the process would go if you were the one doing the brewing, that is a good start. Because online articles and web sites mix expert knowledge with newcomers orientation, if you do stumble into a section of those sites that you don’t understand, just surf on to pages that are intended to help you where you are and understand that when you get to that level that that technical sophistication, you can always come back to these pages. Just build a good bookmark library because it will serve you well.
But to pick up speed on learning the real details of what brewing is all about, you don’t have to depend just on reading or books. Because brewing beer in your own home is more than just book knowledge, it is handling of equipment and ingredients, the more direct exposure you can get to the brewing process, the better. But it is also very likely that you developed your interest in home brewing while enjoying a good brew at your local brew pub. Most towns have brew pubs where home made beers are sold in just about every flavor, color ant texture. Many times these brew pubs grew up out of a home brewing hobby that just got bigger and bigger until it became an enterprise and a money making business.
That is why most brew pub owners are more than happy to give tours and lessons in home brewing. This is probably some of the most value exposure you can get to how the process of home brewing works. By walking through a brewery where the beer you love is made, you can step through the process to get a feel for how you will proceed. You can see the boiling pots, how the strainers are used and the filters and fermenters and everything that is needed to take beer from raw materials to the finished state of a fine brewed beer. In fact, with a little charm and by working for free, you may be able to apprentice in the brew pub making beer. This time will be tremendously valuable to you to help you learn the ropes of making your own beer.
You combine this hands on knowledge with what you are learning on line and from other training sources along with what you can learn by networking with other experienced home brewers and you have a powerful source of knowledge that will pay you well when you start making your home beer yourself. And that knowledge will result in some great tasting beers from your kitchen so you will be glad you took the time to learn all you can before taking the plunge.
The internet is often a source of information that we go to start learning more about a new area of life like home brewing. Perhaps that is how you found this article and that’s good. That means you are off on the right foot and using free information from people who have already learned a few things about brewing at home to get your orientation to what it would take for you to learn to brew your own beer at home.
As often happens with any new area of interest, if your fascination with how to brew beer at home starts to get some momentum, it’s a good way to go to log on to the major home brewing web sites and begin to get oriented to the methods, the equipment and the process of brewing beer at home. Do be aware that some of these sites get very technical and it's easy to get intimidated.
But if you can just get an understanding about the equipment and the ingredients and some basic ideas of how the process would go if you were the one doing the brewing, that is a good start. Because online articles and web sites mix expert knowledge with newcomers orientation, if you do stumble into a section of those sites that you don’t understand, just surf on to pages that are intended to help you where you are and understand that when you get to that level that that technical sophistication, you can always come back to these pages. Just build a good bookmark library because it will serve you well.
But to pick up speed on learning the real details of what brewing is all about, you don’t have to depend just on reading or books. Because brewing beer in your own home is more than just book knowledge, it is handling of equipment and ingredients, the more direct exposure you can get to the brewing process, the better. But it is also very likely that you developed your interest in home brewing while enjoying a good brew at your local brew pub. Most towns have brew pubs where home made beers are sold in just about every flavor, color ant texture. Many times these brew pubs grew up out of a home brewing hobby that just got bigger and bigger until it became an enterprise and a money making business.
That is why most brew pub owners are more than happy to give tours and lessons in home brewing. This is probably some of the most value exposure you can get to how the process of home brewing works. By walking through a brewery where the beer you love is made, you can step through the process to get a feel for how you will proceed. You can see the boiling pots, how the strainers are used and the filters and fermenters and everything that is needed to take beer from raw materials to the finished state of a fine brewed beer. In fact, with a little charm and by working for free, you may be able to apprentice in the brew pub making beer. This time will be tremendously valuable to you to help you learn the ropes of making your own beer.
You combine this hands on knowledge with what you are learning on line and from other training sources along with what you can learn by networking with other experienced home brewers and you have a powerful source of knowledge that will pay you well when you start making your home beer yourself. And that knowledge will result in some great tasting beers from your kitchen so you will be glad you took the time to learn all you can before taking the plunge.
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Great Grains for a Great Beer
One of the great reasons for learning to brew your own beer is to learn more about the various grains and ingredients that makes one beer better than another one. When you first start your hobby of home brewing, you no doubt got connected to a local club or association of home brewers. They can help you learn the lingo and how to tell what the best grains are to use in your beer. But before you go to the first meeting, it might speed things up if you knew the basics.
The use of malts is at the heart of how grain contributes to a great beer. The difference between a light beer that doesn’t have a heavy malt taste and one that virtually tastes like a loaf of bread all go back to what malts you pick and the process that is used during the malting and brewing of your beer. There are actually a big variety of different grains that people commonly use when brewing their own beer and you may have to take some time to brew up a few batches using different grains to see which ones capture what to you is the perfect beer taste that will make your home made beer unique. But understanding how malting works is a good first step.
Now as a home brewing enthusiast, you will probably not actually take grain through the malting process yourself. But you should become familiar with how malting works and why there is so much variety to the outcome of the malting process. In that way you can use that knowledge when buying the malts for your beer so you can get a malt that will give you the flavor, color and intensity of beer that you are looking for.
The malting process starts with the grain to be used. The most common grains are barley, wheat or rye but others can be used from time to time. The grain is used from the seed form and steeped and germinated which gets the active part of the malting and brewing process underway. Germination, which from your high school science class you know is what happens when a seed sprouts out to become a plants, releases the store energy of the seed that was put there to jump start the growth process. We are going to use that energy and convert it into malt mash that you can use to brew your beer.
What happens during the germination process of those grains is that the stored energy in the seed is changed as it is released. When the starches in the seeds changes into sugars by the enzymes that are active part of the germination process, those sugars give us one of the core ingredients for great beer. It is at that exact moment that the germination process is suspended using kilns to dry the grains and all of that good sugar and enzymes that became active remain in the malt for use during the brewing process.
Obviously this description of the basic malting process is simplified but for our purposes it gives you a background into what happens before you buy the malts you will use in your home made beer. But based on this description, you can go on to get a feel for the wide variety of malt types. The more you know about malt, the better informed you will be about what malts you wish to use when you brew your beer. And those decisions will have a big effect on the taste of your beer. So for great tasting beer, use great malts and knowing one malt from the next is the key to knowing which to use for the best home made beer possible from your home brewing efforts.
The use of malts is at the heart of how grain contributes to a great beer. The difference between a light beer that doesn’t have a heavy malt taste and one that virtually tastes like a loaf of bread all go back to what malts you pick and the process that is used during the malting and brewing of your beer. There are actually a big variety of different grains that people commonly use when brewing their own beer and you may have to take some time to brew up a few batches using different grains to see which ones capture what to you is the perfect beer taste that will make your home made beer unique. But understanding how malting works is a good first step.
Now as a home brewing enthusiast, you will probably not actually take grain through the malting process yourself. But you should become familiar with how malting works and why there is so much variety to the outcome of the malting process. In that way you can use that knowledge when buying the malts for your beer so you can get a malt that will give you the flavor, color and intensity of beer that you are looking for.
The malting process starts with the grain to be used. The most common grains are barley, wheat or rye but others can be used from time to time. The grain is used from the seed form and steeped and germinated which gets the active part of the malting and brewing process underway. Germination, which from your high school science class you know is what happens when a seed sprouts out to become a plants, releases the store energy of the seed that was put there to jump start the growth process. We are going to use that energy and convert it into malt mash that you can use to brew your beer.
What happens during the germination process of those grains is that the stored energy in the seed is changed as it is released. When the starches in the seeds changes into sugars by the enzymes that are active part of the germination process, those sugars give us one of the core ingredients for great beer. It is at that exact moment that the germination process is suspended using kilns to dry the grains and all of that good sugar and enzymes that became active remain in the malt for use during the brewing process.
Obviously this description of the basic malting process is simplified but for our purposes it gives you a background into what happens before you buy the malts you will use in your home made beer. But based on this description, you can go on to get a feel for the wide variety of malt types. The more you know about malt, the better informed you will be about what malts you wish to use when you brew your beer. And those decisions will have a big effect on the taste of your beer. So for great tasting beer, use great malts and knowing one malt from the next is the key to knowing which to use for the best home made beer possible from your home brewing efforts.
Saturday, November 17, 2012
Dying to Drink an Awesome Beer? Go German!
The German people are renowned for a lot of things, one of which is brewing. Beer is a crucial piece of their legacy and civilization, with more than 1300 various breweries spread across the land. As far as per capita beer consumption, the German people are only behind the Czechs and the Irish. The history of German beer spans back to the origin of the country when monks began to experiment with brewing around 1000 A.D. The country's leaders eventually began to regulate the production of beer as brewing started to be more and more profitable.
brewers had simply used the yeast found naturally in the air. Because of the stringent standard of quality followed by the purity requirement, Bavarian manufacturers were soon considered the best manufacturers of beer. Other breweries started to adhere to the proclamation as the prominence of the Bavarian breweries continued to rise.
German breweries have a long-standing reputation of producing quality brews made only from the purest ingredients as a result of the Reinheitsgebot. As time passed and Germany started to export beer, many cities became famous brewing spots. By fifteen-hundred, Scandinavia, Holland, England, and even India were getting beer imported from one of the 600 breweries in the city of Bremen. Two more famed brewing towns were Einbeck and Braunschweig.
Next time you're at your local bottle shop or purveyor of fine fermented libations, try perusing the German beer section and taste a thousand years of brewing history!
Reinheitsge-what?
The Bavarian Reinheitsgebot, or purity standard, came about in fifteen-sixteen and remains the most famous and influential aspect of German brewing. The Bavarian Reinheitsgebot was ordered by Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria to ensure that Bavarian beers were all of high quality. Hops, barley, and water were the only ingredients allowed in beer according to the regulation. The Reinheitsgebot is the oldest legislation placed on beverages in the world and has not been changed in nearly five-hundred years with the exception of adding yeast as one of the allowable ingredients. Before that addition,brewers had simply used the yeast found naturally in the air. Because of the stringent standard of quality followed by the purity requirement, Bavarian manufacturers were soon considered the best manufacturers of beer. Other breweries started to adhere to the proclamation as the prominence of the Bavarian breweries continued to rise.
German breweries have a long-standing reputation of producing quality brews made only from the purest ingredients as a result of the Reinheitsgebot. As time passed and Germany started to export beer, many cities became famous brewing spots. By fifteen-hundred, Scandinavia, Holland, England, and even India were getting beer imported from one of the 600 breweries in the city of Bremen. Two more famed brewing towns were Einbeck and Braunschweig.
Plague and Steins
Because of it's full-bodied flavor and right amount of head foam most modern Germans still prefer fabbier, or draft beer, over bottled beer. Used still today, German beer steins became popular around the time the purity standard came about in an effort to prevent the spread of the black plague. Germany made a lot of regulations to stop its citizens from getting ill during the time of the black plague. People discovered that infected flies would fly in people's food and spread the disease. Since Germans were not the type to let a little bit of plague get between them and their beer, this led to the stein, a beverage container with a closed lid that could be used with the thumb so drinkers could stop disease and still be able to drink with one hand. Beer drinking went up exponentially as people started to realize the plague spread in dirty conditions with brackish pools of water. Originally made of stoneware with pewter tops, steins grew in popularity. German beer steins started to be made entirely of pewter for nearly three-hundred years as the pewter guild grew. Still manufactured today, silver and porcelain German beer steins were eventually introduced.Today
More than five-thousand types of beer are made today from over thirteen-hundred and fifty breweries within Germany's borders. The oldest brewery in the world that continues operation today is the Benedictine abbey Weihenstephan, that has been producing beer since one-thousand and forty. The most concentrated area in Germany for breweries is the Franconia region of Bavaria near the city Bamberg. German breweries manufacture a wide variety of tastes and kinds of beer with the majority of them able to be placed under ales or lagers. Most of these beers have an alcoholic content ranging from 4.7% to 5.4% but some kinds can be as high as 12%, making them more potent than a lot of wines.Next time you're at your local bottle shop or purveyor of fine fermented libations, try perusing the German beer section and taste a thousand years of brewing history!
Sunday, November 11, 2012
Benefits of Brewing Your Own Beer
I love beer. Drinking a few bottles of good beer after a stressful workweek is one of the reasons why I am able to maintain a happy disposition in life. As a fan of both beer and cooking, about a decade ago I figured it was a natural progression to making my own beer. Since then, home brewing has not only been a mere hobby for me, but a passion. When I take into account the many benefits home brewing can provide, it's not difficult to see why. I also have no qualms about recommending this wonderful hobby; if you need some convincing, here are several good reasons to take up home brewing.
It's a Rewarding Hobby
Being able to brew your own type of beer with its own unique flavors can give a home brewer a great sense of pride and accomplishment. The act of brewing your own beer also gives you that mad scientist feeling (or at least for me), not to mention the satisfaction that you feel every time your beer-guzzling friends rave about your concoction.
Better Quality For Your Beer
Home brewed beer, unlike commercial beers, doesn't have cheap additives. It's also typically all malt beer, giving it that full bodied taste that you don't normally get from mass-marketed beers purchased from stores or bars. You can also use ingredients that are not normally used for commercial beers to add exotic or traditional flavors.
Cheaper Beer
Home brewed beer is cheaper than commercial beers. Home brew stores have been popping up all over the country and the internet for the past several decades, so you can get ingredients and brew 5 gallons at a lesser cost than the cheapest beer brand in your nearby store. As the popularity of home brewing increases, it can only get better since the cost of malt and hops is bound to get cheaper.
Reduced Hangovers
A beer-drinking sesson doesn't have to provide you misery in the morning. Home brewed beer reduces the severity of hangovers due to high amounts of Vitamin B. It's known that home brewed beer doesn't undergo pasteurization and filtering which can remove huge amounts of Vitamin B. For that reason, beer that you brew yourself has more amounts of yeast with Vitamin B.
Improves Social Life
I've lost count of the good friends I've made and great conversations with strangers I've had because of my interest in beer and brewing. Brewing in particular has led to some great friendships over the years. I find that people who take up home brewing are always brimming with enthusiasm, either about their new hobby or about their old passion if they've been doing it for a while. It seems every brewer is on a quest to find the perfect recipe, and rather than being secretive about their search, they usually bubble over with excitement when they talk about their journey. I don't have a scientific explanation for this--maybe it's the effect of the beer, but if you've spent any time around a home brewer, you know what I mean. I would also recommend joining a home brewing club. At best, you can persuade your friends to take up the same hobby.
Health Benefits
This is perhaps the best benefit of them all. While it's true that overdrinking can have grave consequences to your health, it's been scientifically proven that alcohol in moderation can improve it. Why? It's because of the high flavinoid content contained in dark beers. It's also generally true that a 12 oz serving of beer has fewer calories than 12 ounces of juice, milk or soda.
There you have it! There's no doubt that home brewing has many benefits, and the best part is that you yourself can discover many others on your own.
It's a Rewarding Hobby
Being able to brew your own type of beer with its own unique flavors can give a home brewer a great sense of pride and accomplishment. The act of brewing your own beer also gives you that mad scientist feeling (or at least for me), not to mention the satisfaction that you feel every time your beer-guzzling friends rave about your concoction.
Better Quality For Your Beer
Home brewed beer, unlike commercial beers, doesn't have cheap additives. It's also typically all malt beer, giving it that full bodied taste that you don't normally get from mass-marketed beers purchased from stores or bars. You can also use ingredients that are not normally used for commercial beers to add exotic or traditional flavors.
Cheaper Beer
Home brewed beer is cheaper than commercial beers. Home brew stores have been popping up all over the country and the internet for the past several decades, so you can get ingredients and brew 5 gallons at a lesser cost than the cheapest beer brand in your nearby store. As the popularity of home brewing increases, it can only get better since the cost of malt and hops is bound to get cheaper.
Reduced Hangovers
A beer-drinking sesson doesn't have to provide you misery in the morning. Home brewed beer reduces the severity of hangovers due to high amounts of Vitamin B. It's known that home brewed beer doesn't undergo pasteurization and filtering which can remove huge amounts of Vitamin B. For that reason, beer that you brew yourself has more amounts of yeast with Vitamin B.
Improves Social Life
I've lost count of the good friends I've made and great conversations with strangers I've had because of my interest in beer and brewing. Brewing in particular has led to some great friendships over the years. I find that people who take up home brewing are always brimming with enthusiasm, either about their new hobby or about their old passion if they've been doing it for a while. It seems every brewer is on a quest to find the perfect recipe, and rather than being secretive about their search, they usually bubble over with excitement when they talk about their journey. I don't have a scientific explanation for this--maybe it's the effect of the beer, but if you've spent any time around a home brewer, you know what I mean. I would also recommend joining a home brewing club. At best, you can persuade your friends to take up the same hobby.
Health Benefits
This is perhaps the best benefit of them all. While it's true that overdrinking can have grave consequences to your health, it's been scientifically proven that alcohol in moderation can improve it. Why? It's because of the high flavinoid content contained in dark beers. It's also generally true that a 12 oz serving of beer has fewer calories than 12 ounces of juice, milk or soda.
There you have it! There's no doubt that home brewing has many benefits, and the best part is that you yourself can discover many others on your own.
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Common Homebrewing Mistakes
Beer lovers take note. If you're reading this blog, you already know that you can make your own beer at home--and that it doesn't involve any rocket science. The process is much simpler than what many think, and this is the main reason why home brewers are on the rise in the United States and in many other countries.
There new innovations in home brewing equipment being developed almost daily, and there is a growing body of materials available online ready to be downloaded. It's easy to concoct your own brew. But just a little reminder--don't let your over-eagerness get the best out of you. Exercise some restraint as well when trying home brewing for the first time. You don't want to go the way of many first-timers who become frustrated simply because they failed to know some of the more common home brewing mistakes.
To learn from others' mistakes, you must first be aware of them. Listed below are some of the most common ones made by first-timers in the field of beer making at home.
Sanitation. This one is huge. Many upstart home brewers don't realize the importance of sanitation. A single cell of just the wrong wild yeast or bacteria strain can ruin a whole batch of beer. It should be remembered that the unfermented beer (wort) is packed with malt sugar, and bacteria and wild yeast love this. If a brewer is not concerned with cleanliness in the work space, this will often come through in the flavor of the final product, and nobody likes drinking dirty or infected beer! So what needs to be done in order to address this concern?
The best thing to do is to ensure the cleanliness of equipment every time. All the equipment used in home brewing should be sanitized. This doesn't mean that you have to invest in pricey sanitizing products. There are many products available to the home brewer, but I use a simple bleach solution--an ounce of Clorox in a gallon of water--when cleaning anything that will touch the wort in the brewing process. Rinse with hot water.
Another common mistake is not using the right temperature to ferment the beer. As a home brewer, it is important that you know the balance between too hot and too cold a temperature. There is a right temperature for use in home brewing and this is dependent on the kind of yeast strain selected for the brew--ale yeasts typically ferment between 60 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit, and lager yeasts work in the 40's. Fermenting at a temperature outside these ranges can result in undesirable flavors in your beer.
Perhaps the most common mistake is impatience on the part of the brewer. Novice brewers, for example, will often bottle the brew too early. Remember, good things take time! If you bottle the beer before the fermentation is complete, all you will end up with is a fridge full of bottle grenades.
Bottom line, the best thing you can do is read everything about brewing that you can get your hands on. And be patient. Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither is good beer!
There new innovations in home brewing equipment being developed almost daily, and there is a growing body of materials available online ready to be downloaded. It's easy to concoct your own brew. But just a little reminder--don't let your over-eagerness get the best out of you. Exercise some restraint as well when trying home brewing for the first time. You don't want to go the way of many first-timers who become frustrated simply because they failed to know some of the more common home brewing mistakes.
To learn from others' mistakes, you must first be aware of them. Listed below are some of the most common ones made by first-timers in the field of beer making at home.
Sanitation. This one is huge. Many upstart home brewers don't realize the importance of sanitation. A single cell of just the wrong wild yeast or bacteria strain can ruin a whole batch of beer. It should be remembered that the unfermented beer (wort) is packed with malt sugar, and bacteria and wild yeast love this. If a brewer is not concerned with cleanliness in the work space, this will often come through in the flavor of the final product, and nobody likes drinking dirty or infected beer! So what needs to be done in order to address this concern?
The best thing to do is to ensure the cleanliness of equipment every time. All the equipment used in home brewing should be sanitized. This doesn't mean that you have to invest in pricey sanitizing products. There are many products available to the home brewer, but I use a simple bleach solution--an ounce of Clorox in a gallon of water--when cleaning anything that will touch the wort in the brewing process. Rinse with hot water.
Another common mistake is not using the right temperature to ferment the beer. As a home brewer, it is important that you know the balance between too hot and too cold a temperature. There is a right temperature for use in home brewing and this is dependent on the kind of yeast strain selected for the brew--ale yeasts typically ferment between 60 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit, and lager yeasts work in the 40's. Fermenting at a temperature outside these ranges can result in undesirable flavors in your beer.
Perhaps the most common mistake is impatience on the part of the brewer. Novice brewers, for example, will often bottle the brew too early. Remember, good things take time! If you bottle the beer before the fermentation is complete, all you will end up with is a fridge full of bottle grenades.
Bottom line, the best thing you can do is read everything about brewing that you can get your hands on. And be patient. Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither is good beer!
Monday, October 22, 2012
Wild Partridge Recipe
This post isn't precisely about brewing, but without good food, good beer and wine would be rather pointless, so I wanted to share a wild partridge recipe my wife and I made together tonight. Up here where I live in Maine, partridge season is something people anticipate all year long, and with good reason--prepared correctly, they are a taste of heaven! I found the recipe at allrecipes.com:
Recipe makes 4 servings
We served the bacon wrapped breasts with a simple rice pilaf mix, and some steamed broccoli. The wine we used both for cooking and serving was Barefoot Pinot Grigio, but any white will go well with this meal--I've got a few more breasts in the freezer, so I think next time we may try a Sauvignon Blanc. Partridge being a wild game bird, even a mild red would not be inappropriate.
Chew slowly to enjoy this meal to its fullest...and to avoid cracking your teeth on any shotgun pellets you may have missed!
Recipe makes 4 servings
We served the bacon wrapped breasts with a simple rice pilaf mix, and some steamed broccoli. The wine we used both for cooking and serving was Barefoot Pinot Grigio, but any white will go well with this meal--I've got a few more breasts in the freezer, so I think next time we may try a Sauvignon Blanc. Partridge being a wild game bird, even a mild red would not be inappropriate.
Chew slowly to enjoy this meal to its fullest...and to avoid cracking your teeth on any shotgun pellets you may have missed!
Friday, October 19, 2012
Brewing on a Budget--The Poor Man's Guide Learning to Brew Beer at Home
For a true beer lover, one of the most rewarding hobbies is brewing your own signature beer. Once you get set up with the equipment and basic supplies, it’s a fairly affordable hobby and you will get a lot of entertainment value out of going through the brewing and fermentation process. The real enjoyment, however, comes from the sense of pride you get from watching the enjoyment on friends' faces when they taste a beer that you made.
One of the hold ups that keep many people from getting into home brewing is the startup cost. Let's face it--if you've ever taken a tour of a brewery seen the huge machines and storage tanks, it can be hard to see how you can make beer in your kitchen with just a few simple devices. Fortunately, there is an entire home brewing subculture that has risen up based entirely on being able to make beer in small batches and at relatively low costs. It's legal, it's fun, and brewing beer can become a major hobby as well.
All that said, it's true that the initial costs can be a bit intimidating. The cost of the pots, fermenters and other specialized equipment can run into several hundred dollars. It's risky to sink that kind of money into a new hobby before you even know if you will enjoy making beer, whether the beer you make will be drinkable, or if you will stick with it. And during a time when we need most of what we earn just to get by, that is a risk that may be holding you back from getting into the hobby.
Of course one natural solution is to get your first exposure and training in making beer with someone else's equipment. Once you start poking around on home brewing websites and places where the equipment and supplies to make beer are sold in your town, you can find out about clubs and societies that are full of people who have taken the plunge and are making beer all the time right in their own homes.
These people love home brewing, and they can become real boosters for their hobby. Ask if you can sit in on their next brewing session. With very little encouragement, you can enjoy some Saturdays in their shop or kitchen learning how to brew beer with someone who already knows the process. This kind of experience is priceless because you learn what to look for in equipment, as well as what is essential and what is merely optional. You can go through the brewing process and learn a lot about how to make actual beer that is drinkable, and what pitfalls to avoid. Meanwhile, you may not have spent any more than the cost of lunch for your friend, and maybe a bag or two of pretzels for the tasting party when the beer is done.
When you are ready to get started brewing on your own, your knowledge of what you really need will pay off in a big way. You still don't have to pay top dollar for the equipment to get up and running. Lots of people get started with making beer, and then for a variety of reasons, their hobby stops suddenly. The outcome is that there is a pretty brisk market out there for used basic home brewing equipment. You can find discounted equipment in new or like new condition for sale on eBay or
Craigslist all the time. Don't overlook the local sources like home brewing clubs and associations--they may have bulletin boards with listings from people who want to sell or upgrade their own equipment. Pawn shops in the area are another great resource.
Another great way to save money is to go in with a friend or family member and split the costs all the way down the line. This makes brewing beer more fun and social, and each of you can have the equipment and supplies home at different times. If you each learn to make good beer separately, you can also make great beer together! And who knows--you may get so good at it that you start selling your beer to local pubs. When the big bucks come rolling in from that, your investment in learning to
brew beer will have been well worth it!
One of the hold ups that keep many people from getting into home brewing is the startup cost. Let's face it--if you've ever taken a tour of a brewery seen the huge machines and storage tanks, it can be hard to see how you can make beer in your kitchen with just a few simple devices. Fortunately, there is an entire home brewing subculture that has risen up based entirely on being able to make beer in small batches and at relatively low costs. It's legal, it's fun, and brewing beer can become a major hobby as well.
All that said, it's true that the initial costs can be a bit intimidating. The cost of the pots, fermenters and other specialized equipment can run into several hundred dollars. It's risky to sink that kind of money into a new hobby before you even know if you will enjoy making beer, whether the beer you make will be drinkable, or if you will stick with it. And during a time when we need most of what we earn just to get by, that is a risk that may be holding you back from getting into the hobby.
Of course one natural solution is to get your first exposure and training in making beer with someone else's equipment. Once you start poking around on home brewing websites and places where the equipment and supplies to make beer are sold in your town, you can find out about clubs and societies that are full of people who have taken the plunge and are making beer all the time right in their own homes.
These people love home brewing, and they can become real boosters for their hobby. Ask if you can sit in on their next brewing session. With very little encouragement, you can enjoy some Saturdays in their shop or kitchen learning how to brew beer with someone who already knows the process. This kind of experience is priceless because you learn what to look for in equipment, as well as what is essential and what is merely optional. You can go through the brewing process and learn a lot about how to make actual beer that is drinkable, and what pitfalls to avoid. Meanwhile, you may not have spent any more than the cost of lunch for your friend, and maybe a bag or two of pretzels for the tasting party when the beer is done.
When you are ready to get started brewing on your own, your knowledge of what you really need will pay off in a big way. You still don't have to pay top dollar for the equipment to get up and running. Lots of people get started with making beer, and then for a variety of reasons, their hobby stops suddenly. The outcome is that there is a pretty brisk market out there for used basic home brewing equipment. You can find discounted equipment in new or like new condition for sale on eBay or
Craigslist all the time. Don't overlook the local sources like home brewing clubs and associations--they may have bulletin boards with listings from people who want to sell or upgrade their own equipment. Pawn shops in the area are another great resource.
Another great way to save money is to go in with a friend or family member and split the costs all the way down the line. This makes brewing beer more fun and social, and each of you can have the equipment and supplies home at different times. If you each learn to make good beer separately, you can also make great beer together! And who knows--you may get so good at it that you start selling your beer to local pubs. When the big bucks come rolling in from that, your investment in learning to
brew beer will have been well worth it!
Thursday, October 18, 2012
A Brewing Society
One of the reasons the hobby of home brewing is so popular is that you are not just taking up a pastime, you are becoming part of a close-knit society of home brewing that has its own culture, lingo and social structure that is unique to brewers alone.
Of course, the social aspect of drinking beer is well known. The infrastructure of pubs and bars that offers to patrons a place of comfort, friendship, fun and relaxation is about a lot more than just tipping back a delicious drink. It is a part of our social fabric that goes back to revolutionary times when our most important documents were hashed out over an ale. And the importance of sharing a beer is just as powerful today as we all enjoyed thinking about that bar where "everybody knows your name" called Cheers.
So just as the social aspect of enjoying a beer with others is strong and well entrenched in our culture, so too is the art of making beer a deeply rooted part of society that goes back generations. That popularity has regular revivals and we are seeing a surge of interest in brewing today as all over the country brew pubs are springing up around delicious home grown beers that in many cases are far better than the mass produced beers that are heavily advertised during the Super Bowl.
This well developed and sophisticated brewing subculture not only will be of great help to you as you start to learn about becoming a home brewer yourself, it will become a society that is a lot of fun to be part of and where you may make friends for life as you share with others your love of making your own beer. In America the grass roots level subculture of home brewing is growing fast. This is no small concern to the big retail brewers who cannot possibly make the quality and rich kinds of beers that can be made at the local level. But this is a natural evolution as we follow our cousins in the UK where keg beers made locally dominate the world of beer consumption in a culture where pubs are a central part of the fabric of society.
One reason home brewing has such an appeal is the tremendous diversity of beers you can produce and the control you have over flavor, consistency and alcohol levels. In most cases, once you have your basic equipment for brewing beer, it is cheaper to make your own beer. And there is something satisfying about brewing up a big batch of beer to put back to ferment as you enjoy a five gallon batch you made last month. Beer brewers can become quite obsessed with flavor, color and "punch" and always be looking for new ways to become better at this fun and interesting hobby.
Whatever level of involvement in beer making appeals to you, you can probably find new friends in the beer brewing society that you can share your hobby with. There are beer brewing radio stations and ham radio channels devoted to helping amateur brewers share their secret recopies and solve each other's problems. And there are home made beer competitions that can really put some challenge that all on you to make that blue ribbon beer that rally makes the judges sit up and take notice.
So as you find yourself getting more and more enthusiastic and "caught up" in the fun of home brewing, don't be embarrassed by that because you can find a diverse assortment of other beer making enthusiasts to share your hobby with. So have fun, make friends, make good beer and above all, share your beer and your knowledge with others. Because beer is about more than good drink. It's about good times with good people as well.
Of course, the social aspect of drinking beer is well known. The infrastructure of pubs and bars that offers to patrons a place of comfort, friendship, fun and relaxation is about a lot more than just tipping back a delicious drink. It is a part of our social fabric that goes back to revolutionary times when our most important documents were hashed out over an ale. And the importance of sharing a beer is just as powerful today as we all enjoyed thinking about that bar where "everybody knows your name" called Cheers.
So just as the social aspect of enjoying a beer with others is strong and well entrenched in our culture, so too is the art of making beer a deeply rooted part of society that goes back generations. That popularity has regular revivals and we are seeing a surge of interest in brewing today as all over the country brew pubs are springing up around delicious home grown beers that in many cases are far better than the mass produced beers that are heavily advertised during the Super Bowl.
This well developed and sophisticated brewing subculture not only will be of great help to you as you start to learn about becoming a home brewer yourself, it will become a society that is a lot of fun to be part of and where you may make friends for life as you share with others your love of making your own beer. In America the grass roots level subculture of home brewing is growing fast. This is no small concern to the big retail brewers who cannot possibly make the quality and rich kinds of beers that can be made at the local level. But this is a natural evolution as we follow our cousins in the UK where keg beers made locally dominate the world of beer consumption in a culture where pubs are a central part of the fabric of society.
One reason home brewing has such an appeal is the tremendous diversity of beers you can produce and the control you have over flavor, consistency and alcohol levels. In most cases, once you have your basic equipment for brewing beer, it is cheaper to make your own beer. And there is something satisfying about brewing up a big batch of beer to put back to ferment as you enjoy a five gallon batch you made last month. Beer brewers can become quite obsessed with flavor, color and "punch" and always be looking for new ways to become better at this fun and interesting hobby.
Whatever level of involvement in beer making appeals to you, you can probably find new friends in the beer brewing society that you can share your hobby with. There are beer brewing radio stations and ham radio channels devoted to helping amateur brewers share their secret recopies and solve each other's problems. And there are home made beer competitions that can really put some challenge that all on you to make that blue ribbon beer that rally makes the judges sit up and take notice.
So as you find yourself getting more and more enthusiastic and "caught up" in the fun of home brewing, don't be embarrassed by that because you can find a diverse assortment of other beer making enthusiasts to share your hobby with. So have fun, make friends, make good beer and above all, share your beer and your knowledge with others. Because beer is about more than good drink. It's about good times with good people as well.
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
A Short History of Home Brewing
Ever since the joys of drinking alcohol was discovered about 7,000 years ago, and with the scarcity of commercial brewing companies at that time, people resorted to brewing beer in the comfort of their own homes. As expected, it only took a short time before commercial breweries started to mass-produce beer. While that made beer more accessible to the general public, beer lovers and hobbyists have never stopped brewing their own beer.
Home brewing was very popular in England during the medieval period, largely because it was customary for feudal manors to make sure beer was available for consumption for the lords and their subjects.
In America, the most influential people who took up home brewing were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and more recently, Barack Obama.
Home brewing took a drastic blow when in the 1800's, brewing was heavily taxed by the government in order for the commercial breweries to get more profit. Eventually, the Prohibition was enacted, causing all types of alcohol to get banned. Since then, home brewing was the only way for people to get their beer, and a risky endeavor at that.
The Prohibition got lifted in 1933, but at this time, only wine was allowed for home production. It was only when President Carter passed the 1979 Cranston Act that home brewing beer became legal again, partly due to the proliferation of crime involving beer smuggling in the previous years.
Home brewing hobby shops steadily increased in number ever since. In 1981, home brewing hobby shops numbered 150. This number grew to 1,000 in 1996. After some retrenchments, the number dwindled to 550, one of the reasons being the rising costs of materials.
Commercial breweries have permeated the fabric of society since then, but while home brewing was still legal, it dropped down in popularity and was relegated to "connoisseurs" and fanatics. It came to a point where being a home brewer became an elitist stance, since the product did not justify the cost of materials and amount of preparation required in brewing beer.
Today, the American Homebrewers Association roughly estimated the amount of home brewers to 1 million. The Internet revolution may have had an influence, but one of the main reasons for the surging popularity is the production of scaled down brewing kits and the easier access to 100 different strains of yeast. The quality of advice and the ingredients has improved dramatically. Years ago, the materials involved in home brewing were a can of Blue Ribbon malt extract, a 10 gallon ceramic crock, and a pile of Fleischmann's bread yeast. Now, home brewers can purchase hundreds of different beer ingredient kits, which are much cheaper and less unwieldy than earlier beer home brewing kits.
Because of these significant changes, home brewers are now producing beers with better quality. A wide range of possibilities has opened up. Different types of beers with unique flavors have come out of the woodwork, and still continue to do so. This is a sign that home brewing is here to stay. In fact, there's no better time to start up the hobby than now!
Home brewing was very popular in England during the medieval period, largely because it was customary for feudal manors to make sure beer was available for consumption for the lords and their subjects.
In America, the most influential people who took up home brewing were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and more recently, Barack Obama.
Home brewing took a drastic blow when in the 1800's, brewing was heavily taxed by the government in order for the commercial breweries to get more profit. Eventually, the Prohibition was enacted, causing all types of alcohol to get banned. Since then, home brewing was the only way for people to get their beer, and a risky endeavor at that.
The Prohibition got lifted in 1933, but at this time, only wine was allowed for home production. It was only when President Carter passed the 1979 Cranston Act that home brewing beer became legal again, partly due to the proliferation of crime involving beer smuggling in the previous years.
Home brewing hobby shops steadily increased in number ever since. In 1981, home brewing hobby shops numbered 150. This number grew to 1,000 in 1996. After some retrenchments, the number dwindled to 550, one of the reasons being the rising costs of materials.
Commercial breweries have permeated the fabric of society since then, but while home brewing was still legal, it dropped down in popularity and was relegated to "connoisseurs" and fanatics. It came to a point where being a home brewer became an elitist stance, since the product did not justify the cost of materials and amount of preparation required in brewing beer.
Today, the American Homebrewers Association roughly estimated the amount of home brewers to 1 million. The Internet revolution may have had an influence, but one of the main reasons for the surging popularity is the production of scaled down brewing kits and the easier access to 100 different strains of yeast. The quality of advice and the ingredients has improved dramatically. Years ago, the materials involved in home brewing were a can of Blue Ribbon malt extract, a 10 gallon ceramic crock, and a pile of Fleischmann's bread yeast. Now, home brewers can purchase hundreds of different beer ingredient kits, which are much cheaper and less unwieldy than earlier beer home brewing kits.
Because of these significant changes, home brewers are now producing beers with better quality. A wide range of possibilities has opened up. Different types of beers with unique flavors have come out of the woodwork, and still continue to do so. This is a sign that home brewing is here to stay. In fact, there's no better time to start up the hobby than now!
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Beer And Fitness – Can You Drink Beer And Stay Fit?
This week I was asked an interesting question concerning drinking beer and exercising. It seems that a former Navy Radioman has developed quite a gut since retiring, and was curious about whether he should give up his beer to lose weight? Not only does the gentleman enjoy drinking about 2-4 beers daily, he also has quit exercising. Moderate beer consumption is actually healthy, so I set out to define “moderate” as well as educate on the basics of caloric intake and caloric expenditure. The radioman is not suffering from a beer belly but an INACTIVITY BELLY! Yes, you can still drink beer and be very fit.
Over 90 million Americans love drinking beer! Drinking in moderationhas been shownby many doctors, as well as the New England Journal of Medicine, to be a healthy component of longevity. In fact, moderate consumption of alcohol, including beer, has been proven to reduce the effects of high cholesterol, heart disease, some forms of cancer and even impotence.
Anything done in excess is naturally unhealthy. “Moderation” is defined by most doctors as 1-2 beers a day. And NO, you cannot save up through the week and catch up on the weekend drinking 10-12 beers in an evening. That is NOT moderation. There is even a US Beer Drinking Team that links beer enthusiasts and promotes moderation, responsibility, and healthy living.
The average can of beer has over 100 calories. Drinking one beer is equivalent to eating a chocolate chip cookie. Drinking four is equal to eating a Big Mac Hamburger. In order to lose weight, you have to burn off these extra calories as well as the other calories that you ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Even the lightest of beers has the empty calories of alcohol, which is the cause of poor health if done in excess and without a regular exercise routine. Unfortunately, too many Americans live under one of the worst stereotypes placed on a human being – the BEER BELLY, or as I call it, the inactivity belly.
The “inactivity” belly is caused by excess calories in your diet AND lack of activity to burn the extra calories. The solution to lose your beer belly is as simple as calories in must be less than calories out (or expended through exercise).
Calories IN < Calories Out (burned) = Weight Loss
If you can add exercise into your schedule for 20-30 minutes a day, your daily consumption of alcohol (1-2 beers) will not have any additional impact on your gut. To lose your beer belly, you REALLY have to watch your food and beverage intake, drink 2-4 quarts of water a day, AND fit fitness into your world. THERE IS NO OTHER HEALTHY ANSWER! The exercise and workout ideas below can get you started on your calorie burning plan:
Workout #1: This is a great full body calorie burner:
Repeat 3-5 times
Walk, run or bike 5:00
Squats – 20
Pushups – 10-20
Situps or Crunches – 20
Workout #2: Swimming and elliptical gliding (cross country skiing) burn the most calories per hour (This workout can burn up to 1000 calories in one hour!)
Swim 20-30 minutes non-stop
Elliptical Glide 20-30 minutes
There is no reason why you cannot have “six pack abs” and still drink a six pack a week. Once again, excessive beer drinking is not recommended by anyone in the health industry. If you simply enjoy drinking beer and are serious about your health, moderation in drinking alcohol and eating foods high in calories, combined with habitual daily exercise is your ticket to reaching your goals. I now have a series of Workout plans that cater to all levels of fitness and can help you with developing a healthy diet with proper food choices – the Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced 45 Day plans sold on StewSmith.com Store. For those who are into strength training, I have recently writtena weight training plan called “Beer and Barbells” that allows you to use the additional calories of beer, or milk shakes if you are under 21, to gain mass and strength.
Adding exercise daily and observing the dietary recommendations in these eBooks will enable you to be the person you were yesterday without changing who you are today.
Over 90 million Americans love drinking beer! Drinking in moderationhas been shownby many doctors, as well as the New England Journal of Medicine, to be a healthy component of longevity. In fact, moderate consumption of alcohol, including beer, has been proven to reduce the effects of high cholesterol, heart disease, some forms of cancer and even impotence.
Anything done in excess is naturally unhealthy. “Moderation” is defined by most doctors as 1-2 beers a day. And NO, you cannot save up through the week and catch up on the weekend drinking 10-12 beers in an evening. That is NOT moderation. There is even a US Beer Drinking Team that links beer enthusiasts and promotes moderation, responsibility, and healthy living.
The average can of beer has over 100 calories. Drinking one beer is equivalent to eating a chocolate chip cookie. Drinking four is equal to eating a Big Mac Hamburger. In order to lose weight, you have to burn off these extra calories as well as the other calories that you ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Even the lightest of beers has the empty calories of alcohol, which is the cause of poor health if done in excess and without a regular exercise routine. Unfortunately, too many Americans live under one of the worst stereotypes placed on a human being – the BEER BELLY, or as I call it, the inactivity belly.
The “inactivity” belly is caused by excess calories in your diet AND lack of activity to burn the extra calories. The solution to lose your beer belly is as simple as calories in must be less than calories out (or expended through exercise).
Calories IN < Calories Out (burned) = Weight Loss
If you can add exercise into your schedule for 20-30 minutes a day, your daily consumption of alcohol (1-2 beers) will not have any additional impact on your gut. To lose your beer belly, you REALLY have to watch your food and beverage intake, drink 2-4 quarts of water a day, AND fit fitness into your world. THERE IS NO OTHER HEALTHY ANSWER! The exercise and workout ideas below can get you started on your calorie burning plan:
Workout #1: This is a great full body calorie burner:
Repeat 3-5 times
Walk, run or bike 5:00
Squats – 20
Pushups – 10-20
Situps or Crunches – 20
Workout #2: Swimming and elliptical gliding (cross country skiing) burn the most calories per hour (This workout can burn up to 1000 calories in one hour!)
Swim 20-30 minutes non-stop
Elliptical Glide 20-30 minutes
There is no reason why you cannot have “six pack abs” and still drink a six pack a week. Once again, excessive beer drinking is not recommended by anyone in the health industry. If you simply enjoy drinking beer and are serious about your health, moderation in drinking alcohol and eating foods high in calories, combined with habitual daily exercise is your ticket to reaching your goals. I now have a series of Workout plans that cater to all levels of fitness and can help you with developing a healthy diet with proper food choices – the Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced 45 Day plans sold on StewSmith.com Store. For those who are into strength training, I have recently writtena weight training plan called “Beer and Barbells” that allows you to use the additional calories of beer, or milk shakes if you are under 21, to gain mass and strength.
Adding exercise daily and observing the dietary recommendations in these eBooks will enable you to be the person you were yesterday without changing who you are today.
Monday, October 15, 2012
All About Beer
Prohibitionists and other conservatives have long viewed beer as the devil’s brew. Beer itself isn’t so bad; it’s people that have given it a bad rap. When used in a controlled, social setting, beer is nothing more than a cold, refreshing break time treat. Here are some of my thoughts on some of the different facets of beer.
Served warm or cold, from a bottle or glass, beer is an important part of society from Montana to Mongolia. And sometimes, even those so-called little old ladies will gather to enjoy a pint with their mates.
Rich History
There is evidence that beer has been around almost along as history itself. Pre-historic man is said to have created beer before learning that grains could also be used to produce another dietary staple called “bread”. Noah is said to have stocked his ark with beer. Ancient Babylonian clay tables revealing recipes for beer date back to 4300 BC.Social Acceptance
Clearly, beer has always been in important element in social gatherings. It’s a staple at sport arenas, card games and dart matches. Problems can arise, however, when beer drinkers indulge privately or believe they can drink away their troubles. Of course, binge drinking or drinking in excess also brews trouble.Worldwide Acclaim
Beer is consumed all over the world. North America, South America, Asia and Europe all have rich beer histories. Breweries can be found in Mongolia, many African countries, and Middle East countries including Iraq and Syria. Virtually anywhere a thirsty traveler stops to rest, a cold pint can easily be found. Many beers of the world are imported and readily available to North American beer drinkers looking to explore new flavours.Rating Systems
Some avid beer drinkers actually rate the beers they consume, tally the scores and post their comments on Internet websites to determine the world’s most popular brews. Beer drinkers in America can correspond online with their Russian counterparts and swap bottles of beer through the mail. Others drink a variety of beers to keep and collect the bottles and caps. Pubs sometimes host beer clubs, awarding plaques or personalized steins to those who have purchased and quaffed every brand of beer on the menu.Glass or Cans?
Some beer drinkers prefer to quaff from a proper pint glass, and others downright refuse to drink from a bottle or can. Drinking from a glass or stein helps to release the aromas of the beer, so the drinker is able to appreciate more than just the taste of the brew. Pouring beer into a vessel also allows a head to form on the beer, an important element for many beer drinkers. Similar to wine and spirits, there are specific glasses available for different types of beer. Many brewers produce glassware intended for use with their own brand of beer.Temperature
The ideal beer temperature varies depending on a number of factors. More experienced beer drinkers will tell you that a warmer temperature enhances the flavour, while colder temperatures inhibit the senses of the tongue and throat. Subtle nuances are weakened, and the main flavour is downright destroyed by low temperatures. On the other hand, those who work hard and play hard expect an ice-cold beer, served in a frosty mug. Irish beer drinkers insist that a pint of Irish Guinness is best served at room temperature.Pouring
The way beer is poured has influence over the presentation of beer. The flow rate from the tap, position of the pour and the tilting of the glass all affect the outcome. How the beer is poured determines the size and longevity of the head, and the turbulence of the pour affects how the carbonization is released. More heavily carbonated beers, such as German pilsners, need time to settle before they’re served. Many barkeeps will serve the beer with remaining yeast at the bottom of the glass to add extra color and flavor.Served warm or cold, from a bottle or glass, beer is an important part of society from Montana to Mongolia. And sometimes, even those so-called little old ladies will gather to enjoy a pint with their mates.
Sunday, October 14, 2012
REVIEW: Samuel Adams Octoberfest Seasonal Beer
If you 're like me, you love tasting new beers. I also love going back to some of my old favorites, which is why I'm glad the Boston Brewery continues year after year to brew Samuel Adams Octoberfest Seasonal Beer. While I usually prefer hoppy over malty, there is just something about a nice roasted malt flavor when you've spent the day outside where the chill of autumn has been caressing your face.
Samuel Adams Brewery
From the brewery:"Samuel Adams® Octoberfest is a malt lover's dream, masterfully blending together five roasts of barley to create a delicious harmony of sweet flavors including caramel and toffee. The beer is kept from being overly sweet by the elegant bitterness imparted by the German Noble hops."
This beer is best consumed just slightly below room temperature. I know, I know, warm beer. Seriously, you ice-cold beer fans would really do well to broaden your horizons and try something with some flavor for a change, and that flavor is only unlocked by serving slightly less cold than the mass-market "cold as the mountains" stuff.
The first thing to note about this beer is its deep orange color, and that it won't have much head because the carbonation is a bit lower than the Boston Lager. this is typical for this type of beer, so not to worry. When you take a whiff, you shouldn't notice too much hops, but instead you should catch some fruity and floral aroma.
When you take a sip, you'll notice that the mouthfeel is substantially bigger than those mass-market beers as well. This is a good thing. Beer shouldn't feel like water any more than it should taste that way. Speaking of flavor, the first thing I noticed was sweet maltiness, with a bit of maple syrup flavor in the background. There is definitely some hops in there, but it hangs out in the background instead of asserting its presence like it would were this beer an IPA. The most memorable part of my first sip, however, was the malty aftertaste, which reminded me of roasted coffee.
Take your first sip on a clean palate, and then enjoy the rest with a good hearty meal. I had mine with a nice juicy burger topped with pungent blue cheese. Yum!
Samuel Adams Octoberfest is readily available at a reasonable price. Boston Lager is my old standby, but no matter what beer you choose from their line, you can’t go wrong with Sam. Be careful—while this beer is not super strong at over 5% abv, it can pack a punch if you don't watch your intake!
Please always enjoy your beer responsibly!
Samuel Adams Brewery
This beer is best consumed just slightly below room temperature. I know, I know, warm beer. Seriously, you ice-cold beer fans would really do well to broaden your horizons and try something with some flavor for a change, and that flavor is only unlocked by serving slightly less cold than the mass-market "cold as the mountains" stuff.
The first thing to note about this beer is its deep orange color, and that it won't have much head because the carbonation is a bit lower than the Boston Lager. this is typical for this type of beer, so not to worry. When you take a whiff, you shouldn't notice too much hops, but instead you should catch some fruity and floral aroma.
When you take a sip, you'll notice that the mouthfeel is substantially bigger than those mass-market beers as well. This is a good thing. Beer shouldn't feel like water any more than it should taste that way. Speaking of flavor, the first thing I noticed was sweet maltiness, with a bit of maple syrup flavor in the background. There is definitely some hops in there, but it hangs out in the background instead of asserting its presence like it would were this beer an IPA. The most memorable part of my first sip, however, was the malty aftertaste, which reminded me of roasted coffee.
Take your first sip on a clean palate, and then enjoy the rest with a good hearty meal. I had mine with a nice juicy burger topped with pungent blue cheese. Yum!
Samuel Adams Octoberfest is readily available at a reasonable price. Boston Lager is my old standby, but no matter what beer you choose from their line, you can’t go wrong with Sam. Be careful—while this beer is not super strong at over 5% abv, it can pack a punch if you don't watch your intake!
Please always enjoy your beer responsibly!
Saturday, October 13, 2012
A Hoppy Marriage: Gourmet Cheese & Beer Pairing Guide
By Sara Kahn
Is there really a season for beer? I certainly enjoy beer year round but find myself opting for a cold brew more often during warmer weather. This time of year seems to call for lighter and more refreshing beverages but did you know beer just may be the better beverage choice to enjoy with gourmet cheese?
Beer, like wine, has something in common with cheese. All of these products are pastoral and crafted using traditional methods that date back centuries. Wine, beer and cheese speak of a particular culture, a place and a time. The connection between beer and cheese is particularly strong since the animals milked for cheese ate the grains used for brewing beer. It’s possible that your nose and palate may pick up similar flavor profiles. Putting aside their natural affinity, perhaps the most important reason to pair beer with cheese is that the carbonation and brisk qualities of beer refresh the mouth and wash away the tongue-coating richness of the cheese. Simply put, they taste good together.
With the wide variety of domestic, imported, and craft beers now available, selecting the right one can be just as overwhelming as choosing an appropriate wine. Fortunately, we have teamed up with Peter Estaniel, founder of Better Beer Blog (www.betterbeerblog.com) to give us an assist. Take a look at our Gourmet Cheese and Beer Pairing Guide for Peter’s recommendations for your next gourmet cheese and BEER tasting.
Cheese Type: Fresh
Fresh cheeses are not aged and usually are white and light in flavor, smooth and sometimes tangy. Try chevre (goat cheese), buffalo mozzarella or feta.
Peter’s Picks: The light citrus character of White Beers (Unibroue Blanche de Chambly, Wittekerke) and Wheat Beers (Erdinger Weissbier, Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier) marries well with the lactic tang of fresh cheeses.
Cheese Type: Bloomy
Encased in a whitish, edible rind, bloomy cheeses are often velvety, gooey with a mild flavor. Add Brie, Camembert or Pierre-Robert to the cheese board for a decadent treat.
Peter’s Picks: Pilsner, with its balanced flavor and mildly bitter finish, washes the palate of creamy, bloomy cheeses. Try Trumer Pils, Spaten Pils.
Cheese Type: Washed Rind
AKA “Stinky Cheeses”. During the aging process, washed-rind cheeses are usually bathed in a brine or washed with liquor such as wine, beer or a spirits. It’s this brining process that gives the cheese an aromatic quality. Almost all have orange or reddish hued rinds. Not mild and not sharp, washed rind cheeses are full-flavored. Give Taleggio or Epoisses a taste.
Peter’s Picks: India Pale Ale (Blind Pig IPA, Stone IPA) and Belgian-style Dark Strong ales (Chimay Grande Reserve, Gouden Carolus Grand Cru of the Emperor) have enough gusto to stand up to the power of these cheeses.
Cheese Type: Aged, Hard Cheeses
As cheeses matures, it hardens and concentrates in flavor. Try our 3 Year Old Cheddar, Aged Gouda and Piave.
Peter’s Picks: A pint of English ale (Samuel Smith’s Nut Brown Ale, Newcastle Brown Ale) is the traditional beverage of choice for Cheddar. The nutty and caramelized flavors of aged Gouda and Piave match well with brown ales, as well.
Cheese Type: Blue
The bluish-green veins give blue cheese its punch. Listed from strong to strongest in pungency are creamy Gorgonzola, nutty Stilton and salty Roquefort.
Peter’s Picks: Intense cheeses like blues can be tamed with sweet, fruity beers. For a unique treat, try a raspberry flavored beer like Belgian Lambic (Lindemans Framboise) with blue cheese for dessert.
Is there really a season for beer? I certainly enjoy beer year round but find myself opting for a cold brew more often during warmer weather. This time of year seems to call for lighter and more refreshing beverages but did you know beer just may be the better beverage choice to enjoy with gourmet cheese?
Beer, like wine, has something in common with cheese. All of these products are pastoral and crafted using traditional methods that date back centuries. Wine, beer and cheese speak of a particular culture, a place and a time. The connection between beer and cheese is particularly strong since the animals milked for cheese ate the grains used for brewing beer. It’s possible that your nose and palate may pick up similar flavor profiles. Putting aside their natural affinity, perhaps the most important reason to pair beer with cheese is that the carbonation and brisk qualities of beer refresh the mouth and wash away the tongue-coating richness of the cheese. Simply put, they taste good together.
With the wide variety of domestic, imported, and craft beers now available, selecting the right one can be just as overwhelming as choosing an appropriate wine. Fortunately, we have teamed up with Peter Estaniel, founder of Better Beer Blog (www.betterbeerblog.com) to give us an assist. Take a look at our Gourmet Cheese and Beer Pairing Guide for Peter’s recommendations for your next gourmet cheese and BEER tasting.
Cheese Type: Fresh
Fresh cheeses are not aged and usually are white and light in flavor, smooth and sometimes tangy. Try chevre (goat cheese), buffalo mozzarella or feta.
Peter’s Picks: The light citrus character of White Beers (Unibroue Blanche de Chambly, Wittekerke) and Wheat Beers (Erdinger Weissbier, Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier) marries well with the lactic tang of fresh cheeses.
Cheese Type: Bloomy
Encased in a whitish, edible rind, bloomy cheeses are often velvety, gooey with a mild flavor. Add Brie, Camembert or Pierre-Robert to the cheese board for a decadent treat.
Peter’s Picks: Pilsner, with its balanced flavor and mildly bitter finish, washes the palate of creamy, bloomy cheeses. Try Trumer Pils, Spaten Pils.
Cheese Type: Washed Rind
AKA “Stinky Cheeses”. During the aging process, washed-rind cheeses are usually bathed in a brine or washed with liquor such as wine, beer or a spirits. It’s this brining process that gives the cheese an aromatic quality. Almost all have orange or reddish hued rinds. Not mild and not sharp, washed rind cheeses are full-flavored. Give Taleggio or Epoisses a taste.
Peter’s Picks: India Pale Ale (Blind Pig IPA, Stone IPA) and Belgian-style Dark Strong ales (Chimay Grande Reserve, Gouden Carolus Grand Cru of the Emperor) have enough gusto to stand up to the power of these cheeses.
Cheese Type: Aged, Hard Cheeses
As cheeses matures, it hardens and concentrates in flavor. Try our 3 Year Old Cheddar, Aged Gouda and Piave.
Peter’s Picks: A pint of English ale (Samuel Smith’s Nut Brown Ale, Newcastle Brown Ale) is the traditional beverage of choice for Cheddar. The nutty and caramelized flavors of aged Gouda and Piave match well with brown ales, as well.
Cheese Type: Blue
The bluish-green veins give blue cheese its punch. Listed from strong to strongest in pungency are creamy Gorgonzola, nutty Stilton and salty Roquefort.
Peter’s Picks: Intense cheeses like blues can be tamed with sweet, fruity beers. For a unique treat, try a raspberry flavored beer like Belgian Lambic (Lindemans Framboise) with blue cheese for dessert.
| About The Author
Even though her passion for gourmet cheese was undying,
Sara Kahn found shopping for it to be overwhelming, time consuming and
confusing. She established www.thecheeseambassador.com to offer a simple way to
select and serve the world’s finest cheeses either for home entertaining or as a
unique cheese gift. By providing the perfect combination of fine cheese along
with a comprehensive cheese course guide, enjoying gourmet cheese is now a
deliciously enriching experience.
|
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Upgrading to a 5-gallon System
Greetings Alehounds! Alemonger here.
So, I promised you last time that I'd tell you about upgrading to a 5-gallon homebrewing system. Upgrading your equipment and your batch size can have a huge effect on the overall quality of your beer. After about nine or ten batches with the Mr. Beer
kit for homebrewing beer, I realized that I was in this hobby to stay, and that it was time for bigger and better equipment. I did some research and some talking to my local homebrew guy (yeah, we became pretty good friends!), and I learned that five gallons is sort of the standard homebrew batch size. I searched around and settled on a homebrew equipment kit very much like this one
, which includes most of what you need to make some excellent beers from ingredient kits. This kit includes the Fermtech Auto Siphon, which makes transfers from the fermenter to the bottling bucket a simple task. It's also got a brewing book, 6.5 gallon primary fermenting bucket with lid, bottling bucket with a spigot, fermentation thermometer, bottle filler, 5ft of 5/16in flex vinyl tubing, hydrometer, bottle capper, bottle Brush, 3 piece airlock, and sanitizer. You may want to pick up some Beer Bottle Caps
as well. The great thing about a kit like this is that you can further upgrade your equipment and improve your beer later on without replacing any of what you already have.The first few beers I made with this kit were just as easy to make as the ones I did with Mr. Beer (See my Homebrew Beer Recipes page), but were of far better quality because of the larger batches.
Now, I tend to prefer hoppy beers over malty ones, so I picked up a Muntons Gold India Pale Ale Home Brew Beer Ingredient Kit
from my local brew shop. Like the Mr. Beer kits, this is a pre-hopped malt extract kit in two cans and a packet of dry yeast. The process goes like this:-"Wake up" the yeast by pouring it into a small sanitized container (a coffee mug will do) with some lukewarm water and a teaspoon of sugar. Set this aside for later;
-Sanitize your primary fermentation bucket (VERY IMPORTANT!);
-Pour the contents of the two cans into the bucket. I recommend soaking the cans in some hot water first to soften the malt syrup and make it pour a little easier;
-Pour boiling water--about two gallons or a little more--into the bucket on top of the extract;
-Top off the remaining volume of the bucket to the five gallon mark with cold water;
-Check the temperature of the wort to see if it is within the zone tolerated by the yeast (this can be found on the yeast packet or in the kit instructions). Set the bucket aside to cool if necessary;
-Measure the sugar content with the hydrometer (see the instructions included with it). This can take a little practice!
-Record the measurement someplace you won't lose it. You're measuring Specific Gravity, but in this case, this measurement is called Original Gravity, or O.G. It will help you later to determine your beer's alcohol content. Now would be a good time to get a notebook and start a Beer Log if you haven't already done so!
-If your wort is cool enough, pour the yeast mixture from step one into it, and cap the bucket tightly. Place the airlock with a little bit of water in it into the hole on the top of the bucket. Set the bucket aside, preferably someplace cool and dark and out of the way.
Almost as easy as making jello, huh?
After a day or two, you may notice the airlock bubbling rather vigorously--this is completely normal! When the airlock stops bubbling or slows to one bubble every minute or so, take a measurement with your hydrometer. When this measurement reads the same on two consecutive days, your beer is ready to bottle.
You may want to bribe a friend with beer to get him or her to help you out on bottling day. Wash and sanitize some bottles. About 50 12-oz. bottles will probably do, but you may want to do a few extra, just in case! You can either use plastic PET bottles as I mentioned in another post, or buy/reuse amber glass beer bottles. If you're using glass, make sure not to use twist-off bottles (Coors, Bud Light, Bud, etc.), but only use the kind where you have to pry off the caps (Sam Adams, Bass, etc.). Transfer your beer to the sanitized bottling bucket using the Auto Siphon (this is called racking), and mix in the proper amount of priming sugar indicated in the kit instructions. Attach the bottle filler to the spigot on the bottling bucket (this step is easier if you place the bucket on a table with the spigot hanging over the edge. Use the bottle filler as the kit instructions state to fill your bottles, and then cap them tightly with the bottle capper if using glass bottles, or plastic caps if using PET plastic bottles.
Put the capped bottles in a cool dark place and leave them alone for a week or two, then chill and enjoy!
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