Gremlyn's Beer Blog

Gremlyn’s Mild

Sun, 11 Sep 2022 14:40:31 +0000

If I have a pride and joy in my brewing, this recipe is it. I designed this recipe in my early days of home brewing and it marked a turning point in my understanding of how to design recipes and understand how ingredients affect the resulting flavour of a beer.

I was visiting family in England in early 2011 and happened upon a pub/brewery in East Anglia; the pub is The Fur and Feather Inn and the brewery is called Woodfordes. I had their Mardler’s Mild from a gravity fed cask and loved it so much that I decided I needed to recreate that beer to drink at home. I was reading Ray Daniels’ book Designing Great Beers at the time and decided to put my new found knowledge to the test, so I sat down and came up with the recipe you see on this page. Barring very minor tweaks because I like numbers to be round-ish (convert to kg and the nonsense decimals below looks great), the recipe has not changed since the first time I wrote it and has served as a starting point for all my brown English beers.

GREMS: The Gas Reducing Multivessel System

Wed, 04 Sep 2019 21:04:48 +0000

Not long ago I decided to move away from carboys and age my sour and brett beers in pin lock kegs. I’ll go more in depth on the reasons behind that in a future post, but the biggest hurdle to overcome with this move was to allow for adequate pressure relief during secondary fermentation. Buying …

Keezer Build Part 1: A New Lid

Mon, 25 Feb 2019 10:00:30 +0000

I built my first keezer in 2010. At the time I was living with my wife in a one bedroom apartment. I don’t remember how I spun it, but I managed to convince her a 4-tap keezer would save space. It was built with an 8.8 cu ft black freezer and some oak 1×12 to …

Vote for me for the AHA Governing Committee!

Thu, 14 Feb 2019 11:40:26 +0000

This year I decided to run for the American Homebrewers Association Governing Committee. I’ve been a home brewer for just shy of a decade. It’s been such an important part of my life for so long that I want to contribute back in a big way. I can’t think of a better way to get …

Can't reseal mylar bags at home? Vacuum seal them!

Sat, 14 Jul 2018 16:49:04 +0000

Maybe I’m late to the party with this, but it only recently occurred to me. You can easily vacuum seal hops and maintain the benefits of the mylar bag at home! How, you ask? Cut an extra long vacuum bag, drop your mylar bag full of hops in it, and vacuum seal that! If you …

Rehabbing An Old Barrel

Tue, 10 Jul 2018 11:00:49 +0000

I was recently given an old five gallon barrel that had sat empty for about 5 years. Increasing my barrel collection by 50% seemed prudent, even if had to work for it. The process took me longer than I intended, but mostly because life got in the way, if you’re on top of things this …

New Brewer Stovetop Brew-in-a-Bag Starter Kit

Thu, 26 Apr 2018 10:00:59 +0000

The home brew starter system I put together. For a while now my dad has told that after he retires he would like to try brewing beer again. His retirement is finally upon him, so I figured a good way – a very me way – to welcome him into his post-work life would be …

AABGBdG – Briess Copper Malt Biere de Garde

Thu, 19 Apr 2018 17:14:26 +0000

This the recipe page for the biere de garde I brewed for an AABG Brewola event. We met on April 13th, 2018 to compare beers, you can read about that here.

I’m fermented it all clean with WLP029, and then kegged half and put the other half in a carboy with Bootleg Biology’s Funk Weapon 3. I opted to start the fermentation out at 58F and kept it there about 5 days despite White Labs’ recommendation to keep it warmer. It worked very well at 58F, hitting 79% attenuation.

Copper Malt Biere de Garde Brewola Tasting Recap

Thu, 19 Apr 2018 12:00:09 +0000

At the 2017 HomeBrew Con in Minneapolis, I was wandering the exhibition hall on the last day with a few friends and one of the Briess representatives looked at my badge and saw I was part of the AABG . Every year Briess brings some grain to give away, and presumably they brought more than …

Belgian Dubbel

Fri, 05 Jan 2018 17:00:08 +0000

A while ago I became convinced that I could make any Belgian style beer with two grains and some sugar additions. I love a good Dubbel and figured that would really showcase the ability to attain the right flavour profile with a very simple recipe. After a few iterations I landed on the recipe below. I tried a little darker, using D-180 instead of D-45, and though it was good, it was a bit darker for what I thought it should be – more of a big quad without the rest of the quad characteristics.

A Review of the Pro Brewers Siphon

Thu, 31 Aug 2017 14:45:20 +0000

This review is not funded in any way by the makers of the Pro Brewers Siphon. I spent my own money for this product and have not been asked to review it or offered anything in exchange for my review. My Pro Brewers Siphon finally arrived 485 days after I made my Kickstarter pledge ! …

Burton Ale

Fri, 18 Aug 2017 20:59:51 +0000

Burton Ale from 2015

I wanted to create a high gravity beer that was special to me. I’d read about a mostly forgotten beer style in a book by Martyn Cornell called a Burton Ale, which seemed like the perfect thing to try. What I came up with is undoubtedly not a traditional Burton Ale, but my take on the style. I targeted the loosely defined style specs and to get to the gravity I wanted I decided to try a concentration boil. This recipe uses a 4 hour boil, intended to concentrate a standard strength wort into a high gravity wort and produce many complex flavours through Maillard reactions. Gravity and volume are tracked over time and hops are added when I determine 60 mins is left in the boil. I mash low to ensure fermentability of the high gravity wort.

Burton Bitter

Fri, 11 Aug 2017 19:43:17 +0000

An unconventional English-style bitter.

This recipe is identical to my yearly winter warmer, the Burton Ale, with the exception of the hops and boil length. This beer is a standard 60 minute boil and there is a whirlpool hop addition at the end (which shows up as 5 min aroma addition on this page for some reason). The grain bill, including Golden Naked Oats and brown malt pushes this beer outside of a conventional bitter style beer, but like my Rye, Bitte the general concept stays within the bounds of a strong bitter.

Barrel Stand Build From Furniture Dolly

Thu, 06 Jul 2017 10:00:36 +0000

I’m ready to fill my barrel for the first time but need a place to put it when it’s full, which means I need a barrel stand. I want to maintain some mobility in case I need to scoot it out of the way to access other things in my basement. I have some Harbor …

RatFest 2017 Ye Olde Vineale

Tue, 20 Jun 2017 13:48:13 +0000

A sample of the Ye Olde Vineale in a RatFest tasting glass.

This is a recipe my brewing partner and I came up with for Arbor Brewing Company’s 2017 RatFest.

You can read about the brew day here.

You can read about the event and tasting notes here.

Rye, Bitte

Tue, 20 Jun 2017 13:38:47 +0000

An English-style bitter with a portion of the grain bill made up of rye malt.

You may have noticed that I rarely name my beers, yet this one has a name – sort of. I view this beer as an English style bitter, as it relies on Maris Otter, English hops, and English ale yeast as a big part of the profile, yet it is made with a healthy portion of rye malt in the grist. Bitte in German means please (in this context), and using it as a double entendre for Bitter is a nod to delicious roggenbiers that inspired the use of rye in this recipe.

Golden Ale

Tue, 20 Jun 2017 13:34:26 +0000

Golden ale made with golden naked oats and English hops.

At the time of posting this Golden Ale, this is my hoppiest beer ever. That’s kind of funny as it’s probably only just approaching American pale ale levels of hops. I experienced the craft beer scene in San Diego in the mid-late 00’s and IPAs were abound. What I had trouble finding in bars was anything with a focus on malt, or at least lacking a focus on hops. This was before Belgians and sours became hot styles, so when I started brewing in 2009 I turned my attention toward beers from my homeland: England.

HomeBrew Con 2017 Recap

Tue, 20 Jun 2017 13:00:13 +0000

This year was my fourth time attending HomeBrew Con, and third year straight starting with San Diego 2015. This is a long read and I tried to break it up into sections that talk about specific things, so if you’re interested in hearing about only specific parts of the weekend you can skip around. I’ve …

DIY Inline Carbonator - Build and Review

Mon, 12 Jun 2017 11:00:00 +0000

A while ago it occurred to me that I could build an inline carbonator much like Blichmann Engineering’s QuickCarb™ and I started to figure out the parts list, which I posted here . Shortly after that post I purchased all the parts and eagerly await the slow boat from China to deliver my new project. …

Bioprospecting - Notes from AABG Educational Session

Mon, 22 May 2017 17:30:08 +0000

I volunteered to give a talk on bioprospecting (aka wild yeast capture) to my home brew club, the AABG , before our May monthly meeting. This post is a recap of the material I covered in that talk, supplemented with links to sources I pulled from and/or more information on specific topics if you want …

A New Barrel Project and Eventual Solera Vessel

Thu, 11 May 2017 11:00:43 +0000

Adventures in Homebrewing often has 15 gallon FEW Spirits barrels in their Ann Arbor store taunting me, calling to me to buy them. I’ve reluctantly managed to resist the temptation telling myself “one day…”. Well, Adventures sent out a “spring cleaning” sale email a few weeks ago and I opened it to browse just in …

Wee Heavy

Wed, 10 May 2017 19:52:47 +0000

This is a recipe I put together for a small barrel project. Two other home brewers from the AABG and I each brewed a batch and will contribute 5 gallons. Being the first batch through the barrel I expect it won’t spend more than 2-3 weeks in there.

Recipe note: I always have a little more third runnings than I need which I usually discard, but for this beer I took about 1.25 gallons of it and boiled it down until it started to look a little syrupy. I added that to the whirlpooling kettle while I was cooling for a little flavour boost.

West Country White Ale

Fri, 05 May 2017 04:10:42 +0000

This is a recipe I created for a club competition, and what you see below is the original recipe scaled up to 11 gallons from the original 10 gallons (accounts for packaging losses better). I like this beer, though it was distinctly lacking any honey character and I think the info I’ll take from the experience is that it takes more than 4 lbs of honey in 10 gallons of beer to have a meaningful flavour impact.

West Country White Base

Fri, 05 May 2017 04:07:33 +0000

This recipe is a derivative of my original West Country White Ale, which was made for a club competition requiring honey. Though that beer was good, the honey character was largely absent, so more honey would be needed to truly give it the honey flavour. The main changes on the version of the recipe is that the honey was removed and the grain bill was scaled to keep the gravity in the desired range.

Two Unconventional English-style Strong Bitters

Thu, 04 May 2017 11:00:11 +0000

I recently made a couple of beers modeled after an English strong bitter, though neither would be considered conventional for the style. One was the base recipe from my Burton Ale , which I previously wrote about, and the other is my Rye, Bitte recipe, which is a second attempt that had hopping changes after …

I Built A Keg Washer, And You Should Too!

Wed, 15 Mar 2017 11:00:51 +0000

I know this isn’t a new idea, but my latest brewing build was a keg washer. If you have kegs you need to build one too. My old routine was to wait until I needed kegs, then take what I had out to the driveway and line them all up, then go through a few …

Burton Bitter, a New Recipe From an Old Recipe

Wed, 08 Mar 2017 11:00:24 +0000

If you’ve looked around my blog or talked to me, at some point you’ve surely heard about my Burton Ale . I’ve brewed this two years in a row, and will definitely make it a third this year. Last yeast I changed the recipe slightly and am happy with those changes so it’ll remain the …

Stout Porter

Thu, 02 Mar 2017 21:09:26 +0000

This is the strongest of my range of related brown beers so far. Although the name is confusing to many that have tasted it, I called it Stout Porter as a nod to the historical use of the term ‘stout’, which used to just mean ‘strong’. This recipe is my Porter recipe with the ABV bumped up and the addition of some roasted barley to the grist.

DIY Inline Carbonator Build - Planning Stage

Wed, 01 Mar 2017 11:00:40 +0000

I have built and tested this inline carbonation setup and am very happy with it. Click here for the build and review post . This post was updated on March 2nd, 2017. The main changes revolve around a decision over pump selection. The parts list was also updated with parts found to be cheaper than …

Bioprospecting - Capturing Local Microbes For Fermenting Beer

Thu, 23 Feb 2017 11:00:15 +0000

The idea of wild yeast capture , sometimes known by the much cooler name bioprospecting, for making beer has interested me for a long time. I have started down this path a couple of times, with my first attempt successfully capturing a yeast from a blend of Michigan grown apples pressed into cider. This was …

Bottling and Wrangling Sour Beers

Mon, 20 Feb 2017 12:00:55 +0000

About a year ago I decided that I would bottle my sour beers instead of kegging them. I figured I would want to have a variety of sours available to drink at any given time and kegging would mean I’d have to constantly rotate them in and out based on what I want to drink …

Ye Olde Vineale - A Post RatFest Update

Thu, 16 Feb 2017 10:00:30 +0000

In my previous post , I talked about making a beer for Arbor Brewing Company’s competition, RatFest. Well the day have come and gone, the beer was served, and sadly we did not win any awards for it, but that’s OK! The festival itself was a great time with many good and plenty of interesting …

Old Vineale Brewed for RatFest 2017

Thu, 17 Nov 2016 12:00:48 +0000

Here I am looking busy. For the post-event update, click here . On November 13th I participated in brew session at Arbor Brewing Company ‘s Ypsilanti location to make a beer for a semi-regular event/competition called Rat Fest. The goal is to come up with something off the wall, yet enjoyable, and you brew enough …

Third Place in Standard Cider at the Michigan Beer Cup

Tue, 23 Aug 2016 17:00:41 +0000

I’ve decided I need to enter more competitions. I think my beer is good, I often have a lot of it available, so why not see if I can win some awards? I ended up entering four beers and a cider in the 2016 Michigan Beer Cup . The beers I entered were my Mild …

A Modern West Country White Ale, England's Lost Wheat Beer

Thu, 04 Aug 2016 12:00:33 +0000

It’s time to make a wheat beer, something I’ve not done outside of my Dunkeweizen. This beer will be brewed for a club competition involving honey, and is modeled on an old English style, West Country, or Devon, White Ale.

On Black IPA, and other IPA variants.

Fri, 13 May 2016 12:00:17 +0000

I’m getting on my soapbox again with this post, and it seems my opinion isn’t the most popular, but I really don’t understand how a Black IPA can be a thing. Not every hoppy beer has to be an IPA!

A Misstep on the Road to Sourville – Part 2

Fri, 06 May 2016 08:30:12 +0000

This the second post on my issues with my first sour beer and details how I plan to fix it. It wont be a quick process, but at this point I am confident that I have plan to turn this beer around and make it something enjoyable.

Two Brews for HomebrewCon 2016

Thu, 28 Apr 2016 10:30:51 +0000

I’m ramping up the brewing schedule prior to HomebrewCon. I’m bringing at least two beers to serve on club night, and generally need to refill my almost depleted pipeline of brews.

A Misstep on the Road to Sourville - Part 1

Tue, 26 Apr 2016 10:30:09 +0000

After waiting a year for my first sour beer, I have run into some trouble, mainly that my beer is not at all sour! This post enumerates the problems, and a follow up post will detail the possible fixes.

Burton Ale is Advancing to the NHC Final Round!

Wed, 20 Apr 2016 13:51:16 +0000

My first year entering the National Homebrew Competition went well with my Burton Ale advancing after taking second place in Category 22, Strong Ale.

Resources

Fri, 08 Apr 2016 14:43:26 +0000

There are many home brewing resources out there, and this is a short list of sites I find myself visiting regularly. Useful Websites https://www.reddit.com/r/Homebrewing/ – one of the best internet-based communities for discussing and asking questions about home brewing. http://www.milkthefunk.com/ – A great place to go for all the wild, weird, and sour brewing questions …

Golden Ale Tasting Notes

Tue, 05 Apr 2016 09:00:31 +0000

Tasting notes from my Golden Ale, which was my first ever ‘hoppy’ beer! This is also the first time I am using Golden Naked Oats in a beer, and it won’t be the last.

Burton Ale Tasting Notes

Wed, 30 Mar 2016 09:00:57 +0000

Tasting notes for my Burton Ale, brewed in May 2015, aged and then served as a winter warmer. The beer underwent a 4 hour boil.

Solera Project - The Beginning, Batch #1

Mon, 28 Mar 2016 11:00:07 +0000

My Solera project is finally up and running with Batch #1 brewed and fermenting. This post tells how it went and details the future of the project.

Home Brew Recipes

Mon, 21 Mar 2016 11:10:03 +0000

My First Hoppy Beer and Golden Naked Oats

Thu, 19 Nov 2015 08:00:52 +0000

It may come as a surprise that as I have been brewing since 2009 and lived most of that time in San Diego, but I have never made a hoppy beer * . Living in San Diego, I had access to plethora of amazing IPAs, all as fresh as could be, so why would I …

Cider and Cyser Making 2015

Fri, 13 Nov 2015 09:15:38 +0000

For the second year in a row I was fortunate to be able to attend the AABG private apple pressing at the Grainger’s Orchard . I was a little more conservative with how much cider I brought home this year (8 gal vs 15 last year). I had originally signed up to bring home 6 …

Here Be Gremlyns

Mon, 05 Oct 2015 20:00:39 +0000

Warning: Here Be Gremlyns Fortuntely these are the kind of gremlyns that will make you a delicious beer! Like many home brewers, I had dreams of making my own sour beers, but simply buying commercial cultures was not something that appealed to me. If I’m going to so sour, I want to go wild and …

PSA: Sterile vs Sanitary - they are NOT the same

Tue, 15 Sep 2015 09:55:07 +0000

Many home brewers use sterile and sanitary interchangeably, when there are in fact very different terms. I briefly explain the difference between them in this post.

I am now a Certified Beer Server!

Wed, 02 Sep 2015 12:53:20 +0000

I finally sat down this week to take the test to become a Certified Beer Server, and passed with flying colours. This is merely a fairly small step towards my goal of becoming a Cicerone and BJCP certified judge, but it is still the necessary first step! So I’ll throw myself a tiny, little party …

Sehrdunkelweizen

Mon, 17 Aug 2015 19:26:36 +0000

Recipe Details

Batch Size	Boil Time	IBU	SRM	Est. OG	Est. FG	ABV
10 gal	65 min	15.6 IBUs	23.0 SRM	1.053	1.014	5.1 %

Fermentables

Name	Amount	%
Rice Hulls	8 oz	2.6
White Wheat Malt	11 lbs	57.14
Munich Malt - 10L	6 lbs	31.17
Special B Malt	1 lbs	5.19
Chocolate Wheat Malt	12 oz	3.9

Hops

Name	Amount	Time	Use	Form	Alpha %
Hallertauer	85 g	60 min	Boil	Pellet	2.7

Yeast

Name	Lab	Attenuation	Temperature
Hefeweizen Ale (WLP300)	White Labs	74%	68°F - 72°F

Mash

Step	Temperature	Time
Mash In	154°F	60 min

Notes

Bittering ratio of 0.25-0.30.

Download

Download this recipe's BeerXML file

Irrational Dislike of Breweries or Beers Based on Labels or Names

Mon, 17 Aug 2015 18:00:58 +0000

Do you ever have a feeling that you know is entirely baseless, but you can seem to shake it? Worse yet, you don’t even know why your bias exists? I have this problem, and very specifically with certain beer labels. While shopping for beer, if I see a label with a human or humanoid face …

Dank as an IPA Descriptor

Thu, 06 Aug 2015 17:57:32 +0000

Am I the only person that feels like ‘dank’ is not a valid term to describe an IPA? Unless I misunderstand the origin, it comes to us from pot culture, where I guess dank is a good thing. I’m not sure how it could ever be a good thing because all it does for me …

Starting a Solera Sour Project

Thu, 30 Jul 2015 08:00:28 +0000

Since pitching my sour culture into a lambic for the first time and yielding good, albeit early, results I have begun to think about my long terms plans for making sour beer. I also started to consider how I might keep my culture going without allowing it to succumb to selective pressures that might reduce …

My Fermentation Chamber Build, Circa 2011

Thu, 02 Jul 2015 08:00:02 +0000

This post is a historical account of my fermentation chamber build from 2011, and includes recent updates. Details of this build are scattered around the web, and now they have been brought together in one place. About a year after I started brewing, I decided it was time to take the next step in making …

Special Bitter

Fri, 26 Jun 2015 14:32:03 +0000

Recipe Details

Batch Size	Boil Time	IBU	SRM	Est. OG	Est. FG	ABV
10 gal	65 min	32.7 IBUs	11.7 SRM	1.045	1.013	4.2 %

Fermentables

Name	Amount	%
Pale Malt, Maris Otter	12 lbs	75
Amber (Crisp)	2 lbs	12.5
Crystal Malt - 60L (Thomas Fawcett)	2 lbs	12.5

Hops

Name	Amount	Time	Use	Form	Alpha %
Goldings, East Kent	63.8 g	60 min	Boil	Pellet	7.2
Goldings, East Kent	49.6 g	0 min	Boil	Pellet	7.2

Miscs

Name	Amount	Time	Use	Type
Whirlfloc Tablet	1.00 Items	10 min	Boil	Fining

Yeast

Name	Lab	Attenuation	Temperature
Burton Ale (WLP023)	White Labs	72%	68°F - 73°F

Mash

Step	Temperature	Time
Mash In	154°F	60 min

Notes

0.70-0.75 GU/IBU

Download

Download this recipe's BeerXML file

An Adventure into the Wild and Sour

Fri, 26 Jun 2015 11:46:13 +0000

After I restarted home brewing last year, I decided I wanted to start experimenting with things a little more. Up until then I had focused more on the process and getting good, basic recipes figured out for house staples like my Mild or my Special Bitter , and I still do mainly make these staples, …

My Take on a Burton Ale

Wed, 17 Jun 2015 08:00:01 +0000

A few months ago I came across an old English style of beer, the Burton Ale, that seems to be all but forgotten these days, excepting a few blogs, such as Martyn Cornell’s Zythophile and a 2011 article in Zymugry (co-written by the Martyn Cornell and the late Antony Hayes). While details are scarce about …

What a Shandy Is...

Wed, 27 May 2015 19:54:14 +0000

I posted this a while ago to /r/homebrewing , and figured I’d post it up here as well. Minor changes were made as needed. Disclaimer I want everyone to know up front that I do not want to discourage experimentation or making something you like to drink. All I want to do is clarify what …

About Me

Wed, 21 Jan 2015 21:15:15 +0000

Who Am I? I am a dad, home brewer, beer lover, home cook , DIYer, tinkerer, and web developer living in Michigan. Home Brewing History I started home brewing in 2009 after taking a trip to visit family in England. After seeing the low price of pints of good beer, and tasting some excellent English …