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. A few … [Read more…]
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 to dive further … [Read more…]
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 case … [Read more…]
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 the first came out … [Read more…]
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 steps. First step … [Read more…]
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 same this for year’s … [Read more…]
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 what was there previously. … [Read more…]
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 used in my first attempt at making … [Read more…]
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 and also … [Read more…]
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 beers available, … [Read more…]