Posts from Beer

One of the things I love about brewing my own beer is that once I got the basic techniques down I was able to brew styles that appeal to me but aren’t readily available at the liquor store (or even a really good beer store). There are dozens of IPA’s out there that are as good or better than any IPA I can brew, so it doesn’t feel like a good investment of time and effort to brew one of those. Harder to find are the British best bitters, the Belgian patersbiers, the Finnish sahtis. Its how I ended up competing with a style called roggenbier, a German rye ale. I couldn’t find a single commercial example of roggenbier in America, but when I brewed my first batch of it I fell in love with the style. I entered it in competition to see if I was getting it right, and the rest is history trivia. read more

I wrote recently about creating a new milk stout recipe.  Yesterday was brew day! I was well prepared: I had a recipe I was excited about. I had a beefy amount of yeast cultivated (strong yeast being the key to any successful beer). I had the grains milled, the hops in the fridge, the hardware all sanitized and sterilized. Show time! Until… read more

Last night I attended a monthly meeting of a local homebrew club here in Chicago.  I haven’t typically done homebrewing as a group activity.  Not sure why, but I’ll think on that for another day.  But I was enthusiastically invited to the brew club by a friend who is a member, so I decided to stop by and see what it was about.  The meeting was about a dozen brewers who get together monthly to share their beer and swap stories about how they made it.  I really enjoyed the conversations, drank some interesting beers, and drove home thinking on a few brewing tips and tricks I picked up in conversation. read more