As our readers know, I homebrew.  Not only do I homebrew batches, I experiment often.  I might add a whole new dimension or a subtle change to a brew.  For instance, the other day I posted about roasting my own cocoa beans at home—not an easy thing—so I really appreciate good chocolate even more.  For my part, I like to take one gallon of my brew aside and experiment with it.  Recently, I added some blueberries to an oatmeal stout I had recently brewed with some pretty nice results.  I bottled it the other day, but then I thought, “What about these blueberries?”

My wife and I don’t like wasting anything.  We cook carrot tops, beet greens, broccoli stems—basically anything that is edible and is subsidiary to the actual vegetable or fruit.  Everything gets used, so I speculated that the blueberries might have more life in them.  I also had some wort I had frozen from a hydrometer reading of a brew.  I figured it was sweet and sugary, so I could find a use for it. I also had some cocoa beans left from roasting.  The result?  Beer wort jam.

I took some fresh-squeezed lemonade we had made and used it for the base liquid.  Why use water when you have lemons, which are a great preservative?  At any rate, I took the 1/2 cup blueberries, 1 cup lemonade, 1 cup of wort and a few cocoa beans that I ground with a mortar and pestle (I made a little cocoa bean coffee with the rest) added some sugar and vanilla, then let it cook down until is was jam.  The results were great, and it was just one more way to use what we had in order not to waste anything.  Who knows, this sort of creative thinking might come in handy for a brewery some day.

I have no purpose in sharing this other than to simply share my world of homebrewing with you folks.  I’m having fun. Here are some pictures to prove it: