While in some corners of the world, spit (saliva) is a must-have ingredient when making a good brew, here in the United States we try to keep the spit out.  Saliva contains more than a few microbes and bacteria that would love to feast on the sugar in wort, or residual sugar left in a [...]

Nearly every time I share a homebrew with someone–after they bow down at my feet and praise me for making such a glorious creation–inevitably, they ask me:  “How do you determine how much alcohol is in this work art?”  Seriously, I am posed this question at least monthly.  As I explain and begin throwing out [...]

Comparing methods of carbonating beer

If you are a home brewer, you are already a do it yourselfer to a degree.  I mean, you are making the beer you drink.  But maybe you are still using extracts.  Simply said, extracts are primarily made of maltose, which is the byproduct of saturating grains at set temperatures to convert starches (complex sugars) [...]

Having posted a series on how to brew that dealt mainly with extract brewing, we thought it was necessary to expand the horizon a little bit.  There are a multiplicity of reasons for including instructions on all grain brewing.  First of all, we have gotten enough response to the initial series that it seems appropriate to [...]

Now that you have carbonating beer and are itching to drink it (I know that you are), let’s just briefly mention a few ways to store your beer. If you have room for 50 or so bottles of beer in your fridge, you can put it in there after a week or two of ambient [...]

Now that your beer is fully fermented, you should be ready for bottling. Always sterilize your bottles. This can be done numerous ways. You can clean it just the same way that you cleaned your fermenter. You can also run the bottles through the sanitary cycle of your dishwasher (detergent free), if you have one. [...]

Now that you’ve made a recipe and gotten your beer into the fermenter, what should you do? “Why would I need instructions about that?” you might be thinking. One might think that it just needs to sit. But even doing that can be hard. I know that I was very anxious to taste and get [...]

Is retrospect, as a home brewer neophyte, this was by far the most intimidating step on the journey towards a bottle of homemade beer. The first time I put the first pot to boil, I never left the side of my stove…and for good reason. As with many other aspects of life, I agree that [...]

In this post, we’re going to offer some possible beers that you can brew. We can’t do them all, so we’re posting just a couple of styles. The other thing that we’re going to do is stick to ales, since lagers are a bit of a different animal. Additionally, we are assuming that you’ve decided [...]