Welcome to my blog. I write about beer and brewing through the lens of a science educator and craft brewer. I hope that you’ll find a similar interest in the science and history of brewing.
Taiwan is an island that has a reasonably developed craft beer scene. My previous experience with Taiwan had only been a long-weekend trip to Taipei back in 2013, but I recently took a 4-day trip to southern Taiwan and it was in the unassuming town of Hengchun that my wife and I would stumble across a pleasant surprise for the craft beer lover.......3000 Brewzeum.
All-grain brewing opens up a huge realm of possibilities for the malt profile of your beer. Of course it comes with the cost of an extra step of complexity with the "mash". Mashing is a process that is described by John Palmer in "How to Brew" as "the hot water steeping process that hydrates the malt, gelatinizes its starches, releases its natural enzymes, and converts the starches into fermentable sugars" (p.141). More simply put, it's like making barley-sugar-water through steeping - just like tea. In this post I will discuss the choice of the mash temperature and how it will affect the wort that you produce.
With over 4,000 breweries and growing by the day, the United States is never a bad place to go for interesting craft beer. This past Summer I had the opportunity to visit breweries in Middlebury, Burlington, and Stowe and I was left thirsting for more. This post will touch on a handful of breweries in this self-proclaimed "weird" state and the wonderful beers that they produce.
In this age of West Coast IPAs and East Coast Juicy IPAs, when developing recipes it's easy for home brewers to focus their attention on selecting new and interesting aroma/flavor hop varieties. However, the malt profile is equally important to provide the supporting base underneath those hop flavors. In this post I will share a basic approach to calculating the grain bill for your target beer style.
International Bitterness Units (IBUs) often show up on packaged craft beer and just as often in conversations involving IPAs. In this post I will share how home brewers can easily calculate the amount of IBUs in their recipes.. As a home brewer you must know how to calculate these if you hope to make consistent recipes.
