Beer Style: Specialty Beer Family
Gordon Strong’s Gruit
Balancing the bitterness and spices can be difficult due to unknown freshness and potency, so be prepared to make infusions (teas) to tweak the balance once the beer is finished.
Chocolate Winter’s Embrace
This winter seasonal beer has a rich malt character, underpinned by a pleasing chocolate note. The winter spices are present but not overpowering, providing a warming finish.
Gruit
While it is true that it is an unhopped beer that uses other herbs to add character, traditional gruit is a very narrowly defined and specific beverage that was highly regulated by various governments in the Middle Ages in northwestern Europe. Learn more about this concoction of lore.
Infusing Chocolate and Coffee to Your Brew
Chocolate and coffee are two adjuncts that are stalwarts in the craft beer world. Denny and Drew have used them both extensively and are here to share their advice to making the best use of them.
pH vs. TA in Sour Beers
pH might not be the most effective method for measuring the perceived sourness when brewing beer. Due to various acid strengths and the buffering capacity of different worts, titratable acidity (TA) is the
Keys to a Successful Small-Scale Barrel-Aging Program
Learn the keys to running a small-scale barrel-aging program at your brewery from sourcing barrels to space saving ideas to tracking the progress of each beer. Michael Tonsmeire not only specializes in
Revolution Brewing Co.’s Fistmas clone
Appropriate for the season, Fistmas is a holiday beer for hopheads! “As a homebrewer, I always would do spiced ales around the holidays,” Revolution Head Brewer Jim Cibak said, “but honestly, they just wore out my palate. Fistmas goes more with Revolution’s theme of brewing hoppier beers.”
Revolution Brewing Co.’s Deth’s Tar clone
The base beer of Deth’s Tar is an English-style imperial oatmeal stout that Revolution ages in whiskey barrels.
Revolution Brewing Co.’s Freedom of Speach clone
Revolution’s Freedom Series of fruited sour beers brings together the tartness of a lower-ABV kettle sour beer with a wide range of fruit flavors — in this case peach.
Brewing Sugars for Modern Beers
Sugar, generally from malted barley, is necessary to feed the yeast that produce ethanol in beer. But sugar can also be an ingredient that doesn’t have to come from malt, and it’s not just used to create macro-style lagers. Let’s take a closer look at some of the more popular brewing sugars, the characteristics they impart on beer, styles they may best suit, and advice on how to best use them in your brewing.
Not Craig’s Smoked Porter!
(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain) OG = 1.070 FG = 1.016 IBU = 45 SRM = 33 ABV = 7.2% Recipe courtesy of Jeff Gladish who is a bona fide rauchbier fanatic (see picture
Learn How to Smoke Your Beers
Beer produced with smoked malts don’t need to be smoke bombs. Learn to craft your own smoked malts and use them in recipes.
