Mr. Wizard
RIMS systems
I must confess that I am one of those particular brewers who likes nailing my target temperature and appreciate the gadgets of modern brewing. I have a mash mixer where I work
Irish Red Ales vs Oktoberfest
I wish I could travel to a different place in time when beer styles were truly tied to geographical regions, a time before globalization of brewing techniques and brewing ingredients. Based on
Corking Belgian-style homebrews
Your attempt to recreate the entire package at home is admirable and more challenging than using crown caps on normal beer bottles. For-tunately, the challenge has more to do with finding the
When you want to double the batch size of a recipe, do you just double all the ingredients also?
Dear Mr. Wizard, I’m a partial mash brewer and formerly brewed single, 5-gallon (19-L) batches using 2.5 gallons (9.5 L) of water in the brew pot. After the boil was complete, we
What is the proper way to force carbonate a keg of homebrew?
Dear Mr. Wizard, I used my keg system for the first time recently and force carbonated my brew by chilling the beer, applying approximately 30 pounds of carbon dioxide pressure and shaking
Gelatin fining naturally conditioned beer
Fining is one of those brewing practices that takes some “touch and feel” to perfect. Not all beers respond equally to finings, regardless of the type. That’s because the components in the
Delayed Yeast Pitching
This is a question deserving a brief answer! I think you are on the right track wanting to have your lager fermentations timed where you can use the same lagering schedule. I
Infusion vs. Step Mashing
Infusion mashing is a traditional method using an unheated mash tun, resulting in a single temperature mash. In reality, the temperature drops slightly over the mash rest and increases during sparging. Step
ID’ing wild hops
Hop variety identification can be done the old-fashioned way of comparing pictures of hop cones of known varieties to the unknown. Although this method is not perfect, it is widely used as
Sodium metabisulfite to clear chloramine
This is an interesting question and I did some digging to come up with a good answer for you. Dechlorination is important to brewers for flavor reasons. Compounds called chlorophenols are formed
Add citrus flavor to beer
Your description reminds me of something in between a malternative and the classic beach side invention of a cold brew garnished with a wedge of lime. I must confess I too like
Dried vs liquid malt extract
There is absolutely no reason not to use dried malt extract (DME) exclusively for your recipes, although there are fewer choices in color with dried extracts than there are with liquid extracts.
