Mr. Wizard
Minimizing Hop Sludge
Copious volumes of hop sludge are a real problem for brewers who are in pursuit of hugely hopped beers because this sludge represents wort loss and batch size contraction. The net result
Adding Body
The old thin-bodied stout is definitely one of the more frustrating flaws for this particular style. From what I have observed, this flaw is often associated with stouts that are brewed in
Brewing Lagers for a Beginner
One of the keys to brewing great lager beers, really, is keeping the fermentation temperature cool. There is no way to sugar-coat the importance of this fact. Lager beers that are fermented
Sparge Temperatures
I remember when I first began homebrewing back in 1986 and almost immediately wanted to start brewing all-grain. At that time the information related to homebrewing was a little more difficult to
Double filtering homebrew
The first question that really should be answered is why do brewers filter beer? Some brewers filter beer to make it clear and pretty, some filter beer so that they don’t have
Fading Hop Character
I think the most difficult thing about trying to troubleshoot brewing problems in my column is not being able to taste the beers that I am being asked about. I sometimes flash
Making Kettle Sours
It took a while for brewers outside of the small sour brewing centers of Belgium and Germany to produce excellent sours because so much of the science and practice of sour beer
Too Much Yeast? Is over-pitching a problem?
Averbelen et al. (Impact of Pitching Rate on Yeast Fermentation Performance and Beer Flavour, Applied Microbiology Biotechnology (2009) 82:155–167) demonstrated that increasing pitching rates of lager yeast from 10 to 120 million
Terminal Gravity Woes
Alpha amylase can be added to the fermenter to aid in attenuation, but it has limited efficacy in converting dextrins and starch into fermentables. The primary role of the endoenzyme alpha amylase
Adding Water to a Boil
Brewers, and those of us brewers who write about brewing, have all sorts of rules of thumb to help guide us through our brewing journeys. Boil time is one such rule. Some
Using Softened Water?
Oh boy, this topic is one of the more confusing ones in all of brewing and I will do my best to keep this answer clear. Toward this goal, I am using
Troubleshooting The “Reverse Step-Mash”
The old alpha and beta amylase temperature conundrum! It does indeed seem that the temperature optima for these two enzymes is reversed for the purpose of mashing. Beta amylase produces maltose by
