December 2015
Recipe
Wheatwine
Gordon Strong provides readers with a recipe for a wheatwine. “Stan Hieronymus writes in Brewing with Wheat that wheatwine has its origins in modern American craft brewing, but that it was not intentional. A happy accident produced a higher gravity American wheat ale. The first modern commercial version is credited to Rubicon Brewing Company (Sacramento, California) in 1988, but many breweries now produce it as a limited edition winter release. Some examples are vintage-dated and oak-aged, suggesting they likely will continue to improve with age.”
Recipe
Not-Quite-Amber Waves of Grain
The American wheats I’ve been tasting at competitions lately take the best of American pale ale, add some nice low-Lovibond character maltiness and wheat, and back off the IBUs so you can actually appreciate the flavors. This one was a silver medal winner at the Philly Homebrew Cup.
Recipe
Summer Cellar BdG
Biére de Garde’s are a remarkably flexible beer that can be brewed as a pale, amber, or brown, depending on your preferences, pairings, or the season of service. This recipe aims right down the middle in terms of the style and its color/flavor options, and is a gold-medal-winning amber Bière de Garde (at the 2012 BUZZ Off, hosted by the BUZZ Homebrew Club in West Chester, Pennsylvania).
Recipe
Grantham Mild
The best thing about brewing a mild is that you get to dial up pretty much all of your favorite malt flavors, in whatever ratio you’d like, in a session-strength beer – and all you need to do is back out the black barley and sub in a bunch of fun character malts. You can still have a touch of roast in there (if you want), but you also get biscuit, toffee, nut, molasses, toast, plum, raisin . . . you get the picture.
Article
Designing Bottle Labels
With the holiday season here, it’s probably crossed your mind that homebrew makes a great gift for family, friends, co-workers and anyone else who wound up on the “nice” list this year.
Recipe
Dirty Hands Brewing Co.’s Liberty Ship Stout clone
This beer has a nice bittersweet chocolate and coffee profile, with just enough hop presence to offset any cloying sweetness. Unfortunately Dirty Hands Brewing closed their doors in 2016, but their legacy can live on.
Project
Keep Your Mash Tun Insulated
An insulating jacket for a brew pot, which can be easily removed when it’s time to start the boil. Lose less than 4 °F (2 °C) per hour when mashing. It’s perfect for single-vessel brew-in-a-bag setups or can even be used for a standalone mash tun or hot liquor tank.
Recipe
Firestone Walker Brewing Co.’s Velvet Merlin clone
This seasonal oatmeal stout is named in honor of Firestone Walker’s Brewmaster Matt “Merlin” Brynildson, who earned the nickname because of his magical ability to rack up top honors at prestigious beer competitions. This is a rich beer, with dark chocolate and roasted coffee flavors. It boasts a truly creamy mouthfeel and dry finish.
Recipe
Firestone Walker Brewing Co.’s Pivo Pils clone
When Old World Pilsner goes US West Coast, the result is Pivo Hoppy Pils. Brewed with classic influences from Germany and the Czech Republic, Pivo is then dry hopped to pump up the floral, spicy, herbal, and lemongrass aromatics in German Saphir hops.
Recipe
Firestone Walker Brewing Company: Wookey Jack clone
This black rye IPA from Firestone Walker’s Proprietor’s Reserve Series was recently retired from the Firestone Walker regular lineup, so you’ll definitely want to brew your own!
Recipe
Firestone Walker Brewing Company: Union Jack clone
According to Firestone Walker’s Brewing Co.’s website “This aggressively hopped West Coast IPA showcases stunning pineapple, citrus and piney aromas along with exceptional dry hop flavors of grapefruit and tangerine. This intense brew finds its balance in hone-like pale malt sweetness. The name Union Jack is a nod to the colonial origins of the IPA style, and to the British expatriate who co‐founded our brewery.”
Recipe
Neshaminy Creek Brewing Company: Neshaminator Wheat Bock clone
A traditional German wheat bock with a twist. Breaking from tradition, Neshaminy Creek adds orange blossom honey to add orange background notes.
Article
If You Like This Beer Style, Try Brewing That Beer Style
When you first start brewing, the sheer volume of beer styles out there in the world can be part of the allure. So many options, so many variations, so much history and
Article
Firestone Walker Award-Winning Brewing Tips & Clone Recipes
This September a brewer and his team walked the Great American Beer Festival (GABF) stage in Denver, Colorado to collect an unprecedented fifth Mid-size Brewery and Brewer of the Year award. No
Article
Pairing Food by Beer Style
Photos c/o Voyageur Press, an imprint of Quarto Publishing Group Style guidelines exist to give beer lovers a methodology to describe, compare, and contrast different beers in existing categories. Are guidelines needed
Article
Adding Herbs and Spices to your Beers
A spice is typically defined as a dried part of a plant used to flavor, color, or provide preservative properties to food (or drink). In that regard, every beer you drink is
Article
Wheatwine
by the numbers OG: 1.080-1.120 FG:1.016-1.030 SRM:8-15 IBU:30-60 ABV:8-12 Most homebrewers are quite familiar with barleywine, a very strong ale with English roots and modern American craft interpretations. However, many have not
Article
Perfect Priming & Kettle Souring: Mr. Wizard
Q I can’t seem to find any information that I feel like I can trust on the amount of priming sugar to use if I cold crash my homebrew. I have heard
Article
Brewing Wheat IPA: Tips from the Pros
As IPAs became all the rage among craft beer consumers in the last decade, brewers looked to capitalize on their Humulus lupulus obsessions by adding greater amounts of hops to other beer
Article
Brewing with Hemp Seeds
As a longtime homebrewer and a professional brewer at Madison Brewing Company in Bennington, Vermont, I’m always looking for new ingredients to brew with. A while back, I was approached by the
Article
Dirty Hands Brewing Company’s Liberty Ship Stout: Replicator
Dear Replicator, I used to live in Vancouver, Washington but I took a job transfer to Southern California. This was a mistake as I moved from a beer-laden area to something much
Article
Evaluating Hop Oil Content
There are no “Cascade” or “Saaz” aroma molecules, rather the relative proportions of hop oils drive their aroma contributions. The same four oils constitute 60-90% of the essential oils in every hop variety.
Article
Techniques for Brewing Age-Worthy Beers
I suppose most of us have dreamt of producing a beer that we will keep for years so we can pull out a bottle on special occasions to impress our friends and
Mr. Wizard
Bottle Priming
The Wizard fields questions on priming cold-crashed beers and the technique of kettle souring.
Article
Figuring Out Off-Flavors
Stone Brewing Co.’s Quality Assurance Supervisor discusses how to set up a proper off flavors panel at home.
Article
Be Cool to Your Brew School
If you’ve ever considered becoming a pro brewer, there’s never been a better time to attend a formal brewing education program.
Recipe
Devil’s Tongue Imperial Stout (Habanero)
An exclusive byo.com web bonus recipe John Rathmell took first place in the Spice, Herb, or Vegetable Beer category with Devil’s Tongue Imperial Stout at the 2014 Big Beers, Belgians and Barleywines Festival in Vail, Colorado. John has brewed over 500 batches of beer and operates a small hops farm near Ann Arbor, Michigan. John describes his beer this way. “This is a Russian imperial stout with habanero peppers added. It is based on an imperial stout recipe that I’ve been successfully brewing for nearly 15 years. It’s rich, thick, and sweet, as any good imperial stout should be, with a lot of bittering hops to help balance it out”.
Recipe
Madison Brewing Co.’s BURNT clone
Toasted hemp seeds, infused into this American brown ale, provides a unique nutty character. The hops balance the malt characters nicely. Recipe provided by the head brewer at this Bennington, Vermont based brewpub.
