Topic: Ingredients
Brewing Sugars: Finding your sugary zen
MEMBERS ONLYAdding sugar to beer has been a bit of a pariah in the brewing world thanks to homebrew lore of old. It’s time to set the record straight on this brewing adjunct and put it back in its rightful place in our brewing kettles and fermenters.
Priming sugar uses
MEMBERS ONLYRudy, I like your ideas! This question reminds me of lyrics from The Clash tune “Rudi Can’t Fail.” Now we get a rude and a recklessWe been seen lookin’ cool an’ specklessWe
The Intersection of Wine and Beer
FREEMany brewers are first drawn to homebrewing for the creativity and experimentation involved, and one of the easiest ways to add a new dimension to an already-understood style of beer is adding
Two Brews: Tips from the Pros
MEMBERS ONLYCoffee beer doesn’t need to limit you to porters and stouts. We asked pros who brew a coffee lager, golden stout, and imperial stout to share their brewing methods.
Brewing with Coffee
MEMBERS ONLYOne thing that you will find in common among professional brewers is that we usually drink more coffee throughout our day than we do beer. Some of us just need a caffeine
Turn Up the Heat
FREEMost beer styles are about balance. This is not to say that all the flavor and aroma aspects of every beer style are in equilibrium, but that there is a balance to
Beyond the Barrel
FREEBarrel-aged beers are wonderful, but barrels are also expensive, time-consuming, and take up a lot of space. With the wide array of oak alternatives available, they are also unnecessary. Explore the alternatives to barrels.
Master the Spice: Options and approaches to additions
FREEOne spice, two spice, red spice, blue spice. While mixing beer with spices offers an unlimited array of options, the approach to spicing beer can be handled in stride using a few key guidelines explained by Josh Weikert.
Spicing Up Beer: Tips From the Pros
MEMBERS ONLYSpiced beer can be a thing of beauty when done well; but brewers need judicious additions and well-married flavors. We sit down with two professional brewers who know what it takes to make a concept beer turn into reality.
Brewing with Spanish Cedar
MEMBERS ONLYDifferent from oak, the most common wood used in brewing, Spanish cedar imparts citrus, spicy white pepper, and sandalwood flavors, with aromas similar to a cigar box. It doesn’t have the oak tannins that conflict with hops, making it a good wood option for hoppy beers.
Fermentations Apart: Selecting different yeast for different jobs
MEMBERS ONLYBrewers often add adjuncts right into the main batch of beer before or during fermentation with the hopes that the characteristics of the beer will play nicely with the additive. But Michael Tonsmeire explains that fermenting the two separately may sometimes be your best approach.
Using Allspice
MEMBERS ONLYOne of the easiest ways to work a spice into beer recipes is to consider how the spice is used in cooking and then create a beer that mimics the food concept.