Writer: Brad Smith
Evaluating Brewing Ingredients
A brewer must understand the impact each ingredient will have on the final beer in order to master recipe development. Get tips on how to properly evaluate each ingredient. With practice, everyone can master these skills and start brewing better beers.
Clearing Things Up
Crystal clear beer should be the goal with most beer styles. To get there, homebrewers must understand the causes of haze, ways to minimize them in the first place, and how to clear them up when they do exist.
Lautering for All-Grain Brewers
There is more to lautering than just rinsing grains with water. You need to consider the design of the mash and lauter system, grain crush, temperature, sparge volume, lauter flow, pH, and more. Take a closer look at ways to maximize the efficiency of your lauter.
Understanding Brewing Ingredients
I was making pancakes one day with a box of Bisquick mix and noticed that there are a bunch of recipes on the back for things you can make with Bisquick. In addition
A Taste of the Season
Brewing with fruit can add amazing depth, flavor, and aroma to your beer, but fruits also present significant challenges. Selecting the correct fruit, understanding its fermented flavor profile, the practical considerations of
10 Tips for Tastier Homebrews
Brewers new to the hobby of making beer are often overwhelmed by unfamiliar ingredients, techniques, and equipment. Those who master the craft have to understand not only their equipment and processes, but
Wort Chilling
One of the first challenges a new brewer runs into is how to chill their boiling hot wort down to room temperature to pitch the yeast. I recall filling the bathtub with
The Decoction Mash
Decoction mashing has both a mystic and feared quality to it. Purists imagine achieving perfection in the ultimate Bavarian or Bohemian lager. The more pragmatic of us fear the time-intensive triple decoction
Improve Quality and Consistency
To brew great beer you need to start with a good recipe, know how to evaluate your beers, and then understand the cause and effect of each ingredient and technique so you can improve the beer the next time you go to brew it.
Fast Mead
This is a simple and straightforward mead recipe that should have your fermentation finished within a few weeks.
Tart Cherry Mead
This tart cherry mead uses 2 gallons (8 L) of tart cherry juice and finishes at 15.5% ABV.
Melomels: Brewing Big Fruit Mead
High-gravity fruit meads — or melomels — can be a tricky style to brew when starting gravities are often above 1.140. Learn the best techniques to brew and ferment your next melomel, as well as advice for choosing the best fruit.
