Recently, I had started doing research into Hefeweizen again. In my research I discovered things I already knew, but never put into the front of my mind I guess. I think the reason Hefeweizen fell out of favor with me was that I wasn’t really getting fresh enough examples anymore. As my beer palette was maturing, I didn’t realize that the freshness factor needed in most all styles of wheat beer was so crucial. I assumed I just didn’t like the taste of Hefeweizen anymore. (It made be quite sad, because those pitcher sessions with great friends is still a vivid memory for me.)

So I decided to take a simple approach to brewing a Hefeweizen. I wanted to brew it quick and drink it early. I wanted to use ingredients I was comfortable with and liked. I also wanted to restrain the fermentation character a little bit to avoid maybe generating too “hefey” of a taste; if that even makes sense.

What I have is a great thirst quencher. Laid out in this Hefeweizen tasting video.
I fermented this one on the really cool side, 62F. I the banana esters are really muted. And the clove character is the only think really hinting at all that I used the classic WLP300 Hefe strain. Even at that the clove character is pretty muted too. Just enough to make the beer appear “spicey”. But that could just as easily be coming from the EKG hops.

Lastly, there is a pretty cool twist in these beer. For the Pilsner malt I used traditional continental german Pils from Wyermann. But for the wheat portion I used malted wheat from Vally Malt in Hadley, MA. They are a “craft” malt house bringing small batch malting back to the local markets here in MA.

Both John and I really enjoyed this beer. Its a going to be a great summer drinker. But you’ve got to drink Hefeweizen quick (or at least I do). At the time of this writing its been about two weeks since the video was shot. The beer is still drinking nice, but some of the bright edges are starting to fade. I want to save some it to do a side by side with a wheat beer John has going… but I am not sure. If it starts to take a deeper turn, I’ll have to crack open the liter mugs and start getting this one down.

So give this style a second look. Its not too late to brew up a great Summer Hefeweizen.
Brew on! I’ll post the full recipe separately soon. Enjoy the video.

Read the original article Hefeweizen Tasting Video and other Brew Dudes posts.

I looked into the trending of homebrewing popularity a few years ago by using some online tools.

The data that came back was contrary to what I thought was happening. The data made it appear that the hobby was decreasing in popularity.

Knowing the growth in craft beer, I would assume homebrewing beer would be growing too. This survey confirmed it from the homebrewing supply shop side of the equation.

I type this post happy that the hobby is becoming more popular. More homebrewers is a good thing and more homebrewed beer is an even better thing.

The one thing that I am a bit wary about with the growth of sales is the increase in prices on homebrewing ingredients and accessories. Last week, I bought a few items at a homebrew shop that is near my new place of employment. Some of the things on my list were the largest size of both Powdered Brewery Wash and Star San sanitizer that they had in stock. I brought my stuff up to the counter and the guy at the register commented on my choices of the biggest size. My reply explained that buying in bulk makes sense for me.

The total came up on the register and it seemed a bit high at first glance. I paid and looked at the detailed receipt as I walked out the door. Both the PBW and the Star San were easily 7 to 10 dollars more than I have paid at other shops or online. I was a little floored by the markup.

Hey, I don’t blame a business trying to make a buck but price gouging is not something I can support. WIth increased demand, you can charge higher prices but the buyer can get around it by checking out other options.

Now I could out them here in this post, but that’s not my style. I could tweet them and ask them about it but the time has past to tweet.

At this point, I have to chalk it up as a lesson learned or at least a lesson reminder. In this growing hobby, make sure you compare prices and you won’t overpay if you take the time to avoid overly high prices.

Read the original article The State of Homebrewing in 2013 and other Brew Dudes posts.

We did an oktoberfest duel a few years ago so we will do the same thing but this time we will be brewing saisons.

Maybe we will bring in others to drink them and see what they think.  We can make a video tasting about it and make it an event.  Certainly  we can put them into a competition too.

It’s been a while since I brewed a saison but I do have a passion for these farmhouse ales.  At the American Craft Beer Fest, it seemed many of the booths had a saison to offer.

Clearly, saisons are sooooo hot right now.

I really enjoy the process of brewing saisons.  One reason is that you can let the fermentation temperatures run wild – within reason.  Too hot and yeast will die but in the dog days of summer, you can be lax with where you store the fermentor since warmer than typical temperatures work wonders on the finished beer.

The grain bills can be full of experimentation too.  There aren’t strict guidelines for the style in terms of specialty grains but I like using different Belgian grown malts.

With saisons, the yeast is the thing.  I was mulling over yeast strains and I was able to buy a vial at the Homebrew Emporium.

This is a blended strain from White Labs and I am interested in seeing how it will perform. I think this is a combination of Belgian and French saison strains. I have had success with other strains that other homebrewers have said are problematic and I hoping I can brew an excellent beer with this blended stain.

So let the challenge be thrown down. It’s a summer of saison.

Brew On.

Read the original article Saison Throwdown and other Brew Dudes posts.

Bottling beer from the keg puts your beer back in the social circles of beer drinkers where it belongs. Beer is a social beverage and while it is great to pull up a chair and listen to the baseball game in the garage,  the novelty of that environment wears off pretty quick.

In short, the objective with bottling beer from the keg is to minimize the amount of foam as it goes in the bottle. Foaming in the bottle equals lost carbonation in the finished product. Now for competition purposes, just to be safe, you may want to slightly over-carbonate the beer before you bottle it.  To do this, I’d just advise cranking up the CO2 by about 3-5 PSI a few days before you plan to bottle. In competition, you’ll get a harder ding for undercarbed beer than over carbed beer. Judges can always swirl the carbonation out of a beer in the glass or let it sit for a few minutes. Heck, in a double IPA a little extra carbonation can really help carry some aromas out of the glas,s too.

Anyhow, in the video I present my ultra-cheap method for getting beer into bottles. I know there is cooler and pricey ways to do it. However, I have never experienced an judging score sheet that came back and said my beer was undercarbed, overcarbed or even the dreadful oxidized!

So, crank your dispensing pressure way down – just enough to get the beer to flow and away you go. Check the video for details.

BREW ON!

Filling from a Keg:

1. Keg of beer must be chilled and carbonated.  I like to over carbonate by a few tenths (0.2) of a volume of CO2 to compensate for lost CO2.  (some of that lost CO2 is a good thing as I’ll state later)
2. I use a black Cobra/Picnic tap to dispense the beer from.  I modify the tap into a filler by using a piece of tubing that will stick right over the spout of the tap (usually 3/8 ID tubing).  The length of the tubing need only be long enough to reach the bottle of the bottle.
3. I chill down the bottles I plan to fill.  This reduces CO2 loss and foaming.
4. Right before I am ready to bottle (bottles and caps washed and sanitized), I dial down the CO2 on my regulator to zero PSI, then I burp the keg to release all the head pressure.
5. I put the tap with tubing filler into my first bottle and pull the trigger.  Then I slowly dial up the regulator until I have just enough pressure to get the beer flowing at a decent rate.  But not too fast to get excessive foaming.  This can be a little tricky to manage the regulator and the bottle filler at the same time.  But once you get the pressure set and the beer flowing; that’s it with fussing over the regulator settings.
6. Fill the rest of my bottles and cap them.  Getting a little foam while filling is a good thing as it helps to purge out the ambient air and O2.  This minimizes oxidation of the beer after bottling.
7. Once all the bottles are filled I reset the pressure on the regulator to my normal carbonating and dispensing pressure to keep the beer from going flat.

Read the original article Bottling Beer From The Keg and other Brew Dudes posts.

I have dry hopped before, but I used my own homegrown hop cones. They were easy to put in the carboy but not so easy to remove once the beer was done picking up all the flavor and aroma.

This time around, I was looking forward to working with pellets. Once I cleaned and sanitized my secondary, I put the pellets into the carboy and then racked the beer on top of them. The pellets broke apart slowly as the beer was siphoned off the yeast cake.

Right now, the hop particles are mostly floating at the top of the carboy. Some are settling to the bottom, and I wonder if more of it, if not all, will end up down there.  I don’t think I will have the beer in the carboy long enough to find out.

I learned from reading stuff online and in the For the Love of Hops book that dry hopping does not have to be a long time. Three to seven days appears to the range. I plan to dry hop for four days and then bottle.

Since this is an American wheat ale, the hop aroma is not that important to the style. I am not using a large amount of hops, just a quarter of an ounce of the Sorachi Ace hops. I wanted to get a better understanding of this variety and I thought using the hops in all stages of hopping would be a good way to learn the process.

Read the original article Dry Hopping With Pellets and other Brew Dudes posts.

I tend to use English malts and hops for porters, but if you find American or even German varieties are more to your liking – go ahead and substitute.

Yeast strain should be a clean one. No funky Belgian strains if you are looking to brew to style.

Nice and Roasty Robust Porter Recipe

Ingredients:

10 lbs Maris Otter Pale Ale Malt
1.5 lbs Crystal 60°L
1 lbs Chocolate Malt; Thomas Fawcett
0.50 lbs Black Patent Malt
1.5 oz Fuggle Pellets, 4.75 %AA boiled 60 mins.
0.5 oz Goldings Pellets, 5 %AA boiled 15 mins.
0.5 oz Goldings Pellets, 5 %AA boiled 1 mins.
Yeast: White Labs WLP002 English Ale

Instructions

Mash the malts at 155° F for 60 minutes. Boil for one hour and add the different hops amounts at the times specified above. Cool wort to 66° F and ferment for two weeks at that temperature. Bottle or keg as usual.

Predictions

Original Gravity: 1.059
Terminal Gravity: 1.014
Color: 30.95 °SRM
Bitterness: 35.7 IBU
Alcohol (%volume): 5.9%

This is my tried and true robust porter recipe. It’s a style that is offered by many craft breweries and certainly many homebrewers as well. Again, you can substitute malts with ones that you like or have available to you. The black patent malt is the key to the complex, almost burnt flavors that you are going after with this beer. The chocolate malt give you that coffee roastiness. You can play around with different crystal or caramel malts for some different sweetness in the beer to counter the darker malts’ flavor.

Read the original article Robust Porter Recipe and other Brew Dudes posts.

We expected to get a report that told us our water was relatively soft, which it is. It has low calcium and low magnesium level. What came back as a surprise to us was that we are actually fairly high in sodium and chloride. The levels are at a point where we may need to dial them back a bit through dilution or otherwise attempt to balance it with an equally high amount of sulfates (and subsequently calcium). But that’s another video! Sorry kids.

Take a quick look at our report card’s numbers and judge for yourself. Then cruise on to the video and see what we think of our water predicament.

From Ward Labs in Kearney, Nebraska!
Sodium: 134 ppm
Calcium: 34 ppm
Magnesium: 5 ppm
Sulfate: 6 ppm
Chloride: 250 ppm

Bicarbonate (HCO3): 72 ppm
Total Hardness (CaC03): 106 ppm
Total Alkalinity (CaC03): 59 ppm

Enjoy the video. BREW ON!

Looking at some sources out there, here are the typical ranges for minerals in water that is ideal for brewing beer.

Sodium: Beer brewing range is 0 to 150 ppm
Calcium: Beer brewing range is 50 to 150 ppm
Magnesium: Beer brewing range is 10 to 30 ppm
Sulfate: Beer brewing range for hoppy beer is 150 to 350 ppm
Chloride: Beer brewing range is 0 to 250 ppm

What do you think? Have you worked with your water chemistry before? What tips would you give someone or someones that received a report like the one above? We’ll update you when we have tried out some attempts at altering our water for brewing.

Read the original article Ward Labs Homebrew Water Report and other Brew Dudes posts.

His response was, “You know what…. Fuck it I am in.”

Since then, we have been writing posts to hoping help other homebrewers to brew better beer. Of course, better beer is just one step towards brewing excellent beer which is the ultimate goal for not only ourselves but for everyone who reads the posts on our site.

It’s been a fun 6 year run. We have seen visits to our site increase from our humble beginnings. By the middle of 2012, I think we lost the plot. We weren’t updating the site as much. We weren’t inspired.

At the beginning of this year, we made an effort to add more content to the site. Every Wednesday, we are putting up a video to enhance our written content. I hope you check out our videos. We are trying to make them educational.

The purpose of brewing your own beer is to produce something that is special, better than what others can provide.

I think we are getting back to the purpose of this blog. We are attempting to produce the best resource for homebrewers.

We don’t have the wisdom of crowds as you may find on discussion boards but what we provide is a great amount of research and first hand experience. We also provide a lot of sweat equity and time – the same things you and I put into brewing beer.

With the purpose of the best resource for homebrewing comes the meaning. If we always create with that purpose, we will be helpful.

We will help others to brew excellent beer.

So please share our “craft” content. Know that there are two guys who are trying to produce something that is special, unique, remarkable.

We appreciate your attention. We hope to realize our purpose with you.

These Brew Dudes are finding meaning in brewing on.

Read the original article Finding Purpose In Homebrewing Beer and other Brew Dudes posts.

One was a gallon that I had racked off the larger amount a few months ago to condition on oak.

The second carboy was the rest of the medium show mead that hasn’t been altered in any way.

Well, the results are in and here are some photos to show you what the mead looks like today.

The bentonite worked great. The mead is not only clear, but appears to be a different color. In the matter of a few days, the mead went from an amber color to a light yellow color.

The gelatin results did not fare as well.

It looks pretty much the same as it had before I added the gelatin. The clarity and the color are similar if not exactly the same as they were before I added the gelatin.

If you would like to the what the meads looked like before I added the agents, you can see pictures of the start of my mead clarifying experiment on this post.

So what does this mean really? Does this mean that gelatin doesn’t work as a clarifying agent and bentonite does in all cases of mead? Well, I can’t say that for certain. I can say in this experiment, there is no comparison. The bentonite really worked and the gelatin really didn’t.

It is interesting to note that bentonite removes positively charged particles as gelatin removes negatively charged particles. Maybe the cloudiness in my meads was caused specifically by positively charged particles and that is why the bentonite worked so well. I know Mike has used gelatin in fining his beers and it has worked wonders when he has used it. Again, there may be a difference between the particles in mead and the particles in beer.

Read the original article Clearing Mead – Gelatin or Bentonite? and other Brew Dudes posts.

Well, I do.

Now it has been a while since I brewed up a recipe kit from a homebrew shop but when a representative from Midwest Supplies wrote to our blog email address and asked us if we wanted to write up a review of one of their kits, I said we would be happy to do one.

Sticking with their homebrewing calendar as it existed in late 2012, I asked them to send me the Wurtzburger Maibock kit.

This post will serve as the depository for our entire experience brewing this beer rather than writing different posts for the brew session, fermentation, first tastings. etc. for each segment of the review.

The first segment of the review is the unboxing of the kit itself.

What I didn’t reveal in the video was that I was expecting an all grain kit. In my conversations with the rep, we agreed to review an all grain kit but I got sent an extract kit instead.

No matter – I will review what they sent me. I made a mighty yeast starter with the vial they sent me and it will be ready in plenty of time for the brew session.

We shot a video for the brew session.  I found the kit’s instructions easy to follow and provided a good brewing experience.

Check out this post to see this beer lager in a cold slumber in the beer fridge.

I let this beer lager for a pretty long time. Have you ever had the fear that you let your beer lager too long?

After all this time, the beer was ready to drink in May as planned. Here is our official tasting video:

Overall, this was great experience. It had been a while since we last brewed a kit recipe. We want to thank Midwest Supplies for the opportunity to brew their kit.

Read the original article Midwest Supplies Recipe Kit Review and other Brew Dudes posts.