There are friends and family of mine that can go years without speaking and just pick up right where they left off. I'm definitely one of those. I don't need constant updates. In many ways, this makes me a bad or terrible friend and/or relative. In some ways, it makes me the best. I have … Continue reading Where to begin….at the beginning maybe.
Category: Rant
I want to start out this short rant of mine with a very simple statement. You want to sell your brewery to another brewery? Go for it. I don't care. Basically no one should unless you own stock in that brewery. Otherwise, this is just craft beer's social justice warriors not grasping that breweries are … Continue reading Owning and Operating a Brewery: Part 3 of 1000 – Navigating Conglomeration
This is part two in my ongoing series about my experience, so far, owning a brewery. Part one defined my brewery, the format and style of brewery it is and delved shallowly into the fundamental basics of being a contract brewer. There will be a lot of posts in this series, but this post is … Continue reading Owning and Operating a Brewery: Part 2 of 1000 – The Cost of Making Beer
I've stated in a few posts over the past few years on this blog that I started a brewery. That wasn't bullshit and it was on of the large reasons why I haven't had time to post to this blog as much as I wanted to. A few months back I decided that I didn't … Continue reading Owning and Operating a Brewery: Part 1 of 1000
Forward This post is about brewing history, specifically German brewing history and how my ancestry touches the edge of this history. I've been writing a post about the 500th anniversary of Reinheitsgebot 1516, and I hope that will be up in a month or so but this post isn't about that. This is just a … Continue reading Beer Pendatry #4: Beer is in my blood
A few months back a friend of mine, Mike (you may know him as the mad fermentationist), asked if I wanted to assist him in writing an article for Brew Your Own magazine (BYO) about homebrewing with Lactobacillus (here is the table of contents for that issue). After going back and forth a few times, we … Continue reading Beer Microbiology – Lactobacillus pH experiment
In the ever increasing trend to treat beer more like wine, there are now dozens of suggestions online for beer / food pairings. There are some serious and useful (don't get me wrong, I like the food pairing stuff) graphics from places like craftbeer.com to help with this. As far as I can tell, the way to … Continue reading Beer Pedantry #3: Beer Flavor Pairings (science based rant)
Happy Spring everyone, it is finally spring and the long winter is over. Of course on the first day of spring here in D.C. we got some snow. Go figure. I've had a lot going on lately with home life and work life and sort of let this blog go to seed for more than … Continue reading Physiology of Flavors in Beer – Lactobacillus Species
I am a microbiologist by trade, I have a Ph.D. and have been brewing for over 10 years at this point. A large portion of this blog is dedicated to my own homebrew efforts but sprinkled throughout are articles like this one, where I isolate a biological or chemical aspect of the beer and explain … Continue reading Beer Microbiology – What is a pellicle?
As a working scientist, I really want to get deep into the science of brewing, especially the microbiology of brewing. Throughout the life of this blog, who knows how long that will be, I want to sprinkle in articles with high resolution details about the organisms that we, as brewers, work with on a daily … Continue reading Physiology of Flavors in Beer – Saccharomyces Species
A Ph.D. in Beer - A Study of Beer and Fermentation Science 