I am auditioning additional saison yeasts for my house blend. I've been trying different home brews by people I trust with different blends and harvesting yeast, or getting yeast, from different brewers in order to expand my options. I have a few promising leads for future beers but the first two I wanted to check … Continue reading Recipe #18: Galaxy Saison with Dupont Yeast (Batch #2014.15)
Tag: Brewing
Spring has sprung and what better way to celebrate than starting a new brewing project and make some flower beers! This will be the first in a series of flower beers made this spring / summer...hopefully they will all turn out well. This is the only one out of the four or five where I … Continue reading Recipe #17: Hibiscus Brett Saison (Batch #2014.08)
Authors Note: I try to post a recipe a week (or a post about brewing once a week) but this week I'm posting two, this being the second behind the Chinook and Cascade IPA disaster. I'm doing this to minimize the impact of that bad beer post on this blog and to reduce my backlog … Continue reading Sour Program — Part 2: A Blended Sour
I started this blog a few months ago but I've been brewing for about 10 years. I wanted to start the blog so I could keep better track of what beers I'm making and to force me to try more experiments...push my abilities and contact other brewers to refine my technique. This post isn't going … Continue reading Brettanomyces clausseni Ale
This post is about beer, but in addition, this post is about the microbiology of beer, specifically the microbiology of the genus Saccharomyces. I am a microbiologist by trade, so there will be several posts throughout this blog concerning the organisms responsible for the production of beer and other fermentation products. This is the first … Continue reading Saccharomyces species experiment #1: Paradoxus Ale (Recipe #14, Batch #2014.07)
I returned to the experimental hop series of beers and brewed this blankly named hop "Lemon Zest"...I wonder what it tastes like. So far, these beers have been great. I brewed the Azacca hop saison and the Experimental Pine Fruit (both amazing in my opinion) and this one brings me to my half way point … Continue reading Experimental Hop Series #3: Lemon Zest Saison (Recipe #13, Batch #2014.09)
I am very excited to bring you the first of several (hoping many) posts about brewing beer on production scale systems. That's right; I convinced several local breweries to let me peek behind the curtain and be an assistant brewer on a batch of beer. The goal here is to be present from start to … Continue reading Brewing at DC Brau Brewing Company (Grain-to-glass collection #1)
Another hoppy saison recipe from a blog about hoppy saisons...at least they are good! This a slight departure and a sign of things to come: this is not a single hop saison (all right, none of them have been single hop saisons but they all showcased one particular hop). This beer has late additions of … Continue reading Recipe #12: Mosaic and Simcoe Saison (Batch #2014.06)
This is one of those beers that straddles the line between saison and "Belgian IPA". I have a considerable amount of citra left so I have to a make a few beers, I'd hate to waste it, plus it is one of my favorite hops. I am not exactly sure which harvest these hops were … Continue reading Recipe #11: Citra Saison – a rebrew, sort of (Bacth #2014.05)
One of the more popular style of beer these days is anything "wild" or "sour". But these beers are not new, in fact they are some of the oldest styles of beers still in production. Before the days of microbiology and sanitation, and pure culture, likely all beers were "wild" or at least contaminated. I'm … Continue reading Sour Program — Part 1: Unblended Lambic #1 (Cantillon dregs)
A Ph.D. in Beer - A Study of Beer and Fermentation Science 