Dec 182013
 

Although we’re seeing it in stores more and more, as compared to wine and beer, mead is a little known fermented beverage using honey as the source for fermentable sugars.  Like wine, mead can be sweet or dry.  You can choose to leave it unflavored or doctor it up with fruit or spices.

Is five gallons enough honey?

Is five gallons enough honey?

While mead requires more patience than beer, it is surprisingly easy to make and requires less equipment.  It makes for a shorter brew day as well.  You can put together a batch in a couple of hours.

Here is the procedure that I use to make a five gallon batch of great mead:

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 Posted by at 8:20 am
Dec 032013
 

Many homebrewers start brewing with extracts.  It provides a great way for new brewers to get their feet wet while keeping the equipment and time investment lower.  I have written more about the benefits of this here.

Recently I’ve spent some time helping out some non-brewer friends that are working on a product offering for beginning homebrewers. I’ll be posting more about that as it becomes reality. As a part of this they wanted to give  brewing a try to make an extract batch of beer.

2013-11-23 13.39.21

After they acquired a basic equipment kit, a Lemon Coriander Weiss Extract Beer Kit, and some StarSan we got together on a Saturday a bit more than a week ago. We wanted to make the recipe with little more than the contents of the beginner’s kit so we decided on a partial wort boil on the kitchen stove.

Following the example of some friends who make some very fine extract beer and given that the beer is supposed to be rather light in color I decided that boiling all the extract for the full sixty minutes was not the thing to do. Continue reading »

 Posted by at 7:19 am