|
|
|
| ...this weekend we spent our second of two days brewing up an all-grain Wee Heavy. Wee Heavy is a very serious Scotch Ale with an original gravity hovering between 1.090 and 1.100 - in layman's terms, the amount of fermentable sugars in this wort is extremely high... |
|
|
|
Posted by Rick Young at
| | | |
|
| One of the motivations I have for putting this blog together is to help make brewing more accessible to folks. Sometimes, that means including a whole lot of details about my process that experienced brewers may find boring or redundant. It may be wishful thinking, but I like to imagine that I'll one day have some regular readers. I also imagine that as a regular reader, I would be frustrated to wade through the same descriptions of regular processes with every post. In the interest of brevity, here's my current standard all-grain brewing process. From now on, I'll just link here for folks looking for more details... |
|
|
|
Posted by Rick Young at
| | | |
|
| Well, it's update time! As both of my regular readers will recall, in this entry I happened upon a free and very expired beer kit. I "brewed" this beer under utterly detestable conditions. The beer's been in the keg since then, and while I've had a taste here and there, today was the first time I have sat down with an entire pint of this beer... |
|
|
|
Posted by Rick Young at
| | | |
|
| As I've been slowly making the transition to all-grain brewing, I've come to appreciate how complex recipe formulation can be. As of late, I've been using a much recommended book, Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels. Many people told me that this book literally changed their brewing style and ability overnight, and I dismissed them. Every word is true - this book makes basic brewing science accessible to all. I like it so much I may make a separate post about it it at some point. At any rate, I recently used the book to formulate a recipe for my first fruit beer to use real fruit, rather than a fruit extract... |
|
|
|
Posted by Rick Young at
| | | |
|
| It's been a long time since I've posted anything here. There's a lot in the offing right now, so there should be more posts soon. From the start, I wanted this site to be useful and relevant to brewers and potential brewers. I don't want to garbage it up with lots of personal posts. I have livejournal for that. I also want to keep the integrity high. There are a lot of brewing sites on the web, and they cover most everything imaginable. Here, I want to highlight some things I'm working on that you don't see every day, share some insights that have made my life as a brewer more interesting, and perhaps point out some external sites that I've found enteraining and informative. The site will grow slowly, to be sure, but I hope that the end result will be a site that is low in garbage, and acutally worth visiting. Now that I've gone on a bit about crap... |
|
|
|
Posted by Rick Young at
| | | |
|
| I'm a gadget-fanatic. I love constantly trying to increase the amount of "cool stuff" I have to brew beer with. To my mind, most of this stuff can help increase the complexity and quality of my batches. Even if a few of these items don't actually allow me to make better beer, I feel like they help me to understand the process better - plus they're fun to have. That said, like many brewers, I started out with liquid malt extract and a plastic bucket - my first fermenter was a pickle-bucket from the local deli. I made beer that was very drinkable, and while my palate has evolved with my capabilities, I think that extract beer made via single-stage fermentation in a plastic fermenter can be good beer. While my time and money have been helping me to migrate slowly toward complexity in my home setup, I've been interested for some time in finding out how far in the other direction I can go... |
|
|
|
Posted by Rick Young at
| | | |
|
**NOTE - THIS BLOG IS NO LONGER UPDATED, AND WILL BE ELIMINATED BEFORE TOO LONG. THE BLOG IS NOW AT www.salvagebeer.com/blog THANKS!**
Today, I want to point out what I think is really a cheap, yet classy step forward for the homebrewer. My local homebrew supply place didn't carry these when I started brewing, so when I moved and started shopping with a new supplier, I thought I was looking at alien technology. So simple, yet such an improvement on what I was using - the Drilled Universal Carboy Bung!
This baby is simple, easy to use, and virtually eliminates all of the problems inherent in solid and drilled solid bungs and stoppers. These suckers are VERY difficult to accidentally pop all the way into your carboy. The tapered stopper means the same stopper can be used in your 5, 6, 6.5, and 7 gallon carboys - no more buying by number, or looking for the right stopper for the right carboy. Finally, and the very most exciting to me - these stoppers will make a good tight seal on wet carboys. If you don't use the hollow-type universal carboy bungs yet, make the change. The simplicity and low cost make this a no-brainer.
**NOTE - THIS BLOG IS NO LONGER UPDATED, AND WILL BE ELIMINATED BEFORE TOO LONG. THE BLOG IS NOW AT www.salvagebeer.com/blog THANKS!**
|
|
|
|
Posted by Rick Young at
| | | |
|
**NOTE - THIS BLOG IS NO LONGER UPDATED, AND WILL BE ELIMINATED BEFORE TOO LONG. THE BLOG IS NOW AT www.salvagebeer.com/blog THANKS!**
So begins the creation of my blog. I hope it will serve a number of purposes as it moves ahead. First, I feel pretty sure that readers of my livejournal aren't interested in hearing me go into great depth about beer, yet inviting folks who's main interest may be beer and brewing to read about my fiance's wisdom teeth extrations doesn't feel right either. Second, I hope that the blog will serve to help guide me on my path toward a life as a professional brewer. Third - as I improve as a brewer and get closer to reaching my goals, I hope that this blog will help others walking similar paths to get where they're headed.
Reaching goals is a funny thing, and one that my personality time does not innately mesh with. Left to my natural tendencies, I tend to make a lot of goals, get partway there, then lose interest, or - more accurately - get excited about NEW goals and leave the old ones behind. I feel that this is not my typical M.O. anymore, but rather, the way that my mind works. I've worked hard through the years to get to a place where I can be goal-oriented, and I can make consistent progress toward something. Believe it or not, brewing helps.
The goal of making an excellent batch of beer isn't always an easy one to reach. While anyone can learn, and with attention and some learning, most folks can make a tasty beer, it's not like popping dinner in the microwave or even making soup from scratch. Beer takes patience, attention, and different kinds of care at different times during it's growth. There's no immediate gratification, and even if you like your end product, it takes a special kind of mindfulness to make it the same way a second time. I feel a bit blathery without any real content to share, but welcome. I hope this page turns out to be both a teaching and learning tool for everyong who visits.
-Rick
**NOTE - THIS BLOG IS NO LONGER UPDATED, AND WILL BE ELIMINATED BEFORE TOO LONG. THE BLOG IS NOW AT www.salvagebeer.com/blog THANKS!**
|
|
|
|
Posted by Rick Young at
| | | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
