Adventures in Homebrewing had a sale going on for their Gingerbread Brown Christmas Spiced Ale. A gingerbread beer sounds delicious, but $20.99 is a bargain regardless. Dan and I both bought one to save on shipping. We both went for the Safale S-04 yeast. We'll both brew them...
Dan had pretty good success adding cold brew to his stout. I thought that might be a good way to hide the inevitable band-aid flavors from my Oatmeal Stout. After work today, I bought a 32oz bottle of cold brew coffee concentrate and a 9oz bag of dark chocolate chips. I used t...
I've always loved wheat beers and more specifically Belgian Whites. Hoegaarden and Franziskaner are top of the list. Give me a beer that goes down like steak and potatoes. Yes, please. Now that I have a few brew days under my belt, I thought I'd give it a try. I ordered a Fran...
When I bottled this beer, the fermenter bucket had an overwhelming smell of clove. I was worried it was going to be undrinkable. Instead, there is barely a hint of clove or cinnamon. Barely a hint of orange. It was boiled in for ten minutes! All I taste is band-aids. After tha...
In brewing this Oatmeal Stout recipe kit, I noticed first that the water turned immediately black when I dropped the grain bag. Second, I noticed the water wasn't deep enough to soak all the grains. I had to keep smooshing it down. The hanging thermometer's long twist tie can...
Not sure why I took so many pictures... I washed up and sanitized all of my bottles and bottling accessories. Along with cleaning up the kitchen, the whole process ends up taking hours. I've always got some music or a podcast going. This bottling day was accompanied by Master...
After work, I "brewed" the apple jack, loosely following the recipe I found on WikiHow. I heated one gallon of apple juice up to 110° and then slowly stirred in five pounds of raw cane ("light brown") sugar. I cooled it all down in the sink in an ice bath, then added that and...
For the apple jack, I ordered a pack of Safale S-04 yeast from Amazon, because I have it on good authority that it makes the best cider. I also picked up five gallons of apple juice at the grocery store, along with five pounds of raw cane sugar. I found an apple jack recipe on...
I ordered an Oatmeal Stout recipe from Adventures in Homebrewing with Safale S-04 yeast. I've always liked Highland Brewing's Oatmeal Porter, so I thought I'd give it a go. Also, as an inspiration, Dan just brewed a stout recipe. His plan was to add a homemade cold press coffe...
Holy moly. This beer is explosive. Apparently, I didn't get my 80/20 priming sugar measurement correct, because this batch is so much more carbonated than the first gallon of Backyard Pilsner. It's like champagne. After a couple of days, I ended up moving the whole batch into...