It's Time to "Begin Brewing"

There is a lot to learn and know about brewing beer. I've been doing it for a few years now, and I definitely don't consider myself an expert. I've made mistakes that required me to toss out a batch of beer, mistakes that resulted in a beer that didn't meet my expectations, and mistakes that cost me some extra money. If you're interested in brewing your own beer but feel like you have a lot to learn, I understand your concern and I built this blog to help folks like you. I want to help you make good choices of equipment, pick recipes that challenge you but don't exceed your skill level, show you how to do some basic things in brewing, and hopefully help you avoid the mistakes I made early on.

You might see posts like these in the coming weeks:

Articles about brewing terminology like wort, flocculate, sparge, and attenuation
Selecting the right equipment to start out
"Brew along" posts showing a beer from recipe selection through bottling

Beer recipes that are easy for a beginner to follow and produce a good beer
Demonstrations of common brewing techniques
Getting good deals on equipment and ingredients
Alternatives to the more-expensive brewing equipment
Links to other good sites on brewing
Reviews of books about brewing
Reviews of brewing equipment
Different grain types and how they change a beer's flavor
Pellet vs. whole hops

Those are just a few things off the top of my head. If you have suggestions for posts you'd like to see, let me know in the comments.

While we're on the subject of comments, I totally encourage them - provided that your comment is related to the post and constructive in some way. Can you correct a mistake or misunderstanding in my post? Do you have additional information (or a good link) to share on that topic? Do you have a solution to a problem I'm describing? Do you just want to say "thanks" for the article? Go ahead.

The first "real" post will appear in about 24 hours. Posts should appear approximately weekly after that, or more often when I can write them. I hope you'll be back, and share this site with your home brewing friends. Thanks!

Comments

Yellow Label Angel Yeast vs. Typical Brewing Yeast

I currently have my second batch of rice wine fermenting with the "magical" yellow-label Angel Yeast from China, and wanted to share some of the more unusual aspects of using it. If you've never seen or used this yeast, I suspect you're not alone. It ships in a 500 gram package that looks like this: What makes it "yellow label" is that yellow box you see in the upper left corner of the package. This implies that it's yeast for distilling (though you do not need to have a still or distill the output to use it). As I understand it, inside the package is a mix of yeast and other materials which will convert starch into sugar and directly ferment it, without the need for a traditional mash step. This can radically shorten your brewing time. For my most-recent batch of rice wine, I heated 3 gallons of water to 155F, poured it over 13+ pounds of uncooked rice straight out of the bag, let that soak for an hour, rehydrated some of this yeast in warm water,

2021 Batch 1 - Rice Wine made with Yellow Label Angel Yeast

I've become a big fan of the Still It channel on YouTube. About a month ago, Jesse posted a video about how he made rice wine using nothing more than water, rice, and a purported "magic" yeast from China called Yellow Label Angel Yeast. Perhaps even more amazing was the fact that he was able to make the rice wine without gelatinizing or mashing the rice. He shows three batches in the video. One was made by cooking the rice before adding the yeast mixture. Another was made by adding uncooked rice to boiling water. The last was made by adding uncooked rice to room temperature water. All three fermented out to roughly the same amount of alcohol in about two weeks. He was amazed by this, as was I. I resolved to buy some of this magical yeast from Aliexpress.com and try it out. In the Still It video, the rice is ground up in the grain mill into smaller chunks to make it easier for the enzymes in the yellow label yeast to convert and ferment. I'm changing this up s

Making Alton Brown's Immersion Cooker Fennel Cardamon Cordial

Alton Brown's "Good Eats" series is my favorite cooking show. I love the way he explains the "why" and "how" of a recipe in detail, which helps you understand (if things don't go right) where you may have gone wrong. In his episode on immersion cooking (also known as sous vide), he shows you how to make a cordial in an hour using an immersion cooker. It took me a while to locate all the ingredients here in Columbus. I ended up getting the fennel and vodka at Giant Eagle. The cardamom seeds, pods, and anise stars came from Amazon. The Fennel fronds and bulb came from Trader Joe's at Easton. Ingredients 32 ounces of 80-proof vodka 2 cups of fennel fronds 10 green cardamom pods 3 ounces granulated sugar 1 tablespoon fennel seeds 1 teaspoon black cardamom seeds 1 whole star anise Begin by loading your sous vide vessel with hot water and set your immersion cooker to 140F. While the cooker is getting up to that temperature, meas

Begin Brewing!

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