Vandal Kolsch all grain home brew
My all-grain Kolsch home brew beer was intended to be a light summer beer with a bit of character. Now, summer beer doesn’t mean no flavor. Summer beer means lighter-bodied, fruity, crisp, and not too bitter. That’s just what I got with this batch, and I even managed to get a decent gravity yield from my all-grain mash after a little studying up on water chemistry. Read the rest of this entry »
Doctor’s Orders Ale
Actually, I don’t know if this was intended to be an English-style ale, but that’s what it makes me think of. My wife gave one of her co-workers a six-pack of my Vandal Kolsch (stay tuned for a blog post on the Kolsch). He sent back a homebrew six-pack that she said was a pale ale. After tasting it, I don’t think of it as a pale ale. To me it seems very English, but I am not sure if I would compare it to a bitter, a brown ale, or a mild ale. I guess I am not enough of a beer expert to say. But I know enough to say that it’s tasty. Read the rest of this entry »
A glass of Crusader Ale
This home brewing recipe ties in with the English beer kick I was on last year. I took a really basic pale ale style and added some English Crisp’s roasted malt to see if it would add a little of that caramel confection feel I like so much in an English bitter beer. It didn’t work out like that, but it was tasty and educational nonetheless. Read the rest of this entry »
Hops and Honey make my beer yummy!
A few months back, I hit an unexpected problem with my day job. I suddenly had a lot of unscheduled time, but for a variety of reasons, I didn’t get much blogging done. Thing is, I still had the motivation to do the brewing, even if I wasn’t writing about it. We all soldier on the best we can, right? So now, I have a backlog of home brew batches to write about. Today its time to talk about Summer Buzz Honey Blonde Ale. I’ve done this before as a malt extract brew, but I tried the idea recently as an all-grain home brew. With 1980’s heavy metal and album-oriented rock in the background, the brew session went something like this. Read the rest of this entry »
I fired up a batch of home brewed beer back in November, throwing in a little apple and a little maple syrup. I haven’t written a blog post about it yet, though I have mentioned it briefly in previous posts. I hit a little snag with my day job, and I haven’t posted in weeks; but I just drank the next to last bottle, so I guess it’s time to write something down for posterity about Apple Crisp Ale. Read the rest of this entry »
Home Brewed Prickly Pear Ale
In the past I have tried to keep the blog on pace with my actual home brewing, writing about my new home brews as I first taste them. Real life has intruded a bit lately, and I am now almost two batches behind. That means it’s time to throw down a few words about the tasting of my Prickly Pear Ale. The recipe has already been posted, so here are some impressions about this novel brew. Read the rest of this entry »
Getting prickly pear fruit off the cactus and into juice form is not for the weak or the timid, but somehow I got it done. The next step was to add the prickly pear juice to an all-grain home brew beer and see what happens. The juice was a lovely, rich, red color, with a flavor that mixed elements of red berries and green vegetables. Read the rest of this entry »
Prickly Pear Fruit
The first question most people would probably ask is why. Why would you want to home brew prickly pear beer? Because it’s there. That is to say, there is a large prickly pear cactus there in the back yard of the house that I’m renting. I’ve been letting the fruit fall on the ground and rot every September for the past three years because I didn’t know what else to do with it. I didn’t even know what prickly pear tastes like, but Charlie Papazian is rather gushy in his praise for home-made prickly pear honey mead in his book, so I figured I would give prickly pear beer a shot. Read the rest of this entry »
I cracked open the first sample of my all-grain home brew effort number 2 just a few days ago. Fortunately, it turned out pretty well, though there were a few missteps along the way. Read the rest of this entry »
All Grain California Pale Ale
Some notes on my first attempt at all-grain home brew. This new friend has a light hop aroma with a woodsy feel to it. A light but creamy head tops a dark caramel body that cloaks itself modestly with the cloudiness that all my home brews show. But, as I usually say about beer clarity, it aesthetically pleasing, but if an otherwise good home brew is too cloudy, drink it from a stoneware mug and forget about it. Read the rest of this entry »
Man Seeks Beer 