So, you want to make beer at home but everywhere you read you get the endless list of items to make the perfect home brewing setup? I personally find those lists daunting, so I worked very hard to simplify my initial setup for extract brewing. No long and complicated lists but truly the simplest home brewing setup. So, in order to get everyone the chance to just go make beer … [Read more...]
Wheat Beer Brewing Day
Not too long ago I had a friend from Israel who would be coming to visit us, and prior to his visit we talked about beers and the variety I make so we could have a great victory beer (he came to run the North Downs Way 100 mile race). During the discussion I offered to make a special beer to make the victory beer even better, and he mentioned that his favourite beers are … [Read more...]
Final recipes for the home beers – Light Pale Ale and Black Ale
The first time I decided to make my Black Ale was a couple of years ago, and since then I have been trying to perfect the recipe, adjust it and try and find the right balance - and I think I finally did. Over the last few months I have also been playing with BIAB, focusing on making an IPA but ending up with a very aromatic light Pale Ale, which has become my wife's favourite … [Read more...]
Fuggle vs Golding hops – tasting round
It's been a while since I had a chance to write here and last weekend my wife and I finally had a proper tasting of the Black Ale that was split on hops - each batch got dry hopping with a different hops variety: Golding vs Fuggle hops. The beer itself is my standard Black Ale from an extract. It had the right color, been boiled with Fuggles and resulted with a 3.89% ABV - a … [Read more...]
Running out of storage room
Running out of storage room I'm afraid not much have been happening in brewing terms in my world. After the great enthusiastic time in the holiday season which resulted in brewing 3 batches, I'm out of ingredients, space and bottles. Lately it was a lot of raking, dry hopping and bottling. The split batch hops experiment of Black Ale is now in refrigeration stage, ready for … [Read more...]