Cant wait to see the finished product Mark!


Brewed a Weizenbier recipe from Brewers best last night, I need to start coming up with my own recipes....I have much to learn.

the thing that helped me learn how to develop recipes most was fine-tuning a beer to my complete satisfaction. My buddy who taught me to brew came up with a real straight-forward IPA recipe (a 1994 IPA, not a 2010 IPA) and we tweaked it about 4-5 times until I loved it.

You can find recipes easily enough. Find the common denominators and use them for the skeleton then flesh it out with your own ideas. The most you lose is the cost of ingredients and an afternoon. However, if you keep things clean, I highly doubt you'll end up with undrinkable beer.

You can always bounce ideas of folks here. Shucks, I'll probably do that sooner than later myself!

Just got my kegerator up and running. The first keg purchased was a 1/6th of Dog Fish Head 90 Minute IPA. Yummy.

Same keg I bought when I got mine up and running.

if you are ever in tempe, az during the first few days of the month, go to four peaks brewery and order the aged barley wine they have. ****ing amazing. they age it for a year and have a limited supply that only lasts a few days. also there ipa was a staple (and again really good) while i worked there. the beers there have won numerous awards

Nom nom nom, I love 90 minute.

Opened a bottle of Scaldis Prestige last night that I'd been storing for a year and a half...yummy.

doing my part...

They call it "weizen pils." It's got a decent hop flavor and the malt opens up if you give it a minute or two. PLUS they give 75 cent to Gulf Clean Up too!

That's funny, I just had one of those this afternoon. My first impression was that it was too hoppy - good, but not greatly balanced - but I enjoyed the second half of the bomber more. I wasn't sure if it was just that I'd had some beer and so liked having more, or if it was something else.

Still not sure if I'd buy another. Generally, I think they make good beer, especially for the price. If there's not something I want to try for the first time, and I'm not in the mood for Stone, I pretty much default to Abita. I really like their Andygator, and at $5/bomber, it's a great "everyday indulgence."

LOL...as I was reading this post I had The Great Food Truck Race on and the girl on there (Vietnamese) was explaining what nom nom nom meant. Amesome coincendence.

as a side note, if anyone in the thread is from the phoenix area and wants to go to papago and drink some good brews, pm me.

Brewed 20 gallons yesterday ... 5g Newcastle clone, 10g Raspberry Brown, 5g Pumpkin Ale ... very excited for the results, everything went very well and all carboys displaying signs of active fermentation ... averaged just a shade under 80% efficiency

I think I'll be shifting my brew days to 10g only, and two batches back to back ... the time the 2nd batch adds to the brew day is 1.5 hours max

how much food coloring did you add?

Well I have ****ed around and gotten buzzed tonight. Was going to have a beer while I replaced my heatsink, but that heatsink was a PITA, so I had 6. And now I'm here.

This thread is pretty awesome. I've only recently decided that I want to get more experimental in my beer drinking, so I'm in the right place. Problem is, there is no selection where I'm from.

So, does anyone know of a good place to buy beer online? Something with a good selection that won't break the bank? Is there any such thing?

P.S.



I know nothing about beer. Does this chart rank beer from lightest to darkest?

Anyone in the Atlanta area who is into beer should check out the Brick Store Pub. It's ranked the 2nd best Belgian Beer pub in the US and in the top 5 in the world (they're also the #1 consumer of St. Bernardus 12 in the US). I've spent a small fortune there over the years, but have been rewarded with many a'rare beer from their cellar full of aging Westvleteren 12s. Recently got a year and a half old Midnight Depth Charge from Terrapin as a gift from their beer coordinator. Also, send me a PM if you're interested in trading beers. I'm looking for Pliny the Elder, The Abyss, and Dark Lord (among many others). Or if you'd just be interested in grabbing a Belgian brew and whining about bad beats.

basically the lower it is on the chart the darker the style tends to be.

None. http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f67/aber...lone-ag-36912/

I was just crackin' on Newcastle; a reliable source tells me they're making their beer brown with additives.

I have read that Newcastle Brown is a blend of two different beers but didn't know they used coloring.

Brewed a batch of Dubbel this weekend. Chimay Red inspired and used the cake from a low grav Belgian Pale Ale, Wyeast 1214 which is allegedly the Chimay strain.

Also emptied and cleaned the keezer...which is always fun...but still better than all that bottling!

"I got the base clone recipe from BYO. Problem was that their clone recipe called for brewing two separate beers and then blending them in the same tradition that the NewCastle brewery uses. To make things more complicated, it called for a 3 gallons of one of the beers and two gallons of the other, so simply mixing the ingredient lists and dividing in half wasn’t an option."

ChicagoRy,

TR? Did I miss it?

Last night I had the following;

21st Century Watermelon Wheat-not hateful but far from great.

21st Century IPA-much better than the Watermelon, would definitely drink again.

Ommegang Hennepin Saison-have had this before but this was the first time from a bottle. Loved it even more than previous draft experiences, which were good.

I'm really, really close to pulling the trigger on a home brew kit and giving it a try. People have about 24 hours to talk me into it or out of it.

Seriously, is it worth the hassle? I enjoy doing things just to do them, but how's the beer? I'm always scared that people think it's better than it actually is because they sunk a month into making it.

Also, why do I keep reading about bottle capping failures? Do the caps not seal on a regular basis?

Lastly, and this is one I really don't get. From what I'm reading, sanitation is very important. Sanitize, sanitize, sanitize. But beer's been around a whole lot longer than sanitary practices. Why is it so important now when it couldn't have been hundreds of years ago? Did beer just suck back then?

For me, it isn't a hassle. It's an afternoon, or morning, or whatever, spent outside doing something fun and interesting. After that day, in a couple weeks, it turns into a fun and gratifying drink.

As with poker, "it depends" how things turn out. In general, though, even first time brewers will make a decent batch. Unlike as little as ten years ago, a homebrewer today can buy the same yeast as a pro brewer, as well as the same malt and the same hops. Brewing itself is a pretty forgiving process, so given quality ingredients, its not hard for a novice to make a pretty good batch of beer.

I'm not sure what you mean about capping failures. The caps, cappers, and bottles around today are pretty idiot proof.

For your last question, I'm not sure anyone knows. Sanitization is critical because freshly brewed wort is the perfect incubator for just about any critter, and the only one we want in there is our strain of yeast. Beer yeast, though, is a pretty hardy fungus, and has advantages like alcohol tolerance on its side. I'm not positive, but from memory I think that once you get to 2% ABV, the yeast will win out over most other organisms. Did beers from 1800 suck? I dunno, but I bet most weren't as clean as today's beers, and I bet a lot did suck compared to today's beers.. Some historical records clearly describe bacterial infections as part of the flavor of a beer, and some of those flavors actually have become hallmarks of the beer style.

In a previous post, you asked about websites that shipped beers, because your local options are limited. Often, people think that homebrewers are out to save money by brewing their own instead of saving money. Given the time and equipment investments, it takes a long time to make beer more cheaply than you can buy it. However, its much easier to make beers that you wouldn't otherwise be able to experience. I've never had a macadamia coconut porter, but I could make one tomorrow if I wanted to try it out. I've had Russian River's Pliny the Elder, but I can't buy it in TN. I could brew up a clone tomorrow if I wanted, and maybe my first attempt - or two - wouldn't be spot on, but it would still be a pretty good beer, and I know I could nail it down if I wanted to.

Homebrewing isn't for everyone. I know people that have given it a shot and decided they'd rather just buy commercial beer. But its not a hobby that takes a bunch of money or time to figure out if you like it. Your first brew will run you maybe $100 and an afternoon. Two weeks later you'll spend another two hours, and then two weeks after that you'll have a pretty good idea if your initial $100 was an investment in a lifelong hobby or the most expensive two cases of beer you'll ever buy.

Drunkon some good beer.Just want to point out that I thought that lindemanss guize lambic is pretty ****ing great beer. I havent had to many lambics because im not like a fruit beer guy but it's pretty amazing. It's very sour, tarty, smooth and yet has a lot of nice flavors to it and a nice finish.