17Mar/120
Happy St. Patrick’s Day: A Toast to the Stout
Posted by Dusten
St. Patrick’s day is upon us and I would like to celebrate by giving a shout out to the Irish Stout. Though not born in Ireland, popular brands like Guinness and Murphy’s have branded the stout as Irish in many minds. This dark roasty beer will be downed in excess today whether alone or with it’s cousin (distant and twice removed) the Irish Cream Liqueur (Bailey’s, St. Brendan’s) in an Irish Car Bomb.
Origins
The stout originated with the porter in London in the early to mid 1700’s. The term “stout” was used as an adjective meaning strong. Stout was used to describe any style of beer being a strong beer. It wasn’t until the early 1800’s that the term stout for the beer we know today became a popular term commercially.
Early versions were made prior to the introduction of pale malt which was invented in 1817 which would have given it a more brown than black look. Due to taxation on grains, a lot of brewers used burnt sugar or burnt molasses instead of brown or patent malt (when it became available). Once patent malt became popular the malt bill for the stout changed from mostly brown malt to mostly light malt and small percentage of patent malt. The patent gives the stout the burnt, roasty character typified by the stout.
For some 150 years the stout/porter reigned as the king of beers. However, eventually the pale ale and then the pilzner took over. Today many varieties of the stout exist: Dry Stout, Sweet Stout, Oatmeal Stout, Foreign Extra Stout, American Stout, Russian Imperial Stout with variations only limited by the imagination of the brewers.
25Feb/120
Home Brewing Apps
Posted by Dusten
Here is a list of some useful Android apps and PC programs dedicated to helping the home brewer. Apps range from simple calculators to recipe storage and inventory management.. I have sorted the apps by platform first and price second. I haven’t been able to try all of them so if you have some personal experiences with any of them or use one that is not on this list please let us know! Right now we only have PC and Android apps (since that is what I have) but I’ll look into the iPhone/iPad apps and update the post.
Desktop
Free
- QBrew - QBrew is an open-source recipe formulator along the lines of BeerSmith and Promash. It has less functionality but has most of what you would want and has the ability to export to BeerXML, PDF, .txt or .html.
- Brewer’s Friend – Alright, this isn’t an app to download but it is a great resource with a lot of calculators and ability to create recipes on this site.
- Brew Target – Another open-source program built for Linux, Mac, and Windows. Supports BeerXML.
Paid
- BeerSmith– This one is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. This is an all in one program that has anything you can possibly want from a home brewing program. There are calculators and recipe formulation. Also, you can keep your inventory with price and cost and create shopping lists within the program. It has an internal database of hops, grain and yeast with all of their stats (IBU, SRM, etc). You can download it for a free 21 day trial to see how you like it.
- ProMash– Here is another program that is easy to use and has loads of functionality. It doesn’t look as “new age” as BeerSmith2 but it is still really nice. It is quick to put in recipes, but sometimes it is hard to navigate. You can download a trial version of this as well which is the full version but only allows you to save 3 recipes and 9 brew sessions.
- BeerAlchemy – Available for Mac. Suggested by bifftradwell on reddit who noted it has “…a much better interface than BeerSmith, and instructions are better-formatted as well.” Available as a demo version for full unrestricted 30 day use.
Android
Free
Note -There are a lot of calculator apps so I won’t list them all but I’ll try to list a few of the better rated ones.
- Brewzor Calc – Has a ton of different calculations. I’m not sure about the color estimate but it’s been noted that it’s nearly impossible to denote an SRM as an RGB.
- Brewzor Pro – This is the beta, so it might not be free forever. While it is pick it up in the Market and save all your recipes to your phone, generate a shopping list and keep notes all at your finger tips.
- HBC Homebrew Tools – Another recipe saving tool and has a built in hops timer.
- BrewR – Also saves recipes. A little lower tech than Brewzor and HBC but still does the job.
Paid
- Mr. Malty– I use Mr. Malty all the time but I’m not sure why anyone would buy an app for it when you can get the same service online for free. If you do though you’ll be getting a good service I’m sure.
- Price – $4.95
- Mash ~ For All-Grain Brewing- Strike calculator for all-grain brewing.
- Brewdroid- Brew droid is a beer recipe formulation program and home brew support app.
19Feb/120
Brewing Terminology – Chill Haze
Posted by Alex
Chill Haze - A cloudiness that appears in beer when it gets cold. It is a result of proteins and polyphenols combining as a result of hydrogen bonding. The haze disappears as the beer warms up.
12Feb/120
Brewing Terminology – Attenuation
Posted by Alex
Attenuation - The percent of sugars consumed by yeast during fermentation.
6Feb/120
RE: Learn to Brew: Your First Home Brewery
Posted by Alex
For those of you who have read our Learn to Brew posts, you know that there are a lot of different ways to get started. Well, lucky for you I saw a great deal on a hombrewing kit from Midwest Supplies: Homebrewing and Winemaking.
30Jan/120
Brewing Terminology – Fruity/Estery
Posted by Alex
Fruity/Estery - Flavor and aroma of bananas, strawberries, apples, or other fruit; from high temperature fermentation and certain yeast strains.
29Jan/120
How to: First Extract Brew
Posted by Dusten
If you have been following with us from Your First Home Brewery, you now have everything you need to brew your first batch of extract beer. While it is true that you can’t get quite the range of recipes and fine touch with your brews using extract as apposed to all-grain, the quality of extract these days allows homebrewers to make some amazing beer with the time saving ease of malt extract.
Malt extract is the reduced and refined sugars extracted from barley grain and provided in either a dry (DME – Dry Malt Extract) or liquid (LME –Liquid Malt Extract) form. Many varieties exist ranging from light, amber or dark to Belgian and Bavarian styles. You may pay more for extract than equivalent grain but you save hours of preparing and processing the grains to get the sugars out.