It’s been a bit of time since my last post. Work and personal stuff picked up a ton in the last 2 months. However, despite all this business I’ve still made time here and there for brewing beer for a chill Sunday afternoon activity. In a post a few months ago, I talked about how I planned a whole trip to Berlin to try Berliner Weisse beers. Since my first Berliner beer batch, I’ve been testing and tweaking to get things just right. I thought I’d share an updated version of my recipe where I did a more even split of the grain bill and added Hallertauer hops instead of Sterling. The biggest ch ..read more

I’m a big fan of fruited beers. If there is a fruited beer on the menu, I’ll definitely try it. My main issue with fruited beers is either the don’t really have a strong fruit flavor or end up tasting like a sugar bomb. I never made a beer with actual fruit in it (I’ve mostly used extracts so far), so I chatted some fellow brewers and researched and landed on trying out adding frozen fruit to the fermenter. Knowing my blond ale provided a fairly good base for fruit and needing to made room in my freezer, Berry Blonde was born. Why frozen berries? Well, I’m kind of lazy and in general from my ..read more

As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve brewed mostly straightforward wheat ales to get my footing in the homebrewing world. Now that I’m a year in, I figured I’d expand and try some new things (especially now that I think I have a handle on how to better adapt recipes for small batch brewing). I love a good Belgian Wit beer, so I figured why not give that a try. Coriander spices, orange essence, and peppery notes takes me back to late summer nights drinking Blue Moon or Allagash White around a bon fire in the fall. Something about the warm spices pairs well with fall weather so seemed like a good ..read more

Did I tell you about the time I planned a whole trip around going to Berlin to try Berliner Weeisse beers. Oh, I didn’t. Well, I did in 2018. To my surprise, not many breweries offered the sour namesake beer. If I had a time machine and went back to the early 19th century, Berliner Weisse beers were the most popular alcoholic drink in Berlin. However, this type of beer fell out of style.  As craft brewing took off, sour beers started to make a come back and thus the Berliner Weisse made its triumphant return to taps around the world. If there’s a Berliner Weisse on the menu or in the be ..read more

I know it’s been a bit since my last recipe post and for good reason. My cat buddy of 13 years passed away in late February. Shortly after that we picked up our lives and moved 1,000 miles across the country. After all of these changes, it’s about time I got back into brewing and sharing recipes. So here we go! In case you couldn’t tell I love sour beers. Before I moved, I bought some brewing supplies and…. accidently ordered 12 pounds of acidulated malt (ooops!) so needless to say I’ll be making a lot of sour beers in the future.  I’ve also been testing out different ratios of acidulat ..read more

I love sour beers and learning how to make them became a big driver in my desire to learn how to make beer. I started reading about the souring process, and it seemed pretty complicated. My local brew store posted a photo of WildBrew Philly Sour yeast, so I read a bit more about it. At a high level, it sours the beer like adding Lactobacillus would. However, you don’t need to do the separate kettle souring step in your brew process. You add it to the wort at the end of your brew day, and let it sit for 2 weeks to ferment as usual. Easy peasy! The yeast does ferment at a slightly higher tempe ..read more

I didn’t really give much thought to beer bottle labels until I bottled my first batch. Everything was in there and it dawned on me–how do I know what’s in here? Since I have swing top bottles, I couldn’t put info on a bottle cap… so I needed to figure out a quick solution. For a while my make shift beer bottle labels were pieces of packing tape. It worked OK at the time. Then I ran out of packing tape and switched to scotch tape. This worked OK as well, but quickly became a pain in the butt to peel the tape off. I needed a better beer label solution. I spent some time looking around online ..read more

The Vierling in Marquette, Michigan, makes a delicious blueberry wheat ale I often dream about. Served in a cold glass with fresh blueberries in it, it’s certainly a favorite of mine. I mean, what’s better than a serving of fruit in a tasty beer? I wanted to make version of this beer for a while, but I didn’t have all the wheat beer ingredients I needed. All I had around were some bits of a kolsch and wheat ale recipe, so I decided to use some Saaz hops and U-05 from my wheat ale and use the leftover Pilsner Malt. The mash up turned out beautifully and thus this blueberry kolsch beer recipe ..read more

I have a confessions… I love sour beers. I’ll travel far and wide to try all sorts of sour beers. From raspberry chocolate sours to margarita sours, I’m all in on those tart, delicious beverages. When I started learning how to brew, I wanted to learn how to make sour style beers. The process seemed a bit intimidating for a really new brewer, but then a simple gose beer recipe came along and saved the day! Most sour beer recipes require the addition of lactobacillus or pediococcus to work their magic in the wort for a few days before you can finish the boil and add any type of additional hops ..read more

With one gallon brewing growing in popularity, more home brewing stores and sites started offering one gallon beer recipe kits. With so many options out there, how do you know which one to pick. Well, no worries! I’ve tried several one gallon beer recipe kits and here’s the low down on them. Northern Brewer Recipe Directions: Easy Brewing/Boil Time: ~60 mins (Depending on kit) Price: $17.99-$27.99 Would Purchase From Here Again: Probably, but not soon due to lack of variety The first few one gallon beer recipe kits I ordered came from Northern Brewer. Honestly, I purchased from them beca ..read more