So far I can best describe 2024 as painfully busy. After my position with Muntons Malt was eliminated at the end of 2022, I started working as a consultant for one of Muntons' distributors Pro Brew Supply. Ironically most of what I have been selling for the past year has been yeast, although we will be making a push to sell more malt in my territory which is Virginia up to Maine. I have been supplementing my income with a variety of side hustles which have been consuming my weekends for the past four months or so. Behold, the Jar of Destiny! This has left very little time to drink bee ..read more

When I volunteered to pour at Ales over ALS this year there were two things I needed to do. The first was to brew. I managed to do that successfully. The second was to dispense the beer that I had brewed. I still owned the jockey box I purchased for my first Ales over ALS in 2015. The problem was that the jockey box had not been used or seen the light of day since Ales over ALS in 2019. Whenever I brought homebrew anywhere out of the house over the past four years, I just filled growlers off one of my taps. The jockey box had sat in my basement for four years gathering dust and spiderwebs.&nbs ..read more

One thing I have always understood is that life is about choices. Humans have to make an innumerable amount of choices on a daily basis. Every once in a while we are confronted with important decisions. Lately it feels like my batting average on these important decisions is below the Mendoza Line.  Anyway, this all started at the end of September at a North Shore Brewers club meeting. Club Vice President Tim Broderick listed off the club members that had volunteered to brew for the upcoming Ales over ALS competition and event. As Tim read off the names, participation felt light. I haven't ..read more

As we hit the beginning of August I was anxious to put this beer on tap to enjoy during the last weeks of summer. I went as far as to taste test the beer after only seven days. Usually I am the type to let a beer sit for 14-24 days until I know it is done. Simply the Zest on the Left, Samuel Adams Porch Rocker on the right. At 7 days the beer was still quite green. At 14 days it tasted ready to go. Even though the beer tasted like it was done, it didn't quite have the lemon flavor I wanted. Adding more fermentables may have thrown off the balance of the kit slightly. My former collea ..read more

So far in 2023 I haven't been brewing or writing a great deal. I did brew two batches for the summer; I need to write about that double brew day.  Summer being my favorite beer season, I really should have brewed one more batch. Especially for late summer when store shelves start to fill with marzens and festbiers.  Toward the end of July I happened upon a sale of Muntons malt extract. My supply of base malts has dwindled after being laid off, so the timing worked out well. I have three upcoming brews that needed English base malt. At $9.95 per can I can brew an extract batch for rou ..read more

When I started brewing in the early 2010's, my first recipe kit came with two cans of un-hopped malt extract, some specialty malt to steep, and hop pellets to add in the boil. In that era many of homebrewers started that way. Traditionally here in the US, and especially internationally most brewers entered the hobby with an even simpler way to make beer at home: canned extract beer kits. My copy of the 3rd Edition of the Complete Joy of Homebrewing includes a chapter recipes for enhancing canned extract kits. These canned extract kits contain pre-hopped malt extract. The extract only needs ..read more

I have always run hot and cold with beer names. Originally when brewing was something Jennie and I did together, our brewery had a baseball theme as did all of our beer names. After awhile I ran out of baseball puns and references. Since then I either come up with a great name, or struggle to think of one.  von Trapp (L) and Bernie's Dunkel (R) As I drank the first samples, I was reminded of my grandmother's husband Bernie who she married in 2007. Bernie wasn't much of a beer drinker, but he was stationed in Germany while in the army. When he saw our first batch of Double Pl ..read more

One of my Brew Year's Resolutions for 2023 is off to a great start! If you count the blog refresh I am working on, that's two.  Harp Lager and Pa's Lager. In addition to writing down somewhat detailed sensory notes on this batch of Pa's Lager, I picked up a commercial example to compare it to: Harp Lager. I love Guinness, and brewed in Ireland, Harp Lager was Guinness' first foray into lager brewing. I thought it was a good choice here for a couple of reasons. Presumably both beers were made with malt from the British Isles: Pa's Lager with Muntons Pilsner malt, and Harp with Ir ..read more

Author David McCullough wrote all of his books on a typewriter. What makes this noteworthy is that McCullough only just passed in 2022, and his last book was published in 2019. His justification was that he never had to worry about one push of a button erasing his work. As I have gone through every published post and inserted recipes, I have noticed more missing recipes than I thought. Brew sheet from my AHA-finalist Imperial Stout When I started brewing in 2012, even before I started brewing my first batch, I looked for a mobile application I could use as a brew log. Back then ..read more

I finally started the long-needed refresh of the blog. When I set up the blog on Blogger, it was initially just an archive of what I wrote for Wicked Local. Then I started posting my content here and pushing it to Wicked Local. I never put a great deal of effort into the design and layout of the site. As I mentioned on my Brew Year's Resolutions for 2023, I knew the older posts which I exported from Wicked Local's WordPress, and imported into Blogger had some formatting issues. This includes mis-sized and mis-located pictures, captions with code showing, and posts with no tags.  What I h ..read more