Barebones Beer

So I guess the thing that amazes me is how forgiving the brewing process is. I stumbled upon this article in Mother Earth News a few weeks ago and just found it again. It gives a pretty basic DIY recipe and process for homebrewing. Its basically a hopless beer where the only ingredients are baker's yeast, malt extract, plain old sugar, and tap water.

This dude probably flavors his coffee with stump water!

Click here for the article... its bizarre. We should try it once to compare resutls

AHHHHH!!!!

OK, so after weeks of hemming and hawing over this or that and fretting over details..... I have finally purchased a brew kit and all the ingredients to brew a robust porter from scratch. EXCELLENT! So, I was going to tackle the task Sunday night (7/15), but got bogged down with other stuff. So, the backup day was today (7/16). The Kitchen is spotless and rearranged to make room for equipment. Dinner has been cooked, eaten, and cleaned away. All that is left is to buy spring water at the Kroger three blocks away.

So I pop over and spend longer than I wanted to in line (this would become the absolute least of my worries.) Head back home and pull out the strong sturdy keychain and WHAT?!? NO KEY?

Somehow the only key I need to get into my apartment is totally vanished from my keyring. The keyring, I will add, that I use SPECIFICALLY because it never opens enough for keys to be removed even when you want it to. I have broken hardened steel blades trying to pry that bitch open enough to slip a key on or off.

So now its 10:40pm and i've been inside the door maybe 10 minutes (thanks to our temporary neighbors who saved us by tossing down a keychain). The universe has won... I will not brew tonight.

But tomorrow... oh tomorrow it's on!

tastybrew.com post

I posted this last night to see if I can get some answers on an ale i want to make and to get us involved with this online community, cause I think they are a good resource. Watch to see if we get any posts. Subject: Ales arent they supposed to be without hops? [edit] Author: DarkBrownBrew

Jul 11th, 2007 12:18 am

So I am BRANDNEW to homebrewing and am actually studdying fermentation as part of an internship with the National Science Foundation at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. Of course i'm am working with a bioluminescent bacteria, but fermentation applies to alcohol production too ... besides I also like to drink.

I have been doing some research and the KotMF brewing glossary put in its definition for ale a historical note;
"In historical times, the term ale referred to fermented malt beverages which were brewed without hops, with the term beer being used to refer to hopped malt beverages." so i am interested in try to make an ale.

But KotMF also adds in the definition that the name ale is loosely used now "In some states in the US, any beer over a certain strength must be labeled "ale" by law, regardless of whether it is technically an ale. Hence the odd practice of putting the word "ale" on the labels of strong lagers (e.g. Doppelbocks) intended for the US market.]"

I was hoping to make an ale like a Witbeir, which falls under the Belgian and French Ale BJCP style categorie giving some of the commercial examples as Blue Moon, Hoegaarden Wit etc.

I'm confused, my question is, is there something i'm not getting? how does one get a Witbeir with an IBU of 10-20% without using Hops? I have been drilling the calculators supplied on this website to no success. Do these ales actually use hops at some point in the process, meaning they aren't historically traditional ales, or is there something i havnt found yet in my research? ANY comments would help.

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Witbeir/Hefeweizen

The way we three are ontop of the same thing at the same thing... well it just has to be genetics. So u have a chocolate stout Josh, i'm in pursuit of a Hefeweizen. Dad is picking me up some malt extract and Hops, I'm also going to use some oatmeal as a portion of the fermentables. I used the calculators on Tastybrew.com to calculate my beer by plugging in ingredients and measurements into the formulas to come up with the beer i wanted and compared it to the style standard to make sure i was pulling off what i want (I LOVE HEFE'S!) here is a pic of my screen with the ingredients and factors computated together. The pic has to be up on its side or else the toolbar covers the info.

Off to see the wizard........

OK Guys. I'm probably going to get some beer brewing supplies and equipment in the next day or two from the Savannah Home Brew Shoppe. I spoke with the guy a few weeks ago and he said that he has a kit he has put together from his normal stock. It's more money than the Mr. Beer sets you can buy online, but my guess is that the equipment allows for a greater volume of beer per batch, plus the ingredients are almost certainly of a higher quality.... I am going to play it safe and make a standard, follow-the-recipe batch to begin with. Pretty quickly, though, I want to move on to something more complex (and hopefully rewarding). Check out some of the homebrew recipes on that excellent site Alex found, Cryptobrewology. I am particularly interested in the Coffee Oatmeal Stout. I will give a full report on the Savannah H.B. Shoppe and the attempts at our first beer. I am really going to try to take pictures and keep full notes.

I am also currently handbinding a book, specifically a leather-bound journal. I think we all three need matching brewlogs so we can keep notes and brew related information handy. I'll keep you guys posted.

homebrew supplies store list

so i was poking around on the internet and found a website that lists homebrew supply stores for each state. Here is the link.

future dates

alright so i was looking at the triad homebrew supplies store in Greensboro and i noticed on their website that they host a brew demo infront of the store every second saturday of the month 12pm to 3 pm. This could be a good field trip for DBB. Also on the page is a link for the battleground brewers guild which meets every 3rd Wednesday of the month, Dad i think that might be a good investment of time, not to mention fun as hell.

WE'S LEGIT!

alright dudes, i actually went ahead and registered us on tastybrew. We are registered as DarkBrownBrew, the password is my dogs name no space first and last no caps. Check the place out. I havnt figured out how to post a link for the blog though.

07-05-2007

you keep working on the domestic wine! remember ur efforts to imbibe are for research purposes! also did u get the yeast's and stuff? i think i might try one of these places online and see if they can ship me something, i'm so doing beer next. I found this wicked website with all kinds of recipes. By the ways I have been reading alot about the whole bottling bit and found that when fermentation is complete often the drink is completely alchoholy tasting and alot of commercial wines will add alittle juice to the drink once fermentation is complete to sweeten it up. I have had to do that with a couple of my blackberry ferments. let us know how things are going, what u been up to Josh?

CHEERS!