Homebrewing

The All Grain Brewer   |   Thursday, February 23 2012
Carbonator drops :  How to let the carbonation happen naturally in the bottle by adding sugar.

So I have been kegging my beers exclusively since about 2006. I like kegging over bottling on several levels. First I only have to clean one keg, and second I can much more easily adjust carbonation in beer the way I want it.

However, I have recently been doing some bottling after I rack / transfer the beer into the keg. I still have to clean and sanitize the bottles just like I used to, but generally I am only working with a dozen or less so it is not that painful. As I mentioned earlier, I didn’t like bottling because I could never get the correct carbonation levels. A lot of my carbonation level problems revolved around my brewing equipment. My buckets and carboys have no volume indication. Therefore, I would put in the correct amount of corn sugar for five gallons of beer for proper carbonation, but I might actually have 5.2 gallons of beer. This means my final product is under carbonated, and I’m once again not happy with the beer.

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Tastings & Food Pairings

The B'Oracle   |   Wednesday, February 22 2012
Gulden Draak Ale :  It innocently invites you in, only to entrap you in Ale world.

When looking at beautiful snow-capped mountains one tends to forget that they are born of moments of great upheaval. In fact, the Himalayas are still rising from India’s careless collision with the Asian plate. I was there when that happened, it was an uncomfortable moment to say the least, kind of like watching men ogling at David Beckham during that underwear commercial. I promise you, hundreds lined up for those panties the next day.

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Culture, Society, & Health

The Beer Fox   |   Monday, February 20 2012
Moderate drinkers :  The association between beer and obesity, if it exists, is probably weak.

Winter has been relatively mild in the northeastern part of the U.S. With such moderate temperatures, our minds quickly slide into summer mode, dreaming of sexy sandals, bare midriffs, and how the latest swimwear collections will frame our sumptuous figures. Although they would never admit it, men check out their own abs, too. As this Beer Fox runs from beer-festival to beer-competition to beer-dinner, she is constantly encountering people who say, “I need to lose 20 pounds, so this is the last beer I’m going to have in a long time.” Is this truth or fallacy?

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Homebrewing

The All Grain Brewer   |   Thursday, February 16 2012
Lessons learned :  The importance of temperature, roused yeast cakes, blow off tubes, and an understanding spouse.

Fermentation Alert! This winter I have been having all kinds of hardships with fermentation whether it is over fermentation (I’ll explain in a second) or under fermentation.

Under fermentation is really the main issue that I have been battling. This is primarily due to the fact that the temperatures are just cooler in my house during the winter. My basement is between 61 and 62 F. My living space in the house is around 67 F.

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Tastings & Food Pairings

The B'Oracle   |   Wednesday, February 15 2012
North Coast's Scrimshaw Pilsner :  The beer looks like you just poured gold in a glass and topped it with a jewel of white opal.

The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics dictates that the arrow of time only moves in one direction, forward. Hence all matter is moving from order to disorder. The more organized an object is, the higher its entropy. A sandcastle's entropy is much higher than a pile of sand. In other words, the castle will decay into the pile of sand. This also applies to intelligence. That’s right! Kim Kardashian's entropy is very, very, low. Because she has very low order, she’s likely to remain in her current state for a long time, thus subjecting humanity to years of stupidity. In all my years of living on this sphere, I’ve witnessed this force in action. Entropy is an unstoppable force that tends to affect objects of higher order and beauty with more precision than most. That is my concern with Scrimshaw Pilsner.

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Culture, Society, & Health

The Beer Fox   |   Monday, February 13 2012
Geeks get it done :  As in love, success is governed solely by passion.

Her lean legs, firm as steel and deeply bronzed, glistened in the shadows just as readily as they did in the afternoon sunshine. She had traveled to over 1,000 brewpubs across the globe, always with Phil Farrell who snapped her photograph with every beer aficionado he met, including Beer Hunter Michael Jackson, Charlie Papazian, Don Younger, and Pierre Celis. He was proud of her. She never drank, although her companion certainly offered her a taste of his many libations. Their relationship may have been as hot as the affair between Yuri Zhivago and Lara Antipova, had she been human.

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