The Fine Art of Beer And Homebrewing

Beer Products

2009-06-25T13:27:00.000-07:00

How ToTroubleshoot Your Home Brewing

2009-06-14T11:22:00.000-07:00

Image by Bandido of Oz via Flickr

Stuck fermentation
Stuck fermentation happens when your brewed beer fails to
ferment to completion. The use of old yeast or poor ingredients, can cause this to happen.
Preventing it from starting, is the best way to solve this problem
To make this happen, you need to:

1. Water:
Re-hydrating the yeast with the addition of
some water and adding a bit wort into the yeast an hour
or so before you give it the pitch. By doing this you will help to ensure
that your yeast remains active.

2. Malt:
Use an all malt or a recipe that has
a lot of it, as yeast needs nutrients to stay
alive. Corn and sugar lack these nutrients. If
your yeast still fails to survive, it cannot
reproduce. For this very reason, distilled water
shouldn't be used when making beer.

Under carbonation
If you've used the proper amount of priming sugar
and your beer is still flat, it's probably due
to the fact that you didn't properly rise the
sanitizing solution from the bottles. If too
much sanitizer is left in the bottles, it can
kill the yeast, which results in flat beer. The
only way to prevent this is to stop it from
happening.

Over carbonation:
Over carbonation can cause your beer to turn into
a foam disaster. It can result from these causes:

1. Sugars:
Too much or uneven priming sugar. You
should measure your primer carefully and dissolve
it thoroughly in boiling water and allow it the
proper time to cool. Before bottling, make sure
to stir this into your beer.

2. Premature :
Bottling your beer too early can also
result in too much carbonation.

3. Cleanliness:
Make sure your work space is cleaned up.
Poor sanitization is also a cause of over carbonation. It can result in over carbonation and
possibly even off flavors, if
you allow your home brew to come in contact with wild
yeast.

4. Look Out:
Bottles that tend to be under filled can
also eventually lead to over carbonation. You should
allow 1/2 inch of head space to allow your
beer time to pressurize.

Take the proper time to sit down and try to fix these problems, you'll
make sure that your home brew comes out awesome every
single time you brew it. If you just so happen to run into any
problems, always give yourself the time to rationalize these problems
before you jump right into fixing it. You may start another problem, If you rush into
fixing it to hastily .

Don't beat yourself up,You should expect a few problems, especially if this
is the first time attempting your own home brewing. This is true also if you are an expert home
brewers, many types of problems can occur every once in awhile -
This is just something that you'll learn to live with.

Heavenly Brewpub

2009-05-02T13:08:00.000-07:00

Everyone knows that if your looking for the best in
coffee, you go to Seattle. For wine, you go to
California. When it comes to the best in beer, you
go to Portland Oregon, where your never more than
15 minutes away from a quality brewpub.

The Williamette Rive in western Oregon has been
the center of hop growing and brewing since the
days of the pioneers. When the microbrew revolution
began, the history and the hops were already there,
along with the spring water, the grain, and the
fruit for summer beers. As a result, regional
brewers and microbrewers began to pop up all over
the place.

After that, it didn't take long at all for the
brewpub to follow. These beers weren't just for
washing down food anymore. The hand crafted beers
could be used in cooking, just like wine. In
the brewpubs of Portland, the beer also forms a
base for salad dressing, spices up marinades, and
even helps to sweeten the desserts as well.

Many brewpubs will offer a sampler of the best
in beer tasting. You can think of it as wine tasting
without the snooty steward. You sip on small
amounts of a variety of brews to see what the
brewer can do, from the light and hoppy to the
dark yet sweet brews.

What to expect
1. Good head on the beer. Good head
ensures that you'll get a strong smell of the
brew, so be sure to pour it into your glass very
carefully.
2. Always use a glass. You should always
use a clean glass, a very clean glass. In most
brewing establishments, the glasses are always hand
washed and air dried to ensure that there isn't a
speck of grease in the glass to deflate the head
and leave soapy looking bubbles behind.
3. The English are right. As the English
know, refrigerated beer is too cold to fully
appreciate the taste. In brewpubs, the beer is
served at temperatures that are cool but not that
cold. The iced and chilled glasses are saved for
martinis.
4. Vocabulary. Beer has a mouth feel,
which describes the body of the brew - light,
medium, and full. The color can be misleading,
as even light bodied beers can be full bodied.

Anytime you are looking for the best in microbrews,
you can count on Oregon to deliver the best in
beer. There are hundreds of brewpubs here, with
everything you could ever want. Anytime you
are in the area, don't hesitate to stop off and
see why the microbrews here are easily among the
best in the United States - or the world for
that matter.

The Story of Anheuser Busch And Microbrews

2009-05-02T12:56:00.000-07:00

Beer brewing has always been the core business of
the Anheuser-Busch company. An industry leader
since 1957, Anheuser-Busch currently owns over half
of the domestic beer market.

The market share has grown so much that Anheuser-
Busch now has a bigger portion of the market than
the next four competitors, with the international
sales being no different. Anheuser-Busch remains
the leading exporter of beer from the United States,
with sales in more than 60 countries.

Microbreweries, or microbrews for short, have been
gaining a lot of attention in the past several
years. Microbrews are best classified as breweries
that produce less than 15,000 barrels in a given
year.

The strength of microbrews is found in their
philosophy that beer should be of the highest
quality. Therefore, microbrews are only brewed
with malted barley, hops, water, and yeast, which
are the only four ingredients found in the purist
German beers. Mass bottled beers normally add
rice and corn to help lower costs.

The only drawback to microbrews is what they cost.
The more expensive ingredients found in microbrews
cost on average 60% higher than the mass bottled
beers.

Beer isn't like wine, which tends to get better
with age. Beer is instead a food that should be
consumed as soon as possible after production.
With this in mind, pubs or microbrews that
produce beer on the premises are the hottest new
trends, with four new pubs on average popping
up each and every week.

Each year, sales of microbrews goes up an average
of 40% each year. This figure is very impressive
when you consider that the market is shrinking
as a whole. Even with this amazing success, the
microbrew sales represent around two percent of
the entire beer market.

In their pursuit to continue dominating the
entire beer market, Anheuser-Busch has tapped
into the trend of microbrews. They recently
purchased a stake in the Seattle based Red Hook
Ale microbrewery. The new products they released
into the beer market include Red Wolf, Elk
Mountain Red, and Elk Mountain Amber Ale.

Microbrews are normally produced regionally,
therefore Anheuser-Busch is developing regional
manufacturers and distributors. By doing this,
they must decide on the best possible way to
handle their short term cash needs for purchasing
inventory in these tiny plants.

With their recent transition into the world of
microbrews, you can count on Anheuser-Busch to
make quite the impact. They will be offering
more microbrews in the future, which is great
news for beer drinkers. If you like the wild
taste of microbrews, Anheuser-Busch is more than
worth your time and money.

Alaskan Brewing

2009-05-02T12:36:00.000-07:00

The Alaskan brewing company is the oldest operating
brewery in Alaska, with their amber beer being
their most popular brand. They produce two other
brands as well, pale ale and Alaskan frontier
amber. If you enjoy fresh amber beer, Alaskan
brewing is what you want.

As you may already know, brewing beer in Alaska is
very hard to do. The coastal community of Juneau
doesn't have road connections to the lower 48 states,
so everything arrives and leaves by water or air,
with weather always having the final say.

In 1986, the Alaskan brewing company became the
67th brewery to operate in the United States and
the only one to operate in Alaska. Since that time,
Alaskan brewery has received more than 30 major
medals and awards, including the best beer in the
nation award during the 1988 Great American Beer
Festival.

The popularity of their beers has led to a great
amount of efforts to keep up with the demand from
consumers. They also hold the unnofficial record
for the production on a 10 barrel brewing system,
which produces an amazing 42 batches a week.

The Alaskan Brewery offers several different styles
of brew as well, which are listed below:

1. Amber - This is the company's flagship
beer, based on a turn of the century recipe that
was used to quench the thirst of the miners during
the Gold Rush era. It provides a smooth, malty,
rich taste that goes well with meals - or friends.
2. Pale - Pale is fresh, crips, and
inviting. Alaskan pale is great with crab, pawns,
and salads. The floral aroma of the hops is
derived from dry hopping the tanks during the entire
fermentation process.
3. Stout - The oatmeal style beer of stout
doesn't have the harshness of other stouts. Great
with chocolate and hearty meals, stout is also
ideal to enjoy while walking in the snow.
4. ESB - If you like hops, the infusion
of hops in this delight will amaze your nose while
the refreshing cascade hops will provide a wonderful
crispness to both the flavor and the finish. This
beer is great with spicy food, wild game, and other
wintery food.
5. Smoked porter - Very exclusive, Alaskan
smoked porter has a world class reputation for its
excellence. Brewed in the fall, this beer is ideal
for storing in the cellar for later enjoyment.
6. Winter ale - This tender brew of spruce
trees has been used for brewing in Alaska since
the late 1700s.