For many years I have wanted to be able to can my homebrewed beer and now I “can”. A few months ago I received a 225 series All-American Can Sealer as a gift. My model seals 12oz or 16oz aluminum cans. I have tried canning a few times so far, but I am definitely still learning how to use it.
Ducklamp Brewing Tap Handles
A great gift from my wife, Ducklamp Brewing Company tap handles! (photo)
Importance of Writing Recipes Down
When you are working from homebrew kits, they come with directions. If you follow the directions and make the beer as intended, not too much record keeping is required. The only thing that you need to write down is the original gravity (OG) and the final gravity (FG) so that you can calculate how much alcohol is in the beer.
Adding a Wort Chiller
When my wife and I first started brewing beer about 15 years ago we worked with homebrew kits containing a few simple ingredients. These ingredients included a couple cans of malt extract syrup and some hops. From these kits we made a couple of decent drinkable beers including a red ale and an IPA.
Rumpled Finch IPA Recipe (all grain)
This is an all grain IPA that I made recently. It has Magnum hops for bittering, Mosaic for Aroma and dry-hopped with Equinox. I brewed this for the first time in March. Hops combination was great. Planning on brewing this again in the next couple of weeks to make sure that I can replicate it.
Downgrading my Cable TV package, again
“Last week I called Comcast and requested that they downgrade my cable television service from the Digital Classic package to broadcast channels only. This is a rather fun conversation to have with the Comcast folks. Their procedure seems to require that they escalate the call at least twice to give a couple of supervisors a chance to talk the caller out of this decision. Despite their efforts, I prevailed and the service has been downgraded. This downgrade will save us about $50/mo.” William Grady, October 2008
When I wrote that in October 2008, I thought that I was downgrading my cable forever.
Irish Plover Red Ale Recipe (all grain)
When my wife and I first started brewing back 2002, we made Red Ale a few time via True Brew extract kits. The beer was good enough at the time, but as we moved past working with kits and into all-grain we just did not get back to brewing another red ale.
Fat Robin Barleywine, with WLP070 Bourbon Yeast
What follows here is my recipe for Fat Robin Barleywine. This is my first barleywine and my first all-grain recipe that I designed from scratch using the Beer Smith 2 software. I brewed this on January 19, 2014. In late February 2014, I bottled this into some beautiful used 25oz swing-top bottles that I got used from Northampton Beer & Winemaking on King Street in Northampton, MA. I also had labels made for this at Grogtag just because I liked that such a thing was possible.
Homebrew Emporium in Weymouth, MA
While looking at the September 2012 issue of Brew Your Own homebrew magazine, I happened upon the “Homebrew Directory” section. The secion consists of a list of homebrew shops by state. I looked up my state (Massachusetts) and found that Homebrew Emporium had opened a new location in Weymouth, MA (which somewhat near my house.) I was happy to discover this as there are not too many homebrew supply locations on the South Shore.
1979 Volvo 240 Ad: Lost 1,000 Pounds of Ugly Fat
The text of this ad states: “HOW I BOUGHT A VOLVO WAGON AND LOST 1,000 POUNDS OF UGLY FAT.” By Pat Fellman, as told to Volvo. You wouldn’t know it to look at me now, but I used to have
