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.
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.
Milk Stout Homebrew Recipe (partial grain)
A while back I found beer recipes for partial-grain Saison and Milk Stout on Homebrew.com*. I brewed both of the recipes and was very happy with the results.
I took notes along the way on each of the brewing sessions. I wisely posted my Saison recipe notes but never got down to doing the same with the Milk Stout recipe. As this was a few years ago, both beers are long gone now and I can no longer find the Milk Stout notes.
My First Attempt at Growing Hops
In February, I went to Modern Homebrew Emporium in Cambridge, MA and placed my order for hops rhizomes. Figuring that this would be a muti-year effort, I decided to start by ordering one each of Cascade, Fuggle, and Goldings rhizomes and see how things went. The hops rhizomes arrived in late March. I had grand plans for how I would go about planting my rhizomes, but regrettably April found me down with a leg injury for a few weeks.
