As a continuation of my comprehensive taste test kit I bought from Siebel Institute, last weekend I conducted off flavor taste test #2 and #3. If you missed #1, acetyldehyde, think…raw pumpkin and fresh cut grass. But today we are going to be talking about acetic acid, which is probably much more easily identifiable, but harder […]
Off-Flavor Taste Test #1 : Acetyldehyde
About two weeks ago I decided to bite the bullet and purchase Siebel Institute’s Comprehensive Sensory Training Kit to improve my craft beer tasting skills. It was pricey at $250, but because I’ll be using it myself I can get a few tests out of each flavor. Each vial is enough to dose 1L of […]
A Tale of Two Saisons
After searching for styles that would fit grapes (I found none), I decided that a saison would be a light tasting beer that could benefit from some extra simple sugar. I figured it would just dry out any regular saison recipe, and since I would be using white grapes, I might also get some white wine influence on the beer.
A Primer On Priming Sugar + Bottle Conditioning
Unless you’ve got a good idea that you want to be a brewer for life, your first couple batches of homebrew will be carbonated using priming sugar and “bottle conditioned”. Even if you are an expert with a badass kegging system, there are still styles that lend themselves to bottle conditioning, including high gravity beers that need to be aged, or Belgian beers brewed in the traditional style (some of which prefer having some yeast sediment in the bottle and ask you to swirl before serving).
How to Keg Homebrew For Newbies
If you’ve been bottling for a while then you know what a pain in the butt it is and are ready to learn how to keg your homebrew. Probably the hardest thing when starting to keg is knowing what equipment you need to buy, especially if you’ve never kegged before! Luckily, setting everything up is pretty easy once you have the right gear, and after that, you just need to learn how to start serving your beer like a true cicerone.