Brewing with chocolate
Adding chocolate flavour to beer is a very clever thing to do and can give you great results when you master it but if you get it wrong (depending on your method) it can have serious consequences for your beer. There are a lot of ways to get chocolate flavour into your beer so I’m […]
Partigyle brewing
Parti-gyle brewing is a very old method of brewing and is a great technique for making several distinct beers from one mash. It works by performing one mash, draining it and then performing a second mash with the same grain and draining that before boiling each wort separately with your various hop additions. The first […]
Brewing With Oats
Oats fall into the category of ‘adjunct’ which covers anything that is a non-malt source of fermentable sugar. For some brewers adjuncts are viewed with disdain they are often associated with the money saving corn and rice that are used in some macro lagers. To dismiss adjuncts though is to severely limit the options you […]
Brewing With Tea
Oddly there isn’t a lot written online about brewing with tea. It seems like a natural thing to go with beer considering that tea making is itself (in a way) a form of brewing. Not only that, but tea has a whole range of herbal and floral characteristics that would seem naturally complimentary with many […]
Adding Peppers to Beer
Continuing our series on adding unusual ingredients to beer, this week we are talking about how you can go about adding chilli peppers to beers to give your beer a kick of heat. Chilli beers aren’t for everyone but they present a fun and interesting challenge to brewers which can be quite rewarding if you […]
Adding Coffee to Beer
This week, Dave talks us through the techniques he has tried and tested for adding coffee flavour to beer; ‘One of my favourite beers and the one that really got me into ‘craft’ beer is Founders Breakfast Stout – an extremely complex yet beautifully balanced stout, full of rich dark chocolates and roast malt character. […]
Kettle souring with the Grainfather
Kettle souring has become extremely popular with homebrewers in recent times. As sour beers grow in popularity brewers are looking for a way to create the complex, sharp, tart and drinkable styles that many people love without having to wait months or even years for the results. Some brewers may opt to achieve this via […]
Reintroducing Oxygen During Fermentation
For those of you who read our mash a couple of weeks ago on the methods of aerating wort, you will know that there are very few stages in the brewing process where the introduction of oxygen is desirable and that fermentation in particular is a stage where the introduction of oxygen should be avoided. […]
SMASH Brewing, Blending & Other Experiments
The theory is that doing a single malt, single hop beer you can really get to know a particular hop and come to grips with its character without ‘muddying the waters’ with other malts and hops. With this in mind we caught up with JK who shared some of his experience and tips for brewing, […]
