April is always a busy month in graduate school. Fellowship reports, exams, papers, taxes all due. Couple that with regular work (research, lab maintenance etc.), and things get busy quick. I’m keeping my spirits bright, and using brewing as a stress-free creative outlet! In lieu of formal blog posts (due to school, sad face), I’d … Continue reading
Air-lock activity has stopped. Krausen has fallen. Gravity readings are terminal. Brewers everywhere know what this means: time for packaging! The Passion Fruit American Wheat has finished secondary fermentation after a substantial addition of passion fruit juice. Frankly, I am relieved this beer is near process end. The planning and execution of this recipe was … Continue reading
One of my favorite beer styles is American Pale Ale or APA for short. I like it so much that I have a well-developed house recipe I brew often. When I find a new hop or a hop variety I haven’t used in a homebrew, I like to make single-hopped APAs to find out what … Continue reading
The spring equinox has passed and spring has sprung (at least in central Texas)! The weather has been nice and frost isn’t likely, so I recently put out my spring-season balcony garden. Those who read the Session Oatmeal Stout post may have noticed transplanted bluebonnets and sunflower seedlings next to the beer. My garden is … Continue reading
This is Part 2 of the small batch clone of Fuller’s London Porter! In Part 1, I did some research and recipe design. In summary, the Fuller’s London Porter is a fairly simple recipe. Its key ingredients are a significant portion of brown malt, along with Fuller signature yeast. For part 2, I review both … Continue reading
No matter what time of year, one of my favorite ales to brew is American Pale Ale. There are lots of great commercial examples of APA, and many great recipes for APA on the web. Despite this, I thought I’d share my house APA recipe. It took many iterations to get this recipe just right … Continue reading
One of my first Partial-Mash homebrews was an American-style Red IPA. It was my first big beer, which I called #7, since it was 7% ABV. I was experimenting with hop blends, this one being a 50/50 mix of Centennial and Tettnang hops. The idea was to try to get a strong floral aroma by combining … Continue reading
With 2013 coming to a close, I thought I clean out the brewing closet (aka find my ageing malts and hops) and throw together a tasty beer. Based on the ingredients I found, I came up with a session IPA (I could of made it an APA, but I thought I jump on the session … Continue reading
The Palisades American Bitter (a British-style bitter malt profile with 100% Palisades hops and fermented with Wyeast 1056 American Ale yeast) has completed fermentation and bottled-conditioning. Starting at 1.033, this ale finished fermentation down to 1.008, attenuating around 75%. Fermenting around 66 F, 1056 showed typical characteristics of West-coast ale strains, taking close to a month for … Continue reading
Getting ready for the springtime weather (at least in Texas, its been 80 F in March!), I decided to start making some light and hoppy beers to fit the upcoming season. Looking through my hop storage, I realized I had a bunch of Palisades hops that I bought on a whim, but have been hesitant to use … Continue reading
The Apartment Homebrewer 