Last spring, I submitted a few entries to the 2013 Texas Bluebonnet Brew-off, the largest “single-site” homebrew competition. I did well for my standards, as a number of my beers were “pushed” to the second round. Excitingly enough, my apricot wheat beer, an American-style wheat beer brewed with loads of tasty apricots, won a 3rd … Continue reading
One of my favorite English-style beers on the market is Fuller’s London Porter. Smooth, rich, and chocolate-ity, it’s also one of the only commercial beers I have ever tried to clone. Here is my attempt to clone this fantastic beer, and hope my fellow bloggers can learn from this first iteration. In part 1, I … 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
From the brew day last March, finally, here are the tasting notes to my Big Oatmeal Stout (the link to the brew day is here). This one came out great and has been folding up well with age. Coming in at 6% ABV, this beer isn’t that strong across the stout spectrum (Imperial stout, for … 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
If you haven’t noticed, I like to brew big beers to celebrate the changing of seasons. For the 2013 summer solstice, I brewed a big English-style barleywine with a twist: using only Maris Otter malt. Hence Blonde Barleywine! After aging for 6 months in bottle (fairly young for a barleywine), I gave this one a … 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
Last weekend, I was hit with a craving for a big, malty stout, but had none on hand, nor had any ageing in the homebrew archives (gasp!). So, to remedy this problem, I decided to brew up what was on my mind, and came up with a recipe for a big (or big-ish, 1.060+) Oatmeal stout. … Continue reading
The Apartment Homebrewer 