Motivated through Part 1 of this series, filtration of brewing water can vastly improve your brewing, often through the use of reserve osmosis (RO) water. While RO water can be easily purchased at corner stores and/or home delivered, apartment home dwellers, especially those living in dense urban centers, may find access to RO water limited/cumbersome … Continue reading
One of the most challenging aspects of apartment (and tiny kitchen) brewing is finding a good, fast, and reasonable source for heating water and boiling wort at the apartment scale. So much so, it’s a constantly reoccurring question on most homebrewing forums (see long list at end of post). First time homebrewers often start their … Continue reading
I didn’t want to start this tech series with the typical brewing water motivation, but here it is anyway (read this as if Ben Stein was reciting this to his high school class). 85-95% of beer is made up of water so unsurprisingly great beer starts with great water. Not only for taste/flavor considerations (for example making sure your … Continue reading
I have to say it’s fantastic to be back brewing in my apartment. Three months of empty carboys is really a sad sight. Fortunately, last week I was able to crank out not one, but TWO brew days! SMaSH Session Saison The first brew day was a session-style saison using a SMaSH recipe in which … Continue reading
It’s been a busy past 10 months (or so) and unfortunately not with homebrewing in my small apartment. Three conference abstracts/presentations (for grad school) and a soon-to-be-announced brewing-related winter project kept me busy from regular brewing (and blogging). In fact, I haven’t been able to whip-up a batch since April. Luckily, this changes today as … Continue reading
In an apartment or kitchen setting, sourcing and moving water throughout the brewing process is not an easy task. Water is key to the brewing process, not only for the beer itself (mash, boil, etc.), but also for chilling and cleaning. Indeed, for my homebrewing setup, I have to source and move 25 gallons of … Continue reading
For those who are new to homebrewing, towels may seem an unlikely addition to your kit. However, new and seasoned homebrewers alike know all too well of the messes, sometimes gigantic, that can happen on a brew or bottling day. Since brewing indoors on a stove top presents many challenges, having some trusty clean-up technology … Continue reading
Siphon tubing can be unwieldy even at the best of times. Often, my siphon tubing doesn’t quite stay on the racking crane (for some reason or another). The more experienced homebrewer knows this can be a real pain. An imperfect tubing seal causes air to flow into the siphoning beer, adding unwanted oxygen, or terminating … Continue reading
The simple answer is the total volume of water used in the entire brewing process with respect to the finished volume of beer produced. How is it calculated? If you keep track of your water usage, it’s pretty easy to calculate. During the brewing process, water is not only used for the beer itself, but … Continue reading
The Apartment Homebrewer 