It’s often been said that there are as many ways to brew beer as there are brewers. In fact, I don’t think that I know any two brewers who brew in exactly the same way. Some of the differences in brewing technique are pretty subtle, and others are so fundamental that they can be classed…
Should My Homemade Beer Taste Like Vinegar? (What is that smell?)
No matter how many times you’ve made beer in the past, it’s always exciting when you open the first bottle from a new batch. Will the hop aroma be as good as expected, will it be cloudy, or will my homemade beer taste like vinegar? We all make a bad batch of beer at one…
What Happens If You Ferment Beer Too Warm?
Temperature control during fermentation is one of the most critical factors in home brewing and significantly impacts what your beer tastes like. Yeast has a temperature range where it works best. At the higher end of the temperature range fermentation is more vigorous. If the yeast gets too cold, it may stop fermenting all together.…
Do Beer Finings Kill Yeast?
Finings are added to beer during the brewing process to help prevent it from being cloudy. They work by attaching themselves to protein molecules and yeast cells, causing them to sink to the bottom of the brew kettle or fermenter. Depending on the fining agents used, they are added either during the boil or in…
How do you know fermentation is complete?
Fermentation is the most critical step in the brewing process when yeast turns the sugar in the wort into alcohol and carbon dioxide. Depending on the type of yeast used, the concentration of sugar in the wort and ambient temperature, fermentation will usually take between five days and several weeks to complete. Once fermentation stops,…
What Is A Trappist Beer? What Does Trappist Beer Taste Like?
Beer has been brewed in monasteries since the middle ages and, although they didn’t actually invent beer, it’s fair to say that monks played an important part in the development of beer as we know it. Medieval abbeys were basically self-sufficient and, in addition to praying, the monks used to work long hours in the…
What Is Sparging In Beer Making?
When you’re first getting into beer making it can often seem a lot like alchemy; part science, part magic and with a lot of strange words that more experienced brewers use to describe unknown and mystical procedures. Three words that come up a lot are lautering, sparging and vorlauf. But what do they mean and…
What is Brewing Efficiency & How Is It Measured?
Most all-grain beer recipes published online and in homebrew books mention brewing efficiency or brewhouse efficiency. But what is brewing efficiency and how is it measured? Brewing efficiency is the quantity of sugar in the wort divided by the total amount of sugars which were potentially available in the grain expressed as a percentage. For…
Easy Viking Mead Recipe | How To Make Mead Step By Step
Mead is the oldest alcoholic beverage known to man and is believed to have its origins in Asia, some 7,000 years ago. Probably discovered by accident, mead soon spread to other parts of the world and is known to have been consumed by the Ancient Greeks, Romans, Mayans and of course the Vikings. Early civilisations…