The Right Glass for your Next Home Brew

The right glass can add quality to any beer

It’s true, most people reading this would drink a craft beer or homebrew out of a paper cup and be perfectly satisfied.  But beer has been around a long time, and over that time brew masters, scientists, and engineers have designed, tested, tweaked, and redesigned glasses that are made to perfectly complement a particular beer style.  For example, snifters allow barleywines to be swirled and oxygenated while wheat beer glasses have a wide base to trap yeast; so it would be a shame to allow years of research and fine tuning to go to waste, plus having the right glass for your homebrew could add some quality, not to mention it will look like you know what you’re doing.  Check out the list below to educate yourself on which glasses go with which beers.

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Deschutes Brewery Clone Recipes

If you’re familiar with the ever expanding, high quality beer from one of the Northwest’s largest craft breweries, Deschutes Brewery, then you may be as thrilled as we were to discover the homebrew page on their website.  Deschutes is famous for its Black Butte Porter, Mirror Pond Pale Ale, and Inversion IPA.  They have won many Great American Beer Festival (GABF) awards for their high quality and unique brews.  Venture over to the Deschutes website and delight in the fact that you can find the recipes for almost all of their offerings.  Deschutes won’t tell you the brewing schedules or volumes, but experimentation is part of the fun of homebrewing.  As they say: “Temps, times and weights are the challenge. Happy Brewing!”  We agree. Brew On!

Homebrew for the Holidays

Gift giving season is among us.  All homebrewers have to start somewhere, and many companies have created great starter kits that make it easy to begin brewing great beer at home.  If you have someone special in your lives this season that has an affinity for beer, consider giving a gift that will keep giving…Great Beer!

We’ve compiled a list of starter kits from around the web.  We’ve tried to select kits that include everything needed to start brewing great extract beer in your kitchen at home .  There are many more options out there, but we hope this helps at least one person discover a wonderful new hobby.  Brew On!

The 10 Best Books on Brewing and Beer

The guys over at BeerBooks.com have put together a list of 10 of their favorite and most popular books on brewing and beer.  The list contains the obligatory and absolutely excellent Joy of Homebrewing and the Brewmaster’s Bible but there are some other less expected titles as well such as beer advertising memorabilia and a history/trivia book about beer through the ages.  If you’re looking for a great present for that homebrewer or beer drinker in your life, follow the links below to see the collection.

A Case for Labeling

The label sets the expectation

It’s a step in brewing process that is often overlooked even though I believe it contributes to the quality of a homebrew just as much as any ingredient in the beer (except hops or malt or any ingredient that actually goes into the beer).  The label is what sets the expectation for the entire drinking experience.  A bottle with an interesting and unique label will be much more remembered than that 2nd IPA you brewed last February without a name in a nondescript brown bottle and handing out a nicely labeled beer is a satisfying, enjoyable gift.  I believe in labeling every beer I make, not only for others, but it helps me remember each specific beer much more vividly.  A great resource I use is a website called BeerLabelizer.com.  It’s a great starting point for a nice looking label plus it’s always fun to add some personal touches as you can see in 2 of my labels above.  So consider this a recommendation to not skip that final step, it’s a great way to increase the quality of your beer.  Prost!

-Travis Neufeld

Black Friday Beer Specials

Black Friday is upon us

It’s a tradition as American as watered-down beer, yet between the ridiculous crowds and the convenience of the internet, Black Friday can still provide amazing savings for your beer needs without ever leaving your home.  And staying at home makes it much easier to keep full with Thanksgiving leftovers and those few home brews you didn’t polish off last night.  Read on to see a few of the online deals going on today.

Growlers in the Press

We love our house growlers. Useful for toting some homebrew to the family get together at grandma’s house, or bringing home a few liters of that special cask release from the local craft brewery. Growlers are nothing new, but a recent surge is bringing this old way to buy, carry, and enjoy beer back from beer geekdom and making it available for everyday beer lovers.

NYT Article

Common Homebrew Off Flavors

It’s a problem all too common in homebrewing and with such a large number of variables that can contribute to off-flavors, Murphy’s Law seems to have quite the advantage.  The most occurring reason for off-flavors is lack of sanitation leading to bacterial contamination but there are still a plethora of other possible culprits.  So if you finally crack open that first homebrew only to find a strange, unwelcome flavor staking out in your bottles, check out this list from morebeer.com, it ought to help determine what caused it and should help you prevent any unwanted tastes in the future.