Enjoying your trip to a winetasting room
So you’re about to walk into a wine tasting room. Maybe you’ve never been, maybe you’ve done this before but never been quite sure how it’s supposed to go: do [..]
Category: Brew How-To: Basic Help
Makin’ the White House Honey Porter
I am gearing up to try the White House Honey Porter recipe this weekend. There are a few mysteries in the two beer recipes released by the White House, which [..]
Books for Brewers: Basic List of Books of Modern How-To on Beer and Mead
This is my collection of books of modern how-to on beer and mead – all the books I currently have in my library plus a few. There are even a [..]
Fruit flavoring and glycerine – dubious is the word
I added flavoring and glycerin to a test batch of cordial for the first time ever this week. I had split a batch of peach cordial made with lovely orchard [..]
Is making a cordial really brewing?
Making cordials is often lumped in with brewing. Should it be? Is making a cordial, with modern restrictions and requirements, really a brewing activity? Why do people make cordials, anyway? [..]
Feeding Yeast
Proper yeast nutrition means your brew ferments faster and cleaner, leaving fewer off-flavors that have to age out. We’ll call that a good thing. Yeast is a pretty complex little [..]
Starting Yeast
I’m getting to brew a recipe from last year’s American Homebrewer Association’s national competiton – the Underwood’s “Blasphemy at GobblersRoost” (you’ll need an AHA login to view their Homebrewopedia); it’s a [..]
Homebrew Clarifiers
This is a class handout, and rather chatty. You’ve been warned. Clarifiers
Homebrewing: Things That Go Boom In The Night
src=”http://www.elspethpayne.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/carboy-working1-209×300.jpg” alt=”” width=”209″ height=”300″ />This manuscript was first published in Tournaments Illuminated, a quarterly magazine for medieval enactors. It appeared in the Third Quarter 2010, Issue 175. Copies may be ordered [..]
Methode Champagnoise
This is a copy of an email from a man I know in the SCA as Eadric the Potter. I think the information worth sharing. The region of Champagne has been making [..]
Mead fermentation
Recently a new brewer talked to me about fermentation time. He thought his mead should be finished much more quickly than it was. When competition judges tasted his mead, the universal [..]
Acids in mead
A common flaw in meads is a poor balance between acid and sweetness. You need a little acid to offset the natural sweetness in mead. Honey is not a high-acid substance [..]