News flash for some folks: you can make apple juice from any apple, but you can’t make good hard cider – I mean the fermented stuff – from just anything.  If you buy all your apples at an American grocery store, you’ve probably forgotten what an apple can really taste [...]

This is my personal library of modern how-to-brew books for beer and mead.   Suggestions for additions are welcome; so are corrections.  I don’t have any surprises in here; experienced brewers will undoubtedly recognize all the titles and have a few of their own to add.  Schramm, Papazian, Acton and Douglas, [...]

I’ve been preparing my list of historical brewing sources.   I am chagrined each time I see a post from a newbie on one of the brewing history forums, asking whether there are period sources.  You bet there are!  Clearly my eleven-page bibliography needs to become a searchable database available from [...]

What shall I call my very first cyser,  in primary this very morning?  I used a recipe that took a gold in last year’s AHA competition which sounded particularly appealing – 18 lbs of pretty solid buckwheat honey, lots of apple juice, raisins, oak chips soaked in Jack Daniels  The [...]