Elspeth Payne on…

Ever think of making your malt to homebrew with?  Uncertain you can do it?  Sure you can.  You can make your malt and thus have complete control over its roastiness, diastatic power, everything. I have a couple of friends wanting to reproduce medieval beers starting from scratch – they’re growing old varieties of […]

BJCP CLASS – we were given a choice of presentation topics, and I chose Malt.  Turns out Malt is one of the very first presentations, so I’ve been scrambling through a very busy week (end of fiscal quarter at work, Baronial At-Home on Wednesday at my house) to get something […]

Sometimes fate just calls your bluff.  I’ve been saying for a while now I’d like to take the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) certification – for mead, and maybe beer – and probably the Cicerone training too, eventually.  Well, last week I got an email from Les White, the president of […]

It’s National Stout Day, and since stouts are my favorite style of winter beer I’m going home to heft one tonight.   What I love about stouts:  stouts and porters were my gateway beers, my intros to craft beer and homebrew.  Gotta be grateful for that.  I love the biscuit-colored, […]

Last year a brewing chum asked me why I compete in homebrewing.  He’s one of the most morose people I’ve ever met, so my first thought was that he was sulking as usual, and found hearing about my competition outreach distasteful.  Take out the sulking, though, and you’ve got a […]