Tag Archives: homebrewing

It’s Winter! What You Should Be Brewing Right Now

Home Brewing 2 Comments
Tom Ayres
Tom Ayres
Tom Ayres
Latest posts by Tom Ayres (see all)

It’s winter, well at least in the Midwest. For those living in colder climates, our palates scream for hearty, full bodied beers this time of year.  There are a range of beer styles to choose from to satisfy your desire for heavier beer.  My “go-to” beer for winter is a Foreign Extra Stout. I feel it’s a nice blend of  hearty, yet still easy drinking enough to enjoy a couple of pints.The Foreign Extra Stout has an interesting and long style history. The style dates…

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It’s Fall! What You Should Be Brewing Right Now

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Tom Ayres
Tom Ayres
Tom Ayres
Latest posts by Tom Ayres (see all)

As the fall season begins, I start to get a hankering for more hearty beers. I don’t know about you, but I can’t just make a leap into drinking heavier beers straight away. I need some beers that will ease my palate into the heavier brews of winter. There are lots of beer-style choices to consider brewing during this transitional season. My “go-to” beer for fall is a German Altbier. To me, it’s the perfect blend of hearty and easy drinking.For those unfamiliar with this…

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CopyCat! Tips for Cloning Your Favorite Craft Beers

Home Brewing 2 Comments
Tom Ayres
Tom Ayres
Tom Ayres
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For many homebrewers, the desire to clone our favorite beers was a primary motivation for starting our journey in beer making. I know it was for me. I didn’t just want to brew an IPA, I wanted to brew a Bell’s Two Hearted Ale. Clone brewing kits of the day were fine, but I found they were only distant approximations of the beer I really wanted to brew. Early in my brewing journey, I started scouring publications, online forums and brewer’s websites to look for…

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Relief Pitching: How to Save Your Brew Day

Brewers, Home Brewing Leave a comment
Tom Ayres
Tom Ayres
Tom Ayres
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Source: TribLive.com Advice to hombrewers when the batch specific gravity needs adjustmentAs a homebrewer, we’ve all been there. That moment during your brew day when you realize something went wrong and you’re off track. For me, confirmation of that fact usually occurs when I take my first gravity read following the mash at the pre-boil stage of my brew day. I usually know its coming; I missed my target mash temp, my pH was a little off, I got distracted and missed a small step…

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Homebrew Fermentation Do’s & Don’ts

Debate & Commentary, Home Brewing 2 Comments
Tom Ayres
Tom Ayres
Tom Ayres
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Probably the most entertaining part of homebrew (other than drinking the finished product of course) is fermenting your brew. Don’t get me wrong; I love all parts of homebrewing except the clean up. To me, fermentation is fascinating and entertaining. It’s also critically important to brewing a quality beer, so let’s discuss some fermenting do’s and don’ts. Pre-Fermenting Do’s & Don’ts DO be extremely diligent to start with a clean and sanitized fermentation vessel. DO clean with the appropriate cleaner for the specific fermenting vessel…

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Homebrew Half Batches

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Tom Ayres
Tom Ayres
Tom Ayres
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The advantages of small batch brewing. For some of us homebrewers, consuming a “typical” batch of beer is fun but sometimes challenging. Five gallons can be a lot to consume, even with help from family, friends and neighbors. It can be difficult and a hassle to find enough outlets to consume your beer before it stales. Obviously this is more of a challenge with some beer styles than others. For example, IPAs should be drunk while they are young and fresh while other styles like…

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Homebrew Day Hacks: Time Saving Tips to Shorten Your Brew Day

Home Brewing 1 Comment
Tom Ayres
Tom Ayres
Tom Ayres
Latest posts by Tom Ayres (see all)

Homebrew Day Hacks: Time saving tips to shorten your brew day. Like many homebrewers I am frequently challenged to find time to brew. Work, family and even other hobbies demands our time, so when we brew we usually need to be efficient at it. With that in mind, here are some ideas for “hacking” your brew day plans and processes to shorten the time commitment. Stage Your Brew Day Probably the most effective way for me to shorten my brew day is to stage my…

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Things I wish someone had told me when I first started homebrewing

Home Brewing 5 Comments
Tom Ayres
Tom Ayres
Tom Ayres
Latest posts by Tom Ayres (see all)

Things I wish someone had told me when I first started homebrewing I’m closing in on a decade of brewing my own beer. Over that time I’ve made lots of mistakes, learned many new things and refined my processes all in an effort to make better beer. That learning and process improvement challenge is a big part of why I homebrew. To shorten my fellow homebrewers learning curve, here are some of my learnings I wish others had shared with me. Cleaning & Sanitizing We…

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Homebrewing Gadgets: Grain Mill

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Perzell Brewing
Homebrewing couple who love all things beer related.We take our beer serious, but that's about it.
Latest posts by Perzell Brewing (see all)

Introduction Hello everyone.  For this next article, I wanted to touch upon something that we (me and my co-brewer, a.k.a. “The Wife”; aka “The Brains”; aka “The Boss”) didn’t have to begin with and had to purchase. If you brew beer, I am sure you ran into brewery purchase overload like I did in the beginning. There are just so many gadgets related to brewing out there on the market. From brewing systems to kegging systems, it was overwhelming. I found myself building a complete…

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Is Homebrewing Still Relevant with the Expansion of Craft Beer?

Debate & Commentary 6 Comments
Perzell Brewing
Homebrewing couple who love all things beer related.We take our beer serious, but that's about it.
Latest posts by Perzell Brewing (see all)

Contributor Perzell Brewing (@perzellbrewing ) First off, if you know me, follow me on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, you know that I am an avid homebrewer.  I love crafting a good beer, tasting it for the first time, and watching others enjoy something I made from scratch.  That is why this is going to be a very difficult topic to discuss as I am obviously biased. Craft Beer on the Rise I don’t think it is any big secret.  Craft beer has been on the rise…

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