Homebrew bloggers

Charlie Papazian, a homebrew revolutionary.

Blogs are definately a hot commodity these days and it seems that if you don’t blog, you’re out of the loop.

Charlie Papazian, one of the fathers of the modern homebrew movement, is in on the action. In addition to Zymurgy, a magazine devoted to brewing started in the 1970s, a homebrew “bible,” The Complete Joy of Homebrewing, written in 1982, and his involvement with the American Homebrewer’s Association, Papazian is keeping himself busy with a little blogging here and there.

The Beer Examiner, started earlier this month, is a logbook of Papazian’s musings and news on the brew world–craft, micro and homebrews in particular. As of today, there are only a few entries, but the blog has some fun and interesting tidbits. Of course, there is a wee bit of self-promotion in there–but who’s to blame a guy for spreading the word about a world he is so involved in through blogging? After all, in the blogging world, anything goes.

Some of Papazian’s posts have a “What’s in my Glass?” section where he talks about his latest brew, or what might compliment the weather or the season. There are some artful photographs of various beers, too.

Just another fun addition to the ever-growing, ever-changing craft brew world! Check it out!

Cheers, Mr. Papazian!

New Website Launched!

It’s finally here! The Craft of Homebrew Beer has been uploaded! Though it needs a few tweaks, the majority of the site is finished.

Visit http://jo540.bu.edu/keident and take a look!

I think I’ll go have a microbrew. Phew!

Sharing the wealth

Weather and a global demand for hops has affected the ability for brewers to get the hops they need. A few posts ago I wrote about a conversation I had with Ralph Olsen of Hop Union in Yakima Washington about the shortage, and he was helpful in explaining how hops are bought and sold on the global market (see Fire, drought and demand=Short hop supply).

I also spoke with Todd Bellomy of the Sam Adams Brewery, in Jamaica Plain, Mass., about the shortage and how larger breweries are dealing with the situation. Todd told me that Sam Adams, part of the Boston Beer Company headed by Jim Koch, buys its hops mainly from Germany and England, and have locked their hops in at a certain price.

The brewery buys bulk quantities of hops and stores them, which has helped them continue to brew the major beers in their lineup with the same hop varieties despite the shortage, Todd said.

Still, the hop shortage has affected some of the smaller batches Sam Adams brews. One of the winners of last year’s Longshot American Homebrew contest won with a particularly hoppy beer made with seven kinds of hops, Todd said. The brewery had a difficult time finding all the hops needed to brew the recipe the way the winner intended.

“People wouldn’t even trade hops with Sam Adams,” Todd said, of the company’s efforts to secure the hops they would need to brew the beer. “We could not procure them at any price.”

Sam Adams instead only brewed two of the three winning beers, and plans to release the third beer when those seven hop varieties become available on the market again, Todd said.

In the meantime, Sam Adams has started a hop sharing program to help smaller breweries cope with skyrocketing prices. The company released 20,000 pounds of hops, and is selling them to small breweries at cost, he said. Brewers have to demonstrate basic requirements, such as the small size of their brewery and their hop need, and can apply online at the Sam Adams website.

Like Ralph at Hop Union, Todd is uncertain when the hop market will stabilize. “Hops are harvested in August and September,” Todd said. “So we won’t know until October or November.”

Recipes!

If brewing beer is like making soup, then what do beer recipes look like?

Many brewers tweak basic recipes and make them their own. They log their failures and successes in a variety of ways. 2006 Sam Adams Longshot American Homebrew contest winner Bruce Stott keeps his recipes in an Excel file. In addition to recording the ingredients he’s used, he also notes the brewing conditions, the temperature of the batch at various points, and more.

Recipes can be simple lists of the ingredients needed, with a few tips on how long to brew and at what temperature. Other recipes, like Bruce’s, make note of the brew’s gravity (alchohol content as measured with a hydrometer), and keep careful detail of each stage in the brewing process.

A typical, simple recipe can look like this: (taken from BeerRecipes.org)

Ingredients:

• 7 pounds, GWM pale malt
• 14 ounces, Carastan malt (36L) (Huge Baird)
• 1/2 ounce, chocolate malt
• 7–1/4 gallons water, treated with 1/2 ounce gypsum and pinch

OG: 1.051 in 5-1/2 gallons

Procedure:
Mash in with 8 quarts at 170F. for a target of 153-155. Conversion done in 30 minutes. Mash out at 168. Sparge with remaining supply liqour to collect 6–1/4 gallons. 90 minute boil. Chill and pitch yeast. Ferment at about 68F.

Rack to secondary after fermention dies down and dry hop with Cascade pellets and Kent Goldings. Let sit until fermentation completely done (e.g., pellet crud sinks)—about a week or two.

Prime and bottle or keg in the usual manner.

*******

There are a plethora of sites on the Internet that offer beer recipes. A good friend of mine swears by Cat’s Meow, a no-frills site that offers recipes categorized by beer type. It has been around since 1994, and boasts hundreds of recipes. The site has an index and a search function to find the recipe you’re looking for as quickly as possible. Cat’s Meow also has a converter, so brewers who don’t want to calculate the difference between a gallon and a liter can type their measurements into a form and the site will do the rest.

Upon closer inspection however, it looks like Cat’s Meow might not be updated anymore, or will be taken down soon. The site’s creator, Mark, recommends recipe-searchers to try Gambrinus’ Mug, a site very similar in presentation to Cat’s Meow. The difference is that users can now contribute their own recipes and grow the database that way.

BeerRecipes.org is a little more dressed up than the previous two sites, and offers recipes organized by beer type, as well. In addition to recipes, the site has a brew forum, links, and a mailing list for those brewers who want to be connected to the brewing world at-large.

There are many more sites offering beer, mead, lambic and even wine recipes on the Internet; all it takes is a simple search! It pays to do some research and to experiment with different recipes. Bruce Stott’s extremely organized record system has taught me that the best way to make a good beer the second time around is to keep good notes!

But most importantly, brewing beer is supposed to be fun!

Fire, drought and demand = Short hop supply!

Some of my interviewees mentioned a hop shortage to me in our discussions, so I decided to take a closer look. Even though I read the newspaper and listen to NPR daily, I had not heard of any hop shortage. Turns out, I might just live under a rock. Hop Shortage? Yes indeed.

So I called Ralph Olsen of Hop Union in Yakima, Washington to get a feel for what is going on. Ralph is the owner of a hop-buying company that sells largely to American craft brewers, though Ralph said they do deal hops internationally.

I had heard that we were experiencing a hop shortage because of a fire in the state of Washington. Ralph confirmed that a fire had indeed occurred, and in a warehouse next to his. He claimed, however, that the fire only destroyed about 3% of the US supply of hops, and that the fire occurred over two years ago.

I had also heard that drought had damaged some of the crops, and Ralph agreed that weather certainly is a factor, as it is in any farming market. But, he claimed, fire and drought, though a nuisance, were not the real reason the US is experiencing a shortage of hops.

In fact, what I learned about hops turned into a lesson on the global marketplace. The US is not the only country experiencing a hop shortage; many other countries around the world need hops and some are willing to pay exorbitant prices, Ralph said. US craft brewers are feeling the crunch because buyers in Europe need hops so badly they are willing to pay more, thus driving prices up.

Ralph explained that for years the global hops market had a surplus of hops–so much so that smaller hops farmers in the US were slowly driven out of business. A specialized market became even smaller–for instance, Ralph said, when he started in the business in 1978, there were over 200 growers in the US. Now there are only 50-60 growers, he said. But the surplus of hops kept prices low–as low as $2 a pound.

But with the growing popularity of craft-brewing in the US, and the explosion of brewing in countries like China, hops have suddenly become an item much in demand. Today, hops are selling as high as $25 a pound, and are quite difficult to find, Ralph said.

Will the hop market continue at this rate? Ralph said he expected the shortage to continue for a few more years before the market evens out. He explained that for the market to stabilize, a few things have to happen.

For one thing, craft brewers will learn to use hops other than what they are used to–and Ralph even used the old “soup” analogy I heard from Roger on my trip to the Modern Homebrew Emporium in Cambridge. Ralph said that hops are like spices for brewers, and that they “just get used to what they are using,” much the way we find spices we like and stick to them in our kitchens. In order to stay in the game, they will have to adapt their recipes, or find themselves out of business.

The shortage will also encourage growers to plant more acres of hops, Ralph said, but brewers won’t see a higher hop yield for a few years.

Until then–brewers will have to get (more) creative, and beer drinkers may see craft-brew prices go up.

So–relax while you can with a homebrew!!

Next time I’ll talk about what I learned about the Sam Adams hop sharing program when I visited the brewery in Jamaica Plain, Mass.

Cleanliness is Godliness

“Sanitizing your equipment is one of the easiest and most fundamentally important things you will do. If you do not take caren to clean your equipment, the best recipe in the world will result dissapointment.” –Charlie Papazian, “The New Complete Joy of Homebrewing“

If I have only learned one thing in my homebrew quest, it’s that you can’t make a good beer with dirty equipment.

Though it’s nearly impossible to prevent some bacteria from finding their way into the brew-stew, improperly cleaned equipment can literally change the chemistry of the beer and produce a yucky taste nobody will enjoy. Each ingredient we add should be done intentionally so that the flavors come out just right.

But good tasting beer doesn’t just come from the ingredients. How you clean your equipment and store your freshly-brewed beer matter almost as much as what you’ve lovingly added into your batch. If you don’t clean and store with care, you may invite other “friends” into your brew that could change the beer for the worse.

Yeast, one of the four main ingredients of beer, plays a big role in the fermentation process. Not only do the tiny microorganisms eat the sugars from the malted barley, they also add flavor to the beer. There are thousands of yeast strains in the world; but they don’t all make good beer. They are all over the place, on our bodies and in the air–everywhere.

Over the years, brewers have developed a special yeast just for brewing, much the way bakers have developed their own yeast for breads. Conveniently named, brewer’s yeast is really the only yeast you want in your brew, which is why sanitation is crucial in the brewing process. If you don’t clean your equipment and cover your beer as it ferments, yeast from the air or bacteria from the equipment can spoil your brew.

There’s no one sanitizer that works the best, I’ve found–people seem to use what works for them. When my Dad brewed beer, he always bought “B-brite,” a bleach-free powder that he added to his cleaning water. Other people swear by a diluted bleach-water mix, while still others use sterilizers made from an iodine base.

Whatever the cleanser may be, use it it often and carefully clean your brewing materials. Once you’ve brewed up your beer in your sparkly-clean equipment, keep your brew properly covered and stored, and the yeast will do the rest for you!

In the meantime, you can relax with confidence, knowing you have the right yeast in a clean brew that will make the perfect batch of beer.

Cheers!

Longshot Close to Home

Well, the 2007 Longshot 6-pack is on the shelves. Congrats to the 2007 winners of the Sam Adams American Homebrew contest! It’s a dream of mine to one day brew a beer worthy enough to compete–but I am a novice and have a long way to go. But hey–isn’t learning the craft part of the fun?!

I have to admit, I was hoping to find a 2006 Longshot straggler on the shelves because I will be interviewing the winner in a few weeks. (A fellow Cape Codder, like me!) I even called ahead to my local beverage supplier and was told I could find the 2006 Longshot. Once I arrived though, the manager told me that Longshot 6-packs “don’t stay on the shelf long.”

Nonetheless, I look forward to tasting this year’s brews, in the company of good friends, of course.

Welcome to Yet Another Beer Blog!

Hello!

Welcome to this blog about brewing beer!

I am a graduate student studying journalism at Boston University, and I am currently researching and constructing this (yet another!) website about the craft and history of brewing beer.

My hope is that this blog will grow from a simple log of my exploits to a forum that explores brewing with intelligence, humor and fun! I welcome comments, suggestions and posts that will make this blog a great place to talk about BEER—-the nectar of the gods!