Every year, my wife and I make a trip up to Whistler for the annual Telus Festival. This week-long celebration of snow sports features live music, big-air competitions, plenty of swag from the sponsors, and pitchers and pitchers of that golden Canadian nectar Kokanee. After our last visit, I wanted to see if I could…
Category: Homebrewing
Homebrew Recipe: IP…L?
I brewed this recipe this past January… and I’m still drinking them as it’s only grown better with age. Truth be told, this was a screw-up. I had purchased the ingredients for a few different recipes – an IPA, an amber ale, and a Steam Beer – as I usually do, and I stored the…
Homebrew Recipe: California-Style Steam Beer
This California-style Steam Lager was a pleasant surprise for a couple of reasons. First, I have little experience with Steam Beers, and tend to be biased against lagers. I realize that there is no reason for me to dislike lagers, the only real experience I’d had with them had been – of course – those…
Homebrew Recipe: Apfelwine
In early October of 2012, I decided that I wanted to make a hard cider. I had grandiose dreams of pressing my own apples for about ten minutes. After poking around online for a while, I realized that pressing apples would be a shitload of work for (according to the internet) likely very little payoff,…
Homebrew Recipe: B&G Amber
Some days, you just need to brew something simple. For my brother-in-law and I, two days after Christmas was one of those days. At the time, I had rencently brewed quite a few beers, including the Red, the WH Honey Ale, and my Holiday Beer, and when I purchased the ingredients for each brew, I had made…
Waiting for beer…
There’s little worse than waiting for a brew to finish. After spending all those hours planning, purchasing, brewing, racking and bottling, it’s harder still to wait for weeks to try the brew. I slowed my brewing over the winter as well. In fact, I haven’t had anyhting in the brewpot for over a month and…
Homebrew Recipe: Irish Red
One of the first better-tasting beers that I ever tried was Killian’s Irish Red. A friend of mine bought a six-pack of them for St. Paddy’s day one year – mostly just because it has “Irish” in the name – and not only did we have the pleasing realization that beer could have more character…
Homebrew Recipe: WH Honey Ale
Like the White House honey Porter, I decided to brew this beer with the hope that I could use the opportunity to repeat “FOUR MORE BEERS!!!” over and over again. Needless to say, that got pretty old pretty quickly. The original recipes (including the one posted below) can be found at the White House Blog….
Tired dog and a homebrew
I enjoyed the first of my batch of the White House Honey Ale (recipe posted here) last night after a run with Attila. While I assume he was sad that he wasn’t allowed a mug of his own, he seemed satisfied to simply bask in the warmth of the fire. For being a brew that’s only been…
Homebrew Recipe: The Murphy’s Holiday Cheer
The first winter beer that I ever put my lips to was Samuel Adams’ hefty winter brew “Old Fezziwig Ale.” I think I was around 21 at the time, and to my uncultured beer-palate, the Boston-based brewery’s Christmas concoction was like getting punched in the mouth by a beer-soaked Christmas cookie. My friend Jon and…
Brew Recipe: White House Honey Porter
Just before the election, the White House and Obama’s campaign did a great job of making a very small percentage of the population (homebrewers) believe that the Presdent somehow identified with them. Not only did they hype up the idea that the president was a homebrewer, they claimed that the recipes were secret, and only released them…
Brew Recipe: Light Honey Ale
As far as brewing is concerned, there is very little that is easier – and more immediately rewarding – than brewing an extract-only light ale. As with most light beers (and really anything else that appeals to the bovine masses) it only takes a few simple ingredients to make something mildly pleasing, and therefor adored…
Homebrew Recipe: Dark Altbier
This is the OTHER result (the first being the WTF?) of the mixup of some Papazian recipes. This brew is delicious. It has a dark amber color, a smooth mouthfeel with a light bitter finish, just enough hoppy flavor to complement the dark body, and a standard altbier yeastiness. Make it. It’s very good. Grains:…
Homebrew Recipe: The “WTF?”
This beer is beer. That last line was my wife’s analysis of this beer. Here is mine: This beer was one of the results of the mix-up that I explained in my last post: The “Perils” of Homebrewing: Shadow(brew)ing Papazian. The result was a dark, bitter black ale, with a light sweetness, as the bitter original…
The “Perils” of Homebrewing: Shadow(brew)ing Papazian
When we first began homebrewing, my buddy Matt (an official Shadow Brewer) brought over a book that he had received from a friend as a gift. He left it at my house, as my garage had become the defacto brew-cave, and it was promptly tucked into a corner and forgotten as we stumbled our way…
