When I first started brewing, there was very little community, majority of the time it was just me.  I got introduced to homebrewing after a cross country drive quickly turned into a brewery tour from Ann Arbor, Michigan to Seattle, Washington for an internship. After my roommate/driving buddy and I arrived in Seattle after trying 20+breweries along the way, we quickly bought our first homebrew kit and brewed our first batch. We brewed a few extract + steeping grains beers by following LHBS instructions and learning as we went. We drove back to college after stopping at another 20ish breweries and I knew I needed to continue this hobby. However, time got the better of me. Next thing I knew I had graduated, moved out to Seattle full time, and slowly picked the hobby back up.

I had been a long time lurker of reddit (/u/zeith) and figured the only way to improve was to read and practice. I picked up a few basic brewing books and started reading reddit daily. I failed a ton of beers, experimented a lot, swore a lot, and brewed a few average beers. I rarely shared my beer with others except with my brewing buddy from the internship who ended up becoming my roommate again. We would occasionally brew together, but I spent a lot of time on my own; reading, planning, thinking and dreaming.

After eventually moving to All Grain, I decided to stop flying solo and wanted to involve myself in a community and I picked reddit. I started posting more and got to know a few of the regulars. We shared ideas, theories, jokes, and for the first time, I felt part of a community of brewers. It was one thing to go to a craft bar and talk about the beer with the regulars. It was a completely different beast to

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Love this post, man. This distills so much of WHY I wanted this site to grow into a real community. Great job!

posted by homebrewdad on 2/09/2015 at 11:54:12 AM

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Tags for this post: Christmas, beer, belgian, barleywine

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the motivation behind the most "international" beer I've ever done - my Wandering Barbarian IPA, which features ingredients from seven different countries and at least four US states. At the time, I was pretty excited about this particular brew... but, in all honestly, I'm always excited about new beers, so I will forgive you if you didn't share in my enthusiasm.

The highlights of this beer - in case you don't care to read the article - are that it features ECY-29 (Conan) yeast, some interesting, fruity hops in El Dorado and Motueka, and a fairly unique grain bill starring Golden Promise and honey malt. On a lark, I ended up picking up some palm sugar from my local Asian market, which is used to both dry the beer a bit, and to hopefully give it some subtle flavor.

Of course, my six ounces of dry hops were intended to be anything but subtle - I was looking for a fruity aroma bomb. Combined with moderate first wort hopping for bitterness, some minor late boil additions, and a big flameout/whirlpool addition (all told, I used 9.5 ounces of hops in this beer!), I was really hoping for smooth bitterness, huge hop flavor, and the aforementioned MASSIVE hop aroma.

Finally, this would be the first beer that I have ever used gelatin on. I planned to follow Brulosopher's gelatin instructions, but I'll confess - I couldn't be...
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Tags for this post: conan, IPA, beer, homebrew, international

I brew indoors in my kitchen. My set up is for 5 gallon all grain batches. Today I brewed a Traditional (uh, sort of traditional) Bock. It's the third time I've brewed this because it's popular with the wife. I'll post the recipe at the end. ...
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Tags for this post: brew, day, equipment, brewday, process, brewing

Bru'n Water is an Excel Spreadsheet created Martin Brungard, a homebrewer and Environmental Engineer. You can read his bio at the bottom of the Bru'n Water website. This spreadsheet is a great tool to help brewers adjust their water and grain bill in order to reach an optimum conversion pH for the style of beer they are brewing. The download is FREE! If you do download it and find it useful, send the man a donation and he'll send you a personalized (your name on the sheet) version that has a few improvements....
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Tags for this post: Water chemistry, Water Adjustments, Mash pH, Bru'n Water

After posting this on reddit.com/r/homebrewing, it was suggested to post this here.  I hope you enjoy! Feedback is always appreciated.

IPA's and pale ales are my favorite styles of beer. In 3 years of brewing, over half of my brews have been in these categories. Luckily, my wife feels the same about the style and actually demands either a pale ale or IPA be on tap at all time. I know, it's a rough life. We frequent local breweries and festivals to sample a variety of beers, but I am constantly comparing my IPA's to the ones I purchase. I am usually disappointed that mine tend to fall just short of majority of these. Perhaps I am too critical of my own work, but nothing I made seemed to be on par.

To further describe what I mean by my beers falling short of "the mark", think of your favorite "commercial" IPA. Personally, I love West coast IPA's. Even though I am on the East coast, they are readily available. Foothill's Hoppyium and Jade IPA, Olde Hickory's Death by Hops, Wicked Weed's Freak of Nature, and Triple C's 3C IPA are some of my favorite. When

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Tags for this post: IPA, pale ale, FWH, hop burst, hop stand, west coast

On a lazy, winter Saturday I sat in my living room feeling empty. I had just finished the final episode of the millennials take on Friends and ever popular television show, How I Met Your Mother. I had recently moved 1,000 miles from home and fiancée, and had failed at one of my lifelong dreams (more on that later). I was spending every second outside of work on my couch watching Netflix and drinking beer. A very boring lifestyle for a man of such adventurous nature as myself. Then I saw it, as I searched for a documentary on beer, a youtube video by a man with a red beard donning a Virginia Tech shirt going through a tutorial on making beer with an igloo cooler. I watched it and thought to myself, I must do this. Ten days later my first extract kit arrived and I was hooked.

This blog is not just some dude's personal diary of brewing. I will preface this by telling you that I am no pro, at the time of this entry I have been brewing for exactly one year (don't close this window just yet). At the risk of sounding arrogant, self appreciating, or overzealous, I am here to tell you that I have come a long way, and this blog is meant to be a guide for those traveling through the first leg of their trip. Regardless of your destination or what level of brewing you are currently at I invite you...
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Tags for this post: blog, homebrewing, introduction, how to

In the summer of 2014, I found myself annoyed with the online homebrewing scene. A very large homebrewing community that I had spent many hours involved with had become more and more unfriendly, and had managed to drive away a lot of their knowledgeable, helpful posters. I found myself really enjoying the reddit homebrewing sub (and still enjoy it to this day), but reddit is such a temporary medium; after a handful of days (often, hours), even the best material slips into the void, becoming extremely difficult to find again. A brewing friend linked me to a large "invitation only" Facebook group... and I found that I hated it, as Facebook's unknowable algorithm made it so that content disappeared quicker than on reddit, with no rhyme or reason as to what was prominently displayed and what melted away. There had to be a better way!

On an evening drive home, the wheels got to spinning in my head, and I wondered... why not convert this site from a personal blog into a real community? After all, I had already started somewhat down that path, what with the various calculators and such. I had planned to add other major areas to the site. Why not go all the way? Why not try to make the single best homebrewing site on the internet?

That night, I composed a long message and sent it to a select group of brewers that I knew were not only knowledgeable about brewing, but also, legitimately good...
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Tags for this post: homebrew, homebrewing, community, forum, blog, utilities, Wheaton's law

Back in July, a friend of mine in Vermont dropped me an email to see if I would be interested in some yeast he had picked up - ECY29, aka the sometimes hard to find "Conan" strain, which is used in the famous Heady Topper IPA. He had picked it up on a whim while at his LHBS, and really did not intend to use it. I enthusiastically accepted, and ended up giving away three vials of it in a contest here on the site.

One of my contest winners (Ryan) was kind enough to ship me two bottles of beer he had brewed - the same recipe in both beers, save one used WLP004 (Irish ale), and the other used the ECY29 he had won. The difference was striking, with the Conan version indeed manifesting a big, delicious, juicy peach aroma.

All along, I had also planned to brew my own beer with the yeast (and send a couple of bottles to the guy who was great enough to hook me up in the first place). Conan is supposed to really accent hop character, and that unique peach aroma was very interesting. So, I started thinking about brewing an IPA with huge aroma, but I wanted to do something a bit different than the typical beers I had sampled.

Having had great success with my Oakenbranch IPA (an English beer with spicy hops), I wanted to use that as a template, but to...
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Tags for this post: international, beer, brewing, homebrewing, IPA, Conan, ECY29, recipe

In late November, I got the chance to review a Hydra immersion wort chiller from JaDeD Brewing. Due to some issues with my setup (faucet located very far away, four distinct leaks in my hoses, issues connecting the chiller properly), I had less than optimal results - though, to be fair, the Hydra still easily outperformed my old chiller.

I had planned to revisit chilling with the Hydra, but the holidays grabbed hold, and I wasn't able to brew again until this past weekend.

Now, one might think that an intelligent person would do their best to rectify any known issues prior to using their chiller again. You would, of course, be correct... but I'm not claiming to be an intelligent person.

Indeed, I only thought about my past problems on the very morning of my brewday. Fortunately, my wife was getting ready to do the weekly grocery store/Target run, so I penciled in "duct tape" on the grocery list.

Go on, laugh. Call me names. My bright idea was to apply a bit of redneck engineering to the problem; as they say, if duct tape can't fix it, it's not worth fixing. Right?

Well, I got involved in my brew day, and had ambitiously planned also to grill (steaks, burgers, hot dogs, brats, polish sausage, corn) after brewing. Somewhere along the way, I forgot about my hose repairs in the midst of everything else going on, and only remembered close to dusk (near...
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Tags for this post: Hydra, wort, chiller, brewing, beer, homebrewing, JaDeD, immersion

A few nights ago, I thought I'd put together a starter of ECY-29 (Conan) yeast. I figured that I'd grow enough for my IPA, my 2 gallons of cider, and some to save for future batches (via the Brulosophy yeast harvesting method). All told, I'd be making a ~3.5 liter starter.

Hah. Hah hah. Hah hah hah.


I had foolishly asked my 16 year old son to take my DIY stirplate down to the basement at Christmas time. Shockingly, he wasn't overly careful with it, and placed it somewhere that it ended up falling a couple of feet to the ground (where I found it lying on its side).

After twenty something tries to get the starter going (which usually takes one, maybe two tries to do) - all resulting in a thrown bar - I put the flask on the ground, grabbed a spare stirbar, and placed it directly on the powered down plate. BAM, the bar instantly relocated several inches off center.

So, I opened the sitrplate case, and discovered that yes, the magnet was detached from the fan. Crap.

First off, I tried gluing the washer/magnet combo back onto the fan with Gorilla super glue... no dice, it simply would not stick. I spent a good half hour digging around the basement in search of a hot glue gun, found one, applied the combo using it. This worked for all of about five seconds before throwing the magnet again.

Next, I reverted back...
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Tags for this post: stirplate, diy, yeast, starter, troubleshooting