This year Big Brew Day fell on Brent’s scheduled weekend to brew; this was good for two reasons! 1. Brent was the one running around the house trying to brew while 20 friends were hanging out on the patio & in the backyard, and 2. I got to get in the kitchen and turn out some great beer-themed food! I [...]

Last weekend I participate in Fuggled’s International Homebrew Project; aimed to get some hombrewer’s together around the world to pick a recipe, brew it and then blog about it This year’s recipe was a remake of a 1933 Barclay Perkins Milk Stout. Frankly, before this came up, I’d never heard of it; shameful to be sure! Kristen England from the BJCP [...]

Those of you who follow me on Twitter have had your ears bent about this topic quite a bit lately, but it’s so exciting I just have to share it, you know?!? I’ve been slowly (veeeerrrryy slowly) chugging my way through Chris White & Jamil Zainasheff’s book “Yeast” recently; it’s fascinating stuff, and has inspired me to try my hand at [...]

I expanded my world a lot in 2010. After starting this blog, I went back to my dormant Twitter account, and really started trying to connect with people as passionate about beer, wine & food as I am; it wasn’t hard. I barely had to swing a cat and I found hundreds of people who felt like I did! Twitter [...]

I don’t normally make New Year’s resolutions. In the past I’ve made them in order to hold myself accountable to do specific things; get my drivers license, lose 20 lbs…blah, blah, blah. Never works. I didn’t get my drivers licence till I was 27 (10 failed resolutions later) and I go up and down those 20lbs based on what exciting [...]

My compost worms no longer love me. It’s sad, but true. The main diet that my happy little compost worms lived on up till recently was spent grain (the leftover grain from brewing day); that was until I finally decided to try my hand at making my own bread from it, instead of feeding it to the hungry, hungry wormies. [...]

This week my pre-ordered wet hops from Brewmasters Warehouse are finally in! I have a pound of Citra and a pound of Cascade coming that are certainly destined for great things out of my brew pot!! I had thought we might do two separate beers and single hop them, but it seems I underestimated the equivalencies between dry and wet [...]

I recently completed my first cross-country homebrew trade, with Brandon who writes the Thirsty Zymurgist blog. I was pretty nervous to send my brews cross country to Oregon to be tried by someone I’d never met before, but I figured it was good practice for the Iron Brewer tasting coming up next week; what the heck! Brandon sent me three [...]

My friend Amie (@CatLadyBeer on twitter) stopped by last weekend to say hi and try out a couple of our brews on the way home to Gainesville, and to drop off the score she picked up for us in NoFL on the way down (including a Harpoon 100 Barrel Series ESB I plan on cracking open tonight!!). She also very [...]

  After brewing some interesting beers over the past months, Brent and I both decided it was time to brew some drinkable, sessionable and wide-appeal beers. I decided to do with an Oskar Blues "Dales Pale Ale” clone and Brent did a Dogfish Head “60 Minute IPA” clone. Of course, because a) We are not Brian Lutz or Sam Calagione [...]

I’ve definitely been lacking on the potable side lately, and seeing those that almost drained the keg on the 4th July and Daily Beer Review’s Rob seemed to really like my most recent attempt, I thought I would post the recipe for posterity! Read Rob’s review here, and then follow his blog while you’re there! This was a recipe where [...]

I love a good barleywine style ale. They are malty, for the most part quite hoppy (and I do love me some hops) and a little bittersweet. Sierra Nevada’s Bigfoot is one of my favourite examples, so I decided to try my hand at making a version of my own. Everything was going swimmingly till someone gave me unsolicited advice [...]