Vienna Lager

Brew #7 – Vienna Lager

Posted on by

Back in February, a friend from work came over to my place and we had a double brew day on the back patio. He brewed an English IPA and I brewed a Vienna Lager. This was a BIG deal for me, since it was my FIRST ALL-GRAIN BREW!!!! (Yes, I was excited!)

When looking for a recipe I wanted to find a lager that would be easy to brew, was well rated, and German in style. I looked at quite a few recipes online and decided on a Vienna style, since it is one of my favorites (Boston Lager, and all…). I’ve been wanting to do a lager for some time now, ever since I set up my temperature controlled freezer, so I was very excited to try a recipe I found on the American Homebrewers Association website. I modified this recipe slightly, since my LHBS didn’t have all of the ingredients. Continue reading →

Comparison of Blue Moon to my homebrew.

Brew #5 – Blue Moon(ish) Belgian Wheat

Posted on by

So, I was calling this a ‘Blue Moon Partial-Mash Clone’, but the reality of it is — it’s Blue Moon(ish). It’s certainly not Blue Moon, but it’s quite delicious!

About a month ago I found a long thread on HomeBrewTalk that was all about cloning Blue Moon. A group of dedicated Blue Moon fans have devoted trial after trial to perfecting the Blue Moon recipe on a homebrew scale. One of these fans, who goes by the username of ‘Nilo’, has done 8 trials and has a recipe that looked to be very close to the real thing. I then took his recipe and converted it for a partial-mash.

The problem being wheat extract ends up being much darker than mashed wheat malt. Continue reading →

An image of the apple ciders in their fermenters.

Brew #4 – Simple Apple Cider v2.0 and v2.1

Posted on by

A few months ago I made my first apple cider — it was good, but it needed some improvement. I had a few ideas on how to improve the recipe, so for my second batch I decided to experiment with a few factors that differentiate these batches from v1.0, specifically: the juice type, the type of sweetening/priming sugar used, and the time for conditioning. Continue reading →

The White House Honey Ale poured into a glass

Brew #3 – White House Honey Ale

Posted on by

Back in late October, I made a batch of honey ale using the White House Honey Ale recipe with my buddy, Dan, and my wife, Michelle.

For those of you who don’t know what this is, Obama’s staff was petitioned to release the recipe for the homebrew they have been making in the White House. They actually released two recipes: one for a Honey Ale and another for a Honey Porter. For both of these recipes they use honey from the White House garden, but that’s besides the point. Continue reading →

Picture of the freezer and cider.

Brew #2 – Simple Apple Cider

Posted on by

For my second brew (though this may not be appropriate title, since nothing was actually “brewed”), I fermented a small, one-gallon test batch of apple cider.

When my first beer was fermenting, I was telling some friends about my new-found hobby, and several mentioned that it would be neat if I made a hard apple cider. One of whom especially loves Woodchuck Amber! Knowing this, I set out to make a simple, semi-sweet and carbonated apple cider. Continue reading →