Matt Chrispen | Accidentalis Brewery. Overly serious home brewer sharing long-form articles on beer, mead, and gear. Passionate about historical and modern techniques and systems. Documenting the ongoing journey to mastering craft from my garage.
Brewer's Notes
Well now. Fumble is a strong word. But by the numbers, yeah, missed it by that much! But recovered, rather than dumping the beer. Recently I re-brewed an old Robust Porter recipe, confident that with the experience I have gained over the last few years it would turn out better
Brew-Magic
I continue to field a lot of questions about efficiency (especially on the Brew-Magic) and I thought I would try to clear up a few myths, and give some practical advice. While this is generally applicable to any brewing style, I am going to focus on the Brew-Magic V350MS to
Rambling
For those that don't know, a SMaSH beer is a single malt, single hop beer and a perfect vehicle to really get to know a new hop variety. I have gotten very lucky so far with Nelson Sauvin, using it in a previous recipe called Saison Du Sauvin.
Rambling
I have been following Stan Heironymous religiously since "Brew Like a Monk" was released, including his blog, Appelation Beer. A very common theme is understanding Beer From a Place, and how we consistently misunderstand the point when inundated with marketing, beer styles and myths (see marketing). So, in
Brew-Magic
Just washed up, finished. 5.5 hours from heating liquor to knock out to fermenter. Had a neighbor come over part way, made cleaning a lot more efficient. So, very simple 10.5 gallon SMaSH recipe, Otter SMaSH Nelson: 20# Marris Otter, milled twice with a new 0.040"
Rambling
I got a little friendly flack for posting content from other blogs, videocasts, etc. Fair enough. But I thought I would point out and review a few blogs that I religiously follow - and have made it onto my blogroll. Appellation Beer / Stan Hieronymous : If you don't know
Brew-Magic
In my previous post on the Magic-Soft V3 update for the Brew-Magic V350, I walked through my perceptions of how the Brew-Magic performed with the software update, and was very pleasantly surprised at the ease of hitting strike temperatures. I have had a few more chances to brew, but been
Rambling
So a shameless plug for Michael Tonsmiere who just released a very good book exploring American Sour Beers. You can find the book here on Amazon. He also runs the brewing blog - The Mad Fermentationist, which I have been following for a few years. Michael was interviewed for a
Rambling
Well... the performance of this site went off the rails badly. So after some rearranging, cutting free some old plugins and a big upgrade at the host, we are back. My apologies to anyone who came looking and found the blog down, slow or angry. I just got back from
Measurement
Adapted from http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=At_home_water_testing A simple water tool for the brewery can be home water testing kits popularly used to manage aquarium water. In particular, titration kits that measure both GH or General Hardness and KH or Carbonate Hardness are preferred
Brew-Magic
I promised to write up and compare brewing before the software upgrade and after. I realize this is for a very small audience, so will keep this fairly succinct. I intentionally brewed as I would have in the past, without using any of the recipe functions. I will use the
Rambling
I finally got back from a business trip and this was waiting for me... On another note: smile.amazon.com - register and it pushes a small portion of your purchases toward a charity of your choice! We will return to our regularly scheduled programming... when I am done. :) Buy