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.
Brew-Magic
I like shiny things. I think that is well established. I also like new things... like software, computers, motorcycles, barrels... When I heard there was a software update coming for the V350, I contacted Brew Magic. This was back in February. It took a bit of time for them to
Brewer's Notes
What an ugly surprise. Yesterday, I was adding some sugar into my split batch saison, and saw this. Unintentionally I managed to contaminate the batch with Brettanomyces. I have played with Brett quite a bit in the brewery, but how it managed to sneak into this batch remains a mystery.
Brewer's Notes
I do like to mix things up a bit. One of the more frustrating problems I have with small batches on the stove is the consistency of temperature. I am so spoiled by the Brew Magic’s ability to maintain a consistent temperature – I have been seeking ways to replicate
Brewer's Notes
Well, I promised more stuff on water, and haven't gotten around to it. Apologies. I got detoured with the Blacklands Malt, the malt analysis sheets, etc. All around - poorly planned on my part. The Brew-Magic is sitting waiting for the PLC to arrive. I got the software
Brewer's Notes
It's time to get a little nerdy about Malt. We are going to run through and compare Blacklands Malt White Horn® Pilsener to Briess® Pilsen Malt, and hopefully learn a little bit about choosing quality products. Malt Analysis sheets are useful tools in a brewery toolkit for making
Rambling
Apologies for taking so long for another post. It's been a fairly busy month for me so far, and it doesn't seem to want to let up. I have been trying to plan for a large series of brews, and perhaps have talked myself out of
Malt
Small, local malting companies are springing up all over the US. A few years ago, it seemed a small scale malting trend centered around larger nano- & micro-brewery centers, both east, west and north, but not much in the middle. It was a matter of time before one came to
Rambling
A simple tasting description: Tastes like a saison... lots of spice and phenolics. Orange and other spices are in the background. Mouthfeel is light to medium. Love the foam and the spritzy finish. This is a fairly classic saison and sessionable with just a little alcohol at 6%. I think
Brewer's Notes
In the last post, Building a Recipe: Saison, I went through some of my thought processes and research in building a new recipe. Something I didn't cover was the source for a recipe, and that varies greatly. A great place to start is Brewing Classic Styles, Zymurgy or
Process
I am on a saison kick… maybe more like a saison obsession - they taste like summ and it has been cold this winter. I thought I might do some “rambling” and exploration here about saisons and water profiles, since there seems to be some confusion relative to what is
Rambling
I finally got around to making a couple of labels. I cheated and used photos - despite my intent to break out pens and paint. Just ran out of time. I like the general designs - and the changing logo colors to match the themes.
Rambling
On the AHA forum, Denny Conn posted this link to a sobering article.It really got me thinking. I have 4-5 batchs of strong beer in my pipeline at any given time. I am the only drinker in the house - and while I give a lot of it away.