Jay's Brewing Blog

Sometimes when making a recipe it’s a lot easier to work backwards.   Maybe you’ll think to yourself, “I would really like to make a beer that is 9% ABV”.  Well to know how to answer this question you can use a formula to figure out how much DME or LME to use. To calculate ABV: […]

So to finish off this series we are going to create a few recipes to show what we have learned.  We have gone through a lot and now it’s time to test the knowledge and put into some practical use. First off let’s do an American Pale Ale (The Sweet Nectar Of Life) Starting off […]

The easiest way to change your beer around, is by changing your east.  Our blog has quite a few post on yeast in general, so to save your eyes consider this post as a directory to useful information. When looking at your beer recipe one thing that you need to consider is if it is […]

If you are at this point hopefully you have a basic understanding of specialty grains and the hops, now time to get the gist of malt extract.  Malt extract comes in dry (dme) and liquid (lme) form. For ease of this conversation I will be using LME as examples but we do have a conversion chart that […]

We now have a basic understanding of some different types of hops.  It is time to tie everything together with hops and really learn how to use this knowledge for designing your beer. This part on hops is  really subjective, everyone will have their own opinion and there are tons of theories and ways.  So […]

Specialty grains can be used to make the beer more, “Complex” in the malty aspect, but another part that makes the beer more complex is the hops.  Now hops can either be the main focal point of your beer or they can be used just to accent your grains and the flavors that come from […]

How do you make your own recipe?   So many homebrewers get into brewing beer because this was ultimately their dream, to come up with a recipe of their own that was perfect to their palate.  I get asked a lot, and I mean, A LOT, “How do I go about making my own recipe?”.  So I’m writing […]

In the world of all-grain when it comes to sparging there are two main ways to do it: 1) Fly sparge 2) Batch sparge. Well there is a 3rd way to do it, it’s called no sparge.  The way that this is done is, you add all of the water you need to your mash […]

If you made it to this point in the series you have the knowledge to start brewing all-grain. You need: Recipe  Mash Tun Extra Cooler Turkey Burner Big Pot (7 gallons +) I brewed this batch of beer with one of my buddies and took pictures of it so we’ll go with this recipe.  It […]

The biggest thing that separates extract with specialty grain brewers to all-grain brewers is that with all-grain brewers you need a vessel called a, “Mash-Tun”.  You can buy these online but honestly I don’t see the point.  You can make them for a fraction of the cost and you don’t need any special tools. But before I […]