Jay's Brewing Blog

  I sometimes hear when people get into all-grain brewing that they are not getting close to their expected original gravity.  You know that you are doing the all-grain process correctly, you are hitting your temperature as well as going by the books, yet you still are coming up with a lower gravity.  I know it can get frustrating – but if […]

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: […]

I wanted to throw out another plum recipe since so many people are having an insanely great harvest plums.  Apparently in this area, it’s been one hell of a harvest for plums.  Well if you are tired of making just plain wine with your plums, here is a Sweet Plum Melomel. This melomel is best served […]

It is helpful to have some sort of guide when making any type of beer or wine.  When it comes to mead though, it is style that can be so abstract, and you have so much freedom, it’s nice to have some sort of guidelines to give a helping hand. This information can be found probably the […]

I’m always a bit surprised when homebrewers don’t keep records of what they brewed.  To me it vital part to the hobby.  Now to the extent of it, that’s always up for debate but there are a few things that I would try to write down when ever I make a beer. (You Don’t Keep Records?!) Sometimes […]

Sometimes with beer recipes you’ll see next to the hops a number followed by AAU.  If you are new with the world of brewing it’s understandable that you might not have a clue what this means.  An example is below: 5 lbs Light DMe 6 AAUs Fuggle (60min) 10 AAUs Kent Goldings (15min) Safale 04 […]

Plum trees are blossoming right now.  Have too many?  Well that’s not a problem any more.  It’s time to take those extra pieces of fruit and make a delicious wine out of them.  This wine recipe is a dry plum wine. Ingredients  Yield: 1 Gallon 3 pounds black plums 2.5 pounds sugar Juice of 2 oranges 1/4 […]

The Randal is an interesting piece of equipment that was created  at the dogfish brewery in Maryland.  It helps enhance certain flavors with kegged beer. So what is a Randal?  A Randal is pretty much a water filter that your kegged beer passes in and out of to pick up aromas of what ever you chose to […]

Sugar is sugar right? That may be true for other things but for brewing, that could not be further from the truth. When brewing beer, you need to know what you are adding because different types of sugars will give you different results, some wanted and others unwanted. Before we get into the different specific […]

Some people really enjoy a chewy wheat.  Me personally I kinda like it on the other side.  When I make my wheat beers, I tend to make more that are on the American wheat side. So what is the difference between a German Wheat and an American Wheat?  The real big difference is that with […]