Jay's Brewing Blog

I’m a huge advocate for making your own recipes and not going by recipe kits.  I have many reasons and honestly, one post would not do enough justice (but I’ll keep it to one).  So I’ll try to keep this short and sweet. It’s best to start this off by knowing what I see in […]

Every once in a while I get asked how to culture yeast from a bottle of beer.  It’s not that hard, but it is time-consuming.  If you are interested in culturing your own yeast this is the post that you need to read. Which Beers Can Be Culture When choosing the beers that you want […]

When it comes to hardware, I generally try to save money where I can.  Wort chillers are pretty easy to make, and if you have the time, I would give it a go for building your own.  That’s why I wanted to put up instructions on how to make a wort chiller!  Using a wort […]

Homebrewing is an amazing hobby,  but just like most things in life, people end up getting into something that they really enjoy and the joy can diminish over time.  With homebrewing I’ve found it happens kinda like  writers block but, “brewing block”.  It happens to the best of us in the hobby and you go […]

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 […]

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 […]

I’ve been talking about how to making a Jockey Box for a while.  I still haven’t made one because I’ve been looking for some good directions.  I think I found them.  All of this information can be found here, I just tried to condense it a bit better but the general directions and the pictures […]

“What malt extract is better, dry or liquid?”  This is a pretty common question that homebrewers ask when deciding which one to use.  I unfortunately don’t have an answer in this post about which one is, “better” only because I don’t believe that there is one which is better.  At the end its preference.  I’ll break […]

A few post ago we put up a post about how the hardness of water effects your brewing efforts.  Well I wanted to find a, “dummy” map to help you out what your water might be like if you live in the USA and you didn’t want to send your water out. I found this […]