Jay's Brewing Blog

There are a few tips and tricks make you tilt your head and say, “Ah yes, time to share this one and look really smart.”  Well this is one of those. Fairly frequently, I hear about extract brewers getting darker color beers then what was intended.  I still hold the notorious, “tang” flavor as a […]

There is no reason why your beer can’t be clear when you pour it into your glass.  While clarity does not affect the taste of the beer, some homebrewers feel that appearance is half the battle.    Here are a few tricks that will help your beer clear up. Irish Moss This is an adjunct added at […]

Have you ever been in a rush to get a brew made then be able to drink it quickly?   Well, if you have been in situation you know that a lot of homebrew recipes will get thrown out.  They are just too high of a gravity.  That’s when small beers (pretty much session beers) […]

A lot of homebrewers look to get the edge on homebrewing with a few tricks that make life that much easier.  One is a blow off tube if you are fermenting in a carboy.  One thing I should state before I dive deep into the blow off tube is, it’s easier to get the tubing […]

When making a brew there are a couple things that you can do to make a beer a bit more complex.  I recommend using specialty grains.  When using specialty grains and extract you are pretty much making a tea by soaking grains in a pot of water.  In order to use specialty grains in your beer you need to […]

When the cold weather comes around we start to get the phone calls about how the fermentation is  not starting or being sluggish at first.  Well if it makes you feel any better, it’s usually not anything you did.  Usually around this time of year it’s because of the weather and the cooler fermentation temperatures. In […]

One of the easiest ways to save money with homebrewing is culturing your own yeast.  Before you have a knee jerk reaction thinking that it is hard or complicated just know people have doing this since there were pyramids if they can do it, you can too. One reason why you might want to culture your own yeast is if you […]

Everyone has a trick that they know or learned from some one that just saves you time and or makes life easier.  They are the types of tricks that you can’t wait to show off when you have a friend in the room and the reaction is always the same, “wow that’s clever”.  This trick […]

Sometimes you just don’t nail your brew when it comes to the tasting part.  To your defense, there’s a lot of things that could have happened. It’s best not to have a camera around when tasting a bad batch of beer because your face will make some very odd expressions.  Regardless there are off flavors that […]

You would think that the choice is simple when choosing a carboy.  You have glass carboys and you have plastic carboys. But is it really that simple? An ongoing debate has been in the brewing world about plastic or glass carboys ever since carboys have been around on which one is the best option for you when […]