Jay's Brewing Blog

When it comes to water for brewing it isn’t a thing that keeps me up at night.  Yeast, hops, grains might but water not so much.  With that said there are a few things to note and a few important aspects to consider. I was taught this phrase and maybe this explains a lot why […]

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 […]

Sometimes I get asked, “What is the difference between alpha and beta acids for hops?”.  Well I can tell you, but I must warn you – beer nerd talk is about to get put into full throttle. When it comes to hops there are usually two types that come to mind: 1) Alpha Acids 2) Beta […]

With the super bowl around the corner, if you don’t have a homebrew made for the occasion I don’t know how else to tell you – you’re out of luck.  I did however find this article and it was very well done on pairing micro brews for the big game.  It was done well enough […]

Pineapple wine is a pretty nice wine to have in the summer time when you are hanging out pool side.  While it may be hard to think that about the summer when we’re are in the midst of winter, the wine itself will have to age so doing it now will put you in perfect […]

In the past I’ve been a huge advocate for liquid yeast over dry yeast.  I’ve been on this dry yeast kick with my brews though. I wanted to put together a quick profile page for some danstar yeast.  Hopefully I can get around to some other types of dry yeast as well this week.  Everything […]

This is from a customer that was kind enough to share his carboy explosion. When I see these I just think one thing, “epic”.  If you are curious to what type of beer it was, it was an Irish Red with WLP023.                   Hope it brings a […]