First State Brewers Blog

It is a sad day in American brewing.

4 percent of U.S. hops crop burns

Prob won’t effect Coors and Bud that much. Now if rice and corn crops were ruined….

Can’t find a bottle opener around? Try using a sheet of paper.

It looks like the Big Breweries are following on Drew Carey’s idea of Buzz Beer.

Snip: Energy beer, a fusion of traditional ale and caffeine, is the latest craze to hit the beer industry.

Last week SAB Miller announced it would buy McKenzie River Corp.’s Sparks, a caffeinated alcohol malt beverage with ginseng, guarana and taurine.

The orange-colored brew was the first of the new energy beers to hit the market and has been credited with spawning a new breed of beer and opening a new market for beer brewers worldwide.

See full article here.

100 year old woman holds key to long life: drink beer!

University of Pennsylvania Museum is hosting a beer tasting with Michael Jackson on Saturday March 18th. There are three sittings - 1pm, 3:30pm, and 6pm. Tickets are $40 for museum members and $45 for guests. Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head Brewery will be there with an ancient Chinese fermented rice beverage. I’m trying to make it to the 6pm tasting.

What’s a kegbot? Well, it’s a mini fridge with a keg inside, plus a linux based computer. The system keeps track of who you are, how much you’re drinking and in team mode- where you rank. Check out the project page here and some other statistic goofiness here.

As an avid computer geek and homebrewer, this I have to try.

PS - Take two of the honey wheat is doing nicely in the primary as we speak.

Well, after a one year hiatus, I decided to get back on the homebrewing saddle. I wanted a quick and simple recipe mostly for time convienence, but also something that would be ready to drink for a hot summer day. I chose this no nonsense Honey Wheat recipe.

OG for the recipe says 1.040, mine ended up being something like 1.062! Primary fermentation was normal. FG read at 1.010, not too far off the mark. No secondary fermentation, primed with 3/4 cup corn sugar.

About 10 days into bottling, took a sneek peak at how it was doing. Chilled one in the fridge for a bit, popped the top and bang! WAY too much head. Over carbonation to say the least. It was a nice pillowy white head, but it was clearly taking up half the glass. I also noticed the outside of the bottle was slightly sticky, and smelled of homebrew even before I opened it.

Went back to the basement, checked the box. One of the bottles had already shattered and soaked the cardboard box. How did I miss that?

For safety’s sake, purged and dumped the rest of the batch. Several bottles are even more explosive then the one I sampled. No idea how this happened. I checked BeerTools recipe calculator, the recipe was written correctly. Maybe it was the summer heat? I don’t know. I’m disappointed of course. Hate to dump beer down the sink. Looks like it’s back to the drawing board.

Try to guess the American Beer Labels game. I’ve gotten 12 of the 26 so far.

Or, as the Brits are calling it - the Guinness Ice Lolly

Dogfish Head brewer Sam Calagione recently brewed what’s considered to be the oldest fermentable beverage.