Craft Beer

Brewing water adjustments can seem complicated when you first begin working with mineral profiles. You may know that calcium chloride increases chloride, gypsum increases sulfate, and that different beer styles benefit from different mineral balances. But understanding what these salts do is only the beginning. The next step is learning how much brewing salt to

When homebrewers talk about improving beer flavor, the conversation usually begins with malt, hops, and yeast. We carefully select hop varieties, adjust mash temperatures, experiment with fermentation conditions, and fine-tune our recipes. But there is another ingredient that can significantly influence how the finished beer tastes: brewing water. Two of the most important ions for

A successful brew day involves many measurements: water temperature, grain weight, original gravity, and eventually final gravity. Yet one of the most important measurements is often overlooked by homebrewers: mash pH. When I first started brewing, I focused mainly on mash temperature. I wanted to know whether 65°C or 67°C would produce a more fermentable

Choosing hops for a beer recipe is not simply a matter of finding the varieties with the most exciting aroma descriptions. A hop may smell incredible on its own and still be completely wrong for the beer you are trying to brew. Another hop may appear less spectacular on paper but fit perfectly with the

Dry hopping is one of the most effective ways to create intense hop aroma and fresh hop flavor in beer. Unlike kettle additions and whirlpool hopping, dry hopping takes place on the cold side of the brewing process, usually during fermentation or after most fermentation has finished. The hops are no longer being boiled. Instead,

When should hops be added to beer? It sounds like a simple question, but hop timing is one of the most powerful tools a brewer has for controlling bitterness, flavor and aroma. The same hop added at the beginning of the boil can produce a very different result from the same hop added five minutes

Choosing a hop variety is about much more than looking at the alpha acid percentage printed on the package. Two hop varieties can have similar alpha acid levels and produce completely different beers. One may smell of flowers, herbs and delicate spices, while another can deliver grapefruit, pine and resin. A third may produce intense

Hops are one of the defining ingredients of beer. They can provide firm bitterness, delicate floral notes, fresh citrus, tropical fruit, pine, herbs, spice, resin, stone fruit and many other aromas. In some beer styles, hops remain quietly in the background. In others, they become the dominant character of the entire beer. But hops do

Choosing yeast is one of the most important decisions in beer recipe design. Homebrewers often spend a great deal of time selecting malt, calculating bitterness, building hop combinations and adjusting brewing water, only to reach the yeast section of the recipe and choose whatever packet happens to be available. That can be a mistake. Yeast

Choosing yeast by simply reading “ale yeast” or “lager yeast” on the package is not enough. Two yeast strains belonging to the same broad fermentation family can produce dramatically different beers. A clean American ale strain may allow hops and malt to dominate. An English strain can add fruitiness and enhance malt character. Belgian yeast