I’m relatively new to beer making, and in fact beer drinking. So it surprised me to find that the ones I love best aren’t the refreshing pale ales that most closely resemble the lagers of my youth; or even fruity fresh IPAs; but huge, mellow, […]
I love good produce and take recipe creation pretty seriously. But as the great Arlo Guthrie once said, “I know I’m supposed to be singing. But you can’t always do what you’re supposed to do.” Sometimes you have to be silly. Noodling around on the […]
So, friends, I’ve been on a bit of a high. This Monday night, I found out that I won best cider, best mead, best novice, and best brewer (tied), at the Victorian amateur brewing championships (Vicbrew). That means that three of my creations are going […]
This is part eight of a series on making sake at home, part one is here. If you haven’t picked it up from my posts, by now, let me be blunt… Making rice into alcohol is easy. Making sense of sake making is hard. There are […]
This is is part six of a series on making sake at home, part one is here. As we came to day 20 (conveniently, a Saturday), the sake fermentation had slowed down significantly. There were still small signs of fermentation but we decided to stop and […]
This is part five of a series on making sake at home, part one is here. After ten days of gently stirring and peering at our moto for ten days, it was time to build the main fermentation, or moromi. During the moromi, you add more […]
This is part three of a series on making sake at home, part one is here. The next step in sake homebrew is ten days with very little to do. High time, because I was done babying that koji: we had that picnic cooler in our […]
This is part two of a series on making sake at home, part one is here. The first step in sake making is building a koji starter. Um, what is koji? Koji rice means rice grains cultured with a specific kind of mould, which breaks […]
There’s a truth universally acknowledged among boozemakers, that once in a while you need to make something that the people who share your home will like. This hobby can involve weird explosions and permanent stains; if you’re going to keep doing it, you need to […]