Random home brewing updates

There's nothing like being snowed in all day to get a person thinking about beer. We're having a bit of a blizzard in Delaware, so my day was spent inside with Julia watching TV and making beer out of leftovers from previous batches. Today's brew was 5 gallons of English Mild, which I chose because it's a easy to drink, low alcohol brew that would work well with the extra Fuggles and East Kent Goldings hops I had. It also shouldn't take long to get ready since it's such a low ABV style. I probably should have done some more research before making up the recipe, as I'm thinking the chocolate malt I used wasn't the best choice. It's got a strong coffee roast smell even in low quantities (I only used 1/4 lbs in the whole batch), and I really was only going for the color. Maybe next time I'll try some debittered black. We'll see how it turns out, I'm not too worried that it won't be easily drinkable.

The smoke beer Julia got me for Christmas is coming along. It's been in the fridge fermenting for the past month and a half. It's a lager so it needed to ferment at lower temperatures, but the fridge was probably too low. It's warming up right now for a diacetyl rest for a few days before I bottle it and stick it back in the fridge for a few months. Diacetyl is a compound that is generally present in all beers, but normally in low quantities. If the content in a beer gets too high, the beer starts to develop buttery characteristics. Letting the beer sit on the yeast for a few days at warmer temperatures allows the yeast to clear up this compound and get rid of the flavors.

Dan and I got to watch Beer Wars last night, a documentary about craft breweries and their competition with the big 3 brewers in the US. It was an interesting look at the industry and the differences in goals between the average craft brewery and the big guys. At one point they mentioned that between the 3 companies, Bud, Miller, and Coors spent 1.5 billion dollars on advertising in a single year. I couldn't help but think what would have happened if they had spent that money trying to make their beer actually taste good instead of trying to maximize profits.

- Adam