The Ink Flows Like Wine: Beer Brewing Mini-Reference Guide

Friday, November 13, 2009

Beer Brewing Mini-Reference Guide

So last night I finally cracked into the beer that I made with the assistance of local home brew store Let's Brew. It was a fun process, for a small fee we got to use their kitchen and they showed us how to make the beet, step by step. Last week I returned to the place to bottle up my beer, and let it carbonate over a week. When we finally cracked into it last night, we found it was well worth the wait. We made a batch of the store's own Oatmeal Stout recipe. It's a full bodied flavor with a really smooth finish. While it's only at 5% alcohol, I'm still quite pleased with the results.

We have two cases of 22 oz bottles to get through, and then I'm thinking of brewing up a batch to have for the holiday, though I don't know if I'll have time to do it, the whole process takes around 3-4 weeks, and I'm leaving for Hawaii in 2 weeks. We shall see... Oh and that reminds me, Portland's Holiday Ale Festival starts the day I return from Hawaii and goes for 5 days... Mmmm, can't wait...

For those of you interested in learning about brewing a bit (it's so easy and takes only an hour to cook) here's some sites with good info:

http://www.howtobrew.com/intro.html

http://beer.about.com/od/homebrewingextract/a/BrewingPrimer.htm

http://www.beer-brewing.com/

And here's some sites with recipes:

http://beerrecipes.org/

http://www.allaboutbeer.com/homebrew/recipes/index.html

http://allrecipes.com/howto/beer-brewing-for-beginners/detail.aspx

http://hbd.org/recipator/

Enjoy!