Meetzorp

Well, the darn beer has finally started doing something.  The yeast was hella slow to take off this time around.  I think it’s been a little cooler in the cupboard than is ideal, plus the yeast could have used to have been out of the fridge for longer before I pitched it.  I should probably have taken it out the night before.  So in all, it took nearly a week for the fermentation to be significant enough to make the airlock bubble noticeably.  It’s perking right away now.

Since I posted that entry talking about what a pain in the ass it is to brew beer, I’ve gotten quite a few hits from people who were googling homebrewing terminology and questions.

One person had queried whether or not it was okay to have grain in the wort.  I’m suspecting that this person either didn’t have the top of the grain bag tied well, or else the bag sprung a leak at the bottom.  In any event, I don’t think having some grain in the wort would be especially problematic, though if there was a great deal of it, I’d recommend sanitizing a sieve and straining the wort through the sieve as you transfer it into your primary fermenter. 

Other hits came from people either looking for types of recipes or wanting to know what to do with certain varieties of grains or roast-styles of malts.  To that end, I offer:

1.  Homebrew Kit Reviews – a site dedicated to rating the results of various popular beer-recipe kits.  This is a great place to start when you’re REALLY new to brewing and don’t want to risk $30-$50 bucks on a set of ingredients that might not do anything like what you were hoping for.

2.  SkotRat’s Recipe Archive – Organized by beer type, very straightforward recipe styles.  Excellent to print out a couple of recipes for a given type of beer and compare them side-by-side.  I do this when I have in mind a result I want, and I want to kind of average out the quantities of ingredients needed for a typical brew.  For example, when I planned out my Espresso Stout, I researched about five Irish Stout recipes, and planned for a basic brew that was very mild in the hops department, but which would have a very rich, roasted, nutty flavor that would be complimented by espresso-roast coffee beans.

3.  Homebrew Recipe Exchange – real recipes from real homebrewers, often with their own comments or suggestions.  Also, if you come up with a recipe you are really proud of, you can share it here.

4.  The Beer Recipator – This here is basically the brewing nerd’s wet dream.  All sorts of stats and calculations for those who care about them, and more recipes than the human brain can comprehend.

I get my ingredients from two different places.  Mostly, I get stuff from a local homebrew supplier, Bachus & Barleycorn because they’re within biking distance and I like to shop locally whenever I can.  However, if I am planning to use a specific recipe kit, I sometimes shop online at Austin Homebrew, because they tend to have good prices and I’ve never had bad results from one of their recipes.  When I buy from this place, I usually omit the yeast and buy it locally, because the yeast can suffer from temperature extremes during shipment.

Anyway, I hope some of these recommendations are useful to whomever has been reading my site via web-searches about homebrew.  There are MANY, much more useful resources online than this site – this place is basically the opposite of useful.