When you make your first batch of beer from a kit, you are starting out with out enough yeast to be efficient,  you have  no idea how old the hops you included in your brew are  or how they’ve been handled and controlling the temperature of fermentation is assumed and the results are okay, but not what they should be.

You want to WOW your friends, but they tell you it’s good, and grab for their old brand if it’s available for the next one.

If you’ve followed the instructions with your kit, youve got most of it right, but you are under pitching your yeast, and controlling the temperature of fermentation is critical to makng the beer your friends will ask for the second time.

Unfortunately, fermentation vessels with temperature controls for home brewers are so expensive we are forced to rely on salvaged refrigerators or freezers with purchased external controls.

Good Evening fellow travelers!

We are all finding our way through the mess we call modern life, with the 5 second partial commercials, the endless drug ads (all with side-effects that scare the hell out of me), the images of perfect models in obscure out of the way places touting fragrances that have nothing to do with how they got together.

Why am I going on about this?

Because from what I see going on in the beer world, we are being led by advertising and I think it’s time we stop and smell the hops.

Beer has been brewed for 5000 plus years, mostly by home brewers. These brews weren’t always good, they didn’t follow our current methods, they weren’t temperature controlled, or aerated to the right degree, they didn’t use the right yeasts, or were they stored at the proper temperature.

The truth about beer is that it is the substance of civilization, the basis of modern culture and it’s been marginalized through the years because of the ease of it’s production. And it wasn’t until the late 1860’s that much of our current controls were applied.

There are around 12 different styles of beer identified at this writing, we all need some way to classify differences, but all the new beers an the market don’t all fit into the styles they claim to be.

If you fell upon this site during a random search and hoped that this author had an answer for the questions you have ready and waiting for you, you might be a searcher but you may not be a traveler.

I am planning to share what I’m learning on my quest to understand the process of producing great beer and will probably build a set of answers for searchers, but the real goal of the blog is to join fellow travelers on the journey to understanding the process of brewing great beer any where.

Private Life

Temperature control to support our yeast is probable the most important thing we can provide for their health and our brewing process, but it is the most overlooked aspect of the process in every book on brewing I’ve read. It’s always recommended that the home brewer pick-up a “free” discarded refrigerator, as an after thought. Everything written is about Boiling, Grain Bills, IBU’s and Water.
Glass and Plastic Carboys are great, but we need a truly temperature controlled system to brew properly.

Before refrigeration, before science stepped in , people drank beer, ale or lager. So my simple question is what was beer before 1850?

Making beer is about putting everything together so the yeast can do what it does.

Making Great beer is about mixing the right ingredients with water with the  right mineral content and PH balance to reproduce the classics.  Or is it?

I’m open to discussing the brewing process and all things beer here.