Day: November 29, 2011

What do you do with a building near downtown in disrepair? Here’s one brew related idea- The Professor

Written by Jeff Beach for bizlex.com

Lexington, Ky. – Four partners are turning a former bread factory on Lexington’s north side into a craft brewery, with the goal of surrounding it with other community-minded organizations and businesses.

The West Sixth Brewing Co. has purchased what will be The Bread Box, the mixed-used development in the former Rainbo Bread factory at the corner of Sixth Street and Jefferson Street.

The craft brewery will anchor the 90,000 square-foot development, which has three tenants already lined up:

◦ Cricket Press, which designs and prints posters and other products. Much of its work is for music events and arts shows.

◦ Food Chain, a new non-profit focusing on urban farming. It will grow greens and tilapia fish in The Bread Box as part of a “vertical farm.”

◦ The Broke Spoke Community Bike Shop, a non-profit bike repair organization. It will be able to take advantage of the Legacy Trail, which when extended, will run across the back of The Bread Box property. Broke Spoke will use 2,500 square feet of the building.

The brewing company will begin producing beer in the spring. While they are still in product development, founding partner Ben Self said there will be “more than a handful” of high-quality hand-crafted beer varieties from the brewery which also will have a tasting room.
Continue reading “Micro-Brewery planned for Lexington’s (KY) Northside”

The Professor held off on the other 3 columns: for any homebrewer knows without yeast there is no beer. Plus yeast could be argued to be THE most important, and the most underrated ingredient. Try a Belgian Abbey Ale vs. an American Pale, for example. Hops can vary in both, and malts. But if you switch the yeasts you may have switched the styles.-The Professor

Written by Andy Ingram for azcentral.com and The Republic

There are four basic ingredients in beer. In previous installments of the Beer Buzz I’ve covered three: malt, hops and water.

I’ve held off on the fourth ingredient, yeast, because of the sheer scope of the topic. The amount of information on the science of fermentation is vast and, honestly, it would probably bore anyone with even a passing interest in microbiology.

So let’s take a simpler look at what yeast is and what it does for beer and brewers.

For centuries, before the invention of the microscope, yeast was a largely unknown ingredient in beer. What was known was that during each fermentation a light-colored, creamy substance was produced and was taken from the tops of fermenting beer and added to the next batch.

Some stories go that the substance, which caused the beer to ferment, was simply referred to as, “God is good.”
Continue reading “Beer Buzz: Yeast Key to Good Beer Making”