Author: Professor Good Ales

Mythical poster at The LTS Good for What Ales You Beer Journal. Loves good beer. Hates same old, same old. Muses that Bud and Miller might as well be brewed in urinals. Drinks lagers too, if they are complex and interesting.
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Lupulin Powder vs. Pellets Experiment

Lupulin Powder in the Hop Stand

Intense juicy and resinous hop flavor and aroma, less astringent vegetal flavors while using half the amount of hop material–I’m interested! In this article, I look at some of the research surrounding hops, proteins, and clarity and how those might apply to using a new product called lupulin powder. I brew an experimental side-by-side Mosaic pellet to Mosaic lupulin powder beer and reach out to two breweries who have been included in the testing stages of LupuLN2 to get their opinions and results.

YCH Hops was nice enough to send me samples of their Mosaic lupulin powder product called LupuLN2, which they describe as being a purified lupulin powder containing most of the resin compounds and aromatic oils derived directly from whole hop flowers. They create LupuLN2 with a proprietary cryogenic separation process that preserves the aromatic hop components and removes most of the vegetal leafy material.
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Imbibing Beer and Flemish Splendour in Ghent

Ghent

Written by Franz Hofer for A Tempest in a Tankard

Belgium’s compact size and its efficient transportation network make it a paradise for beer travelers. Say you’re staying in Brussels and want to head to Antwerp or Bruges for lunch and a few cultural excursions, followed by drinks in classic beer cafes. You can easily do that because you’ll be in each of these cities within an hour, give or take a few minutes.

But you wouldn’t be alone in places like Bruges. All the more reason to consider Ghent, a Flemish city home to languid canals, impressive Romanesque and Gothic churches, and quiet cobblestone streets lined with ornate facades. And beer, which is a solid enough reason in itself.

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Beer Profile: Oscar Blues’ Death by King Cake

Profiled by Ken Carman


Perfect clarity, golden quaff. Head is slightly off white and fades very fast into sides of the glass. Tiniest of bubbles. Yellow highlights in pure gold.
Mouthfeel is off dry with light carbonation. There’s the slightest harshness that clings to the roof of the mouth, like a bittering hop that popped through.
Aroma is vanilla and a slight sour. I do get slight cocoa nibs, orange peel, no cinnamon in the nose, no pecans. Balance in aroma differs from flavor.
To be honest the flavor is this is somewhat annoying. Unlike aroma orange peel is dominant: so much so, combined with vanilla, I get no malt, almost nothing else. Carbonation is medium and carbonic. It has a hint of a bite. Aftertaste is slight sour with orange peel, as well as in the finish. Very slightly dry, unlike King Cake. I have had King Cake. I have had the BEST King Cake: sour dough, not the coffee cake version. I think this was an attempt at the sour dough version of King Cake. An attempt. Not all that successful.
If I ordered this I’d probably give it to someone else after half a glass then order something I’d like better. It simply doesn’t quite work. The ale is indistinct, not that much of a base for what’s supposed to be King Cake. That would be OK if the King Cake were really King-ish. Missed that mark. A King Cake would be sweeter and the flavors more balanced. Same for aroma, except that balance is different.
The secret here would be in having it finish a little more sweet, balance out the spices, the nuts, and maybe just a hint more of the ale. Otherwise the only “death” here is the concept this is King Cake-ish at all.

untappd 3.5
BA 84%
RB 3.74

3.2

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Welcome to the PGA beer rating system: one beer “Don’t bother.” Two: Eh, if someone gives it to you, drink. Three: very good, go ahead and seek it out, but be aware there is at least one problem. Four: seek it out. Five: pretty much “perfecto.”

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__________________Beer HERE

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Beer Waste Saves Montana Town $1 Million On Water Treatment


As America’s craft beer industry continues to boom, the waste it generates can pose challenges for sewer systems. But if it’s used in the right spot, in the right amount, it’s potentially beneficial and can actually save wastewater treatment plants money.

In Bozeman, Mont., the Water Reclamation Facility treats more than 6 million gallons of water every day from sinks, showers, toilets — really anything that goes down a drain. That includes liquid waste from more than 10 breweries in this city of nearly 50,000.

Because it’s rich in yeast, hops and sugar, brewery waste can throw off the microbes that wastewater plants rely on to remove nitrogen and phosphorus. The two nutrients can cause algae blooms in rivers and kill off fish.

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Brew Files – Episode 80 – Chill Out Or Don’t


The Brew is Out There!

Since travelling to Australia last year and witnessing the ubiquity of no chill brewing, Drew decided to get over his objections and see if you really can skip the chilling step when brewing at a home level. In this episode Denny and Drew breakdown the benefits, the objections and Drew’s experiences brewing the no chill way.

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A New Year with New Beer

Denny is on the right

Happy New Year! It’s time for a whole new bevy of beers and a world of new brews to be. In this episode, we talk our recent brewing efforts and new toys and new news and then we talk to Stephen J Porr of BrewTube fame about the SJPorr Challenge, a unique and logistically challenging homebrew competition that’s prepping for it’s next season!
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Video Tip: Thinking of Barrels as an Ingredient


Cory King, owner and brewer at Side Project, talks about formulating a barrel-aged imperial stout recipe with the barrel in mind, and being patient enough to allow the beer and barrel character to meld.

Side Project Brewing in St. Louis, Missouri, has made its name on barrel-aging and blending—not only for its widely acclaimed range of mixed-fermentation beers, but also for decadently rich imperial stouts such as Derivation and Beer: Barrel: Time.

In the full 86-minute video, Founder/Brewer Cory King digs into deep technical detail on how Side Project brews, ferments, ages, and blends those huge barrel-aged stouts. Among other topics, he covers:

water and the importance of mash pH
grain selection for body and character, from oats to Carafa
the challenges of mashing very high-gravity beers
long boils and long aging
choosing (or not choosing) adjuncts

And much more.

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Replanting the Seeds of Brewing


Craft-beer pioneers Kim Jordan and Carol Stoudt have led women back into the brewhouse after an absence lasting several centuries. Here Tara Nurin spotlights some of the others who have helped along the way.

n “How Women Brewsters Saved the World,” we explored the hidden-in-plain-sight history of women and beer from prehistoric times up through Prohibition. Here we bring this history of women’s contributions up to present times, spotlighting some of the women who have helped the modern craft-brewing revolution take root.

February 1986, Park City, Utah

Homebrewer Mellie Pullman is après-skiing at a condo being sold by a cousin’s friend when she spots a business plan lying open on a table. Nosy by her own admission, she picks it up and starts reading.

“It was a plan for a brewery,” she says. “I saw there was a position for a manager and I thought, ‘I can do that.’”

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Episode 108 – The Questions Begin


Another 12 episodes down, so it’s time for your questions! We tackle 25 of your questions that cover process, ingredients hops, yeast, weird things and Denny’s favorite Karoake song! Sit back – we’re getting quizzical!
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Producing a Good Mead Scoresheet


By Andrew Luberto

As anyone who has ever done so can tell you, entering a home mead into a competition takes some serious time and a fair amount of money.  So it can be pretty disappointing when you get a scoresheet back that doesn’t provide a good evaluation of your product. The components of any scoresheet, whether its beer, mead, or cider generally all follow the same basic structure of descriptive evaluation of the product, non-biased judging, and helpful feedback. However, where a scoresheet may fall short can land in a few broad categories that could include: misevaluating the mead because of an unfamiliarity with ingredients or process; not understanding the product and what should be perceived; sparsely filling out or an incomplete sheet or; not having a good grasp on evaluating mead in general.  For more on properly evaluating mead check out this previous newsletter article. Luckily mead evaluation has vastly improved from the days when some just expected to taste a dominant raw honey sweet character. That being said, there’s always room for improvement! So with that in mind, here are some thoughts from both experienced judges and entrants on what makes up a quality scoresheet.

What are entrants looking for?

Continue reading “Producing a Good Mead Scoresheet”