Professor Good Ales

Ken Carman is a BJCP judge; homebrewer since 1979, club member at Escambia Bay and Music City Homebrewers, who has been interviewing professional brewers all over the east coast for over 10 years.

Written by Ken Carman

Topic this edition: Witch Beer Really Isn’t Witch?

I usually love creative names. But I think Lost Abbey was wise when they decided to repackage Witch’s Wit…

When Professor Goodales contacted me and told me what he was planning for Halloween, I couldn’t resist. He knew as a Unitarian I might have the panache’ to contact those who complained about this label and offer, in advance, the site’s misgivings about using this story as portrayed by the media.

I must start by mentioning that I don’t believe any actual ill-intent exists towards Wicca or Wiccans on the part of the brewery. With the pun, multiple meaning, name “Witch’s Wit,” it has all indicators of being a joke: a bad one, admittedly. Should we therefore have a German style beer named “Lampshade Lager?” How about “Whipped Slave Bock?”
Continue reading “Brew Biz: Werts and All”

If you would like to own this beer mug by Halloween 2011, click…
HERE

From John Palmer’s How to Brew

Water for Extract Brewing

If the water smells bad, many odors (including chlorine) can be removed by boiling. Some city water supplies use a chemical called chloramine instead of chlorine to kill bacteria. Chloramine cannot be removed by boiling and will give a medicinal taste to beer. Chloramine can be removed by running the water through an activated-charcoal filter, or by adding a campden tablet (potassium metabisulfite). Charcoal filters are a good way to remove most odors and bad tastes due to dissolved gases and organic substances. These filters are relatively inexpensive and can be attached inline to the faucet or spigot. Campden tablets are used in winemaking and should be available at your homebrew supply shop. One tablet will treat 20 gallons, so use only a quarter or half of the tablet to help it dissolve. Another alternative is to use bottled water from the grocery store.

If the water has a metallic taste or leaves hard deposits on the plumbing, then aeration, boiling, and letting it cool overnight will precipitate the excess minerals. Pour the water off into another pot to leave the minerals behind. Water softening systems can also be used to remove bad-tasting minerals like iron, copper, and manganese as well as the scale-causing minerals, calcium and magnesium. Salt-based water softeners use ion exchange to replace these heavier metals with sodium. Softened water works fine for extract brewing but should be used with caution for all-grain brewing. Depending on the type of beer, the mashing process requires a particular balance of minerals in the water that the softening process will remove.

A good bet for your first batch of beer is the bottled water sold in most supermarkets as drinking water. Use the 2.5 gallon containers. Use one container for boiling the extract and set the other aside for addition to the fermenter later.

Want to read more? Click…

HERE

Profiled by Ken Carman

To start: what an interesting concept. A black barleywine ale? Way too much head. More head than glass. Very black with just a hint of light. Creamy rocky bubble head mix: deep tan. The head fades slowly but always hangs around.

Continue reading “Beer Profile: Sierra Nevada’s 30 Anniversary Black Barley Wine Ale”

T.J. Steele handles bottles at the Straub Brewery in St. Marys, Pa. The brewery has so few bottles it’s affecting production.

Picture: Keith Srakocic/Associated Press

Written by Joe Mandak for The Columbus Dispatch

ST. MARYS, Pa. — For years, it was the way breweries did business: Sell bottles, then take back the empties. It just made sense — especially to folks weaned in the lean days of the Great Depression and World War II — that bottles should be scrubbed and refilled, not thrown away.

These days, in a culture where nearly everything is disposable, recycling is a rite and energy costs are high, the decision of whether to toss tradition into the trash heap lies with one brewery about 100 miles northeast of Pittsburgh.
Continue reading “Begging for bottles”

Written by Rev. Walter Snyder

This is an excerpt from an on site answer to a reader’s question about beer in the Bible. The complete: less beer related answer, can be found HERE.

Like you, I like to sit down occasionally to figure out what life was like in Bible times. It helps to understand the people and situations we meet on Scripture’s pages. I also like to sit down with a good beer. It helps to relax and refresh a world-weary pilgrim.

Since we Lutherans are often stereotyped as beer-lovers, it seems appropriate to examine Biblical precedent. After all, Martin Luther (probably only partially in jest) commented upon doing what he could, then having a brew and getting out of the Lord’s way during the Reformation: “I opposed indulgences and all the papists, but never with force. I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept [cf. Mark 4:26–29], or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philipp [Melanchthon] and [Nicholas] Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything.”
Continue reading “Beer in the Bible?”

Pensacola/Emerald Coast area

Continue reading “Club Update: Escambia Bay”