Professor Good Ales

No, that’s not the Blob that ate the brewer. A mixture of diatomaceous earth and yeast. DE is used for filtering. Picture from Wiki Commons

Written by Brad Smith for Beer Smith

Note: Professor GA does not recommend washing and reusing yeast that you bought in a dried form. Drying yeast stresses it. Best start with a new yeast if it was dried.

Washing yeast to reuse it in another batch of beer is a great technique to have in your home brewing arsenal. Yeast washing is a simple process used to separate the live yeast from the underlying trub (hops and spent grains) left at the bottom of your fermenter when making beer.

Continue reading “The Technical Edge: Washing Your Yeast”

Topic for this edition of Brew Biz: Worst Beer Ever

Written by Ken Carman

So many bad beers. So much wasted time. So many times my taste buds have been offended.
Continue reading “Brew Biz: Werts and All”

Courtesy Statemaster.com. Stamp commemorating the 1923 beer-related coup event issued years later.

Reported by Ken Carman for professorgoodales.org

Stories abound of stupid things done while visiting your local pub, bar or beer hall. Sometimes things can get strange like patrons passing an obnoxious drunk over their heads on Saint Patty’s Day and tossing him out the door, or drunk streakers who do more stumbling and less streak-ing. But one of the most famous events surrounds a soon to be a lot more famous fellow named Adolf Hitler. If only this event had been the high point of his political career because, if not for those who died, in places it reads a little more like the Stooges than a serious attempt by a world conquer wanna be, mass murderer.

Continue reading “Beer History: Hitler and Beer”

This image shows malt samples milled with a 0.65 mm (26 mil) mill gap. The left hand sample has been conditioned and the right hand sample has been milled dry. The conditioned malt’s volume is about 30% larger than the dry milled malt’s volume.

Conditioning you malt helps you to lessen the crush you use and access the fermentables. Another site recommends you can actually increase your crush.

Here are a few links to start your exploration.

Link 1

Link 2

A cold brew has high levels of dietary silicon, analysis shows.

Picture source: Kirsty Wigglesworth for AP

While researchers don’t recommend gulping beer to meet your silicon intake needs, a new study shows the potential health benefits of a cold brew.

Written by Jeanna Bryner for msnbc.com

(With National Hop Day approaching, note the silicon levels on IPA- Prof GA)
Continue reading “Beer May Be Good for Your Bones”

(Prof. GA wonders, if Bragdy is still brewing, how it compares with the nanobreweries. See previous article. This post may qualify as mostly a “historic marker.” The end of this article there’s a comment regarding whether they are still brewing.)

(Source: Stanzapub.com)

From various sources: as noted.
Continue reading “Is this Still the World’s Smallest Commercial Brewery?”

From various sources; as noted.
Continue reading “Cuvee De Ranke and Kriek De Ranke”

Image courtesy corebrewing.com

Kiuchi Brewery, Ibaraki, Japan

Profile by Ken Carman

An over abundance of head greeted the glass and lasted a while. There was a distinct coffee/espresso aroma which follows through to the mouthfeel and the taste. Pitch black, as one would expect.

Espresso rules the roost here; in fact so much it’s just too one-dimensional. There is just a bit of sweet that clings to the roof of the mouth, but not much else. Needs to have more depth, malt-wise. Carbonated espresso is simply not that interesting. Pull back on the espresso and add malt complexity would be my advice.

Hops? What hops? Of course, style-wise, not necessary, but a tad might add to the complexity.

Millie, my wife, thought at first it was not that espresso-y, but as it warmed she said it started to dominate along with a dark chocolate-sense. I would agree but the dark, bitter, almost sugarless stuff one uses in cooking, doesn’t eat straight, and dare not feed to the dog because it will kill him. The taste buds tend to not like it straight either.

Written by Joe Sixpack/For the Appeal-Democrat, Marysville, CA

Megabreweries churn out millions of barrels of beer every year. Microbreweries make thousands. So what do you call a company that brews just 100 or so barrels of beer each year?

A nanobrewery.

A couple dozen have cropped up across the country in the past two years, operating quietly out of basements, garages and even storage units. They brew as little as a barrel (the equivalent of 13 cases) a week and distribute extremely limited supplies to, perhaps, 10 or 12 area bars.

It’s an under-the-radar trend that’s part of the growing local food movement and, frequently, the result of career dissatisfaction.

At Healdsburg Beer Co. in Northern California’s Sonoma wine region, owner Kevin McGee takes weekend breaks from his job as an attorney to brew a single barrel, which he sells to a handful of restaurants.
Continue reading “Discover the Industry’s Hidden Gems: Nanobreweries”

(British Home Secretary Alan Johnson holds two pint glasses designed to prevent pub glassware from breaking into dangerous shards, or even being used as weapons.- Picture: Associated Press)

Reported for professorgoodales.org by Ken Carman

Ever drop a beer glass and then cut yourself? Long after shatterproof automobile windshields were introduced, the government of Great Britain seems to be the first to actively encourage, indeed demand, the redesign of the beer glass. But this isn’t just to prevent clumsy patrons, or bar staff, from spreading shards all over the floor where others might walk. According to the CBC there have been 87,000 incidents in pubs: Wales and England; glassware intentionally smashed and then used as a weapon.
Continue reading “Shatterproof Beer Glasses”