I found this and thought it was rather intriguing. Real root beer using sugar from malted grains. It really puts the BEER back into root beer. It also cool that you can either ferment the resulting wort to make a true beer, or bottle it as a soft drink. I’ll have to give this a shot.

Real Root Beer | Beer Recipes.

“Brewing beer is neither complicated nor expensive. It’s the responsibility of the brewer to make it as complicated and expensive as their wife will allow.”

9 DIY Beer Brewing-Rigs – Homebrewing Beer Instructions – Popular Mechanics.

This is a good article about how the explosion of homebrewing in the early 80’s (thank you President Carter for making homebrewing legal again in 1978) has led to the expanding microbrewery industry in the United States.

In 1979 there were 44 breweries in the entire country. Now there are close to 1500 as well as nearly 1000 brewpubs.

The Golden Age of Home Brewing – HomeBrewing.com.

Here’s a good article on how to rate a beer based on appearance, aroma, mouthfeel and flavor.

Even if you don’t go full on and take written notes, doing this as a mental excersize will help you know more about the beer you’re drinking and learn what kinds of beers you enjoy most.

How to rate a beer.

Does this sound good or horrible? I’m tempted to try making some myself. They don’t mention what kind of hops are used (maybe they don’t use any?)

Bison Brewing Company : Honey Basil Ale.

My Uncle Paul recently came from the Boston area to the midwest to pay a visit to my family and grandparents (his parents).  While here I told him of my homebrewing and he told me of Scotch Whiskey.  I believe he said it was his father-in-law who got him started on the stuff, and while it’s something of an aquired taste he has grown to love it.

After his visit I made a visit to Binny’s Beverage Depot, a Chicago area liquor store chain where they have more liquor and beer in one place than most people have ever seen.  I asked who their scotch guy was and the directed me to one of the assistant managers.  I told him that I was planning on hosting a scotch tasting with my friends and that I was a newbie when it came to scotch and asked what he could tell me that would help.  He went on for a while and gave me a lesson in the different regions and different styles of scotch, and he spoke of it the way I would speak of wine.  I asked him how many bottles of scotch he has at home and he said probably around 40 and they are all open and he drinks them all.

He showed me lots of different bottles, but when he got to the Balvenie Doublewood he said that was his favorite best value all round scotch they sold.  It is aged in oak for the first 11 years of its life and then moved to sherry casks for the last year to soften and sweeten.  I didn’t go in there with the intention of buying anything but this guy talked me into it and out I walked with a bottle of Balvenie Doublewood 12 yr. ($40)

It occurred to me that you can have a glass of whatever scotch suits your mood without having any waste whereas with wine when you uncork the bottle the clock starts ticking.  I don’t ever keep more than a bottle or two of my favorite wines around anyways because I like to explore wine and sticking to my 2-3 favorites is boring.  Scotch is made in one region of one country in the world by a handful of distilleries.  Its highbrown and small enough in production that you could easily become expert at it.

We took the scotch home and my friend Zac and I uncorked it after watching a youtube video on “how to drink scotch” (we ARE newbies as I said).  We poured a shot glass of it into a tulip shaped highball glass and each added some water and one ice cube.  Let me just say that what I drank was not what I was expecting.  It was smooth and soft, with notes of vanilla and caramel (I am not good talking to the whiskey, but I could talk to the wine all day..I hope I will get better).  It was not like any Jack Daniels or Jim Beam or Makers Mark or Woodford Reserve or Johnnie Walker I have ever had.  All were much more harsh and all were a chore to drink, but not this Balvenie.

If you want to explore the land of scotch but are not a big whiskey fan I would say this is the place to start.

Why buy soft drinks when you can make your own that taste better and are better for you? Laziness is a valid excuse but then why are you still reading this?

Loosly following this recipe from Alton Brown with a few tweaks. And of course in the future I will be altering this recipe further making it better and more awesome.

What you’ll need:
• 1½ ounces finely grated fresh ginger
• 6 ounces sugar (2/3 cup)
• 7½ cups filtered water
• 1/8 teaspoon champagne yeast
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice

I wasn’t exactly sure how much ginger constituted 1½ ounces but I figured that more was better, I grated until I had a decent little pile of ginger pulp. For my next batch I will use more. So grate your ginger until you’re satisfied with the amount you have.

Next put your grated ginger, the sugar and ½ cup of water into a sauce pan and stir over medium high heat until all of the sugar is dissolved. Then remove from heat, cover the pan and let it steep and cool for about an hour.

Once the hour is up pour the ginger syrup through a fine mesh screen into a bowl or glass (if you don’t have a fine mesh screen you can use a coffee filter the point is to get the bigger chunks of ginger out of the syrup). Squeeze the ginger pulp and try to get as much syrup out as possible.

Once the syrup is filtered place your bowl of syrup into an ice (or cold water) bath or in the fridge and cool it down to between 68° and 72° F. You don’t want it too hot for the yeast you’re going to be adding soon.

Using a funnel, pour the ginger syrup into an empty 2 liter soda bottle. Then add your 1/8 teaspoon of Champagne yeast. You can use active dry yeast if you don’t have access to a homebrew shop, but Champagne Yeast is the best for making soft drinks. The baking yeast will leave a bready/yeasty flavor in your Ginger Beer.

Once you have added the yeast add the additional seven cups of water to the bottle. Cap it and let it set in a warm place for 48 hours. The yeast will metabolize some of the sugar into alcohol and CO2. Since the bottle is sealed the CO2 will dissolve into the ginger beer, thus carbonating it. After your two days are up, give it a try. If you want more carbonation reseal the bottle and leave it out longer, if it’s good then chill it in your fridge. The coldness of the fridge should stop the yeast but to be safe unseal the bottle daily to let off any additional pressure. Unless of course you like exploded ginger beer all over the inside of your fridge.

This yielded some pretty darn good ginger beer, I must say. Though I’m a big ginger fan so I want more ginger flavor next time. I will also be experimenting with adding some other spices into the mix: nutmeg, cinnamon, and possibly cayenne?

Winter is here and the holidays are upon us. And how better to warm your spirits than with a nice cup of warm mulled wine? Making mulled or spiced wine is very easy and the result is quite tasty. You don’t need to follow this recipe exactly and you can use whatever spices/quantities you prefer to create your own recipe.

What you’ll need:
• 1 bottle (750 ml) of red wine, I used a Charles Shaw Shiraz
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 4 tbsp brown sugar
• Mulling Spices:
  • Cinnamon
  • Cardamom
  • Cloves
  • Nutmeg
  • Ginger
  • Black Pepper
  • Star Anise
  • Allspice

Pour the entire bottle of wine into a sauce pan over medium heat. You want to make sure it doesn’t get too hot or boil. Alcohol has a lower boiling point (173°F (78.5°C)) than water (212°F (100°C)) does. I used a kitchen thermometer to monitor the temperature of the wine, try to keep it under 130°F if you can.

Add the lemon juice and the sugar, you can add more or less sugar depending on how sweet you’d like it to be. Add your mulling spices. I used a few dashes each of Cinnamon and Cardamom, 4 whole Cloves, 3 whole Black Peppercorns, a dash of Nutmeg and Ginger and just a touch of Star Anise and Allspice. Like I said, feel free to mix and match your spices to create your own mulled wine.

Stir the wine to dissolve all of the sugar and mix in all of the spices. Keep the wine over low heat for 5 minutes or so making sure it doesn’t boil and stirring occasionally. Pour the wine into mugs and curl up by the fire and enjoy.