Craft Hop Growing in the U.S.

After years of exponential growth, craft breweries are now ubiquitous to beer drinkers in every corner of the country. Now these same craft lovers are starting to take notice of the craft ingredients that make their beer special.

Hops, perhaps the key flavor component of most brews, grow throughout the U.S. Dozens of small craft growers supply small breweries with local, high-quality hops. These farms are often family-run, community-centered, and count their acreage in double-digits vs. thousands.

As with craft brewers and drinkers, the relationship between farmer and customer is key.… Read the rest “Craft Hop Growing in the U.S.”

Fermented Cucumber Dill Relish Recipe

For more fermented food recipes, join/renew for one or three years with code KITCHEN to claim your free copy of The Fermentation Kitchen by Gabe Toth.

If you have some extra pickling cucumbers that you do not know what to do with, or maybe you already have jars of pickles stacked to the ceiling, you can practice your knife skills and make some dill relish.

Ingredients

  • 2 pickling cucumbers, minced
  • 3-4 sprigs of dills, finely chopped
  • 1 clove of garlic (optional), minced
  • salt, 3% by weight of other ingredients

Directions

1.… Read the rest “Fermented Cucumber Dill Relish Recipe”

Quinc-y Jones (American Amber with Membrillo)

Mash at 66°C (151°F) and adjust pH to 5.2–5.5. Rest for 60 minutes. If sparging, do so at 75–78°C (167–172°F). Collect enough wort in the kettle to yield enough wort to achieve 5 gallons (19 liters) in the fermenter.

Boil the wort vigorously for 60 minutes, adding the hops, Whirlfloc, and yeast nutrient as per the indicated schedule.

After the 60-minute boil, turn of the heat and add first the dulce de membrillo paste: cut it into slices and add slowly, waiting for each piece to dissolve before adding the next.… Read the rest “Quinc-y Jones (American Amber with Membrillo)”

2022 Homebrew Con Seminar Recordings

Access recordings of the 2022 Homebrew Con seminars from Pittsburgh!

These recordings cover an array of topics on making beer, other fermentation projects, and the homebrewing community. Click on the seminars below (in alphabetical order) to see a description on the topic and speaker.

Don’t forget to visit the Homebrew Con seminar searchable archive, where there are now over 500 recordings.

  • Ancient Grains: Brewing Traditional African Beer at Home
  • Bear No Fruit: Making Novel Meads with Store-Bought Juice
  • Beer Soluble Hop Compounds: Translating Raw Hop Aroma to Finished Beer Aroma
  • Beer Styles: Past, Present, and Future
  • Blending Sour Beer for the Homebrewer
  • Brewery Law for Beginners
  • Brewing with Ancient Grains
  • Brewing with Cannabis: Using THC and CBD in Beer
  • Brewing with Hemp: The Essential Guide
  • Demystifying the BJCP Exams: Tips and Tricks for Earning Master-Level BJCP Exam Scores
  • Domo Arigato: The Adventure Guide to Sake Brewing
  • English Ales: From Classics to Class
  • Evaluation of Five Lager Yeast Strains on a Munich Helles Recipe
  • Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Zinc
  • Hey!
Read the rest “2022 Homebrew Con Seminar Recordings”
Hard Kombucha

How to Make Hard Kombucha

By Amahl Turczyn

As a follow-up to the kombucha article that appeared in the September/October 2021 issue of Zymurgy magazine, we now turn to fermenting kombucha with a higher level of alcohol. These hard beverages are becoming popular with craft breweries and dedicated “kombucheries” alike, as they present a blank canvas on which a limitless number of flavors and colors can be painted.

The basic kombucha process is the same: brew up a batch of tea, sweeten it, introduce it to your symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast (SCOBY), and the microbes will do the rest.… Read the rest “How to Make Hard Kombucha”

Beyond Bourbon: Wine and Spirit-Inspired Beers

Barrel-aged beers are almost a subculture when it comes to the craft beer world. Commonly bold and intense, these beers command attention with their complexity, robust taste, and often high alcohol content.

When envisioning a beer that’s been aged in a barrel or inspired by another non-beer beverage, initial thoughts usually turn to bourbon or whiskey. But there are plenty of beers on the market that have been carefully aged in rum barrels, brewed with the addition of wine grape must, boosted from spending time in a tequila barrel, or even inspired by the ancient Japanese beverage sake.… Read the rest “Beyond Bourbon: Wine and Spirit-Inspired Beers”

Wassup?

The Origin of the Wassup? Ad Campaign

According to the Urban Dictionary Wassup is the short form of “what’s up,” a form of greeting, as in “hi.”

The first Wassup Anheuser-Busch Budweiser beer ad aired during Monday Night Football on December 20, 1999. The Budweiser commercials were based on a short film called True, written and directed by Charles Stone III. Stone appeared in the commercial and is the man who answers the phone at the start.

The Wassup signature catch phrase became a sensation and was talked about on talk shows, parodied in films and TV shows, and made a lyric for songs.… Read the rest “The Origin of the Wassup? Ad Campaign”

EEB: Opening Doors to a More Inclusive Brewing Community

At a community center in the industrial city of Orange, N.J., Joe Mettle and Roger Apollon, Jr. proudly stand in front of an arched stained-glass window before class starts. The two former New Jersey charter school teachers and craft beer connoisseurs are the founders of EEB, which stands for Entrepreneurship and Equity in Brewing, a 10-week training program that provides Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC), and other underrepresented individuals in craft brewing an opportunity to learn how to brew, and in turn, run a business.

This inaugural semester of EEB offers classes in brewing history as well as tasting and evaluating beer (and the necessary vocabulary).… Read the rest “EEB: Opening Doors to a More Inclusive Brewing Community”