My homebrew club, the Austin ZEALOTS, recently held it's competition, The Inquisition. Our club's Primary Fermenter (President) Corey Martin hosted the event at his house and also threw an after party. There, club members could pick leftover duplicate bottles and give them a try. For the most part, everyone would pick a bottle and pour a small taste for themselves. If the beer was good, they would pass it around. One thing that struck me as I played homebrew roulette that evening was the consistently high quality of the beers. 

Got 12 beers? Want to be a scientist? Well, you’re in luck, because James Spencer (host of Basic Brewing Radio) and I are proud to announce the 5th in our series of BYO/BBR Collaborative Brewing Experiments. This experiment is very straightforward, all you need to do is take 12 bottled homebrews, store them under different conditions and sample them at the appropriate times. Here’s the details. 

James Spencer (host of Basic Brewing Radio)  and I are happy to announce the fourth BYO/BBR Collaborative Brewing Experiment. This time around, we’re asking the question, “How much difference do wort clarifying fining agents such as Irish moss and whirlfloc really make?”

Last year, I had some ambitious hop-growing goals. I had 14 plants, growing in containers, and 10 of them were devoted to an experiment to determine the best time to prune southern-grown hops. 

In the most recent  issue of BYO (May-June 2009), we published a collection of stories grouped together under the title "Breakfast Served Anytime." The idea was to highlight common breakfast food ingredients — such as oats, corn grits, coffee and maple syrup — that could be employed in brewing. And of course, we profiled a couple "wacky" ingredients as well, breakfast cereals and bacon. (Yes, bacon. We got the idea from a brewpub brewer in Washington who did this.)  

Before the holidays, I brewed two beers — the pumpkin ale that I wrote about in a couple installments of my blog and my porter that I brew a couple times every year. 

Growing giant pumpkins and fermenting beer inside them was a fun side project this year, and I was just thinking about one thing I learned and what it might mean. I learned that pumpkins will remain intact with fermenting beer inside them far longer than I thought. This year, I fermented inside the pumpkins for 5 days, then racked to a secondary fermenter. I racked after 5 days because I was going to visit my folks for the holidays and didn't want to mop up 10 gallons of pumpkin ale when I returned. After racking, I put the lids back on the pumpkins and set them in my back yard. 

I grew up in Sioux Falls, SD and still go back there to visit my folks at least once a year. In college (Augustana), I drank a lot of beer, but it was all basically the same kind of beer. My fizzy yellow water of choice was Old Milwaukee because it cost $5 a case, and you got part of that back when you returned the bottles. Occasionally, I would try an "exotic" beer, which at the time meant Corona, Moosehead or Becks, but I usually stuck to what was the least expensive, but still drinkable. Even if I had been more adventurous or knowlegable about beer at the time, I couldn't have found much variety. I knew one store in town that carried Guinness, but that was it. Even well-known imports like Bass didn't make it to Sioux Falls at that time. 

I brewed a pumpkin ale on Wednesday. These spiced ales are popular this time of year, but I did one thing a little differently than most — I’m fermenting the beer inside of three giant pumpkins.