Month: September 2011

Steamy Brewday: Wonmisan Vaporizer

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I’m surely not alone in saying that Anchor Steam is the beer I associate with California, though there are, doubtless, plenty of other good beers brewed in the state. But when I first was in San Francisco, I’m pretty sure the first beer I had there was an Anchor Steam. This is fitting, since the Anchor brewery is one of the few that (re-)started production after the Prohibition. I picked it simply because the name was so unusual, which tells you something about the issue of the name of the beer. The style is one that has a long history, though …

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15 Minute Hopping Challenge: A Success!

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On Saturday we held the meetup for the 15-Minute Hopping Challenge, and I think it’s safe to call it a success. Most of the people who attended were either brewers, or friends/significant others of brewers. On my side, Miss Jiwaku and my friend Charles from Liminality joined in. I’d say pretty much every brew we sampled from the home-brewed stuff ranged from very good to excellent. Bill’s dark hoppy lager, Dax’s fruity Belgian pale, Rob’s “The Shit” barley wine (wasn’t it?), Rowan’s mild and easy-drinking first brew ever (an ESB!), and all kinds of other good stuff thsat may have …

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Meadmaking Day: Mittelfrüh Metheglin

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This mead is a shot in the dark: I screwed up when measuring the water for my pomegranate mead, and realized too late that I wouldn’t be able to add the pomegranate juice. So I scooped out a liter of the must (as we call the honey water before it is fermented) and froze it, adding more honey to the (now-smaller) must destined for the pomegranate mead. Then I wondered what to do with all that honey-water. Turned out it was about a half-kilo worth of honey, so I figured I could make something with it. 500 grams of honey …

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Mead “Brewday”: Meadmaking & Bottling & So On…

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Last night, I bottled my “Belgian Pale Ale”. It feels a bit weird to call anything that utterly hoppy by the name, though: it’s definitely out of style, even though the IBUs and the yeast and all are right. The magic of late additions gave this beer a really over-the-top hop flavor (tons of lemon and tropical frut) and a hoppier aroma than other beers I’ve made. (The aroma is not quite so overwhelming as I expected, but it’s certainly present, and I’m a bad judge of aroma to begin with…) I will be kegging my American Pale Ale tonight, …

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Little Heroes by Norman Spinrad

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The first time I saw a video of the band The Clash, I laughed out loud. “This is ‘punk’?” I said. “This is radical?” I don’t know if I thought, or said aloud, These guys wouldn’t know radical if it smashed their guitars. Give me Ornette Coleman any day. I know the friend who was introducing their music to me was somewhat surprised, and took the time to explain to me why, in context, the band and their music was seen as radical. I still wasn’t feeling it, even after the explanation: it just made people in the 1970s look way …

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