I’m hosting a party this Monday night for some people I know to see our friend Chris off, as he leaves Korea for India, and then parts unknown, a day or two later. Chris is gluten-intolerant, so I figured it might be nice to finally try make some makkeoli for him… I’d been planning on doing so for a long time, but never gotten around to it, so I thought I should bloody well get it done.
Category: BEER & HOMEBREWING
Sun-drying Grains Equals Causing Harm, or, Stupid Things My Employer’s Administrative Officers Say
Making beer involves extracting sugars from grain. This means you end up with a lot of grain that you have no use for, since everything tasty has been extracted, but which needs to be disposed of somehow. I’ve been happy that a friend in the building, after starting a worm farm, ended up finding my spent grain useful, since that means one less wasteful outcome for the stuff. I tend to leave the grain out for him, and he dries it in the sun. Drying stuff in the sun is so common in Korea that one expects to see it: …
Partigyle, Rebooted: Wonmisan Silvered Moon Barleywine
Note: This brew is part of a single parti-gyle batch of beer brewed on the 6th of February. The other half of the batch, Wonmisan Mild Brown Hound, is discussed here. However, the majority of the discussion of the parti-gyle itself is here. I have been considering making a barley wine for quite some time now, but I have never actually gotten around to it until now. Since I am eager to produce a batch of Mild ale for Miss Jiwaku, I figured now would be the perfect time to go ahead and make a smaller (10L) Barley Wine, using …
Partigyle, Rebooted: Wonmisan Mild-Hearted Brown Hound
Note: This brew is part of a single parti-gyle batch of beer brewed on the 6th of February. The other half of the batch, Wonmisan Silvered Moon Barleywine, is discussed here. (The majority of the discussion of the parti-gyle itself is on that page, not here.) For those not interested in the link above, briefly, Wonmisan Mild-Hearted Brown Hound is my attempt at Mild, using the second and last runnings of a partigyle for a barleywine.
Experimental Minibatch: Wonmisan Grätzerexperimente
I now have a tiny, 1L batch of Grätzer fermenting in my brewcloset. This may sound insane, and it probably is, of course, but how it happened is perhaps an amusing story.
Smoky Brewday: Wonmisan Grätzer
Grätzer is one of those almost-extinct beer styles that people have started talking about again these days. The basic idea is that it’s a 100% smoked malt, low-ABV beer. We’re talking serious smoke, and seriously low ABV, like 3.5% or less. Sounds good to me, so I decided to make some. Thing is, that’s a more involved proposition than I first imagined.
Batch Management
Well, it’s February, and so far I’ve only made three batches of beer this holiday. However, I’m about to start brewing a lot more, and that means I need to empty out my fermenters and sort out my kegs.
Pale Brewday: Wonmisan Belgian Pale/ESB
I’ve felt like getting back into Belgian brewing, but at the moment I have a nice cake of Safale S-04 (the English Ale yeast) in the bottom of a carboy, and I’d like to pitch onto it, so I figured today would be a great day to do a double batch, split right down the middle, with half going onto Belgian yeast and half going onto English.
Classic Beer Style Series #6: Belgian Ale
The old Classic Beer Styles Series books are a mixed bag: some, like Smoked Beers (by Ray Daniels and Geoff Larson), and I have to say, while Pierre Rajotte’s Belgian Ale entry into the series was probably useful at the time it was published, it’s dated and one is better off checking out the Belgian Brewing series for a more practical and up-to-date look at brewing these beers. That’s not to fault Rajotte — but his book is the product of a different time. (Notably, at one point he explains who it was once common to be able to buy beer …
British Brewday: Wonmisan Brunner (Northern Brown, v.2)
I decided it was time to get brewing today, so I quickly updated a recipe that Miss Jiwaku really enjoyed — my original Northern Brown recipe — to include things I have on hand. And since it’s a Northern Brown ale, I thought I’d name it in honor of John Brunner, a British author many consider the “godfather of cyberpunk.” Not that my ale is cyberpunky, but it is brun, and English, and (hopefully) cool. Usually, I do double-batches, but there are a few reasons why I decided to do this beer as a no-sparge brew. For one thing, English …