So Miss Jiwaku is taking a holiday from work, after leaving her last job. She said she wanted to try do at least one new thing a week, and I suggested that while she’s seen me brew up beers for a while now, she’s never done it herself. Why not try brewing a beer? We talked a bit about possible styles and flavors and so on, and she settled upon a stout. At which point I started formulating the recipe, and figured that given her love of lightly and strongly soured beers alike (she’s crazy about Duchess de Bourgogne and …

Okay, so, I am now facing the reality that I probably (significantly) overspiced my Belgian Wit, and in exactly the way I didn’t want to — bitterness. Not because of hops: I put in an ounce of Hallertau, which gets me close to (but definitely under) 20 IBUs. That’s fine and well within style for a Wit. But the problem is the orange peel. I had left my copy of Stan Hieronymous’ Brewing With Wheat in my office (though I didn’t realize that was where it was) and ended up discovering this fact today. So I had a look at …

Today is my first attempt at a Belgian Wit. I’ve only had one example of the style, the inoffensive Hoegaarden Wit available in Korea. (I’m told it is brewed locally, or somewhere in the region, not in Belgium. It’s not bad, it’s just… well, not all that wheaty, or distinctive, or striking.) I’m making my first attempt using the Forbidden Fruit yeast, about which I’ve heard wonderful things. The other interesting thing you might notice if you look at the recipe (it’s set for a double batch but I’m doing a single batch today) is that I’m attempting is the …

The question of what to brew next is a delicate one. I currently have 11 kegs, in two of which I am bulk aging mead of some kind. In eight of the others, I have, or soon will have, a batch of beer, including one beer I am similarly bulk aging (a dark Saison for the fall). The seven other beers are not particularly being reserved for later, not being bulk aged, and they’re not all full — I have one keg with probably a gallon of RyePA left in it, and a Golden Strong Ale that is, really, about …

This morning I racked my Northern Brown Ale to a keg, which left me with a healthy cake of London Ale yeast and I didn’t want to just leave it in the fridge. Given a discovery I made about my attempted ESB (the Cry Havoc yeast was fine, the carboy wasn’t), I decided I’d better keep my promise to Miss Jiwaku and brew up a Mild. So I brewed up this mild. It’s certainly not a beer I’m dreadfully eager to make — not like, say, a big fat Belgian Tripel  — but I am curious to see what a …

I don’t know if this actually is weird, but, for the ESB I am attempting to brew, and which has sat in primary for a week or so now, the yeast behavior in the carboy looks weird. I saw this fully acknowledging that I don’t use the carboys for primary fermentation anywhere near often enough to know whether this is weird or not… but I’ve never seen anything like it. On top of the wort/beer is this thick, almost oily-looking layer of yeast and bubbles: The bubbles are, well, they are bursting only slowly. The airlock, at this point, is …

I posted this on Facebook a while back, but I don’t remember if I posted an announcement here. Tomorrow, in Bundang, my homebrew club will be donating a bunch of beer for a fundraiser to help put together some money for the Red Cross Fund for Japan’s recovery in the wake of last month’s devastating earthquake/tsunami. There are details here. I’m personally donating a keg of Saison and a keg of supposedly-Bavarian wheat beer. (Which doesn’t really taste Bavarian at all, but it’s still beer, and I brewed it specifically for this event!) I would love for any readers to …

Well, I may have screwed up my English mild. (See the update at the end of the post for how it became a Northern Brown Ale.)

“And that he calls for drink, I’ll have prepared for him a chalice for the nonce…” (King Claudius to Laertes, Hamlet, Act IV, Scene VII) “For the nonce” is a phrase that’s stuck in my head since I first encountered it in Hamlet — not constantly, but it’s a phrase that occurs to me at times, usually when I cannot use it. It was one of those unfamiliar phrases I needed to have explained to me, and when it was explained, I wondered where the hell he’d gotten that word. Turns out there’s a complex etymology behind it, but one suited …