We always seem to have strange issues with our hydrometer measurements whenever we brew. I checked it out the other day and found out that the issue comes about from making hydrometer measurements at room temperature and at mash or boil temperatures. I know we should be making the temperature conversions from wort temperatures to room temperature and we have. But our plastic hydrometer seems to always give the similar  reading (within 0.015), no matter what the temperature the gravity is measured at. That’s really frustrating, don’t you think? For example, we measured the gravity of the wort at the […]

So this weekend we brewed a beer I’ve always wanted to brew for a private event. It had three things I’ve always wanted to put in a brew at one time, but I wasn’t sure if all these elements should be in a drink at one time. If you know me, you know I love sour beers – this isn’t one though. It’s meant to be a refreshing IPA. But the bitterness and residual sugar in IPAs can be tiring after a few beers, I wanted to take the best parts of some of the other IPAs and combine them to […]

We made our first homebrewed RIS – Russian Imperial Stout, not the bubonic plague that affected much of Europe. Black Death, we named it, because if you drank too much of it, you’re going to feel like you’ve contracted the black death the next morning – easy drinking stuff really ;) At 13% abv, it’s the most alcoholic beer we’ve ever made, though Bubblegum Belgian comes in a close second at 12.5%. I’m not a massive fan of the style, we’ve made it our aim to brew every style of beer, with only saisons left to conquer. The beer is […]