CraftBeer.com Director Julia Herz Discusses Upcoming Zymurgy Live Session - via AHA

Halloween is officially in the books, which means the holiday season is right around the corner! No matter what holidays you celebrate, the AHA wants to help you elevate your holiday meals by pairing homebrew or craft beer with your favorite seasonal dishes.

Before you can become an all-star beer and food pairing expert, an important lesson to learn is why beer is such a great food pairing experience. Understanding the beer industry as it relates to the culinary world, and having the right vocabulary to discuss your dish and your beer, is critical to breaking down how flavors interact the way they do. Knowing where to start is the first step.

The AHA is excited to invite you to our next Zymurgy Live webinar, Beer & Food Pairing for the Holidays with Julia Herz, Craft Beer Program Director at the Brewers Association, and Matt Bolling, Events & Membership Coordinator at the AHA.

I sat down with Julia to discuss the state of craft beer in the US and what we can expect to learn in her webinar.

Q: Before we cover food pairing in the webinar, we’re going to talk a little bit about the state of craft beer. Why is that so important to understand?

A: Understanding the state of craft beer as it relates to the entire beverage industry is critical. Where beer stands in the industry and how it’s viewed is closely tied to the culinary arts world, as well as the food that we have on the plates in our own homes. The future of craft beer is undeniably linked to our understanding—as homebrewers—of beer being a part of the food pairing experience.

Q: And what is the role of the Brewers Association in the state of craft beer today?

A: The BA is a powerhouse in the beer world. The work we do to promote and protect our small and independent craft brewers around the country, as well as the community of brewing enthusiasts, is unmatched. Not only do we have the AHA working to further grow the amazing homebrewing community around the world, but we publish books, we have a variety of educational websites and resources for all types of brewers, and we work to further educate and encourage the public to champion beer from their local breweries. We make the beverage of beer better.

Q: What do you do for the Brewers Association?

A: I am the Craft Beer Program Director at the BA. First and foremost, I am an educator and advocate. I represent craft brewers in all 50 states and publish our consumer-facing website CraftBeer.com as well as our professional brewer website, BrewersAssociation.org. I am also an author for the Beer & Food Course, which is available for AHA members to download at CraftBeer.com.

Q: If participants would like to learn more after watching our webinar, what tools are available for them to further expand their knowledge of beer and food pairing?

A: If you take the time to listen to the webinar and download the resources available to you at CraftBeer.com, then you will be further into your own journey of expanding beer knowledge than you would have ever thought possible. I will take your palate and your mind on a wild ride in this Zymurgy Live webinar, and you will have the tools you need to go even further. Go to http://ift.tt/1Ttcmi5 to download the Beer & Food course before (or after) this webinar. You’ll also find tremendous resources at that site that connect the sensory aspect of beer tasting to pairing.

Q: You instructed attendees to be ready with a pickle and a sour beer, as well as some domestic blue cheese and an American IPA. Can you give us a preview of what we’re going to be doing with those pairings?

A: I’ve picked two strategic beers and two strategic food styles for Zymurgy Live. I chose a sour-centric beer to harmonize with something sour-centric such as a pickle, which is often brined in vinegar—so you’ll get sour and sour. That could be a sweet pickle or a dill pickle. I would advise attendees to go with a low-garlic variety since you want that pickle to be as simple as possible. The sour beer could be a gose, an American sour, or anything lactic with a tart acidity that will help you understand the reaction I’m hoping to display on your palate.

Our other pairing will be an American IPA with blue cheese, which is a very popular combo because it works so differently with different hop profiles. Depending on the IPA you bring to the webinar—whether a homebrew or your favorite from a locally owned and independent brewery—we’re going to explore the different ways that blue cheese can pair with different IPAs. Just as chefs pair their culinary creations with herbs & spices to match the flavor of that blue cheese, we’re going to discuss how homebrewers can use hop varieties, carbonation levels, alcohol levels, and other aspects of the beer to create amazing flavor harmonies with the dairy fat in the cheese.

Space is limited! Reserve your seat now for Thursday’s webinar with Julia & Matt, Beer & Food Pairing for the Holidays.

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Introducing the Club Connection Newsletter - via AHA

With more than 1,600 homebrew clubs registered with the American Homebrewers Association worldwide, the AHA is reinstituting our Club Connection e-newsletter. This newsletter will hit your club’s executive officer’s inbox once per month with content focused on subjects for your next club meeting, growing membership, and improving participation in your clubs events. You can expect to find articles catered to clubs of all sizes—from starting a brand new club to re-invigorating your members’ passion for homebrewing.

We’re always looking for new ways to engage our club community around the country and around the world, so if you’re interested in writing an article on a successful club initiative, we encourage you to send a message to the AHA Clubs Sub-Committee with more information!

Club Connection will focus on two main areas for your club: executive officer resources and meeting topics.

Officer Resources

The Club Connection newsletter will be written by club execs for club execs. Though we highly encourage homebrewers from all walks of life to read the articles and let us know how their clubs have found success, this content will be focused on ways that your club’s officers can engage their members. Among other types of content, these resources will include website articles, AHA forum discussions, club-focused Zymurgy Live webinars, and much more.

Meeting Topics

Each month, the newsletter will point you to a suggested topic that you can use to motivate your club meeting. You can email the links out in your own club’s newsletter or utilize these resources in any way you see fit. We will occasionally unlock members-only content for all of your club members to enjoy—including Zymurgy articles and Homebrew Con seminar recordings.

Though we are thrilled to be bringing Club Connection back, we need your help to make it successful! Many clubs in the AHA database have incorrect email addresses associated with them. If you are a club officer or are on your club’s exec committee, please help us stay in touch by updating your club’s contact information.

 

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7 Homebrew Hot Spots to Visit Now - via AHA

Craft brewing and homebrewing have long supported one another: a thriving craft beer community nurtures a healthy, growing homebrew culture, and vice-versa. Some cities are legendary for such pro-am symbiosis, while others are gaining well-deserved reputations as up-and-coming homebrew hot spots.

On your next beer vacation, by all means, visit San Diego, Portland, and Asheville. But you’d be missing out if you didn’t check in to these seven red-hot homebrew destinations as well. Homebrewers love them, and you should, too.

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Boise, Idaho

Boise is a growing city surrounded by plenty of room. “Some homebrewers may travel 30 to 40 miles to collaborate on a brew session,” says Scott Allen, president of the Snake River Brewers homebrew club. “People are willing to help out other brewers all the time, even on short notice.”

Boiseans see it all in four seasons: from subzero (colder than –18° C) in winter to more than 100° F (38° C) in the summer. Still, homebrewing here is a year-round hobby that draws inspiration from the local craft beer scene and Idaho-grown hops and malts. In the last five years, homebrewing has gained more and more acceptance as consumers have come to recognize that beer brewed at home can be superior to mass-produced commercial beer and can even rival that of many craft breweries.

But in the end, Allen says the main force behind the growing homebrew scene in this city of 215,000 is friendship. “The camaraderie of brewers is great, with people always wanting to get together to share beers, smiles, and laughter in this hobby of ours.”

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Minneapolis/Saint Paul, Minnesota

Minneapolis and Saint Paul have long been a hotbed of homebrew innovation. But as in other cities on our list, homebrewing has exploded in the Twin Cities in recent years, fueled in part by a new wave of craft breweries. The area is home to more than a dozen homebrew clubs, including the three-peat National Homebrew Competition (NHC) Homebrew Club of the Year winners the St. Paul Homebrewers Club (2007 to 2009) and the winners of the 2014 NHC Gambrinus Club Award, the Minnesota Home Brewers Association. Locals have also taken home the coveted Meadmaker of the Year prize in seven of the last eleven years!

Since Homebrew Con (the American Homebrewers Association’s National Homebrewers Conference) was last held in Minnesota six years ago, legislative progress has enabled a boom in craft breweries, taprooms, and craft beer events. So expect lots of great homebrew, mead, cider, and professional beer when Homebrew Con returns to Minneapolis next summer, June 15–17, 2017!

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Nashville, Tennessee

As in other hot spots, homebrewing in Music City developed closely with the microbrewing and craft beer community. The city’s oldest and largest homebrew club, Music City Brewers, has incubated several generations of pro brewers since its founding in 1996. The club has actively participated in craft beer festivals for most of its 20 years, and at many of those festivals, it has drawn long lines thanks to the variety of high-quality beers being served.

Music City Brewers co-founder and treasurer Steve Johnson says homebrewers in Nashville bring a trailblazing spirit to the area. “While the craft brewing scene has been slow to bring in high-gravity beers due to restrictive legislation here in the Bible Belt, the homebrewers in the area have often taken the lead in brewing up a wide range of styles over the years,” he says.

Nashville’s presence as a regional crossroads has resulted in lots of new brewers coming into the hobby and community in the last few years, bringing their homebrewing experience from other parts of the country. Tennessee’s homebrewers have embraced their geographic advantage and worked diligently with clubs throughout the region—in Southern cities like Memphis, Knoxville, Asheville, Birmingham, and Huntsville—to bring a strong, creative, and highly competitive homebrew culture to the Mid-South and the Southeastern United States.

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Phoenix, Arizona

You know what they say: necessity is the mother of invention. So it goes for homebrewers in the Phoenix area. “Our state is still largely a macro beer market,” says Keith Mycek of the Arizona Society of Homebrewers (ASH). “If you want good beer, you often have to make it yourself; especially lagers and historic styles.”

Of course, living in the desert has its own challenges, leading to many early-morning and late-night brew sessions to avoid summer temperatures that can easily exceed 115° F (46° C). Brewers without means of temperature control might shift their focus to cider- and meadmaking during the summer months to avoid dealing with fermentation woes all around.

Of its staggering 500-plus members, ASH says it is especially pleased with the increase in female homebrewers it has seen in recent years. In fact, five of the nine club board positions are held by women, all of whom homebrew and have received recognition at local, regional, and national levels.

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Rochester, New York

When asked about the success of the homebrew community in the Rochester area, Upper New York Homebrewers Association (UNYHA) president Keith McCullum gives much of the credit to the water. “We’re lucky to have phenomenal water,” McCullum says, “courtesy of Lake Ontario to the north and the Finger Lakes to our south.”

UNYHA is one of the country’s oldest homebrew clubs and has met regularly since 1979, with half a dozen shops in the area to offer supplies and support. The Rochester homebrew community includes a healthy mix of urban, suburban, and rural brewers, all battling a variety of conditions from limited brew space to sub-freezing temperatures. Overcoming such challenges means the area is full of creative problem solvers.

For UNYHA, growing the local homebrew scene means hosting an annual competition, social functions, and educational tasting events. And when it comes to brewing, bigger isn’t necessarily better. McCullum says he finds more homebrewers getting creative with small batches, either brewing smaller volumes or splitting a single batch into multiple experiments to dial in desired flavors and freshness.

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Tampa, Florida

A long history of beer and brewing in south Florida means homebrewing is nothing new to folks in the Tampa metro area. With a long list of homebrew clubs in the area (including in cities like Dunedin and Clearwater), the competitive scene boasts amazing homebrew, innovative homebrewers, and a tart tooth so strong a regional style has emerged: Florida weisse.

Heat and humidity make temperature control essential, but they also encourage homebrewers to explore such refreshingly heat-beating styles as tropical IPA, gose, and hefeweizen. And a number of clubs have found perfection through their exploration of sour ales and barrel-aged beers. Part of what makes the area friendly to a new generation of potential brewers is the increasing popularity of brew-on-premises businesses that help brewers learn about the hobby before going all in.

When asked what could make the homebrewing scene any better in Tampa, Gary Holmer of the Special Hoperations homebrew club suggested that being selected to judge a regional round of the National Homebrew Competition (NHC) would be a huge step forward. Well, get ready to take that step, Tampa—you’re hosting an NHC first-round competition in 2017.

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Windsor, California

It’s not hard to see why homebrewing has grown over the last 10 years in wine-soaked Sonoma County. Homebrewer Christal Farias says beer is in their blood! “Homebrewing in our area has been taking place for many years,” say Farias. “In fact, our now world-renowned wine country community was first established as a hop farming community long before our region become so densely populated by wineries.”

Christal is not only part of the homebrew shop Beer Belly Fermentation Supply, but also a board member of Knights of the Tap Handle Brew Club, two organizations that mutually support each another. Homebrewers in the Windsor area are blessed geographically, too. The weather isn’t just great for drinking beer and growing hops, but with ambient temperatures in the mid-60s to mid-70s Fahrenheit (upper teens to low 20s Celsius), fermentation temperature is fairly easy to control for any skill level of brewer.

And with breweries like Russian River, Lagunitas, and Bear Republic in their backyard, homebrewers in Windsor have no shortage of encouragement and solid advice.

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Chip Walton is the producer and host of Chop & Brew and serves on the American Homebrewers Association Governing Committee.

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How to Estimate Power Requirements for Your Electric Brewery - via AHA

Disclaimer: When a cartoon character gets electrocuted, its furry little body goes stiff for a few seconds and we get to watch its skeleton flash beneath its skin like an out-of-control discotheque strobe. A puff of smoke later, our protagonist enjoys a full recovery and gets back its normal business of dropping anvils on heads. We all intuitively recognize that immortality is a fact of animated life.

Reality, however, is not so kind, and mixing water, wort, or beer with electricity can be deadly. Unless you have the experience and know-how to do electrical work, do yourself a favor and consult a professional electrician before attempting anything related to wall juice. And always, always, always use ground fault circuit interrupt (GFCI) outlets or breakers whenever electricity and water have even a remote chance of meeting one another.

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Electric brewing offers a number of attractive advantages over breweries built around propane or natural gas.

• Convenience: Electricity is delivered right to your house, obviating the need to make last-minute propane runs.
• Comfort and Safety: There’s no combustion to create harmful carbon monoxide, so you can safely brew indoors. No more Minnesota snowstorms to disrupt your brew calendar!
• Efficiency: Electrical immersion elements deliver heat directly to strike water and wort with virtually no loss, while a typical gas burner can lose up to 60 percent of its heat output to its surroundings. A 5,500 watt (18,767 BTU/hour) heating element outperforms an 80,000 BTU/hour (23,446 watt) propane burner.
• Precision: Electrical heating elements are easily controlled and lend themselves to automation and repeatability.
• Happy Ear Holes:If you’ve ever suffered minor hearing loss from the deafening jet engine roar of a gas burner, you’ll appreciate the silence of an electric brew rig.
• Cost: In most locations, brewing with natural gas is two or three times more expensive than brewing with electricity, and using propane can set you back five to ten times as much.

But going electric isn’t as simple as plugging into an outlet and getting your mash on. You need to have enough oomph to heat your brewery and crank out a brew day in a reasonable amount of time. And you need to do so without blacking out the neighborhood à la Clark Griswold. Fortunately, with a little simple math, you can figure out how much power you need and whether or not you’ll have to re-wire your house to get it.

Electricity Basics

Voltage (measured in volts) is the force, or amount of potential electrical “pressure” that a circuit offers. Everything you plug into an outlet—be it a coffee maker, a hair dryer, or an electric boil kettle—offers a certain resistance (measured in ohms) to that push. The resulting current (measured in amps) is a measure of the flow of electricity required for the given voltage to overcome the imposed resistance.

You can think of it like rocks in a stream (or islands in the stream if you prefer). A stream of a given depth and speed exerts a certain pressure on everything that gets in its way. That’s like voltage. If you plunk down a big boulder right in the middle of the stream bed, the flow has to accelerate around said boulder in order to move the same volume of water through the narrow restrictions on either side. The boulder is like resistance, and the flow rate of the water is like current.

Voltage is set by your electrical outlet. Most electrical circuits in North America deliver 120 volts, while those in Europe and much of the rest of the world usually offer 220 to 240. Having more volts means you have more electrical oomph available to power your devices. Resistance comes from what you plug into that circuit. And current is the flow of electricity that results from a given voltage trying to overcome the resistance your device provides.

Current is what gets you into trouble. Why? Because current and heat are directly related. In a very general sense, the higher the current, the more a device (resistance) heats up. Standard household circuits in North America are typically sized to max out at 15 amps of current (20 amps in some cases). Exceeding a circuit’s capacity in a modern house means throwing a circuit breaker. Exceeding it in older construction means burning out a fuse. And exceeding it in really old construction means burning your house down.

Thus, the fundamental question of electric brewing is this: How can I safely deliver enough heat to my brewery to complete my brew day in a reasonable amount of time?

Getting Hot Water Without Getting Yourself in It

Water is among the most stubborn substances when it comes to heat. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to raise the temperature of water, for reasons we won’t go into here (Google “water specific heat hydrogen bonds” if you’re interested). The practical upshot of this little fact of physical chemistry is that you need to deliver a huge dose of energy in order to boil water in a reasonable amount of time.

Heat is the amount of energy needed to raise something’s temperature. A typical 5-gallon (19 L) batch of beer might require in the neighborhood of 7 gallons (26.5 L) of water for mashing, sparging, and boiling. Let’s say that water comes out of your faucet at 60° F (16° C), and for the sake of simplicity, let’s say you want to bring the entire volume to a boil. In order to heat that amount of tap water to boiling, you need to provide about 8,900 BTUs (British thermal units) of heat, or about 9,400 kilojoules. For perspective, that’s about the same amount of energy contained in 50 standard Oreo cookies.

There’s nothing you can do about this energy requirement. It’s a simple fact of chemistry, and you can’t change it. You can, however, control two things:

1. The manner in which you deliver heat: gas burner, induction element, electrical immersion element, campfire, thermonuclear device, etc.
2. The speed at which you deliver heat: turn up the burner, deliver more electrical power, throw another log (or Oreo) on the fire, etc.

If you’re thinking of an electric brewery, then you’re probably going to be using an electrical immersion element. These come in a variety of shapes and sizes, but let’s say for the sake of argument that you’re going to go with an element made for brewing, like the 4,500 watt and 5,500 watt elements sold over at TheElectricBrewery.com.

These are designed for a 240 volt power source, which is great if you’re in Europe. North American readers who run these at 120 volts, however, will only get a quarter of the rated power, so instead of 4,500 or 5,500 watts, you’ll get 1,125 or 1,375 watts, respectively. Fortunately, all standard-issue electric dryers and stoves in North America require 240 volts, which means that most houses in the United States, Canada, and Mexico have at least one 240 volt circuit available to power such appliances.

In fact, in most cases, power is actually delivered to our houses at 240 volts. When it reaches the house, the supply is split in two. Regular outlets are delivered 120 volts to power most consumer appliances and electronics, while a separate 240 volt circuit is maintained for stoves, air conditioners, dryers, and the like. Here’s why you might want to consider taking advantage of the increased power of a 240 volt circuit.

Power output	Approximate time to heat 7 gallons of water from 60° (16° C) to boiling
1,125 watts	140 minutes
1,375 watts	115 minutes
4,500 watts	35 minutes
5,500 watts	30 minutes

In other words, it’s possible to brew electrically using standard household outlets, but if you don’t want to wait around forever, you’ll probably want 240 volts. Furthermore, you won’t get much of a boil going with just 1,125 to 1,375 watts—just an anemic simmer. If you already have a 240 volt outlet for a dryer or a stove, you’re in luck. Just brew when you’re not doing laundry or cooking!

If, however, you don’t already have a 240 volt circuit, or if you’d like the option of baking a ham or washing and drying your entire collection of 14 brewery-themed work shirts while you brew, consult an electrician on what it would take to install one. It might be easier and less expensive than you think. And unless you know exactly what you’re doing, it’s probably much, much safer.

Staying Safe and Staying Legal

In most cases, brewers looking to produce to up 20 gallons (76 liters) one batch at a time will be well-served by a single 30 amp circuit by alternating between two heating elements: one to heat strike/sparge water and one to heat the boil kettle. This cost-effective approach only draws 23 amps from a 240 volt circuit. An added bonus is that the sparge water slowly cools over time, which helps minimize tannin extraction as runoff gravity drops and runoff pH increases. A well-built control panel like the standard panel offered at TheElectricBrewery.com includes features to easily and safely let you switch between two elements so you don’t overload your circuit.

Anyone with a 30 amp dryer line can easily brew up to 20 gallons (76 liters) at a time with an electric rig, and a 50 amp circuit lets you do considerably more, two to three barrels even, by running two 5,500 watt heating elements at the same time. This is also a handy setup if you’d like to mash a second batch while the first boils. Understand, though, that running two elements simultaneously will draw 46 amps from your 50 amp circuit. In some jurisdictions, the local building code may not permit consumer devices to use more than 80 percent of a circuit’s maximum current rating (40 amps on a 50 amp circuit), but the National Electrical Code (NEC) does allow you to exceed the 80 percent restriction if (1) the device is not a hot water tank, and (2) it isn’t run continuously for more than three hours. So while electric brewers who want to use two heating elements at once are probably fine with a 50 amp circuit, it’s a good idea to check with your local regulatory authority just to be sure.

The point of all this is that electric brewing is about more than just buying a device and plugging it in. You need to understand how you want to brew and how many simultaneously running electrical devices you need in order to do so. Then you can work backward to determine what kind of brewing equipment and wiring upgrades, if needed, will get you there. Evaluate your home before you start planning your brewery so that come brew day, you get the juice you need while staying safe and complying with local building codes.

For more information on electric brewing, check out the excellent resources available at TheElectricBrewery.com.

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The Fall (Cranberry Saison) - via AHA

Mash grains and cranberries at 150° F (65° C) for 60 minutes. Sparge with 170° F (76° C) water.

 

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Relax, Don’t Worry— It’s Learn to Homebrew Day - via AHA

Now in its 18 year, the American Homebrewers Association’s (AHA) Learn to Homebrew Day has become a highly anticipated staple of the fall season for thousands of people around the world. On the first Saturday of every November, hundreds of homebrew clubs, shops, craft breweries, beer bars, and individuals get together to teach their yet-to-brew friends the art of making beer at home.

In 2015, the AHA partnered with 360 sites around the world to celebrate Learn to Homebrew Day (LTHD). More than 5,900 people brewed 6,284 gallons (23,787.5 liters) of beer in 936 batches. We were proud to have 47 states and 10 countries teaching new homebrewers the ropes!

The AHA is exited to partner with LTHD site hosts again this year. Past participants will already be familiar with our marketing timeline, poster, press release, and free Zymurgy intro issues, but here are a few ways that you can take your own LTHD to the next level!

1. Celebrate the whole week

It might be called Learn to Homebrew Day, but that doesn’t mean you should limit the fun to just one day! Sure, the first Saturday of November might be the one day each year completely devoted to teaching the art and science of beer brewing, but we encourage you to expand on LTHD and make it your own!

The spirit of camaraderie can be stretched out into a Learn to Homebrew Week that culminates in a grand event on Saturday. Here is a sample timeline that you can adapt to bring in new (or not-so-new) homebrewers throughout the whole week, with a themed brew or presentation each day:

• Seasonal Spice Sunday
• Maibock Monday
• Trappist Tuesday
• Weizen Wednesday

• Tripel Thursday
• Fruit Beer Friday
• Sessionable Saturday
• You get the point…

2. Give Back

With 5,931 estimated participants in the 2015 LTHD celebration, we taught a lot of people to brew last year. If every LTHD site registrant were to commit to adding a philanthropic effort to their event, we could help our host communities around the country. Not only will partnering with a non-profit benefit your neighborhood, it will instill excitement and pride among your attendees. Here are some ideas.

• Host a canned food, toy, or coat drive. Learn to Homebrew Day is hosted each fall, and Rotary clubs nationwide are looking for ways to engage citizens in their communities. If a coat drive isn’t viable, consider partnering with local food pantries to host a food drive, or host a toy drive of your own to benefit a Toys for Tots chapter in your area.
• Teach a Veteran to Homebrew Day. Held in honor of all US veterans and victims of war, Veterans Day is always November 11, which is a Friday in 2016. The American Homebrewers Association encourages you to contact your local Veterans Health Administration (VHA) facility to invite your local veterans out to celebrate Veterans Day early on Learn to Homebrew Day.
• Donate. Philanthropic organizations all over the country depend heavily on donations from their local communities. Instead of requesting cash or check donations at your event, you can work with a similar organization in your area (craft brewery, homebrew store, or craft beer bar) to host a raffle or silent auction to raise money. Partner with tourism offices

3. Partner with Tourism Offices

In 2013, Colorado.com estimated that 43 million people visited its website to find information on the region. The Festivals & Events section alone registered 450,000 visitors throughout the year, with upwards of 10,000 people visiting some of the most popular event posts. It just goes to show that your tourism office is a sure-fire way to attract a new audience to your LTHD event. We don’t recommend inviting thousands of people to your site, but the added exposure is sure to bring in some eager new faces!

At a minimum, you can register your event with local tourism websites. If you want to take it even further, you could request that your local municipality endorse your event in a public space such as a park or public forum.

4. Learn to Homebrew (Every) Day

Yes, we know that it’s called Learn to Homebrew Day, but why should the learning stop at homebrewing? Brewing beer is just the beginning! We all want to stay true to the brew, but let’s not forget that there is much more to quality beer than brewing processes alone. Here are just a few ways that you can teach your audience about beer while also teaching them to brew:

• Learn To Pair Beer and Food Day. What goes better with craft beer than food? Well, maybe more craft beer…but food is a pretty close second! Whether it be cheese, chocolate, or Cool Ranch Doritos, you’ll find great materials and pairing suggestions on the CraftBeer.com website.
• Learn To Blend Day. Some of the best beers in the world aren’t taken directly from fermentation to consumption. Many of them are blended with older or younger versions of themselves—or even with other beer styles—to craft a delicately balanced beverage. One of the best ways to discover an entire new world of beer is to learn how blending can open up new possibilities.
• Learn About Off-Flavors Day. OK, we fully admit that LAOFD probably has a better chance of becoming a text-messaging abbreviation than an acronym for Learn About Off-Flavors Day. However, learning about off-flavors is an important lesson for any homebrewer or craft beer enthusiast. Just doctor a well-made commercial beer with special off-flavor extracts and learn to detect problems from diacetyl to oxidation. AHA-recommended off-flavor kits can be purchased from our friends at the Beer Judge Certification Program

Sign Up New AHA Members with Brew Guru

The AHA’s new smartphone app, Brew Guru, will soon be launching a featured collection of content straight out of Zymurgy: An Introduction to Homebrewing. The app is free to download and offers users a 2-week trial AHA membership upon download. Attendees to your event can go home with catered homebrewing content, and a complete guide to setting up their first brew day all on their iPhone or Android device!

 

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Ale of Asgard - via AHA

Make yeast starter two to three days ahead of brew day.

Using soft (less than 25 ppm bicarbonate), distilled, or reverse osmosis water, mash crushed malt and flaked maize at 150° F (66° C) in 15 quarts (14.2 L) water. Stir in first dose of calcium chloride and gypsum as you mash in. Stir mash every five minutes. (Add heat to keep temperature from dropping.) After 20 minutes, begin checking for conversion with an iodine test. Once test is negative (no starch indicated), or nearly so, collect 6.5 gallons (24.6 L) of wort from grain bed. (You can do this very quickly; for example, by batch sparging.) If possible, run off wort to your hot liquor tank (HLT). If not, run off to kettle and transfer to your HLT. This wort is your brewing liquor. Heat it to 152° F (67° C).

Quickly clean mash tun and combine 15 quarts (14.2 L) brewing liquor with crushed malts and flaked maize to mash at 140° F (60° C). Add second dose of calcium chloride and gypsum. Mash for 30 minutes, then raise temperature to 152° F (67° C). Stir mash when heat is being applied and raise temperature by approximately 2° F (1° C) per minute. (Do not add hot water to raise temperature.) At 10-minute intervals, take a reading of the density of the wort (by refractometer or hydrometer). Record time and specific gravity or Brix. Stir the mash and add heat to maintain mash temperature as needed.

Decide when to stop mashing based on the rate of change in wort density. (Eventually, mashing for another 10 minutes will yield only a few extra gravity points.) Heat the mash to 168° F (76° C) for mash out. Recirculate wort until it’s mostly clear and begin running wort off. Use remaining wort from first mash as sparge water (heated so that the grain bed temperature remains near 168° F). Sparge slowly to get as many sugars from the grain bed as possible. Do not use water to sparge at the very end (this will dilute the wort). Collect enough wort for a 90-minute boil.

Bring the wort to a boil, and boil for 90 minutes. Add hops with 75 minutes left in boil. Cool to 68° F (20° C) and rack 5 gallons (18.93 L) to fermenter. Aerate the wort thoroughly and pitch the sediment from your yeast starter. (Especially if your OG is over 1.100, aerate for one additional minute eight hours after pitching.) Ferment at 68° F (20° C) until primary fermentation ceases.

Rack finished beer to a keg and force carbonate to 2.4 volumes (4.8 g/L) of CO₂. If you pitched an adequate amount of yeast, Ale of Asgard will condition faster than you might think. After a few weeks, pull a small sample and evaluate. Continue sampling every few weeks. Serve when ready.

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Tuesday Beer Trivia: Growing Barley - via AHA

Fake Out the Cold: How to Brew a Faux Lager - via AHA

For years, the word lager seemed like a dirty word that homebrewers and craft beer enthusiasts dared not utter in mixed company. I mean, who drinks lager? After all, aren’t craft beer and homebrewing, in part, reactions to Big Beer’s mass-produced commodities? Isn’t lager just ballpark seltzer?

Nope! Curious drinkers who get to know lagers understand that they’re not all fizzy, yellow, and thin. From the lightest helles to the darkest doppelbock, I think there’s a lager out there for everyone. I’ll take a well-crafted Czech-style Pilsner over a session IPA any day!

I love lagers, and I love brewing them. The bother with lager is that brewing authentic examples requires a level of technical precision and control that isn’t always convenient. Even if you use a relaxed method like Mike “Tasty” McDole’s riff on the Narziß protocol (a great method, by the way), you still need to initiate fermentation at around 45–55° F (7–13° C). The schedule is accelerated, yes, but you still need good temperature control to pull it off with Saccharomyces pastorianus.

And even if you do have a temperature-controlled environment, let’s face it. Sometimes we’re lazy and don’t feel like messing with it. Sometimes our lagerators fill with bottles of beer. Or, we grow a year older and find the prospect of lifting 50 pounds of wort into an open chest freezer less than inspiring.

That’s why I love to brew faux lagers. What’s faux lager, you ask? A faux lager is inspired by a lager style but uses an ale yeast at a cooler-than-usual temperature. Late autumn and early winter are great times of year for this because chances are, there’s a spot in or near your house that naturally hovers at or near a suitable temperature.

Here’s how I do it.

1. Choose a spot. This is the most important part of the process because the temperature of your fermentation area dictates everything else. This might be a corner of the garage. It might be a basement. It could even be an extra bathroom that doesn’t see any traffic. For me, it’s a home office that, thanks to the peculiarities of an old HVAC system, doesn’t receive as much heat as the rest of the house. This is the same room I use for serving cask-conditioned ales in the winter, which is why I have to wear a coat when I work from home. Ideally, your fermentation area will be 60° F (16° C) or cooler and will maintain a stable temperature (±1–2 degrees) for at least a week or two.
2. Choose a yeast. Once you know the temperature at which your beer can ferment, it’s time to select a yeast strain that will work well in those conditions. Kölsch and alt yeasts are fantastic (they’ve been bred for this moment), and California common yeast can be very good, too. Even if I can’t get down as cold as I’d like to, I’ve had luck using certain dry strains like Danstar’s Nottingham and Fermentis’s K-97 in the low 60s with good results. And let’s not forget the AHA’s own Charlie Papazian, who has won countless awards for ales and lagers alike made with his Cry Havoc strain, available from White Labs.
3. Choose a beer style. You have a bit of flexibility here, but it pays to know what you’re going for. I find that Kölsch yeast does a great job for the lighter styles (helles, Pilsner, Dortmunder) and that Nottingham can knock out a reasonable dunkel or schwarzbier facsimile if you ferment it in the 55 to 60° F (13 to 16° C) range. If you can find a spot nearer to 50° F (10° C), California common yeasts work well in fake Märzen and Oktoberfest.
4. Don’t fret about “lagering.” Yes, the German word lagern means “to store,” and yes, this traditionally takes place at near-freezing temperatures. But you can still turn out a damn fine beer by just walking away from it for a few weeks and allowing it to mature at room temperature. The last time I brewed a standard bock, I used my normal lager fermentation schedule but then forgot to turn the temperature controller back down after a diacetyl rest in the mid-60s Fahrenheit (about 18° C). It remained at that temperature for a good six weeks before I remembered. But I kegged it and put it on tap, and it turned out to be one of the best bocks I had ever brewed. I don’t claim it turned out well because I didn’t lager it the traditional way. But it did turn out well despite my not having done so. What matters most is conditioning. The “cold” part is just the last 5 percent.

If you’ve been scared to give lager a try, I encourage you to dip your toe in the water with faux lager this winter. If you’re an ale devotee, you might just decide to stash away several batches of fake Pilsner to get you through the summer. And if you’ve been brewing traditional lagers for years, you might find yourself breaking the rules and smiling just a little more often.

* * *

Dave Carpenter is editor-in-chief of Zymurgy and author of The Illustrated Guide to Homebrewing. He is an avid homebrewer, an inquisitive traveler, and, despite his surname, an ineffectual woodworker. Dave lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, with his wife, two cats, and countless unfinished projects.

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Vote Now: Battle of the Bottle Labels 2016 - via AHA

One bottle label to rule them all…

We received 126 entries in the 2016 Battle of the Bottle Labels contest. Thanks to all who entered!

Now it’s time for YOU to cast a vote and help decide who will be the 2016 Battle of the Bottle Labels champion. The two most popular labels will win awesome prize packages from contest sponsor GrogTag. Voting closes on Thursday, Nov. 3, 2016 at 11:59pm MT, and winners will be announced shortly after.

For all the background on the contest, see the original Battle of the Bottle Labels post.

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Northern Brewer Purchased By Anheuser-Busch Inbev - via AHA

Late last week the beer world learned that the multinational corporation Anheuser-Busch Inbev, the world’s largest brewing company, had purchased Northern Brewer, one of the largest homebrew supply businesses in the United States, via Anheuser-Busch Inbev’s ZX Ventures “Disruptive Growth” investment group. The acquisition includes Midwest Brewing Supplies, which merged with Northern Brewer a few years ago. With the purchase, Anheuser-Busch Inbev now controls a large chunk of the annual online sales of homebrew supplies.

The most immediate question is, “Why?” It does seem a strange match for the maker of Budweiser to be dabbling in homebrewing. There’s plenty of room for speculation, but until we have more information from Anheuser-Busch Inbev, all we have to answer the “why” question is speculation.

What is of immediate concern to us at the AHA is what’s at stake for the overall homebrew supply retail landscape. With the fifth largest consumer goods company entering the homebrew market place, what is the future of the $1 billion homebrew supply industry? The breweries that Anheuser-Busch Inbev has recently purchased, such as Goose Island, 10 Barrel, Elysian, and Devils Backbone, gained competitive advantages over independent breweries through access to vast amounts of capital, improved access to raw materials, and access to the entire Anheuser-Busch Inbev distribution network. Similarly, Northern Brewer and Midwest now have an advantage over their competitors with greater access to capital, as well as ingredients like malt and hops.

Given those newfound advantages, how will Northern Brewer and Midwest’s competitors be able to compete? The answer, in part, will depend on the homebrewing community’s reaction to the acquisition. Will this impact homebrewers’ choice of which supply outlets they use? Will homebrewers welcome this change, or be indifferent? We’d like to know your opinion.

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Maltonator Doppelbock - via AHA

Dough in with 4 gallons (15.1 L) of 100° F (38° C) water and allow to rest for 1 hour. Infuse one gallon (3.8 L) of near-boiling water every 15 minutes (6 additions total), stirring thoroughly after each addition. Mash out at 172° F (78° C). Slowly run off the sweet wort, sparging as necessary, to collect 8 gallons (30.3 L). Boil hard for 2 hours. Let wort rest 30 minutes, then rack and chill to 45–50° F (7–10° C). Oxygenate and pitch a large starter of yeast. Ferment for two weeks or until finished. Slowly chill to 28° F (–2° C), then rack again. Lager at 35° F (2° C) for 18 weeks.

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(Part 1) How to Motivate Member Participation in Your Homebrew Club - via AHA

A thriving homebrew club is an excellent venue through which to learn from other homebrewers, discover new tips and techniques, and share your passion for great handcrafted beer. But good clubs don’t just happen: they take hard work and planning. Fortunately, it’s easy to motivate your members with just a little extra attention to consistency, education, and community.

Every club is unique, but a few things have worked particularly well for my club, the Carolina BrewMasters (CBM). In this, the first of a two-part article, I’ll share some of the successful strategies we’ve employed at CBM.

Be Consistent

Holding regularly scheduled—and regular is key—club meetings is the number one way to encourage involvement. Meetings give your members an opportunity to connect with one another, get updates on the club, and share great homebrew. Make your meetings easy to remember by consistently holding them at the same day, time, and location. For example, our CBM club meetings always take place on the first Wednesday of every month at 6:30pm, at Dilworth Neighborhood Grille in downtown Charlotte, N.C.

Inviting guests to your meetings can be a great way to recruit potential members. Our club does not require that attendees be official paid members to come to CBM meetings, but we do encourage new faces to join. We find that about 10 to 15 percent of our 90 to 110 monthly attendees are first-time visitors. Encourage them to return!

Hold annual elections for officers to promote fresh ideas from fresh faces. Electing new officers each year avoids burning out your core group of regulars and affords all members a chance to share their talents. Prepare and periodically revise a document that outlines the rules and expectations for your club. Yours might include bylaws, a code of conduct, or a simple mission statement. What matters most is setting expectations of predictability and transparency.

Offer a clear vision of what your club is about, and charge dues. Even a modest financial commitment holds members responsible and makes then more likely to attend. And don’t forget to protect your club and its members with insurance, which is easier than ever thanks to affordable insurance made available by the American Homebrewers Association.

Have a convenient way to communicate with your members. This can be through a website, an email distribution list, or social media channels like Twitter and Facebook. Some clubs use event organizers like Evite or SignUp Genius, while others create custom platforms for getting the word out. Communicate clearly and frequently, but don’t overwhelm your members with tons of email.

Hold regular brew sessions

Brew days are great opportunities to share what you know, learn something new, and get to know other members. Our sessions at CBM cover everything from extract kits on the stovetop to 15-gallon all-grain creations. If you host your brew days at private homes, change up locations so that members can learn about different kinds of equipment and brewing styles.

Our club members live in an area that spans more than 300 square miles (777 square kilometers). Thus, moving our brew sessions around the city each month gives everyone an opportunity to brew in a location convenient to where they live and work. We make chili in the winter, host pool parties in the summer, brew in a garage in the rain, and play ping pong in the backyard or driveway. Varying the entertainment along with the location keeps things interesting and prevents staleness.

If none of your members wants to host, ask your local homebrew supply store or a local brewery with homebrewing roots if you can use their space. Even if you only brew quarterly or biannually, a group brew day gets your members together and brings new customers to the host store or brewery.

Brew sessions are also a great opportunity to include the entire family in the hobby you love, so don’t limit yourself to brewing just beer. My son enjoys making root beer for his birthday party and is proud to share it with his friends.

Educate Your Members

Our club allocates about 20 minutes at each meeting to offer a member the chance to give a presentation on a topic. Start basic, with familiar topics like hops, water, malt, and yeast, before getting too advanced. If you don’t have members that want to present, then reach out to the national brewing community and utilize services like Skype and Google Hangouts.

Have experienced judges offer feedback to members at your meetings. This might be anything from choosing the right competition category to eliminating off-flavors. Encourage your members to become BJCP-trained judges by holding study sessions, publicizing exam dates and details, and paying for exam fees and travel expenses if your club can afford it.

A BJCP-sanctioned competition can be a great fundraiser for your club and a wonderful educational venue. Our annual competition collects around 500 entries, covers three days, has more than 45 judges and 25 stewards, and engages countless volunteers. Hold club-only competitions as well, and as an added bonus, ask local breweries if they could brew the winning recipes from a competition or two and serve it in their taprooms.

Encourage your members to compete in events throughout the year. Our club collects and ships competition entries together to save shipping costs and to help those who aren’t sure how to appropriately wrap bottles and package them. The more your members compete and receive feedback, the better they’ll brew, and the more they’ll want to learn.

But wait, there’s more!

There are so many great ways to encourage club members to participate that we couldn’t fit them all in one article. So be sure to check out for the second installment of How to Motivate Member Participation in Your Homebrew Club!

* * *

Laura Domm is a member of the Carolina BrewMasters homebrew club. The Carolina BrewMasters earned the AHA’s Radegast Club of the Year Award in 2014 for their outstanding service to their community.

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(Part 2) How to Motivate Member Participation in Your Homebrew Club - via AHA

Be sure to check out (Part 1) How to Motivate Member Participation in Your Homebrew Club.

A thriving homebrew club is an excellent venue through which to learn from other homebrewers, discover new tips and techniques, and share your passion for great handcrafted beer. But good clubs don’t just happen: they take hard work and planning. Fortunately, it’s easy to motivate your members by paying attention to consistency, education, opportunity, and community.

In the second installment of our member-motivating features, I offer a few more of the successful strategies we’ve employed in my homebrew club, the Carolina BrewMasters (CBM).

Recognize Volunteers

Your club is built on the work of volunteers, so be sure to give public credit for their efforts at meetings, via social media, and through other communication channels your club uses. And don’t underestimate the power of an appreciative face-to-face “Thank you.”

Hold a yearly awards ceremony to recognize your volunteers and to celebrate together. The Carolina BrewMasters hold an awards ceremony every December to recognize all of the hard work that our volunteers put into the club. We award points throughout the year and select our Volunteer of the Year based, in part, on accumulated points. We also hold a raffle for prizes donated by local homebrew stores: One volunteer point is good for one raffle ticket. In past years, donations have exceeded $2,000 in prizes.

If do you choose to award volunteer points, be transparent about the logistics. Our club’s vice president of communications maintains a list of points and updates it throughout the year. Our guidelines are posted on our website so that members understand how many points they earn for various activities. Competitions remain our greatest opportunities for members to earn points.

Engage Your Community

AHA Rallies offer an excellent way to bring your members together and show the community what homebrewing is all about. Our club sets up a table, tent, and jockey box at each rally, and we offer giveaways, raffle items, and club event shirts. Depending on the demographics of your club, consider having family-friendly events as well, like soda making or games.

Participate in national brewing events such as Big Brew, Mead Day, Cider Day, and Homebrew Con (formerly the National Homebrewers Conference). If Homebrew Con is held within driving distance of our club, we bring out our massive 8-tap, handcrafted wooden bar and show it off to conference attendees. But no matter the distance, we always get club shirts, promote the Homebrew Con to the club, and travel together.

We partner with local charities all year long, offering donations in the form of nonperishable food, money, and volunteer hours. It may seem like a simple gesture, but the local community will appreciate your efforts. We’ve even had members volunteer time to pick hops at a local brewery during the hop harvest. Breweries love to give back to their communities, so ask them how you can get involved.

Our club is also the proud host of the Charlotte Oktoberfest. This is one of the largest festivals in the Southeast, with more than 6,000 attendees, 150 volunteers, 90 breweries, and countless sponsors and media. Last year we raised about $50,000 for local charities, bringing our 17-year total to more than half a million dollars. Our festival started with just one keg and has grown over time.

Set an example

All of the great ideas in the world are of no use if you’re not involved yourself. So set a good example by giving as much to the club as you’d like other members to give. We hope you’re inspired to motivate your club members to be more active and look forward to hearing what you come up with. Remember, all it takes is a good idea and the will to see it through.

* * *

Laura Domm is a member of the Carolina BrewMasters homebrew club. The Carolina BrewMasters earned the AHA’s Radegast Club of the Year Award in 2014 for their outstanding service to their community.

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Tuesday Beer Trivia: IPA Styles - via AHA

4 New Collections Added to Brew Guru - via AHA

Four new Collections available in Brew Guru!

Log into the Brew Guru app (or download it today!) to see four new content collections from the American Homebrewers Association. A collection is curated content about a specific theme that helps Brew Guru users learn more about topics ranging from homebrewing to style analysis.

Preview the four new collections and dig into ’em on Brew Guru.

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It’s the Great Pumpkin Collection

Love ’em or hate ’em, pumpkin beers have become as synonymous with autumn as the changing of leaves and the start of football season. Discover the history of pumpkin beer and how you can brew your own at home.

Mastering the Mash

Mashing is the process of extracting fermentable sugars, along with color and flavor, from brewing grains. It is the first step of the all-grain brew day and is a key process to understand and master. Explore the intricacies of mashing and become a Master of the Mash.

All Things Mead

In its simplest form, mead is a fermented mixture of honey, water, and yeast, but adding ingredients like fruits and spices can transform a traditional mead into a completely different trip for your palate. Discover the history of mead, one of the oldest known fermented beverages, and how you can make it at home.

The Guide to Trappist Beer

Unlike Belgian abbey ales, which can be brewed by anyone anywhere, Trappist is a title reserved for approved breweries that are run within the confines of a Trappist monastery. Explore the rich history of Trappist and Belgian beer and how you can brew Trappist-inspired beers at home.

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Tim’s Super-Clean Kegerator Conversion - via AHA

Having helped my father homebrew for the better portion of my life in our pseudo home brewery, the Barberton Brewing Company, I knew how to wash and dry bottles. He had brewed since the early nineties, and in some way, shape, or form, I had always helped him out. After I started brewing on my own in college, I grew sick of cleaning bottles like many brewers do. So, I made the switch to kegging and jumped down the rabbit hole of kegerators.

My kegerator is different than most. My kitchen fridge that had run more or less continuously for the better part of the previous four decades finally crapped out. That meant my garage fridge would soon be my kitchen fridge, and I would be out of a place to put my delicious homebrew. I had the opportunity to get an old True Refrigeration Worktop Freezer from an old bar in my hometown–a friend of mine had kept it in his basement for years, and after poking and prodding him for several months, I finally convinced him to sell it to me.

The True Freezer needed a bit of TLC. I soaked the condenser, which was full of greasy, dusty gunk, in a slurry of Blaster Degreaser, and I blew out the loose bits with an air attachment. The fan needed cleaning and some wires had to be replaced, but other than that, the freezer ran perfectly. I needed to control the unit’s temperature so as not to freeze my tasty homebrew, so I downloaded plans for a temperature controller from the Homebrewers Association’s website and I was set.

I used a picnic tap for a while, but I knew I wanted something more professional and cleaner looking. So, I ultimately bought a single draft tower online and mounted it to the top center of the freezer (slowly drilling through the top with a hole saw), which is stainless steel with a foam core. The draft line goes directly to the liquid post on a pin-lock keg, and the tower is insulated with foam to keep the beer line chilled.

I have plans to wire the digital temperature controller inline and mount it flush to the backsplash, and I want to mount the CO₂ bottle outside for ease of adjustment. But, I am trying to figure out the best way to route the gas line and insulate around the opening.

I wanted to have a clean, professional-looking kegerator, and as of today, my homemade fridge has been running strong for over a year. The Barberton Brewing Company finally has beer on draft!

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Tips on Brewing New England IPA - via AHA

I am unfit to tell you how to make a New England IPA. I can describe to you what they look, smell, and taste like, but we’ve already discussed what the New England IPA is and why craft beer enthusiasts are going crazy for them.

India pale ales, specifically those native to New England, are some of the most sought-after beers in the country. Think The Alchemist, Hill Farmstead, Trillium Brewing, Tree House Brewing, and Maine Beer Company. However, over the last few years, the IPAs of New England have found their way westward—and for good reason.

Neil Fisher, head brewer at Weldwerks Brewing Company in Greeley, Colo., believes a major contributor to New England IPA’s growing popularity is that it appeals to a larger demographic than its more bitter West Coast counterparts. “One of the most distinguishing characteristics of NE IPAs is their restrained bitterness, which makes them more approachable to casual consumers,” Fisher wrote in an email. “The hop rates are typically equal to or higher than other traditional American IPAs…which means they also appeal to hop heads and craft beer enthusiasts.”

John Kimmich, owner and brewer at The Alchemist in Waterbury, Vt., believes if something is “worth it” and delicious, it’ll create a zealous culture around it. His beer lives up to expectations batch after batch. If you’ve had Heady Topper, or any of his other beers, and you come back to it and it tastes just as good, it’s a testament to the amount of detail on the brewer’s part. Although Kimmich won’t provide too much detail about his brewing process, he doesn’t think he’s doing anything revolutionary. That said, let’s get into some tips for brewing a New England IPA.

More Flavor, Less Bitterness

At this point, most of us know New England IPAs have crazy hop aromas with restrained bitterness to follow. When you smell a New England IPA you expect a burst of bitterness in the taste, and what you often find are fruity, citrusy flavors and a creamy, soft mouthfeel. It kind of messes with your expectations of what an American IPA stands for.

How do breweries pack in so much flavor without all the bitterness? We asked Fisher, Kimmich, and Ryan Scott, head brewer at Odd13 Brewing in Lafayette, Colo., for some tips.

1. Don’t add your hops during the boil. Well, you can add a few at first wort hop (less than 1 percent of the total hop bill) to prevent boil overs. You only need to add them during the whirlpool and when dry-hopping to get the flavors you’re looking for in a New England IPA. Adding hops during primary fermentation has historically been seen as taboo because CO₂ may carry the delicate hop aromas out of the beer. However, many New England IPA brewers are adding their hops during this phase in hopes that the yeast will distribute more hop particulates throughout the beer and help them remain in suspension.
2. Use super fruit-forward hops like Citra, Mosaic, Galaxy, Amarillo, and El Dorado more than traditional varieties like Centennial, Cascade, Chinook, and Columbus. That’s not to say don’t use the “C” varieties, but they aren’t as fruit-forward as some of the newer hops out there.
3. Use a huge dry hop charge. Weldwerks uses up to three dry-hop additions over a 7 to 8 day period after primary fermentation.

More dry hops are added after primary fermentation to lock in the juicy hop aroma. The resulting beer is very hop-forward but not bitter. The mouthfeel is soft and creamy due to the addition of oats and/or wheat, and the predominant flavors and aromas are tropical.

In with the Hazy Crazy IPAs

To some, haze indicates an unfinished or flawed beer. However, many New England IPA brewers don’t see eye-to-eye with this belief. When asked about the haze at first, Fisher said he “never really [had] been too worried about the haziness of Juicy Bits because we designed the beer and the recipe with specific parameters in mind, such as hop flavor, hop aroma, and mouthfeel, and the haze was a byproduct of our process.”

To Kimmich, haziness isn’t the goal. Heady Topper is an unfiltered beer, so it’s natural for the beer to come out hazy when using such an extreme dry-hopping regimen. In the end, it’s just an IPA. It has unique characteristics. It’s somewhere between cloudy and sparkling, and it will flocculate after it’s been packaged. There’s talk of adding flour and other strange additives to artificially create the haze and mouthfeel, but Kimmich doesn’t even use high-protein grains like wheat or oats.

“I stopped using wheat in any of my beers a number of years ago when my wife was diagnosed with Celiac disease,” says Kimmich. “I generally don’t use grains like that unless it specifically demands the use of wheat or oats. The mouthfeel of my IPAs and all of my beers is generated in the water treatment and mash process.”

Water treatment and mash process are two key components that truly separate New England IPAs from their brethren. Let’s look at a few tips provided by the three brewers:

1. Use a high ratio of chloride to sulfate in your water treatment.
2. Use a single-temperature infusion mash. The Alchemist and Odd13 recommend slightly elevated mash temperatures to promote body, but Weldwerks mashes on the low end to accommodate a lower-attenuating yeast strain, usually around 148–149° F (64–65° C).
3. Odd 13 recommends including high-protein grains like wheat and oats. Weldwerks includes over 20 percent flaked wheat and flaked oats in the grist for Juicy Bits.

New England IPA Yeast Tips

Many of these beers derive much of their flavor from unique yeast strains. Heady Topper makes use of a proprietary yeast that’s been rumored to have originated from somewhere in London. If you’re looking to cultivate yeast from dregs of Heady Topper, we’d recommend against that because you’ll be gathering the least viable cells. Sure, there’s yeast there, but that yeast didn’t drop out over the course of three weeks of conditioning. You definitely don’t want to brew with it.

Here are some tips from our crew of New England IPA brewers on yeast.

1. Scott suggests either using Vermont Ale yeast from the Yeast Bay or London Ale III from Wyeast.
2. Kimmich recommends using lots of different strains until you find a groove and can replicate flavors consistently. There are so many choices, and it is really amazing to be a homebrewer nowadays.
3. Fisher gave some of his favorites like Conan, London Ale III, and Dry English Ale. However, there are lots of good options for brewing New England IPAs available to homebrewers.

Concluding Thoughts

This article is by no means a recipe for creating a New England IPA. As I said in the beginning, I’m unfit for that task. But following advice from these award-winning professionals who brew this style is a good start. As for Kimmich, you should do what he did to create such a unique beer. “Read everything you can get your hands on and experiment constantly. Everything you need to know is in a book or magazine article somewhere. Too many people short themselves by not doing enough research with their water treatment.”

Fisher sums up the spirit of homebrewing perfectly. “Have fun and make it your own. One of my favorite things about the style is the vast number of different interpretations from breweries [and homebrewers] across the country. I can’t wait to see how homebrewers will expand the style even further with their own innovations and creativity.”

* * *

John Moorhead, the National Homebrew Competition Director and Project Coordinator, lives in Boulder, Colorado. If he isn’t tasting, brewing, or talking beer, you’ll see him running, roaming or biking around the mountains – or cooking Thai food and blasting vinyl. Occasionally, John will write about homebrewing happenings, and if he plays his cards right, they might show up here on HomebrewersAssociation.org.

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2016 GABF Pro-Am Entries - via AHA

The Great American Beer Festival (GABF) Pro-Am competition is a chance for homebrewers to team up with a commercial brewery to bring a homebrew-inspired beer to the masses. The beer is entered into the GABF Pro-Am competition to see how it stands up to other commercially-produced homebrew recipes.

Take a look at the 2016 GABF Pro-Am entries below, check out the competition results and keep an eye out for the winning homebrew recipes in an upcoming Zymurgy issue.

Brewer	Homebrewer	Name & Style
AleSmith Brewing Company (CA)	Tim Wang	Mash Monstrosity Sweet Cream Stout with Candy Bars & Peanut Butter
Altitude Chophouse & Brewery (WY)	Shawn Miller	The Kolsch Experiment German Kölsch
Arts District Brewing Company (CA)	Lloyd Johnson & Ted Silvas	Elderflower Belgian Pale Belgian Pale Ale with Elderflower
Ballast Point Brewing & Spirits (CA)	Doug Brown	OG20 Weizenbock Weizenbock
Barley Forge Brewing Co. (CA)	Steve Severn	Marlene American IPA
Beer By Design Brewery & Tap Room (CO)	Bradley Bray	BBD Bohemian Pilsener Bohemian Pilsener
Bell’s Brewery (MI)	David Hellen	Bale So Hard Saison Dry-Hopped with HBC438 & Mosaic
Black Bottle Brewery (CO)	Remi Bonnart	Tropical IPA American IPA with Coconut and Mango
Black Diamond Brewing Company (CA)	Robbie Proctor	Weaver’s Gold English Summer Ale
Black Project Spontaneous & Wild Ales (CO)	Brandon Thorpe	Declassified Bohemian Pilsener
Boxing Bear Brewing Company (NM)	Jeffrey Jantz	Bearcat German-Style Altbier
Breakside Brewery & Tasting Room (OR)	Justin Bradley	Breakside State Fair Saison Classic Saison
C.B. & Potts Restaurant & Brewery/Big Horn Brewery – Fort Collins (CO)	Andrew Lowell	King Bouche American Strong Pale Ale
Chainline Brewing Company (WA)	Kurt Dresner	Clark Kent English Mild Ale
Chimera Brewing Company (TX)	Joseph Parker	Brick Layer Classic Saison
Cigar City Brewing (FL)	Gregory Brown	The New Original Amateur Hour American Wheat Wine Ale
CO-Brew (CO)	Thomas Koep	Pepper Wheat Wheat Beer with Jalapeño, Serrano, Thai Pepper, & Banana Pepper
CooperSmith’s Pub & Brewing (CO)	Jamie Moulton	Along the Way Black IPA American Black IPA
Corralitos Brewing Co. (CA)	James Lombard	Going Full Wakatu Saison Hopped & Dry-Hopped with Wakatu Hops
Crystal Springs Brewing Co. (CO)	Robert Horst	Bob’s Cedar IPA American IPA with New Cedar
Dad & Dudes Breweria (CO)	Marc Cavender	Bloodrocuted Saison with Blood Orange
Dogfish Head Craft Brewery (DE)	David Lieberman	Shlemiel Schlemazel Hasenpfeffer Lichtenhainer Lichtenhainer with Smoked Malts, & Soured with Lactobacillus
Drake’s Brewing Company (CA)	Brian Buckingham & Patrick Bennett	Patryeck and Bryean’s American Stout American Stout
Dry Dock Brewing Co. (CO)	Eric Gould	Turkish Delight Saison Aged in Red Wine Barrels with Apricots
Edgewater Brewery (CO)	Mike Peters	Electric APA #3 American Pale Ale
Fall River Brewing Company (CA)	Jim Dobbs	Vanilla Stout Sweet Cream Stout with Vanilla
Fat Head’s Brewery & Saloon (OH)	Malcolm Frazer	Gose Gose with Pink Sea Salt & Corriander
FATE Brewing Company (CO)	Aaron Uhl	CitraCitra American IPA
Fiction Beer Company (CO)	Ryan Foley	American IPA American IPA
Fifty West Brewing Co. (OH)	Brian Murray	Fifty Fest Brewmaster’s Choice Champion English Barleywine
Firestone Walker Brewing Company (CA)	Carl Townsend	Pacific Gravity Weizenbock Weizenbock Aged in Bourbon Barrel
Fish Brewing Company (WA)	Keith Ciani	None More Black German Schwarzbier
Flat Tail Brewing (OR)	Rebecca Merusi	Helen’s Blonde Blonde Ale with Honey
Great Basin Brewing Company – Sparks (NV)	Jeff Klino	Peach Wheat Fruit Wheat Beer with Peaches
Great South Bay Brewery (NY)	Chris Kelley	Go Bigg or Go Home American IPA
Grimm Brothers Brewhouse (CO)	Mark Boelman	Cucumber vs Ninja Night Berliner Weisse with Cucumber
HailStorm Brewing Co. (IL)	Mark Westmeyer	Complete Trainwreck American Barleywine Aged in American White Oak with Coconut
High Hops Brewery (CO)	David Kilts	Frühling Bock Bock
Ironworks Brewery & Pub (CO)	Morris Rangel	MO Betta Belgo Pale Belgian Ale with American Hops
Jagged Mountain Craft Brewery (CO)	Scott Pointon	Swan Song Belgian Strong Specialty Ale
Karl Strauss Brewing Company (CA)	Kevin Stamer	Devil’s Postpile Pale Ale American Pale Ale
Kokopelli Beer Company (CO)	Geoff Shipley	Leia Lime Lager American Lager with Kaffir Leaf, Dried Persian Limes, Agave Nectar, Flaked Corn
Ladyface Ale Companie (CA)	Jeff Koehler	Lacnunga Gruit with Yarrow, Mugwort, Sweet Gale, Sage & Rosemary
Lift Bridge Brewing Co. (MN)	Sean Kampshoff	Sean’s Bock German Dopplebock
Lightning Brewery (CA)	Nick Corona	Barb’s Hef German Hefeweizen
Liquid Mechanics Brewing Co. (CO)	Ethan Tsai	Pomme de Biere Saison with Apple Juice using American Farmhouse Yeast
Magnolia Pub & Brewery (CA)	Matt Peterson & Daniel Owens	Sleepy Alligator American Cream Ale
Maui Brewing Co. (HI)	Thor Mccammon	Tsunami #7 Imperial IPA
McFate Brewing Co. (NM)	Michael Fry	Funky Razz Wit Beglian Wit with Red Raspberry using Brett Brux var Drie
Millersburg Brewing (OH)	Nate Levengood	I’ve Got a Lov-a-ly Bunch of Coconuts Sweet Cream Stout with Toasted Coconut
Minneapolis Town Hall Brewery (MN)	Jordan Standish	Outstandish Sweet Stout Sweet Stout
Neshaminy Creek Brewing Co. (PA)	Joel Piazza	Destroyer of Worts Red IPA American Red IPA
New Belgium Brewing – Fort Collins (CO)	Mike Bostwick	Funky Monk Other Belgian Ale
North Loop BrewCo. (MN)	Dave Matson	BDF IPA American IPA
NorthGate Brewing Company (MN)	Ian Campbell	California Common American Amber Lager
Oak Highlands Brewery (TX)	Bryan Knowles	Oh Maibock! German Maibock
Odell Brewing Co. (CO)	Gerry & Jonnie Lynch	Chester Chipmunk English Brown Ale
Olde Hickory Brewery (NC)	Matt Warren & Ryan Golden	Imperial Berliner Weiss Berliner Weisse using Lactobacillus & Brettanomyces
Paducah Beer Werks (KY)	Bryan Canavan	Canavan Saison Classic Saison
Panther Island Brewing (TX)	Clifton Ellis	Just Rye’te American Pale Ale with Rye Malt
Phantom Ales & Home Brew Shop (CA)	Shawn Olsson	Red Rye IPA Double Red Ale with Flaked Rye
Rabbit Hole Brewing (TX)	Stacy Myers	RYEteous Knight Rye Beer
RAM Restaurant & Brewery/Big Horn Brewery – Seattle (WA)	Will Trail	Space MONKey American Pale Ale using Belgian Yeast
RAM Restaurant & Brewery/Big Horn Brewery – Wheeling (IL)	Zach Fritts	Sunnyvale Pale American Pale Ale
Reuben’s Brews (WA)	Rob Wick	Wee Heavy Scotch Ale
Revelry Brewing (SC)	Hank Hanna & Pearce Fleming	Wise One German Hefeweizen
Rock Bottom Brewery & Restaurant – Denver (CO)	Joe Formanek	Hannah’s Gold Medal Golden Ale English Pale Ale
Silver City Brewery (WA)	George Stephens	Blootered Bahookie Scottish Export Ale
Spencer Devon Brewing (VA)	Brian & Scott Bergquist	Solar Eclipse German Schwarzbier
Spider Bite Beer Company (NY)	Frank DelGaudio	Peach and Chong Specialty Saison with Peaches & Pink Peppercorns
Springfield Brewing Company (MO)	Andrew Lagerstrom	Bad, Bad Leroy Brown Ale English Brown Ale
Starr Hill Brewery (VA)	Gary Layton	Vernal Equinox English IPA
Sudwerk Brewing Co. (CA)	Virgil Redman	PPB Rauchbier Maerzen Rauchbier
Swamp Head Brewery (FL)	Ron Minkoff	Homebrew Grown English Brown Ale with Cold-Brewed Coffee & Vanilla
Ten Pin Brewing – Production Facility (WA)	Ruben Vela Martinez	Jamaica Goza Gose with Hibiscus
Ten Pin Brewing (WA)	Troy Watson	Wheeeee! Scotch Ale
The Brew on Broadway (CO)	Joe Nesvara & Colleen Murphy	Loggerhead Porter English Brown Porter using Lagering Yeast
The Frothy Beard Brewing Company (SC)	David Holaday	Thunder! Black IPA American Black IPA
Thirsty Dog Brewing Company (OH)	Paul Shick	St Peters Heights Baltic Porter
Upland Brewing Co. (IN)	Brandon Schaefer	Purple Reign Saison Saison with Blackberries & Earl Grey Tea
Upslope Brewing Company (CO)	Derrick Flippin	Tripel Belgian Tripel
Ursula Brewery (CO)	Matt Eckhart	Noch American Imperial Stout Aged in California Brandy Barrel
Weasel Boy Brewing Company (OH)	Keith McFarlane, Dave Bertolotti, Danny Yagersz, & Dan Kephart	Beaker’s Babble Belgian Dark Strong Ale
West Sixth Brewing (KY)	Alex Caldwell	Comin’ In Hot Ginger Braggot Honey Beer with Ginger
Wibby Brewing Co. (CO)	Jim Maurer	No Dos Vienna Lager
Willimantic Brewing Company & Main Street Café (CT)	Paul T Zocco	Zok It To Me! Imperial Stout
Willoughby Brewing Company (OH)	Steven Rapko	Perseids Pale Ale American Strong Pale Ale
Wolf’s Ridge Brewing (OH)	Andrew Park	BlkWtr English Mild Ale
Yards Brewing Company (PA)	Matt Talbot	The Punter Orindary Bitter

 

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