Out of Pod Experience

Now they are bigger, and can help learn to brew.

I don't mess about with that though. Making beer, like many hobbies, can start to take up a lot of space if you end up liking the process a lot. I do mead and melomel instead, since I have access to nearly free honey, and it's space-saving if you drink in excess like I do.

ALL RECIPES: Intended for a five-gallon batch. Never use corn sugar as your bottling sugar, no matter what the recipe says. Use malt (substitute measure-for-measure). Corn sugar gives the ale a thin, sharp, sour edge I find unpleasant, while malt gives a round, rich, full-bodied finish.

Sidewinder: Begin with a pale ale recipe. De-stem, wash, pat dry and then dry roast, preferably in a dry cast iron skillet, one Anaheim, three serrano and one jalepeno pepper. If you want your beer spicier, leave the seeds in the Jalapeno; if not, take them out. THrow the roasted peppers into the primary fermentation vat, and continue on as usual with normal brewing instructions. (Adjust peppers to taste after you try this the first time; I find that the dry-roasting is essential, and that adding too many jalapenos makes the beer kind of oily/skunky.)

Sultry Biotch: use either a dark ale or a stout recipe, but substitute chocolate malt for half of the dark malt.

Grinch Heart: use a pale or medium ale recipe, but add a scant tablespoon of cinnamon to the primary vat. DO NOT DRINK THIS RIGHT AWAY. It will be WAY too cinnamony and make you hate it. Then you will let it sit for months (like about 6 or 8) and discover one day that you need some more bottles for your current batch of whatever. At that time, you will pour nearly an entire sixpack of Grinch Heart down the sink, intending to use the sterile bottles for your new batch, but on bottle number five you'll think, "Man, that kind of smells good..." and you'll give it a little sip. You will then hate yourself for pouring out five bottles of perfectly lovely, subtly spiced and beautifully blended ale.

Proud Cut (So named because it had more balls than I expected): Start with a pale ale recipe; add a pound of FROZEN raspberries to the primary fermentation vat (or if you use fresh, make sure A) no molds are present on them, and 2) you smash them up before adding them.) Frozen ones will have their skins pierced from the ice crystals as they thaw and release all the raspberry-y goodness into your ale. Fresh have to be smashed or they'll just keep that raspberry-y goodness to themselves, thank you very much.
NOTE: be aware that the fruit beers may ferment like crazy, so you may have to do some extra venting.
Variations: Use a medium ale recipe = Cryptorchid. Use a dark ale recipe = Dark Horse.

Tode Fuzz (Named for my brother Tode, for whose wedding I invented and brewed this recipe):
Start with a medium ale. Add one half pound of frozen cut peaches and one 12-oz jar of all-fruit peach preserves (or 1.5 to 2 jars of the preserves without the frozen) to the primary fermentation vat. NOTE: this one has a higher-than-usual alcohol content. I did not measure it because a) I am not that big a purist (embarrassing but true), 2) I was moving shortly after making this and had packed up half my stuff, and iii) I never measured the alcohol content in ANY of my beers, so it didn't occur to me. Ooopsie.

There's a company called 5 Star that makes something called Star San for sanitizing your equipment. It's super easy to use, safe, environmentally friendly, and does a bang up job sanitizing. I'm up to my elbows in that stuff on brew days and no ill effects. Much better than bleach, much safer than trying to use steam or boiling water, and it's no rinse. Carboy full of star san suds? NP, it breaks down into yeast food and doesn't alter the flavor of your beer. Miraculous stuff.

Silens, looking at your sister's recipes reminds me of some ales my friends brewed. They used various Chinese teas in the brews. The tea flavor wasn't noticeable, but those were some good ales.

Checking in.


I brew it. Everybody else drinks it.