Archives for August 2016

Fruit Wine, Take Two

August 31, 2016 by 1 Comment
IMG_3524

The fruit, in a nylon bag, fermenting in a bucket. Every day, the fruit gets punched down, so all of it contacts the fermenting wine over the course of the fermentation.

OK, since the website name is Beer & Wine Journal, I guess I should occasionally post something about wine. Back in 2013, I made a wine I called Cherry Berry Wine because it was made with . . . well, you guess (or see the recipe). Last week, I was shopping at HEB (my local supermarket) and they had the same mix of fruits for fairly low prices, so I got the ingredients for another batch of fruit wine. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Winemaking Recipes Tagged With: , , , , ,

Home Brew Recipe Bible, by Chris Colby

August 10, 2016 by 12 Comments
DSCN3853

My book, sitting near the edge of my garden, for no apparent reason.

Earlier this year, I wrote a book. Now, I am excited to say that it will be released soon (Sept. 20). Here’s a brief description of it.

The Home Brew Recipe Bible includes 101 beer recipes — 97 from me and one each from James Spencer (Basic Brewing Radio), Denny Conn (coauthor of Experimental Brewing and Homebrew All-Stars), Dan Ironside (author of Idiot’s Guides: Homebrewing), and Mark Schoppe (two time NInkasi winner). The recipes cover all the major beer styles, including stouts, porters, pales ales, IPAs, strong ales, lagers, sour beers and others. It also contains a few adventurous beers brewed with unusual ingredients — including my Frost Giant Jule Øl, a winter warmer that is spiked with aquavit (a Scandinavian liquor spiced with caraway), and my Beelzeboss saison that uses the soda pop Mt. Dew as part of the brewing liquor. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Announcements Tagged With: , ,

Fruit IPAs (II: How to Brew a Fruit IPA)

August 8, 2016 by 9 Comments

DSCN3793Brewing a fruit IPA is no more difficult than brewing any fruit beer. The most popular fruit IPAs use fruits that either accentuate the citrus character of their hops (grapefruit IPA, blood orange IPA) or the tropical character in hops (mango IPA, pineapple IPA). See below for a list of hops with these characters. The best examples of fruit IPAs have enough fruit character that you can tell it’s not an ordinary IPA, but not so much that the underlying beer is totally obscured. As such, you really don’t need to alter your IPA recipe to accommodate the fruit — just decide how intense you want the fruit flavor and add that to the recipe. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Brewing Ingredients, Brewing Techniques Tagged With: , , , , , ,