300

Beer and Wine Journal — it’s a journal, of beer and wine. (Mostly beer.)

Today — 253 days after launching Beer and Wine Journal — we’ve hit our 300th post. When publications hit a milestone, their editors frequently decide to get lazy and throw together some sort of lame retrospective that’s both easy to compile and self-serving . . . and that sounded perfect to me.

However, on New Year’s Eve, we posted our Best of 2013 list, so another “best of” list was out of the question. In it’s place, I give you something that requires even less effort — an Editor’s choice list! In this case, it’s a list of articles that I thought were pretty good, but got posted early enough in the life of the website that they never got too many readers. (I’ll also put the top 5 stories posted since the “best of” list in the “Related articles” links, below the story.)

If haven’t seen these, I think there’s some good stuff in them. If you have seen them, don’t worry, I’ll post article #301 tomorrow. And either way, thanks for reading Beer and Wine Journal!

10 Cool BWJ Articles You Might Have Missed

Can CO₂ Form a Blanket? — Can CO2 really form a protective barrier above your beer? As it turns out, you need to know some chemistry beyond Henry’s Law to give a good answer.

Stuck Fermentations — How do they happen? What can a brewer do to kick-save a stuck fermentation?

Measuring Tiny Amounts — A fifth of an ounce? How the &^%$ do I measure that?

Handling Sugar Additions in the Kettle — How to add malt extract or other sugars to your brewpot without scorching.

Drain Your Lauter Tun — Save water on brewday . . . and maybe even increase your extract efficiency.

Which Hop Utilization Curve is the Most Accurate? — Once you understand why the question is unanswerable, you’ll know how to pick the curve that’s right for you.

It’s Not “Infected” — Use the right word when discussing contaminated beer.

Use Those Homegrown Hops! — Don’t let anyone tell you not to use homegrown because you don’t know their alpha acid rating. That’s ludicrous.

Malt Conditioning — Higher efficiency and easier lautering? Malt conditioning delivers. And, it’s easy to do at home.

Hops — Alphas and Oils — There’s more to hops than just their alpha acids.