Mead Day 2009

August 1st is Mead Day 2009 which is an event sponsored by the American Homebrew Association designed to celebrate and encourage the making of mead.

The Prairie Schooners have decided to organize an event at It's All About Wine to encourage both local homebrewers making mead and local producers of honey.



The event will coincide with It's All About Wine's normal Saturday wine tasting so drop on by to see meadmaking, talk mead and honey and sample some fine wine at the same time.

Good Taste Trumps Good Sense!

A nice story on NPR's Marketplace about how the recession has not quite impacted craft brewers as they might have expected.

The audio and a text version can be had here:

marketplace.publicradio.org

It's a brief story but offers two alternative (but not necessarily competing) reasons:

1) If you were already able to afford premium craft beers then you are less likely to be impacted by the economy.

2) People are cutting back on larger expenses but countering with a desire or need to splurge in little ways.

Hard call. I tend to lean towards the first argument,

Miscellany

Oh how my beer world has been impacted. I don't even think I've been to Friar Tuck for over a month and only at Brewhaus more recently due to guests from out-of-town. I have yet to bottle my beer from Brew Day in May. Part of the problem there is that I racked into a glass carboy for the first time and beer can last quite some time in there with little adverse impact. I did manage to create a label for it whenever I get 'round to bottling. Let's hope the beer is worthy.



I have mostly subsisted on Schlafly Pale Ale and Wolaver's Pale Ale which I personally find among the best of the Pales. They aren't too hoppy so I must supplement while out with DFH 60 or Boulevard Pale or SNPA where I can.

I did pick up one interesting beer in Capital Brewing's latest Summer seasonal. It is there Wild Rice lager. Capital's website states that the addition adds a fruity/nutty flavor to which I fully agree perhaps tending more towards nutty than fruity. It is an interesting variation even if you aren't wholly thrilled with lagers in general and definitely worth a try.



The Prairie Schooners Homebrew Club is still very active if slightly distracted by the vagaries of Summer. Elections are this Thursday and I believe I am a shoe-in for Vice-President. One year to make a difference and plan for the eventual untimely accident to befall Brian.

More beer history

http://legendsofbeer.wordpress.com/2009/06/08/the-secret-history-of-beer/

This reads like an 8th grade history assay, but includes a few things I didn't know.

Dogfish Head does it again...

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=9000-year-old-brew-hitting-the-shel-2009-06-05&;

Not content with the Midas Touch, brewing madman Sam Calagione has three historic brews to enrich our lives!

News on the Beer Front

While my personal consumption of beer has tapered a bit recently due to a calculating effort to lose some weight, there is still plenty of beer action to be had in Springfield. Predominantly my focus has been on my homebrewing efforts and the Prairie Schooners Homebrew Club.

Recently we held a group brew as a part the the National Big Brew which featured homebrew clubs around the nation brewing one of three styles as a celebration of American homebrewing. I brewed a Dark Mild Ale which happil bubbled away and is due to be racked to a secondary to settle for another week with, hopefully, bottling to follow next weeked.

My recipe was:

1/2 lb Chocolate malt steeped at 170 for 15 minutes
Brought to a boil for 60 minutes
1 oz of Kent Golding hops added for bittering at 60 minutes
4 lbs of Light Dry Malt Extract added at 15 minutes
Danstar Windsor yeast
This was fermented at 68 to 70 deg Farenheit

The dark mild will clock in at around 120 calories and after the debacle that my 3lb malt recipe became should hopefully be good. I have had a string of bad batches that I hope to chalk up to too high of fermentation temps. The Tornado Ale had a bubblegum nose and flavor whoch is not on my ideal list of Pale Ale flavors. The 3 lb Malt Ale is downright unpleasant and may have a host of issues in addition to fermeting in the 74 to 80 degree range. That little of malt also woudn't have been able to hide many off flavors so I was asking for trouble from the get-go. 'll keep trying it just to see if anything changes but I am not hopeful. Moving on is probably the best solution for me.

Next up on the beer agenda is: Prairie Schooners Homebrew Club meeting this Thursday at The Brewhaus.

I Am A Craft Brewer vid

I Am A Craft Brewer from I Am A Craft Brewer on Vimeo.