Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels

I've been slogging through this book for a while, and finally finished it over the long hot summer.

If you are a technically minded brewer you need this book, it has detailed information that will let you design a recipe for any of the major styles of beer. If you are more of an artistic brewer, this book will put you to sleep. It is very chart heavy, with statistical analysis of the recipes for award winning homebrews.

In addition it also has information about most varieties of hops, a guide for hitting your target gravity during the brewing process, a guide for water modification, and others.

Overall, I'd say if you have any desire to brew to style, you should buy this book. If you are more of a free spirit and don't want to be tied down, put your money into another batch of beer.

Buy it here

Start me up!

Made 2 starters yesterday for my upcoming Oktoberfest and a Hefenweizen - yes, I'm not starting my Oktoberfest until October, that happens some time.

I made this year’s spiced cider a little early and racked it to the keg - I tweaked the recipe, cut some spices, added honey - I'll post if it turns out well.

Getting 3 more kegs next week which will allow me to bring production back up to its usual levels, and let me figure out if it will be a 3 or 4 tap keggerator.

Most famous non-existent brewery in New York City

I got written up in the village voice back in August, but I forgot to post it on the site.

With that kind of press, I'm going to declare myself the most famous non-existent brewery in New York City. Anyone want to challenge me for the title?

It lives!

As I mentioned earlier I have built a keggerator, which is a refrigerator that has had its food loving soul scooped out and replaced with a beer swilling demon. This was a simple honest refrigerator, without all the modern bells and whistles like an icemaker, self defrosting, or a separate freezer door and I have turned it into a beast with arteries of co2 and veins of beer.

The shelves that once held wholesome milk have been removed to make room for kegs, the door shelves snapped off to make room for their distended round bellies. You don't even want to know what happened to that vegetable consorting crisper - let’s just say that vegetables looking for crisping are no longer welcome.

We drilled holes in the door, filled them with shanks and taps to allow easy access to the beer. We did not ask the fridge if it wanted it's A sized front increased to a stainless steal D, this was done for our pleasure, without regard for the fridge's wholesome image.

There is no lightweight co2 regulator in the heart of this beast, but a medium duty monster from a welding company. Consider the fact that they would call something medium duty and that the instruction manual had lots to say about arc-welding and o2-cutting torches but nothing at all about beer and you will know the beast's cold industrial heart.

We have transformed this wholesome refrigerator that was kicked to the curb for being old and ugly into one sexy beast!