Initially, the website feature set is going to focus on brewing recipes, searching for,  sharing,  and rating recipes submitted by the community.  The recipe builder options will perform many of the common brewing calculations (IBU, OG, etc) for you as you go.

In the long run, I hope to add quite a number of recipe analysis operations that will let you compare your recipe to a style, other recipes, etc.  For the recognition of the ambitious homebrewer, I will also be adding fun “achievements,” honors that will be awarded members who accomplish certain feats,  like brewing x number of gallons in a year, or brewing x different styles, or having x number of top rates recipes, etc).

Of course, if you have been looking for a particular brewing tool or  have some suggestions, please let me know while things are in their early state.

Happy Homebrewing!

I will leave the old wordpress blog up for the time being, but all new content will be posted here.

Also, with luck, I will have http://www.brewerscache.com up and running with some new features. You should expect to someday find some interesting recipe and style analysis tools, resource locators, forum, etc. The development of the website, like brewing, is a hobby and will take some time to perfect and populate. I will be rolling out the new features as soon as they are developed.

Thanks,

Brewbaron of Brewerscache.com

At this point in my brewing hobby, I have brewed 60 gallons of beer, a meager number compared to some in the same time frame, and have attempted a dozen or so styles.  Before I started homebrewing, I really only took the time to enjoy a small subset of the many, many varieties of beer.  Now, I always have two examples of good beer on tap!

If you are just starting out, stick with it, try new things, and RDWHAHB.

The step ladder stout terminated with a final gravity of 1.014 which is a little higher than expected–I had trouble with the mash temperature control and ended up mashing at a low temp.  I took a little taste and the roasted barely comes through in a huge way, maybe too huge.  The color is lovely ink.

I am going to carbonate this one just using CO2 because I don’t have the nitrogen kegging equipment. Based on my past results, this one will be carbonated nicely in about a week or so ( sitting at 12-15 Psi and 45 degrees ).

Update:  Brutus is no boxer/mastif; he is really more of a boxer/pit.
Brutus somehow conned me into letting him on the couch. He’s good. He’s real good.

From Puppy

Brutus can’t help with the brewing yet but is a big help when it comes to sorting laundry.

From Puppy

In this picture, Brutus has somehow manage to get a leaf glued to his nose. I wonder where he has been sniffing?

From Puppy

At this point, the flavor is pretty strong; the DMS that is characterisitic of the cream ale style does come through.  The pilsen malts and a boil limited to 70 minutes contributed the DMS.  The alcohol warmth is certainly present ( 7+%).  I expect that this beer will be a nice counterpoint to my lastest batch of brew, the Step Ladder Foreign Stout, which will take its place on tap in a couple of weeks.   I hope that the difference in final gravity of the cream ale will be different enough from the stout that I will be able to pour a black and tan, where one beer “sits” on the other in the glass.
More updates to follow when this golden beauty is fully carbonated ( and further aged ).

Also, I would like to say, the Sim City IPA is fantastic and I would suggest giving it a try. Just fantastic!

The first styles that come to mind are Bock and Sour Beer.   It is hard to imagine that I only really had my first bock beer ( Granite City’s Benedictine Bock) this last year and I certainly did enjoy it.   I believe that his style requires lagering so it may have to wait.  The other style, sour beer, I have not yet tried but it sounds quite intriguing.

With sour beer, as I understand it, you take about half of your grist and add enough water to wet the grain. You then leave it in the mash tun in warm place for about four days until it gets really good and stinky.  Then you add the rest of the grain and mash according to a normal schedule ( of course you have to make some corrections for the water already in the tun).  When you boil the wort, all the nasties are kill and your are left with a soured beer that is supposed to be quite nice.  I figure I could try this with a honey wheat or the like.

If any of you have tried making a sour beer, let me know. I would love to hear your tips.

I don’t know how the heck one would go about fishing one of those out of a full keg. I mean, who has a 2 1/2 hook laying around? Anyway, thankfully I had just finished the previous keg earlier today. The keg was still pressurized shut so I assume that the seal was in a pretty sanitary state so I used it. The other fully-lubed ( food grade petroleum lube that I bought at my lhbs ) is now swimming with the drunk fishies at the bottom of my keg.

And to boot, during all the messing around with the washers, I accidently sat on my still-opened tube of lube and shot a glob of it on my concrete basment floor. Lovely. Further, when cleaning everything up, I couldn’t find the lid to lube tube and was absolutley convinced that it had somehow slipped into my now sealed keg. Thanks to God’s good graces, I was not thaaat clumsy and found it that just rolled away.

Anyone else enjoyed such a delightful keg-day experience?