So true!LOL! I know beer can make a guy act the fool, but I also know plenty that are plenty stupid when stone cold sober!
Yuengling is my beer of choice. It's not available in Texas, tho, but can be found in Louisiana and Arkansas. I think they'd have to build a new brewery to supply Texans with it.
I've always heard of this beer, it's supposedly big up in the north east.
It's simpler than you think. The primary ingredients are pretty stable, and if you repeat the process and the recipe you end up with repeatable product. This is your basic process:
You start with barley. Pretty stock and standard grain. You wet the seed and let it start to germinate, and then you halt the process and dry it out. The goal here is to maximize the starch content which the plant does in preparation for growing. Then you roast it to impart color and flavor. That's basically the first part of the grain bill, or recipe. The grains are milled (to increase surface area of the starchy center) and boiled.
Next up are the hops, and there are dozens of varieties. You pick the cones from the plant and them to the boil in the amounts and at the times appropriate to your recipe. Other hops can be added after the boil as well (dry hopping). Adding in the boil is more for flavor and bitterness, after the boil more for aroma. That's the second part of the recipe.
After you cool the boil down to the right temperature, you add the yeast to begin the fermentation process. There's a lot of strains of yeast, all with their own properties and requirements, and each does its part to contribute to your beer's flavor. This is the third part of the recipe.
Once that's done, most of the time it's ready to go into containers and off for consumption.
There's lots of options, and lots of variations to this basic process, but this is the "Reinheitsgebot" you hear of - the German "purity" law. They specify only three ingredients - water, malted barley, and hops. They didn't know about yeast when it was written, but that's the necessary 4th ingredient.
Barley is a staple crop, and can be sourced nearly anywhere.
Hops are a specialty crop, and the varieties are careful cultivated to maintain consistency.
Yeast is reusable, and every brewery will keep pitching the same strain for however long they brew that beer.
Water can make a difference in flavor, but most all breweries will filter and purify their water to nothing and then add back in whatever minerals necessary to stay true to the flavor.
Sorry, got a little long winded I like beer, and I like brewing beer, so I just ... yeah, kinda got going a little there lol. I need to brew another batch.
I did not know there was such a thing as a beer nerd until today.....It's easy to brew beer. It's also easy to screw it up
Now days it's pretty well sorted out at the entry level though, if you can brew tea you can handle it. Malt extracts (powdered and/or syrup) make it super easy. Boil some water, add the extracts, add your hops, let it boil for an hour. Cool it down in the sink by running cold water over it, and when it hits room temp pour it through a filter screen into your fermenter (a bucket), throw in some ale yeast, close it up with a bubbler airlock and leave it sit for a couple weeks. Fill your bottles, drop in a sugar tab, put the caps on and wait a week for it to carbonate, then chill and drink. Easy peezy.
There's a lot of potential reasons, but a common one is letting the yeast clean up after themselves to reduce undesirable flavors in the beer.I've been to a lot of breweries, putting in process control software. Mostly Miller. Some would keep it cold for a month before bottling it for some reason, others right to the packaging when done.
Hamms is one of only two beers in my entire lifetime that I poured out. I don't know what that was, but it was some of the most foul tasting liquid I'd ever experienced. I honestly couldn't finish it.A friend of mine ran the Hamm's brewery in Houston (way before decent process control systems). "From the land of sky blue waters". Ha, what a laugh.
HowdyMackeson Triple Stout XXX.
LOL! I know beer can make a guy act the fool, but I also know plenty that are plenty stupid when stone cold sober!
Steve, please repeat after me; B, E, E, R. There, now you're ready to go!
Steve, please repeat after me; B, E, E, R. There, now you're ready to go!
Yep, pretty dang good beer for a hot afternoon.Just has a Shiner Weisse 'N' Easy beer with some hot dogs and chips. Pretty danged good!
Yep, pretty dang good beer for a hot afternoon.