Saturday, August 1st, marks this years installment of Mead Day.  Organized by the American Homebrewers Association, Mead Day is a national event to help increase drunken friendship and camaraderie between homebrewers and meadmakers and to introduce or reintroduce the meadmaking hobby.  Homebrewers around the nation are encouraged to invite both their brewing and non-brewing friends, family and favorite booze hounds to celebrate by making mead.

Last year, more than 950 people produced more than 820 gallons of mead at over 50 sites in 29 states and even Russia!  That’s a whole lotta meadmakin’.

So what is mead exactly?  Simply, it is a fermented beverage made from honey.  Some even call it “honey-wine”.  True mead is simply honey, yeast and water.  Conceivably mankind’s very first fermented (read: delicious) beverage, mead has evolved and expanded its definition through the ages to include other fermentables such as fruit and malt, with the malted varieties sometimes being called “braggot” or “bracket”.  Various herbs and spices (usually ginger, cinnamon sticks, mint, rose petals, or juniper berries) can be added to the mead to create a metheglin or “spiced” style of mead.

I personally have never made mead.  I don’t think I’ve ever even had a sip, but I’d like to.  I’ve brewed with honey before, namely Sunshine Honey Pale Ale, and it was damn good.  And I do have a bunch of empty carboys right now… maybe I’ll have to fill one of them with a batch of the “Beverage of Kings”.  Sound good to anyone else?

]]> http://thebrewlog.com/announcements/8th-annual-a-h-a-mead-day/feed 0 http://thebrewlog.com/announcements/the-brewlogs-new-home http://thebrewlog.com/announcements/the-brewlogs-new-home#comments Sun, 12 Apr 2009 22:34:28 +0000 Andy http://thebrewlog.com/?p=305 Continue reading →]]> At first glance you might not notice, but The Brewlog has had some major enhancements. First off, we have our very own .com domain name much more relevant that that screwy zasper.com name (who ever the hell that guy is). But more importantly, we have moved to a faster and more reliable host which translates to not waiting 10 gut wrenching seconds for a page to load like you are reliving the glory days of dial-up.

And don’t worry about any old links, all traffic to the old site will be re-routed to its proper location on the new server. Cheers.

The hop plants we put in last year decided to come out of hibernation!  The best looking one right now is the Chinook plant, but all 3 have shoots poking out of the ground.  I’ll keep posting updates as they grow over our heads over the course of summer- next should be getting a trellis of some sort up to start to train the vines, but that’s probably still a couple of weeks out.

With so many wine tastings and pairings, it’s ’bout time for LA to have its own beer festival.

I could not have put it better myself. I think we have all had enough of the watered down beer gardens and martini bars. Truly, it’s time for Angelinos to show that we can enjoy a good beer as much as anyone else.

Admission is $40 and includes unlimited four-ounce pours as well as great live entertainment. Tickets are limited and must be purchased in advance. Tickets will not be sold at the door.

So with that said, check out the official LA Beer Festival page for directions and information on purchasing tickets. We will hopefully see you there!

Can't we all just get along?

“Beer Wars will introduce you to the who’s who in beer while following the journey of small, independent brewers who are challenging the corporate giants. Director Anat Baron provides an insider’s perspective of the daily battles and all out wars that dominate one of America’s favorite industries.”

The documentary stars Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head and Rhonda Kallman, Co-founder of Boston Beer Company (Samuel Adams), and Founder of New Century Brewing. Others like Michael Jackson, Todd Alstrom, Jim Koch, and Greg Koch of Stone Brewing Co. also see some airtime as the movie was set at a Las Vegas beer convention a few years ago.

Check out their website, and see where its playing near you.

Sunshine Honey Pale Ale

5 gallons

Brewed:Feb. 27,  2009

Malt Extract / Fermentables:

Pale LME:  6 lbs.

Clover Honey: 2 lbs 8 oz

Grain Bill:

American Crystal 40L:  1 lb

Hopping Schedule:

#1  Columbus (Tomahawk) [16.4 %] (1 oz @ 60 min)

#2  Amarillo (1 oz @ 15 min)

#3  Casscade (1 oz @ 0 min)

Starting Gravity: 1.061

Fermentation Temperature: 65°-75°F

Yeast: White Labs WLP001 California Ale

Steep grains at 150°F for 20-30 mins. to create a “tea”.  Bring 2-3 gallons of water to a boil. Remove from heat and stir in malt extract, honey, and grain “tea”. Bring to a boil. When foaming stops add hops per schedule. Chill and add water as need to bring to 5 gallons at 75°F and pitch yeast. Ferment at 65°-75°F for 10-14 days. Bottle condition for 7 days. Enjoy.

Also, a small announcement here, we have also set ourselves up with Flickr and Twitter accounts! With that said, be sure and follow us on Twitter for easy post updates. Also check out all of our photos over at Flickr.

Below are a few charts and graphs with some interesting findings.

For more statistics visit the 2008 Craft Brewery Statistics

This brew day I gave my dad a call and he brought Rossco, our new brew day mascot, over.

Truly a beautiful site. A wort chiller is a MUST have item. Talk about making life easier.

We have been experimenting with different hop dispensing methods (in the boil). As of now, using a grain bag to hold the hops in is the easiest method but tends to not let whole flower hops move around as much. Not enough experimenting yet to notice a difference other than in the ease of straining. This time we let whole hops just freely float in the boil.

One reason Rossco is our new mascot, the fact he helps clean up spilt wort.

  

At about 4pm yesterday I recieved a little brown box in the mail at the office.  Long story short, I have in my posession a wort chiller.  And it proved itself last night to be worth every penny.

Andy and I brewed up another batch of the Marina IPA (aka the 44th) last night (late last night), and put the wort chiller to use immediately.  If you do not have a wort chiller, get one. Period.  We finished our boil, popped in the chiller, turned on the water, and no more than 5 seconds after water started coming out of the out tube it was PIPING HOT! Instant chillin’action.  Pretty damn sweet.  So we let it do its thing and had just about exactly the right amount of time to get everything else sanitized when it had droppped to a nice 82F.  We then finished the process as usual.  I can’t say enough how much this little copper device helps in streamlining brew-day.  Its totally awesome! (Thanks again Chrissie!!)

Yes, Kid. Yes you can.

Michigan Brewing Co., brewer of craft beers, announced that it has plans to produce a new product line: a craft beer for musician Kid Rock.

Kid Rock is working closely with Bobby Mason, the owner-brewer at the Michigan Brewing Co., on the design, naming and style of the beer.

“He’s working on designing the beer, he’s giving me direction, he’s tasting the beers,” Mason said. “It’s his idea, it’s his concept. I’m just working with him to make it happen.”

One big decision: Will the new brew be a premium-priced lager, or something priced more in line with the budget and tastes(?) of Kid Rock’s working-class fans? (See Caption)

Well, Kid, I’ve got a few styles/names for you.  How about “A Detroit Tale Scotch Ale”?  Or maybe “An Eighth or a Quarter? Porter”.  This is an important decision, and choosing the wrong fermentation designation can have disastrous results.  We all remember cross-dresser Ru Paul’s infamous bid into the celebrity-branded booze world, the ill-fated and ill-named “She-Male Pale Ale”…. talk about a heavy mouth-feel.