Any Maine homebrewers wanting to grow their own hops (not a bad thought, in light of recent world hops shortages): I just received an email from Rick at Paris View Farm in Paris, ME (near Oxford Hills, for those that don’t know) letting me know that he’ll be digging and cutting hops rhizomes (the roots of the hops plants which are used to grow new vines) this week and they’ll be for sale at the…
I spent some time in Borders this afternoon checking out 2008 Fantasy Baseball Draft Guides and happened across the beer section of the magazine department. To my amazement, there were six different beer-related magazines in stock (and that didn’t include either Beer Advocate Magazine or Celebrator). The magazines I saw before me included All About Beer, Draft Magazine, Beer (a publication of beer.com, I believe), Brew Your Own, Zymurgy — the official magazine of the…
The media has been flooded in the past 3 months or so with stories about the world-wide hops shortage – if you don’t know about it by now, you’ve been living under a rock; beer drinker or not – so I don’t want to beat a dead horse but I think this afternoon was the first time it’s really hit home for me. This afternoon I was in Gray, Maine doing something for my day…
I recieved the following press release this afternoon and was too intriqued not to share it: BrewersSpot.com, a new social networking and resource site for home brewers and beer lovers, has announced the launch of their website, allowing users to gain access to this revolutionary social networking site. BrewersSpot will serve as a unique networking resource to home brewers by providing several areas of functionality that no other online service has attempted to do. In…
Mainers throughout the Portland Metro rejoice – after years of having to travel to Gray or the internet to locate homebrewing supplies, we finally have a shop right here in our own backyard. Rob Zimmerman, a homebrewer of 10 years, was tired of facing the same problem so, to remedy this situation, he decided, along with his wife, Gaylin, to open the store he’d always wished was in Portland. Thus Maine Brewing Supply was born. The…
The results from the 2nd annual New England Regional Homebrewers Competition, which took place on November 3rd, 2007 at Milly’s Tavern in Manchester, NH are in. The competition was hosted by New Hampshire homebrew club Brew Free or Die & the Maine homebrew club Southern Maine Homebrewers and the competition was sponsored by Portland’s own Gritty McDuff’s. The most exciting part about the results from the competition is that, if you look closely at the Fruit Beer category,…
It was brew day in the Livingston household. My dad I got to work in a 5 gallon Autumn Maple Wheat (brewed with 64oz of pure organic dark amber maple syrup, added at the boil at flame-out). We named the beer “World Series Wheat” due to the timing of the brew. Below are some pictures from the brewing process. If you don’t brew your own and would like to learn (which I highly recommend you do -…
That’s right, you read correctly – this right here, these words you’re currently reading, is Blog About Beer’s 100th post. In less than a month, we’ve covered everything from the apparent health benefits of Guinness, to Paris Hilton being banned from this year’s Oktoberfest Celebrations, to the environmentally friendly steps being taken by breweries like Alaskan Brewing Co., Peaks Organic, and Sierra Nevada Brewing; pretty impressive for just a month’s worth of work. So anyway,…
Most people know that Yeast is one of the 4 key ingredients in a beer (along with water, hops & malted barley), but do you know exactly what that yeast is doing? Unless you’re an avid brewer yourself, and you’ve done your homework (or were lucky enough to get to write a report on the topic for your college chemistry class a few years ago), you probably don’t know too much about the actual chemistry involved…
Ever wanted to take your homebrew out of the basement for a slightly more mainstream audience? The Ann Arbor Michigan Corner Brewery Co.’s “Rat Pad Project” is giving you that chance. Selected local home brewers can use a 10-gallon pilot brewing system at The Corner to create a small batch of their best homebrew, which will then be offered up on a Wednesday evening, several weeks later, to a waiting crowd that usually downs all 10 gallons by…