Maine Brews

Kate the Great Day

Joel Mahaffey — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 04:22:29 +0000

February 28th, 2010, Christie and I departed for Portsmouth, NH. This trip was inspired by an invitation from 2beerguys.com to come down for a craft beer weekend, which happened to coincide with Kate the Great Day. For those unfamiliar with KTG, like me prior to that invitation, Kate the Great is an imperial stout. It is [...]

Brewing Apfelwein

Joel Mahaffey — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 01:37:52 +0000

Yesterday, my favorite brew wench (hi Christie!) and I made our first foray into brewing with fruit. We made Apfelwein, which is a fermented beverage made from apples. From Wikipedia: Apfelwein (German, apple wine) is a German variant of cider made out of apples. It is also regionally known as Ebbelwoi, Äppler, Stöffsche, Apfelmost (apple must), [...]

Shipyard Brewer’s Brown Ale

Joel Mahaffey — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 21:36:33 +0000

After years of special releases, Shipyard Brewing Company has decided to make their Brown Ale a seasonal regular under the name Shipyard Brewer’s Brown Ale, and they were kind enough to provide me with some samples to review. From Shipyard: Brewer’s Brown Ale is a full-bodied, dark brown ale made with five different malts and three varieties [...]

Using a yeast cake

Joel Mahaffey — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 14:12:41 +0000

If you brew regularly, and especially if you like to use liquid yeast strains, you might want to consider reusing your yeast. As with everything in homebrewing, there is a long list of do’s and do-not’s, but in general, it’s pretty easy to decide if repitching on yeast will work for you. First of all, if [...]

Fermentation on the hoppy amber ale

Joel Mahaffey — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 20:15:50 +0000

Fermentation took off like a champ. Guess I pitched just the right amount of yeast. A little bit of krausen snuck up the blow off tube, but none made it to the water bucket. Cheers!

Hopped-Up Amber Ale

Joel Mahaffey — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 03:34:18 +0000

This past weekend’s brew was an enjoyable one, if not a learning experience. Once again, I modified my recipe based on available ingredients. I wonder if there’s a niche for that? I had intended a brown, but the lack of crystal malt made me rethink my plans, and I ended up doing some kind of IPA/Amber [...]

Force Carbonating Your Homebrew Keg

Joel Mahaffey — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 22:07:15 +0000

This week I kegged a recent brew of mine, and gave force carbing a go. This resulted in a fully conditioned beer available 24 hours after racking it into a keg. There are many who disapprove of this conditioning process, but if you’re out of homebrew, it’s good to know that you have this option if [...]

Natural Wort Chiller

Joel Mahaffey — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 17:54:08 +0000

It’s officially winter in New England. Last night, it was 3F outside. In addition to enjoying heavier homebrews, it’s also time to put away the wort chiller. Nature takes care of that for me now. I brewed an imperial stout last weekend, and it was a warm evening, around 38F outside. When my boil was over, I [...]

Zapap Lauter Tun

Joel Mahaffey — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:53:21 +0000

We’re closing in on December, and I’ve put my brewing rig through a pretty rigorous testing period so far this year. I’ve made some minor adjustments, but all-in-all, I’m quite happy with what I’ve got after a minimal investment. After my second all grain batch, I wrote about my dual 7-Gallon bucket sparge system, aka Papazian’s [...]

Chocolate Oatmeal Stout: Follow up on fermentation

Joel Mahaffey — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:12:26 +0000

Woke up to a vigorous fermentation, which was pleasing, and I thought it would be ok because of the fermcap. Check out how fast the airlock is rocking it, with only about 1/2 inch of krausen! I called home this afternoon to find out that the krausen was up to the neck of the carboy, and [...]