Maine Brews

American Pale Ale (All Grain)

Joel Mahaffey — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 02:00:47 +0000

Well, it had to come to it. After a year’s worth of style exploration, barleywines and imperial stouts, it was time to take a crack at the baseline of American craft beer: the American Pale Ale. This style has been one that I’ve put off for a while, not because I don’t like it, but [...]

Farmhouse Ales by Phil Markowski

Joel Mahaffey — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 21:57:38 +0000

The term “farmhouse ales” conjures up romantic mages of simple country beers brewed on self-sufficient farms as a matter of necessity. The first sentence of the introduction to Farmhouse Ales by Phil Markowski perfectly sums up most people’s approach to this style of beer, and mine too. Farmhouse ales, as far as this book goes, [...]

German Hefeweizen (All Grain)

Joel Mahaffey — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 02:32:14 +0000

With the arrival of summer in Maine, it was time to brew a hefeweizen. I used the Wyeast Weihenstephan Weizen strain, and did my best to ferment in the mid to low 60s. This was my second wheat this year, and this brew went much better than the last one, thanks to a lengthy protein [...]

How to Brew by John Palmer

Joel Mahaffey — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 01:35:37 +0000

I’ve been homebrewing for a while now, and as I’ve gotten more involved, I realized that not everyone got their start reading Charlie Papazian’s Joy of Homebrewing. In fact, many people did not. Many people got their start with John Palmer’s How to Brew. For those of you who don’t know, it began as an [...]

Gritty McDuff’s Ben Low on Know Your Brewer

Joel Mahaffey — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 17:06:06 +0000

I met Ben in the basement of Gritty’s, where I found him cleaning the pub lines. You know right away that Ben is a hands-on brewer, and is involved with every part of getting the beer to Gritty’s customers. Ben was running BLC though the lines, and after flushing them, he hooked the beer back [...]

First Year Hop-Growing

Joel Mahaffey — Sat, 08 May 2010 23:26:32 +0000

I’ve been interested in growing hops for quite some time. Last year, I wanted to get them from the local organic farming association, and found their website and catalog to be extremely confusing, and by the time I was able to contact someone, they were all sold out. So the project was delayed until this [...]

Improving Efficiency

Joel Mahaffey — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 21:15:52 +0000

My last post alluded to some efficiency problems I’ve been experiencing recently — while I had originally been hitting efficiencies around 75%, the last several batches were down closer to 60%, which resulted in disappointing starting gravities. I got some good feedback, and reverted to some of my old ways, including a pseudo fly-sparge method where [...]

Big beer in a small space

Joel Mahaffey — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 16:15:42 +0000

My last brew was a bit of an experiment. I had just finished reading Brewing with Wheat, and was gung-ho to do something using a significant amount of wheat. Summer is also nearly here, and the desire to drink big beers will be fading with the arrival of warmer temperatures. One of the beer styles [...]

Brewing With Wheat by Stan Hieronymus

Joel Mahaffey — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 12:19:51 +0000

I was recently given an opportunity to read Stan Hieronymus’ new book, Brewing With Wheat. I wasn’t exactly sure what I would find, but I’ve always been a fan of wheat beers, and I was curious to see what a whole book could tell me about them. Hieronymus begins the book by painting a vivid [...]

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 [...]