I am not dead…not yet anyway. I have been away from this place for a bit, but I am going to get back on the posting train here shortly. While I have to head out pretty soon, I wanted to say that I have started brewing again…and I love it. There have been a great many advances in home beer brewing technology over the past 10 years. While there is nothing major, other than Star Stan sanitizer, there are a bunch of little things that make your life 100 times easier when it comes to enjoying the home brewing process.

Star San Sanitizer

Seriously, this stuff is a godsend. For those of you who are not familiar with brewing beer at home, sanitizing your equipment is THE single most important thing when it comes to brewing great tasting beer. When I used to brew, we would use a diluted bleach and water solution to kill any bacteria, fungus or other junk that might be on our equipment or in the fermenting container. There are a few problems with using bleach. You can use too much and/or not get all of it off when rinsing it off. You may introduce something bad when you rinse it off. The end result is the same, crappy beer….and sometimes worse, bacteria. While nothing that can kill you can live in beer, there are plenty of little things flying around that can make it taste like crap.

Star San is a rinseless sanitizer. Yes, it can come into contact with your wort (unfermented beer juice) and everything is cool. It is the best thing since sliced bread. You mix up a batch (1 fluid ounce per 5 gallons of water) let it soak for a while and then dump it out….sanitized.

Siphon Starters

So, one of the more nerve racking jobs was starting a siphon. While starting a siphon is easy, worrying about contamination become more of an issue it seemed every time. These days there are a number of automated siphon starters that not only get your siphon going super fast, they eliminate 99% of the contamination issues that existed with the tried and true siphon starting methods.

Forums

As with most hobbies, there are tons of enthusiasts that eat, sleep and drink home brewing. Because of that there are many popular online forums where brewers from all over the world hang out. There is more help than you could ever use on those forums in addition to tons of recipes, pictures, tips, home-built equipment plans, tutorials and more.

Anyway, so far I have brewed a Belgian Dubbel (which really tastes a lot like Chimay Red), an American Style Pale Ale (great) and I have a German Style Wheat Beer (aka a Hefeweizen) in the fermenter. So, if you are around, come on by and I would love to share a beer with you.

[tags]beer, homebrew, pale ale, belgian dubbel, hefeweizen, wheat beer[/tags]