Matt Chrispen | Accidentalis Brewery. Overly serious home brewer sharing long-form articles on beer, mead, and gear. Passionate about historical and modern techniques and systems. Documenting the ongoing journey to mastering craft from my garage.
Measurement
From a procedural perspective, the single most important brewing issue is temperature. Temperature dictates the accuracy of most of the brewing specific measurements. It drives specific enzyme and protease activity in the mash. Heat is required to boil, and most importantly, specific temperatures for fermentation are necessary to avoid off
Brewer's Notes
It has been a while since I put up a new recipe. I am fairly excited about this one for a couple of reasons. I wanted to stretch my legs on a big beer, and test my new water system and knowledge, as well as feature a hop that I
Brewer's Notes
This article has been superseded by a new tutorial with the release of 1.17a. For the latest, please visit https://www.accidentalis.com/brun-water-spreadsheet-tutorial-free-edition/ There are a number of water calculation tools on the internet for brewers, including EZWater Calculator, Greg Noonan’s Water Witch, Palmers Mash RA spreadsheet,
Brew-Magic
I get mixed responses from other homebrewers and professional brewers when I mention that I brew on a Brew-Magic system. They range from awe to comments about having money to burn, and even some very snarky suggestions that imply a real homebrewer builds his/her own system. Truly a mixed
Rambling
I am hoping that I can release a walk through soon on using Martin Brungard's Bru'n Water spreadsheet. It has been a great tool for me getting a handle on my water chemistry and improved my end product significantly. Coming soon... In the meantime, while watching
Brewer's Notes
Well, I had hoped that the funny taste in the overpitch was just green character and from such a massive blow off. It is now clear that the overpitch batch is infected somehow. This yields an inconclusive result and requires a do-over. I hate to admit failure, especially to admit
Brewer's Notes
I recently had my water tested, and based on the report (because of excessive salinity and alkalinity) decided to convert my brewing liquor to Reverse Osmosis (R/O) water with mineral additions. I should share my process because I have learned a lot about this in a short time (but
Brewer's Notes
Boredom causes me to do some stupid things. Like, open up the week-old "control" conditioned bottles for the experiment. These have only been conditioning for a week now, so they are not really ready for consumption and need some aging. I didn't have high hopes at
Brewer's Notes
Pitching Rates Revisited I continue to struggle with whom I should believe relative to pitching rates of DRY yeast. Both Wyeast and White Labs products seem to accurately present the home brewer with a clearly known and validated yeast cell density – as well as accurate “born on” dates that allow
Brewer's Notes
So I jumped the gun. The fermentation had finished. Just conditioning sitting on the lees. I bottled after a cold crash to 40F to drop some of the yeast. Henceforth, these shall be called White (Batch A), Green (Batch B) and Blue (Batch C), well after this post. That is
Brewer's Notes
I have swapped over entirely to R/O (reverse osmosis) water, which requires me to add back in certain ions to achieve good tasting water and beer. The largest requirement is calcium, through the careful additions of calcium chloride (CaCl2) or powdered gypsum (CaSO4) to acidify the liquor and mash.
Brewer's Notes
As I have received a note telling me that I talk too much... and should let the data show speak for itself... I have moved the fermenters into a warmer room to condition for another week. It appears that all three have reached terminal gravity, although the under-pitch may have