When homebrew is better than breweries.

It's nice to see people playing with black malts in IPAs. Nobody'd ever considered doing a Belgian style stout until recently either. There's a place for it, and I respect it well enough--At the end of the day, I'll reach for a Budweiser, Sam Adams, or a simple homebrew over this kind of stuff 9 times out of 10.

 

With the increasing craziness of releases, I am concentrating on homebrew more and more.

 

Making chocolate covered orange peels a beer-ality.

5.375 gal batch
All grain

12 lb MO
1 lb roasted barley
1 lb chocolate malt
12 oz C60
8 oz C120
1 lb instant oats
2.5-3 lb sucrose

5 oz hops (unknown variety, but it has a similar flavor profile to cascades and I estimate 5% aa)

Mashed at 152°F

3 qts of Wyeast 3944 Belgian Witbier starter

OG: 1.113
FG: 1.018

Add toasted oak and Grand Marnier to taste

Primed with Lalvin Champagne yeast.

This was an old experimental recipe but it came out quite delicious.

 

The freshness/aroma in which I can and do drink my IPAs and Pale ales is better than commercial beer Period.

 

Maris Otter, an English pale malt.

 

Glad you liked it man!

 

You are aware a gueze is a beer that is a mix of young (~1 year old) & older (~2-3 y/o) lambics. What you are brewing is a lambic. Leave the beer on its cake until you rack it to bottle, as lambics are not generally racked off their cakes. Just my $.02 of course. YMMV.

 

I'll reach for a homebrew 9 times out of 10, but never a Budweiser. I'll accept a Sam Adams, but won't reach for it either. What I like best about homebrewing is crafting beers to my taste preferences.

 

The term is pseudo-Lambic or pLambic for short.

 

My local brewing brethren and I have started to make relatively conventional beer styles that are much better than what's produced by all of the local breweries we have here in Iowa. To be fair, the bar is not set very high in this achievement.

 

I have a congenital abhorrence to paying over about a buck a bottle for commercial beers, so 30¢ to 4o¢ homebrews always stomp the bejesus out of the store bought stuff.

 

I think that a lot of the reason that homebrews are better are the same reason that homegrown vegetables and fruits are better, or homemade preserves, jams, pickles, etc. can be so much better than the stuff that you buy. It's made with pure love, without regard to whether anyone else will like it. Third parties my disagree, and that's what competiitions, especially category 23, are all about.

 

Homebrewers have the luxury of using really expensive Ingredients and can make what ever they want to suit their own tastes and desires at a whim in low volumes ( typically 5 gallons or less) . Professional brewers on the other hand have to make beer that should make a profit and their customers will drink that will be consistent every time they brew it on a larger scale .