poured beer. Four Corners and Peticolas are also Brew Riot alumni who successfully made the jump to legit businesses. I talked to Stacey Spillers, who runs the event with her husband, Matt. She emphasized the importance of the home brewers to the experience. "It's very special to make something and choose to share it with someone else," she said. "It's their passion for their hobby that makes Brew Riot work. We wanted to create a forum for that exchange to happen." As a judge, I probably had more than my fair share of brews during the days leading up to the event. But, since it was a blind tasting, I can't fully give credit where it's due to some of those that I wasn't able to go back and track down once the official blinders came off. Either way, here are a few of my favorites from the event. If I missed any, feel free to tell me about it in the comments. Mox Nix Brewery, Texas Breakfast Stout-- My oh my. Founders Breakfast Stout is one of the country's most coveted beers, and these fellas made something even better. I can't overemphasize how good this was. The oatmeal, coffee, chocolate, and grains all blended with just enough milk sugar to hold it all together. I would buy a six-pack tomorrow. And then another the next day. On Rotation's Jalapeno Saison-- I actually blind-tasted this one at judging, and proceeded to tell my friends and family about it for the next week. Somehow, the brewers extracted the flavor of jalapeno without letting the spiciness overpower your palette. And, in a saison? You're crazy, homebrewers, and we love you for it. Steam Theory's Triple IPA-- Hops on hops on hops on hops. But, it wasn't overly hoppy. Does that make sense? Does anything make sense?
Source http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/cityofate/2014/05/brew_riot.php
This Home Brewing Kit Will Produce a Drink for You in Less Than a Day
Wausau has Bull Falls Brewery and two brewpubs: Red Eye Brewing Co. and Great Dane Pub & Brewing Co., part of a Madison-based group. Marathon County's fourth craft brewer, North Abbey Brewing Co., is opening in Mosinee. Dane County makes sense as a place where craft beer accounts for about 20% of the local market, compared with the craft beer segment's 8% nationwide market share: With the University of Wisconsin-Madison, there's a more educated, wealthier population that tends to favor beers from places like Capital Brewery and Ale Asylum. Scratch the surface in Wausau and Stevens Point, and you'll find some similarities. "We like the demographics. There's some money up there," said Eliot Butler, owner of Great Dane, which operates three brewpubs in the Madison area, along with the Wausau location. Wausau includes a relatively sizable number of people who earn good incomes in such industries as papermaking and insurance, Butler said. He declined to provide sales volume for Great Dane's local operations but said the business has grown after Butler's company reopened a failed brewpub in 2009. The shuttered brewpub, Hereford & Hops, once employed Kevin Eichelberger, who also previously worked for Great Dane in Madison. In 2008, Eichelberger opened Red Eye Brewing, which last year sold 532 barrels. This year's first-quarter sales were up 14% over the same period in 2013, with local patrons broadening their tastes for various beer styles such as India pale ales, he said. Stevens Point, like Madison, has a University of Wisconsin campus, a flourishing arts community and a strong tendency to buy locally grown foods from nearby organic farms, said Central Waters co-owner Anello Mollica. "The people in this market really like to support local," Mollica said. Dave Holborn and Doug Gilberts are part of the "drink local" crowd. The two retirees were sipping beers late Thursday afternoon at O'so Brewing's tap room, as Buttera chatted with other customers and his wife and co-owner, Katina, and son, Dylan, worked behind the bar. "It's fun to be able to talk to the owners," Gilberts said. Both he and Holborn said O'so also is known for supporting local charities. And the beer is very good. "It's legitimate," Holborn said. Long brewing tradition There's also a long tradition of brewing in central Wisconsin, with Stevens Point Brewery founded in 1857. It was sold in 2002 to Milwaukeeans Joe Martino and Jim Wiechmann. Five years later it was classified as a regional craft brewer by the Brewers Association after adding several new brands beyond its mainstay, Point Special Lager. Stevens Point Brewery produced about 114,000 barrels of beer, hard cider and soda in 2013, with contract production for other brewers accounting for about half that amount, Martino said. The company, which has 48 employees, a year ago completed its fourth expansion in four years, and sells its brands throughout much of the country. Stevens Point Brewery helped support Central Waters when it began operations in tiny Junction City in 1998, Mollica said. Central Waters, which now has 18 employees, was launched as a side business by local home brewers Jerome Ebel and Mike McElwain, Mollica said. They sold it in 2001, and current owners Mollica and Paul Graham moved Central Waters to its larger Amherst facility in 2007. Central Waters , with a lineup that includes several beers aged in bourbon barrels, sold 9,000 barrels in 2013 and expects to sell about 13,000 barrels this year, mainly in the Midwest, Mollica said. At the Junction City brewery, which was fashioned out of discarded dairy farm equipment, the annual capacity was just 750 barrels. Ebel and McElwain were active in the Focal Point Home Brew Club, now known as Central Wisconsin Draught Board. The club was started in 1991 by home brewer Mike Champion after a new job led him from Milwaukee to Stevens Point. O'so Brewing's Buttera moved to Stevens Point from Kenosha in 1995. His new neighbors included Champion, who gave him a home-brewed barley wine. "It was my first craft beer," said Buttera, then working at a metal fabrication shop while earning a mechanical design degree at Mid-State Technical College. Buttera became a home brewer and later started Point Brew Supply, a store for home brewers to buy equipment and ingredients. The Butteras launched O'so in 2007. The company, which consists of 18 employees, has since grown from selling 350 barrels annually to 5,000 barrels in Wisconsin and the Chicago area, with this year's sales projected at 6,000 barrels. Its brands include new forays into tart beers . Central Wisconsin's strong home brewing culture has helped launch other businesses, including Bull Falls Brewery, where co-owner Mike Zamzow was a member of Bull Falls Home Brew Club in Wausau. Zamzow and his father, Don, who own a Wausau software company, started their brewery in 2007. Bull Falls Brewery in 2013 sold 2,000 barrels and this year expects to double that amount after undergoing an expansion. The company, with 10 employees, is looking to grow beyond central and northern Wisconsin, Zamzow said. Other Bull Falls Home Brew Club members included Chad Hoffer, who plans to begin operating Abbey North Brewing in Mosinee by late summer. Abbey North's tap room will include a tap set aside for a changing variety of local home brews, he said. "We want to kind of nurture the home brewing culture," Hoffer said, "because that's where we all came from." Hoffer's home brewing experience includes taking a 1995 continuing education course on the science of brewing taught by Terese Barta, then a professor at UW-Marathon County, who helped start the Bull Falls club. At the UW-Marathon County center, Barta used home brewing to show her students real-life applications for microbiology. She is now an associate professor of biology at UW-Stevens Point and also offers continuing education classes for professional craft brewers. Another home brewer is Rich Kosiec, whose surname is the inspiration for Kozy Yak Brewery, which he and wife, Rose Richmond, opened in 2012. Their brewpub, with a menu limited to homemade pizzas and pretzels, operates at a renovated former house in Rosholt, population 503.
Source http://www.jsonline.com/business/central-wisconsin-craft-breweries-thrive-off-roots-in-home-brewing-b99273461z1-260624911.html
Central Wisconsin craft breweries thrive off roots in home brewing
Its now 2014, and it seems that interest in home brewing continues to rise; indeed, a Google Trends analysis shows that theres been a steady increase in home brewing kit queries since 2011. Many of these home brewing kits, however, require liquids to go through several days or weeks of fermentation before a drink is produced arguably far too long a period for beginners to go through the trial and error of concocting the perfect alcoholic beverage. Well, Idaho startup Ruckus Fermentation is offering the Bootlegger Bottle , which decreases that wait to less than a day. Google Trends show that home brewing kit has seen a gradual increase in search queries, beginning around 2011. Founded by Joshua Riley and Tushar Jain, Ruckus Fermentation offers patent-pending technology that simplifies the entire fermentation process, allowing for easier production ofwines, ciders, alcoholic cocktails, and others by literally anyone. All you have to do is pour your desired beverage mixture into the Bootlegger Bottle, close the lid, and let it ferment for at least 12 hours at room temperature. Homebrewing is a science, said Riley. This can make learning how to homebrew very complicated, and most times very expensive. Imagine investing hundreds of dollars and weeks of your time to make your own homebrew, and the end result isnt worth the bud light you pay for by the rack. While sales of home brewing kits have increased in recent years, the number of people who keep up with the hobby apparently dont match up with those entry stats. According to Riley, the majority of amateur home brewers dont continue with home brewing because of the amount of time and money that needs to be invested; theres little room for trial-and-error, and the rewards (if a drinkable beverage does actually result) dont make up for the amount of resources used. With the Bootlegger Bottle, those costs are drastically reduced. For many, Mr. Beer is their ingress into the world of home brewing; however, Mr. Beer beginner kits require many different pieces, and the fermentation process involves a 14-day minimum wait. This doesnt allow much opportunity for those starting out to actually play around, experiment, and actually enjoy the hobby. The Bootlegger Bottle merely requires the bottle itself and the companys BioEx Beads (the secret behind their quick fermentation process). Because of its simplicity, beginner home brewers can pursue the hobby with very few limitations. Said Riley: Other small homebrew kits like Mr. Beer have missed the point: nanobrewing isnt a way to make cheap booze, its a form of learning through trial and error. Nanobrewing should be simple enough to understand the first time, but complex enough for them to continue growing and learning how to make better alcoholic drinks.
Source http://tech.co/ruckus-fermentation-bootlegger-bottle-home-brewing-kit-make-alcohol-less-than-a-day-2014-05
How to Build a Home-Brew Radon Detector - IEEE Spectrum
Someone thats got a good palate and balance. You dont need to be a rocket science, but if you know the science it definitely helps. A good sense of taste and judgment and creativity, says Booth, an experienced homebrewer himself. Overall, theres a particular mix of art and science, theory and practice to the process. You need to know some science behind the whole brewing process but then you have a lot of space for flexibility and creativity, says David Bowkett, a homebrewer who went on to set up Powell Street Craft Brewery in East Vancouver. Ive always liked doing things myself and being hands on. David Bowkett at Powell Street Craft Brewery in Vancouver. Im an engineer originally and I find it does tend to attract a lot of those types, says Chad McCarthy, another long-term homebrewer. theyre very much do-it-yourselfers, inventors that like to build equipment. This surge in interest in amateur brewing has resulted in an interesting mix of people that gather for the monthly meetings of VanBrewers , Vancouvers homebrewing society. Co-founded by Graham With in 2010, VanBrewers quickly gathered more than 100 members. A huge amount of homebrewers came out of the woodwork, recalls McCarthy. Tons of people like me brewing in their basements not knowing anyone else existed. VanBrewers quickly became known as a place to get inspiration and education. We offer quite the resource for people to improve, says Scott Butchart, who took over as VanBrewers president after With stepped down to focus on his job. Obviously when most people start out theyre not so great and they struggle a bit. People say they come to our meetings and they leave with 100 per cent more knowledge than they came with we have a really well rounded, well experienced group that can help you. VanBrewers president Scott Butchart with a sleeve of his homebrewed brown porter. That help comes from the collective knowledge of the many and variously skilled people who attend VanBrewers meetings. Such as the web designer with the award-winning barley wine; the opthalmologist who some say makes the best lagers in Canada; or McCarthy, an electrical engineer-turned lawyer whos a certified cicerone a beer expert on par with a wine sommelier as well as a national-rank beer judge. Im not as accomplished as a brewer but Im interested in the science of it and the judging aspect of it, training yourself to know what a beer should taste like and if it doesnt taste right, what might be wrong and provide advice to people, McCarthy says. (Theres) a little bit of an art to it as well as a science. Electrical engineer-turned lawyer Chad McCarthy is also a long-time homebrewer, member of VanBrewers, certified cicerone and beer judge. Hes pictured at an educational off-flavours class he taught last year. * * * With all this focused intensity among a tight-knit group of skilled crafters, itll come as little surprise to learn that some homebrewers can become obsessed. A phrase that seems to be in common use in brewing circles is going down the rabbit hole. And indeed, homebrewing offers a Wonderland of possibilities thats only limited by the crafters imagination and availability of ingredients.
Source http://blogs.theprovince.com/2014/05/26/craft-beer-starts-at-home-how-homebrewers-are-fuelling-the-b-c-beer-boom-part-2/
Coffee at home: Brew like a champ with the right tools - Food & Drink - The Sacramento Bee
Griffin Print Photo: Jon Holmes Over the past few years Ive designed a number of radon detectors; building them is an opportunity to work on multidisciplinary projects with a social benefit. Worldwide, naturally occurring radioactive radon gas seeps from rocks and soils, where it can accumulate in buildings at hazardous levels. The World Health Organization estimates that as many as 14 percent of lung cancers are due to radon exposure. In my work at Carleton University, in Canada, Ive used custom integrated circuits and specially programmed microcontrollers for my designs, but recently I wondered how I could make a detector with spare parts lying around my basement. It turns out that you can make a cheap and effective radon detector with five basic elements: a webcam, a funnel covered with copper tape and mesh, a voltage multiplier built from some basic electrical components, a box, and a computer. The system works because radon and some of its daughter products emit alpha particles as they decay. These alpha particles are responsible for most of the damage to human tissue that occurs when radon gas is inhaled, but they will also produce a slew of electron-hole pairs that show up as illuminated pixels should they strike the CMOS image sensor chip thats at the heart of many webcams. As alpha particles dont travel very far through solid matter, its necessary to cut away the protective cover over the webcams image sensor. Starting with a spare Microsoft LifeCam VX-2000 webcam (about US $20 to $30 online), I cut away the protective cover using a Dremel tool and covered the indicator LED with electricaltape. Putting the modified webcam into a dark, ventilated box and connecting it to a computer via a USB connection gave me a workingbut very slowradon detector. In order to make it more sensitive, I added an electrostatic concentrator to capture one of radons alpha-particle-emitting daughter products. When radon decays into polonium-218, the polonium is usually left with a positive charge, so it can be swept toward the webcams image sensor with a suitably shaped electric field. Some copper tape (VentureTape 1626) and a powder funnel (I happened to have a Nalgene 4252-0100 powder funnel on hand) is all you need to make a two-electrode electrostatic concentrator that creates a field of the right shape. I applied the copper tape to the interior of the funnel, making sure to preserve electrical contact for both electrodes. I used a bottom electrode size and spacing of 15 millimeters. I then stretched copper mesh over the top, soldered a few spots into position, and I was done. To get an idea of how the concentrator would behave and how strong a field I would need to generate, I modeled it using Comsol s multiphysics simulation software. For a concentrator 10centimeters high, I estimated that an electric field strength of 50volts per meter would suffice for collecting charged polonium-218. Although high voltages are required at the concentrators electrodes to create this field, they arent that hard to generate because, effectively, no current will be drawn between the electrodes. Photos: Clockwise from top: Ryan Griffin (2); Jon Holmes RadCam: Copper foil and mesh applied to a funnel [top] form the electrodes for an electrostatic concentrator that boosts the count rate of the radon detector. The high voltages required are provided by a voltage multiplier [bottom left]. The detector itself is a CMOS-based webcam with its image sensor exposed [bottom right]. I put together a 12-stage Cockcroft-Walton voltage multiplier driven by a bipolar 555 timer feeding a Triad Magnetics SP-4 audio transformer. The multiplier converted a 15-V supply to the 1370V and 990 V I needed for the upper and lower concentrator electrodes, respectively. Although you should be careful dealing with voltages as high as these, the voltage multiplier supplies so little current that an accidental contact shouldnt be lethal. I also used small (1 nanofarad) capacitors to avoid a dangerous buildup of charge. But again, be careful, and proceed at your own risk. Turning on the high-voltage concentrator improved the count rate of the detector by 25 times or more. Not bad for an old funnel and copper tape! I used Matlab software to control the webcam and also analyze the data. As the image sensor can potentially also detect less strongly interacting beta particles, I set the detection threshold, over which a pixel is considered to have been struck by an alpha, high enough to avoid noise and beta impacts. Also, when the sensor is struck by an alpha particle, an entire cluster of adjacent pixels will often register the impact, so its necessary to identify any clusters to avoid overcounting strikes. I used an 8-nearest-neighbor algorithm to find clusters. In all, it took about 100 lines of code. Calibrated with a Safety Siren Pro Series3 radon detector (about $130), my system counted 5.2 alpha strikes per hour in an ambient radon concentration of 159 becquerels per cubic meter. At this level of sensitivity it would take the detector about 20 hours to determine whether radon was present at levels recommended as actionable by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency with about 10 percent accuracy. (For the future of this detector, I am thinking of using electrostatics-modeling software to optimize the concentrator shape, electrode size, and voltage to make an even more efficient detector. It would also be interesting to rigorously calibrate the detector and observe activity dependencies on temperature, humidity, and the presence of airborne particulates.) If you build a similar detector yourself and start reading high counts, contact a professional (or buy a calibrated detector). It might be time for radon mitigation in your own home. This article originally appeared in print as DIY Radon Detector. Learn More
Source http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/hands-on/how-to-build-a-homebrew-radon-detector
BC's craft beer boom fuelled by homebrewers |2| Brewed Awakening blog | The Province
And then it hit him -- Johnny Manz Ale. Slavin has a refrigerator full of his new ale. (Photo courtesy Chris Slavin) Cleveland Browns fan Chris Slavin was looking for the perfect name for his new Belgian-style golden ale. And then it hit him: Johnny Manz Ale. Its a clever homage to Cleveland Browns rookie quarterback Johnny Manziel, the media sensation and latest quarterback savior for a long-suffering fan base. Yes, Johnny Football mania is alive and well in Northeast Ohio. Slavin, a 33-year-old machine technician from Grafton, made the beer at The Brew Kettles brew-on-premise operation in Strongsville three weeks ago. Photos of the label, which feature an image of Manziel in uniform and a beer bottle protruding from his face mask, started popping up on Facebook and Twitter this week after the beer was bottled. Now, Johnny Manz Ale is blowing up on the Internet with every sports website from Bleacher Report to the Sporting News reporting on it. I got a lot of people who want a bottle, Slavin said Thursday. But Im pretty sure its totally illegal to sell them. I made them for my own personal use. He added that hes not really a home-brewer and this was only the second time that he has made a beer at The Brew Kettle, which allows people to come in and brew a small batch of beer under the tutelage of a professional brewer. His friend, Jesse Kazmer, did the Photoshop work on the label. Slavin described himself as a huge Manziel fan, saying he loves the quarterbacks style and hopes hes around for a long time. He added that he hasnt heard from Manziel about the beer. Theres likely no way the NFL would allow a beer label to feature the Browns logo, and about as much chance as Manziel giving his blessing for his image on the label. Hopefully I wont hear from a lawyer or Manziels mom, Slavin said. The only thing Im trying to get out of this is a job in marketing and to drink one with Johnny Manziel, he added with a laugh. As for the beer itself, Slavin described it as high alcohol, clocking in at 8 percent alcohol by volume. It was made with plenty of candy sugar. Its smooth and really easy to drink for a high-alcohol beer, he said. Its really sweet and it kind of tastes like banana. If youre disappointed that you cant get your hands on a bottle of Johnny Manz Ale, dont despair. Theres another Cleveland Browns quarterback-themed beer available. Bernie Beer, a brown ale named after former Browns quarterback Bernie Kosar, is being produced by the Bernie Beer Co. at Cellar Rats Brewery in Madison. Its available on draft at Heinens grocery store locations and there are plans to can the beer this fall for football season. Its doing fantastic, Cellar Rats spokesman Joel Sandrey said. Were going full force with Bernie Beer Brown Ale. Rick Armon can be reached at 330-996-3569 or rarmon@thebeaconjournal.com . Read his Ohio Breweries blog at www.ohio.com/beer .
Source http://www.ohio.com/news/local/browns-fan-bottles-home-brew-johnny-man-z-ale-1.490165
Browns fan bottles home-brew Johnny Man'z Ale - Local - Ohio
25, 2014 - 12:00 am Copyright 2014 The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. The ideal way to experience the elevated quality of coffee in Sacramento is to drop by one of the leading shops and enjoy a cup made with skill and precision. But the best coffee people want you to make great coffee at home, too. Several shops teach classes, many of them for free, on everything from coffee-brewing basics and home-roasting to the wonders of latte art. There are several ways to brew excellent coffee at home with plenty of room for innovation and tweaking. But there are a couple of fundamentals: You need high-caliber whole beans, and you must grind immediately before brewing. A quality burr grinder costs $75 to $200 or more (cheaper blade grinders shred the beans and compromise flavor). For some methods, youll need a kettle. Electric kettles are best and cost $50 to $100. For precision, use an instant-read thermometer to get the water to 195 to 205 degrees Fahrenheit. 1. Electric drip machine, $50 to $200-plus Most basic drip coffee machines dont get the water hot enough to extract the right balance of flavor out of the ground coffee. The Bonavita Exceptional Brew costs $169 and has a block heater that quickly gets the water temperature to 200-205 degrees. Further, the thermal carafe keeps the brewed coffee hot for hours. A hot plate and a glass carafe will make the coffee taste burnt the longer it sits on the hot plate. Coffee geek upgrade: I forgo the paper filters in my Bonavita (even with rinsing, I can taste the paper) and use a stainless steel filter from Able Brewing. The drawback? It costs $60. 2. French press, $25-plus This is one of the simplest ways to make good coffee. For a time, this method fell out of favor, mostly because poor quality beans tended to taste bitter with French press. But if you appreciate top-notch beans and use a coarser grind, you can easily achieve a full-bodied, expressive and nuanced cup of coffee in about 3 to 5 minutes. You heat water, put the proper ratio of coffee to water (standard is 2 tablespoons coffee for 6 ounces of water) in the carafe and steep for the allotted time. Push the filter to the bottom and pour. The nice thing is you can play with the ratio to get the strength of flavor youre after. 3. Aeropress, about $30 This simple little device has taken the serious coffee world by storm. Not only does it make a very good cup of coffee, but there are hacks you can apply to alter the process and make even better coffee. A stainless steel filter upgrade allows the coffee oils to add body and additional flavor to the cup. The drawback: You can make only one cup at a time. The advantage over French press: easy clean-up. 4. Chemex, $35 to $45 This elegant and simple device is a large, shapely glass carafe that showcases the pour-over method on a large scale. The one feature the manufacturer touts is the extra thickness of its paper filters, which are supposed to reduce bitterness. You add the ground coffee to the top of the filter, then slowly pour hot water over it. Takes about five minutes. Because the paper can come through in the taste of the finished coffee, you must pre-rinse the filters. A better solution is to use to use the after-market stainless steel filter by Able Brewing ($60). 5. Pour-over, also known as V60, $3 to $30 Before the advent of third-wave coffee, this was known as the Melitta method (after drip-method inventor Melitta Bentz). You place a plastic or ceramic dripper on top of your cup, insert a filter, add coffee and water. When you get the ratio down, youll have a consistently good cup of coffee. Call The Bees Blair Anthony Robertson, (916) 321-1099. Follow him on Twitter @Blarob .
Source http://www.sacbee.com/2014/05/25/6426301/with-right-approach-and-tools.html
Getting ahead - The Times of India
Indian beer hobbyists are not just brewing pints at home, they're giving it a desi touch Brewers have had hits and misses. Sameer Madan remembers his first batch -"It was the worst and left my father, who tried it, very sleepy even though the alcohol content wasn't very high" On May 16, as the election results were announced, Pune-based Sameer Madan cracked open a bottle of beer. Nothing exceptional about that except that it wasn't just any beer but a bottle of the latest batch of his own home-brewed beer a mango ale with the aroma and flavour of that king of fruits, the Alphonso. In a country where it's difficult to lay your hands on any of the ingredients to home-brew beer and where the only choice when it comes to beer is largely lager, a bunch of home brewers are going against the grain and brewing various beers from stouts and ales to wheat beers and dunkels. Mumbai-based Navin Mittal went from being a beer drinker to a beer buff while living in the US. After coming back home, he told people, as every Indian does, to bring back alcohol from trips abroad. Only he didn't want an expensive single malt or a triple distilled vodka, but a six-pack. But there's only so long that you can make a six-pack last, and one fine day as he was having a drink, he decided to look up home brewing. "I was surprised at the amount of information on the web," says Mittal. It took some doing to source the ingredients etc but he finally managed to make his own. "The first one was pretty decent," he says. "I couldn't believe I had created beer. I opened the bottle, it had head and fizz... oh my god... that's when I got hooked." An impatient brewer, he kept checking on his second batch so much so that it got infected, but since then there's been no looking back and he has brewed about 150 batches to date. Though brewing has taught him patience, he does keep trying the brew so that sometimes by the time it is prime, as the adage goes, 'when beer is the best, the home brewer has none.' Not so with Delhi-based musician Garreth D'Mello whose interest was sparked off when his girlfriend, aware of his passion for alcohol, gifted him a book on home brewing. "I read it more than any textbook I've ever read. By the time I started brewing I knew most of the book by heart," says D'Mello, 35, who still has a couple of pints left from each of the batches he has brewed, an ale and a stout, but "now that I know it's happening, I'm not rationing it so carefully." It's a challenging hobby, not just because of the technicalities involved, but also because India lacks a home brew culture and brew shops where one can pick up equipment and ingredients. Bangalorebased consultant Archit Agrawal says his first shopping expedition yielded nothing. "We didn't get anything except baker's yeast which was useless to us," he says with a laugh. If some brewers here have understood the alchemy of alcohol, some of the credit goes to 40-yearold Mittal, who blogged about his experiences and experiments on indianbeergeek.com. He wrote in detail about the equipment one needs, how to DIY it and exactly where to source ingredients. The hops and yeast have to be imported though grain can be sourced from Gurgaon. "The yeast can be reused, I take a portion and keep it aside," says Chennai-based Harsh Bansal, who had a few failed batches initially until he figured out the processes with a little help from Mittal. He now brews almost every week. They've all had their share of hits and misses. Madan, who has so far brewed about 15 batches of beer, among them the German style Hefeweizen, Irish ale, American Amber ale and, of course, the latest mango one, remembers his first batch. "It was the worst and left my father, who tried it, very sleepy even though the alcohol content wasn't very high." "But even my crappiest beer would be better than the packaged beer available," adds Bansal. And once you've got the equipment in place, probably cheaper too. "My first batch, a simple ale, cost me about Rs 100 a pint, far cheaper than an imported ale," says D'Mello. Some brewers have moved on from simpler brews to customizing, tweaking and flavouring to go local and seasonal. Prateeksh Mehra's paan brew with betel leaves from his own back garden has turned out "a brilliant, brilliant beer". "It was a refreshing beer, it opens up in the mouth with the soft notes of gulkand and supari," says the commercial photographer whose pints don't last very long, especially if he has a party. Friends of Delhi-based Hanumant Sakhuja, who did a course in the UK and brews regularly, don't buy lager since he brings his beer along to parties. Besides the house parties, brewing throws open opportunities to exchange notes and brews. "It's a community of like-minded people who share the same philosophies in life," says Aurelia Bhoy, 24, who did her Masters in brewing and distilling in the UK and is now a brewer at The Brew Pub in Pune. She and Mittal, who quit his job at a website, and with partners Rahul Mehra and Krishna Naik set up the Gateway Brewing Company that currently offers its craft beer at seven bars in Mumbai, may brew professionally but they remain enthusiastic home brewers. "It's so stress-busting, you forget your worries," says Mittal. "Besides, I can't ask a microbrewery to brew 10-20 litres of a beer just because I want to have it," says Bhoy, who wants to do a mango beer too. "It's about learning and having your own signature. Home brewing is so much fun, and at the end of it you get beer. It's a win-win situation."
Source http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/stoi/deep-focus/Getting-ahead/articleshow/35581492.cms
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