I came to the award announcements today at the Lops brewery because i wanted feedback on my little bottle bombs . As soon as I saw how over-carbonated my beer was back in September , I decided to send it anyway just to participate and see what they would say . Well, the consensus was…

Of all days to have jury duty selection , of course my ear drum burst over the night . I drove to Providence in pain , and sauntered to the district court , and we were all dismissed after an hour of waiting. You can’t just call in sick to jury duty, everyone would do…

I got RSV from my son, which has been going around . Unfortunately I’ve lost most of my sense of smell (not Covid). As my wild brew ferments into its fifth day, and my pure yeast cultures chug away, I’m faced with a dilemma of deficient senses. Me and wife slathered buffalo chicken sauce on…

Brewed an amber lager on Sunday . Started at 7:30 pm, but due to my inexperience with a keggle and a propane burner , it took way longer to heat to mash temperature because I’m too careful the first time I do something. The brew bag was in no danger of scorching as it was…

With so many samples from one sample, I was surprised with the variance in fermentation. Most of the wild yeast projects I’ve seen put all all the hope into single samples without further enumeration. I’m encouraged that enumerating the samples has resulted in just a few that show the most promise . My “just in…

It’s not surprising that when you scratch the surface of something complicated, you’re likely to enter a much larger room of knowledge, most of which you don’t know. Buying a microscope was the most reasonable thing I could have done, because smelling and tasting are empirical senses that should be done AFTER something is safe…

As my yeast samples ferment , the off odors are now present in all of them. I ordered a microscope, because I don’t like the idea of not seeing what I’m working with. With the Yeast wrangling kit, it’s not part of the process just to dump the samples in fresh wort, it includes petri…

Very happy that all my sample tubes from the paw paw’s are vigorously fermenting aggressively. After unscrewing the caps to release excess C02, it was very fruity and pleasant. They are all fermenting with vigor , and my general theory that Saccharomyces that might exist on a highly perishable fruit might have high attenuation potential.…

I would normally think I’m too inexperienced to submit to a brewing contest , but after getting a recently published book, “the botany of beer”, by Guiseppe Caruso , Sideritis was no where’re to be found ! This was published in English just a month ago as an encyclopedia for 500 plant ingredients in fermentation…

It’s Been a busy week at work (I work in IT), after the first bag of paw paws started to go bad i froze the pulp, and on Wednesday I got more from the Rocky Point Farm. Apparently the raccoons ravaged their supply, and so I got one bag of fruit and one bag of…

Harvesting local wild yeast from fruit that is native to the US might be special. I mean it has to be right? I just have a hunch that there’s a saccharomyces strain out there particularly fond of a fruit that’s had a much longer time to develop that relationship. I could be completely wrong, but…

When I entered the European Store back in 2015, I was summoned there by my wife to buy “salo ,semechki , rye bread, and pickled tomatoes” . I would also buy a few things out of curiosity for fun, for my own edification. To Americans ever since the Cold War , anything Eastern European is…