I've been fortunate to have a loaner Grainfather G70 to brew on the last couple months.Although I had some initial misgiving about using a system that can brew 15 gal. batches, I've found that the design and build quality make it so easy to use that it's been a joy to brew on.  Here's a look at the system and my thoughts on it.

My friend Jeremy Jalabert interviewed me the other day for his show Grist and Mash . If you're interested, here are the videos...

Part 1

Grist & Mash 007: Part One- Interview with Denny Conn from Grist & Mash on Vimeo.

In the last couple years, we've been seeing the growth of what I guess you could call a new style of beer....The NorthEast style, usually made as an IPA.  The common factors seems to be a "soft" bitterness (often brought about by adding large amounts of calcium chloride to the water, rather than calcium sulfate which is more usual), a massive hop flavor with a pretty forward aroma, and usually a hazy appearance.  And by "haze", I mean a lot of them look like gravy!  Proponents of the style say "who cares how it looks, it's about the taste".  Others, like myself, are mystified.  Why does a g

I have a confession to make...I am a yeast abuser. And I have been for years. Yes, I know all the "rules" and try to follow them, but sometimes I fail and resort to....yeast abuse. Recently I brewed a batch of my Rye IPA recipe on my Zymatic. Looking in the fridge, I saw some WY1450 with a date of June 26, 2015....10 months old. I thought "I could make a starter with that", but then I thought "Damn, that would take effort".

The next time you have qualms about questioning the "conventional wisdom", remember the wise words of Frank Zappa...

Today I kegged the beer I wrote about in my previous blog post. It was a few hours short of 11 days from the time I brewed it. The gravity dropped from 1.063 to 1.013, which is consistent with how this beer usually performs. That's 78.5% AA (apparent attenuation) with a first generation pitch of WY1450. A 1 qt., non stirred starter. In spite of being skeptical, I pitched the whole thing, starter wort and all.

Ever since I posted my review of the Picobrew Zymatic (http://www.experimentalbrew.com/blogs/denny/homebrewing-zymatic-way) the one question I've heard over and over again is "how's the beer?". Now that I've had a chance to ferment out 4-5 beers I made with the Zymatic, I'm prepared to answer that question. The answer is "It's as good as you make it!" What I mean by that is that the Zymatic is not in any way a limiting factor in beer quality...that's up to the brewer.

When I started homebrewing, the friend who introduced me to it said that 90% of homebrewing is cleaning. Now, I've never tried to measure the exact percentage, but I do know that if you don't do the work, the results will show up in your beer. Like most homebrewers, I'm cheap so for years I've used Oxiclean Versatile (without the TSP sub that many think is necessary) to do my cleaning. Once in a while I'd pick up some PBW which seemed to work even better, but the cost kept me from using it as often as I would have liked.

You may be aware that one of my favorite beers is a chanterelle mushroom infused wee heavy that I call "Wee Shroomy" (recipe in Experimental Homebrewing"). I'm extremely luck y to line in the Pacific Northwest for a number of reasons, but one of the biggies is the surfeit of wild mushrooms we have here. During mushroom season, I can walk out of my back door and usually find the several pounds of mushrooms I need to make a batch of it.