Category Archives: Experimental Homebrewing

Experimental Brewing – Chapter 2 – Recipe Design

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Authors’ Note: Way back in the Spring of 2013, we were approached to write a book titled Experimental Homebrewing that would “Out Randy” Randy Mosher’s wonderfully crazy Radical Brewing. Quickly, we decided that it was a practical impossibility to achieve that goal. Instead, we pivoted to focus on the word “Experimental” and what it means. Drew was the outlandish one; Denny, the practical digger of how things worked in his brewery and for his tastes. It took us over a year and three editors to pull this book together. (Many thanks to Thom O’Hearn for dragging us across the finish line!)

Experimental Homebrewing is now approaching a decade old and is out of print, we’ve decided to bring the book online over the course of the year in celebration of that crazy decade with annotations! Please note: you can still find used or never sold copies of the book (We’re still partial to having a physical book in hand for practical purposes!)

WHILE WE MIGHT talk often about crazy ingredients or off the wall techniques, our beers are not actually crazy stacks of flavors and aromas. We’ve brewed enough to know that more should never be confused with better. In fact, we love nothing more than stripping away the needless artifice and creating recipes with only the bare essentials. Only once that’s done can you really brew like a nutter and expect any chance of pulling it off. Join us in this chapter as we get simple before we get complex, as we learn the rules that we will soon break.

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Experimental Brewing – Chapter 1 – The Basics

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Authors’ Note: Way back in the Spring of 2013, we were approached to write a book titled Experimental Homebrewing that would “Out Randy” Randy Mosher’s wonderfully crazy Radical Brewing. Quickly, we decided that it was a practical impossibility to achieve that goal. Instead, we pivoted to focus on the word “Experimental” and what it means. Drew was the outlandish one; Denny, the practical digger of how things worked in his brewery and for his tastes. It took us over a year and three editors to pull this book together. (Many thanks to Thom O’Hearn for dragging us across the finish line!)

Experimental Homebrewing is now approaching a decade old and is out of print, we’ve decided to bring the book online over the course of the year in celebration of that crazy decade with annotations! Please note: you can still find used or never sold copies of the book (We’re still partial to having a physical book in hand for practical purposes!)

THE BASICS

BEFORE YOU START RUNNING AROUND all wild-eyed, we need to discuss our basics. Everyone brews a little differently. In this chapter, we’ll outline the all-important standards that apply to all the recipes in this book. Also, since we’ve brewed hundreds and hundreds of batches, we’ll share our recommendations for all-grain, extract, and even brew-in-a-bag brew days. (Right down to the music playing while we brew.)

What follows is just a brewing précis, not a complete in-depth tutorial of homebrewing. (For that, we encourage you to check out The Everything Homebrewing Book by Drew Beechum or John Palmer’s How to Brew.) Fortunately for humanity, beer happens. There’s very little that you can do to completely mess up. Malted barley wants to become beer. As long as you get your beer started, it will get itself the rest of the way. Will it be the perfect little gem that you have in your head? Maybe not, but it will be beer!

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Experimental Brewing – Introduction

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Authors’ Note: Way back in the Spring of 2013, we were approached to write a book titled Experimental Homebrewing that would “Out Randy” Randy Mosher and his wonderfully crazy Radical Brewing. Drew teamed up with Denny to write this book and together we quickly decided that it was a practical impossibility to achieve that goal. Instead, we pivoted to focus on the word “Experimental” and what it means. Drew was the outlandish one; Denny, the practical digger of how things worked in his brewery and for his tastes. It took us over a year and three editors to pull this book together. (Many thanks to Thom O’Hearn for dragging us across the finish line!)

Experimental Homebrewing is now approaching a decade old and is out of print, we’ve decided to bring the book online over the course of the year. Please note: you can still find used or never sold copies of the book (We’re still partial to having a physical book in hand for practical purposes!)

INTRODUCTION

CLOSE YOUR EYES FOR A MOMENT and picture the classic mad scientist’s lab: bubbling beakers, electricity arcing through the air, thunder crashing on a dark and stormy night. A wild-eyed, white-frocked man is at work bringing his newest creation to life—he zips around the lab with the excitement of discovery.

Now open your eyes. Do you get this feeling when you brew? It’s okay. We aren’t sizing you up for a padded cell. We feel the same way. In fact, we’re obsessive when it comes to unlocking the secrets of beer and stumbling upon the next great discovery. New flavors! New sensations! One day, they’ll see our true genius! We’ll show them!

Ahem . . . sorry about that. It’s hard not to get carried away when you get us going about homebrewing. If you’re just beginning to brew or haven’t yet begun, oh are you in for a treat. Some of the stuff we talk about will seem bewildering, but don’t worry. There are great beginners’ books out there to help you master the basics (see page 236). In this book, we’ve tried to create a companion to those books, a book that will help you on your way from ordinary brewer to accomplished mad scientist.

For those of you who brew but go into a cold, sweaty panic when you hear the word science, don’t worry. You won’t find us breaking out anything more complicated than what was available to the average brewery of pre-Prohibition times. The idea is to try new stuff, decide if it makes beer that you like, and go from there. Really, we’re all about getting a chance to play and learn in the brewhouse. Continue reading →