From the Guardian – more proof that wine tasting is bunk: To summarize – small winery owner with a background in science began running a series of wine tasting experiments with the California Wine competition. The same wine presented in a flight would be scored very differently by most judges within minutes. It also summarises a few of the same studies that Denny talks about in the book. Even judges who were consistent varied from year to year. (e.g. a super consistent judge one year might be super variable in follow up years) But.. before you get to feeling all high and mighty – don’t think that beer judges don’t fall prey to the same type of follibles. The problem lays with the susceptibility of human perception. Beer is extraordinarily complex with plenty of pitfalls for our palates to trip up on!
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More Proof that
Thoughts on the American Mild project
When last we left our intrepid homebrew experimenter, he was struggling through forests of formulation in the quest for a new, low alcohol beer style known as the “American Mild”. His search seemed never ending and at times fruitless…but he forged on…. (read about the previous batches here: v1, v2 and v3 )
OK, OK, enough of that…here’s where things stand on the American Mild project. I’ve brewed 3 batches of the mild so far. The goal is to come up with a low alcohol, flavorful beer with enough body to make it worth drinking. And I wanted to keep it “American”, using all domestic ingredients and a hop centered flavor profile.
The first batch, consisting of mainly domestic pale malt with a lb. each of crystal and Special Roast just had nothing there…my wife called it “water”. Ouch.
The second batch replaced a lb. of pale malt with a lb. of domestic Munich. Better, but still extremely light on body and flavor. On the other hand, the hopping was in the ballpark.
For the third test batch, I made some major changes. I used domestic Munich and pale malt in equal amounts and included a lb. each of C60 and carapils. I also decided to use a hop stand after the boil, steeping an ounce each of Amarillo and Simcoe at 170F for 20 min. well, the grist seems to have worked really well. Good flavor and increased body. The hop stand worked almost too well. I got huge hop flavor and aroma and an increased bitterness. They pretty much overwhelmed the beer to the point where you can hardly tell there’s malt there unless you search for it! I guess this is kind of a case of “be careful what you ask for”.
So, I’m thinking about test batch #4. I think I’ll use the grist from #3. The balance of pale and Munich seemed to work well. And if it doesn’t, next time all the pale will be replaced with Munich, although I’ll kepp the C60 and carapils. I still haven’t decided which way to go with the hops. I’ll either use the hop schedule from #2, or I’ll go totally off the wall and do all the hopping as a whirlpool addition, a la Pelican Kiwanda Cream ale. It will be a few weeks until I have a chance to brew another test batch, so I have some time to cogitate (perfect for a codger like me!).
Now, where did I leave that machete and elephant gun?
What happens when a book gets edited and you miss something?
No book ever makes it to your library’s shelf without an error or two – fortunately in this day and age we can keep track with an Errata page! So, thanks to Jeff Rankert – we have our first catch – somehow the Queen’s Diamonds Barleywine is set to 15 pounds of Maris Otter when it should be 25. See – here’s the proof! 
Listen to us on the Brewing Network’s “Session”
The boys (and Beevo) over at the Brewing Network were kind enough to have us on their main show full of jokes, asshattery and beer news you can use. Denny and Drew talked to Justin and the crew for an hour or so covering a wide array of subject and even got good ole Doc to twitch when Drew slagged on decoction mashing, again! So sit back and give it a listen via your favorite way to play mp3’s 
The Effect of Color on Taste
This is something I’d never thought about before. But once you stop to consider it, it makes perfect sense. There are so many things that influence our perceptions of food and drink…why shouldn’t color be one of them?
Old Tools
Ok, so this tool isn’t a brewing tool per se. It was my very first mash paddle!
On my mom’s recent trip to visit her new grand-kitties she spotted me using this old bamboo spatula that she gave me 21 years ago to take to college. Turns out the thing is probably older than me (40 years?) and came from a little hole in the wall store in Orlando’s tee-tiny Chinatown (now a little Saigon district). It was good little laugh to know just how old the thing is and how it just keeps going. It’s my old reliable spatula of everythingness.There’s something about the comfort of using the same tool. The way that I know how it moves and how much force is needed to do anything. This thing has made everything from eggs, bread dough, mash balls, stir frys and more.
Which makes me wonder – what old tools do you cling to? (brewing or not!)
Science
Things to keep in mind as you experiment…
How to tell if it’s science
This just seemed appropriate…
Brewing Again!
My job has a very unstructured schedule. Sometimes it’s a day of work here and there, sometimes it’s 2 weeks straight followed by a week or 2 off. I’m heading into a 10 day stretch of no work and looking forward to getting my brew on for the first time in a while! I’m planning on getting in at least 2 batches of relatively low alcohol, but (hopefully) flavorful beers. Both will be experiments because I haven’t brewed either recipe before. One will be a low alcohol Belgian style beer, made with W3787 Westmalle yeast and some beautiful Hallertauer pellets I picked up. The other with be a 4-4.5% APA. Very hoppy, all late hop additions, mashed at a fairly high temp for some body and malt flavor. Some people would call this a “session IPA”, but I hate that description as much as I hate the words “imperial mild”! It’s a hoppy APA, dammit! I’ll be using some of the techniques described in the Recipe Formulation chapter of the book to come up with the recipes for these. Yeah, I know you haven’t read that chapter…..
Experimental Brew
You can learn something even with an unsuccessful experiment….
We’ve Been Remiss!
I feel like we’ve been remiss here. We totally forgot to mention that homebrewing will finally be legal in all 50 states! It’s taken a few years, but once Mississippi’s law goes into effect in July, you can no longer consider yourself a wanton criminal in these here states. So congratulations to Mississippi (signed in March) and Alabama (signed last week) and to the fleet of homebrewers who’ve worked for multiple years to finally get the hobby fully legalized.
The saga for all this legalization started way back in pre-history and by pre-history, I mean before i was born with the founding of several homebrew clubs, the only one of which still remains would be my club, the Maltose Falcons. This was before the founding of the American Homebrewers Association (AHA). Between several of the clubs in California, there were efforts to first get the hobby legalized in the state, which happened in August 1978 and was signed by the once and future governor of California, Jerry Brown.
At the same time, homebrewers worked with Senator Alan Cranston to legalize brewing on the Federal level. Since Senator Cranston would later be weighted with his membership in the “Keating Five”, we’ll just consider his efforts to pass homebrewing his career high water mark. Yes, that’s a joke. What a lot of folks don’t realize from the time is just how much opposition was marshaled against homebrewing. It wasn’t just moral absolutists that claimed legal homebrew would lead to the destruction of the American family like today.
Witness the recent testimony of Joe Godfrey, director of an Alabama neo-prohibitionist group, who said ““We’re opposed to all alcohol expansion bills… the less restrictions there are, the more drinking there is. The more drinking there is, the more social issues that arise, family breakups, traffic accidents, all of those kinds of things.” Nope, back in the day the ATF had a major concern, moonshiners.
Today we have a romantic image of moonshiners like Popcorn Sutton, but back when homebrewing was being legalized, there was a much larger moonshine tradition that caused concern for safety,crime and tax revenue reasons. (Never discount the revenue reasons.)
So, when what was known as the Cranston bill was racing around the halls of Congress, a second bill, the Conable Bill was being passed in the house from a NY Representive, Barber Conable. The Conable still aimed to provide legalization of homebrewing, but it wanted to do so with an additional restriction – a license issued by the ATF. The ATF wanted to be able to suss out if a moonshiner was using homebrewing as legal cover for their distillation.
Incidentally, I suspect this is also a probable source of the quantity restriction of 100 gallons (single) / 200 gallons (household). The Conable bill also restricted use strictly to the homestead, no meetings, festivals or competitions. This feature was picked up by a number of states in their laws and something that needs changing. Fortunately, in September 1978, the ATF dropped their opposition.
Our hobby was included as part of a bill (HR-1337) that changed the tax code for buses and heavy trucks, in addition to changing the laws regarding homebrewing. In October, the bill was presented to President Carter who signed into on October 14th, 1978. Incidentally, all of this started officially all the way back in January of 1977. Fast – right?
So don’t forget to raise a glass to Sen. Cranston, Rep. Conable, Jerry Brown, Jimmy Carter and most importantly, Lee Coe, founding member of The Draught Board, who was the homebrewer with a lot of drive and passion behind the efforts.
Some newsletter References:
Meeting with Lee Coe About the Bills
The Signing of California’s Legalization Bill by Jerry Brown
A Brief Glimpse into Experimental Brewing
That image is a brief glimpse into what Denny and I began outlining when first approached about writing a book on Experimental Brewing. This is before we started shaping the book and began figuring out what we wanted to do and talk about. But as you can see, there were a lot of initial ideas in this throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. Of course, that’s just our thoughts on things. As we begin writing, we not only want your ideas, but also your help in making these things real. Watch this space as we’ll start needing people to brew experimentally for us soon! Yours in Brew!