Gonzo Home Brewing – Baltimore Post

I wasn’t planning on writing this article, but something happened Tuesday that I found compelled to write this while the memory was fresh.

A few weeks ago, I drove out to Flying Dog Brewery in Frederick, MD to pick up a Stove Topper. What’s a Stove Topper you ask? A Stove Topper is a homebrew kit offered by Flying Dog Brewery to clone one of their beers. Each month a different selection drops at the brewery and a few select stores.

The monthly selection usually matches up pretty well with the brewing calendar for appropriate styles. For example, their August selection will be The Fear Imperial Pumpkin Ale which should be ready around October if you brew it immediately. Perfect for fall.

The selection for May was Single Hop Imperial IPA with Citra. Flying Dog’s Single Hop Series has been one of my favorites for a while. Sure I like some varieties of hops more than others, but I haven’t had one from this series that I didn’t like. Since this month’s selection was the Citra varietal, I was really excited. As Citra has become very popular, and can be hard to come by.

During Frederick Beer week I ran into Ben Savage, Flying Dog’s VP of Marketing, and he told me that some homebrewers had been purchasing the Single Hop Citra kit just for the hops inside. I thought this was silly, since there are easier ways to get Citra. In fact, the day I purchased my Stove Topper kit I also stopped by Flying Barrel in Frederick for some home brew supplies, and noticed that they had Citra in stock.

I think it is extremely cool that a brewery is reaching out to the homebrew community with brewery sponsored clone recipes. Now, this kit isn’t perfect, and I will touch on that later. For now, let’s walk through what you get.

All kits will be different, but here’s what was in mine. 2 (large) malt bags, with Pale, Rye, Carapils, and Biscuit Malt. 5 portioned bags of hops. A packet of yeast nutrient and kettle finings. Some gypsum if you need to make water ion adjustments. 2 vials of yeast and 50 Flying Dog bottle caps. And of course instructions.

One thing you will notice in what was in the box, or what was NOT in the box. No Dry Malt Extract or Liquid Malt Extract. While DME and LME are prominent in the bulk of home brew kits made, it is not a part of this. Flying Dog calls the Stove Topper series “A Home Brew Clone Kit for Advanced Home Brewers”

One of the obstacles that home brewers face that professional brewers do not, is finding the time to brew. For the professionals, it’s their job, and many breweries are 24 hour a day operations. My home brewery is not a 24 hour operation. Mostly because I do not operate for 24 hours, and my day tends to get pretty carved up between work and my family. I am mentioning this because finding the time to brew this particular batch was becoming difficult. Every weekend had something that needed to be done. Whether it was a social event, cutting the grass, or watching my kids while my wife is working, there was always something in the way. I was starting to lose hope for finding a 6 hour block of time.

Then while talking with a co-worker he mentioned that he likes to brew at night after work. Why didn’t I think of that? So I found a Tuesday that I could brew. I had to skip my homebrew club meeting to do it, but I figured what is more in the spirit of homebrew than actual brewing? Nothing.

Five o’clock is here. Time to stop working, and start brewing! Those of you that brew, especially all-grain brewers, know that brewing is work. Actual physical labor too, which is a change for us Millennial Information Workers.

Here’s where I’ll mention some of the flaws of this kit. They are mainly in the instructions. The instructions are detailed, but a selective in what details are provided. For instance, there is no breakdown of the ingredients. I have no idea how much Rye Malt I added or Carapils or even Pale Malt which was the bulk of it. I understand that Flying Dog is trying to protect their product, but this made things a little more difficult for me. Only because I, like many brewers, basically take the instructions from a kit like this, and throw them in the trash. I am being figurative of course, there is still some very important information contained in those pages. But I like to add all of the ingredients into my brewing software, which is customized for my equipment profile and brewing style.

My garage brewery

I’ll provide a couple examples: “Increase mash temp to 160° F and rest for 5 minutes” That’s great if you are someone that uses a Mash Tun with a heat source. But many of us use a more passive approach with cooler and other similar apparatus. When using software I am able to calculate how much water, and what temperature to add to achieve a suitable temperature to “mash out.” For those unfamiliar, mashing out is raising the temperature of the mash to stop the conversion of sugars. This prevents unwanted off flavors. Next I was told to head 2.5 to 3 gallons of sparge water. Which for my equipment is not enough. This was to collect 6.25 to 6.75 gallons of water in the boil kettle. Once again, this is too low for my purposes. I calculated I would need 8.27 gallons of water in my boil kettle to have 5.5 gallons remaining post-boil.

So despite my petty complaints about the instructions, I was able to getting 8.27 gallons of wort into my boil kettle to begin the final 90 minute boil. This is where I really enjoyed the simplicity of this kit. All of my hop additions were in clearly marked bags ready to be dropped in the kettle when the time was right. As the boil went on, I started to become very concerned that my calculations of 8.27 gallons was way too much. Oops. I started making contingency plans for a longer boil or just resigning myself to the fact I screwed up. And then my 90 minute boil was up, and the moment of truth was here. 1) What would my post boil volume be and 2) What would my SG (starting gravity) be?

It took the water a minute or two to settle down to where I could get an accurate volume reading. And behold! The post boil volume was exactly 5.5 gallons! I was very happy. The next step was to get the wort cooled, and get a gravity reading. Woohoo! The target SG for this kit was 1.082 and to my wonderment and surprise I was slightly more efficient and had a reading of 1.084. Wow. I really couldn’t be happier. That isn’t really true, I had blood running down my thumb and all over the ground. For some reason Blichmann Engineering makes the treads on their plate chillers razor sharp. This is not my first cut on that piece of equipment, and likely not the last.

So at that moment, I was ecstatic. Time to pitch the yeast, clean up, and go to bed. I had made a yeast starter the night before with the Flying Dog Chico Ale yeast they had supplied. Unlike store bought yeast, it was not brown, it was a bright green. As it was harvested for Flying Dog’s fermenters. I pitched the yeast, and aerated the wort well, and went to bed.

What I hope to see

Upon awaking, I wanted to go check on my baby. I have become accustomed to seeing beer fermenting wildly after just a few hours since I have begun making yeast starters and a stir plate. This was not the case. I had an inch thick film of yeast cake on top, but not the 6-8 inches that I am used to. I haven’t made a decision on what to do yet, but I really need to figure it out, or I may have wasted 6 hours in my garage this past Tuesday.

Overall, I would say that this is a great product, and a great brewing experience. Many brewers will reach out to the home brew community by holding home brew competitions. Some, like DuClaw will even brew the winner’s beer. Some might work with a retailer to sell a clone kit. But this is the first time I have heard of a brewery making their own kits, from their stock of malt, hops, and house yeast. Truly Awesome!

Where to find:
Flying Dog Brewery, Frederick, MD
The Flying Barrel, Frederick, MD
Gilly’s Craft Beer Fine Wine, Rockville, MD
Nepenthe Homebrew, Baltimore, MD

New Tank Design for More Efficient Beer Brewing

Category: Science Technology
Posted: June 4, 2013 08:57AM
Author: Guest_Jim_*

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Beer is an ancient drink and since it was first discovered, people have been trying to find better ways to make it. One of the current standard technologies used are the cylindroconical, stainless steel tanks (CCTs) which house the fermentation process, and while the design works well, it slows the brewing process for cleaning. Researchers at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen however have developed a new design which should greatly speed up production, while reducing lost beer and cutting cleaning costs.

The reason why current CCTs slow the process is that they have a single pipe for pumping fluids in and out. Once the fermentation is complete, the tanks have to be emptied and then cleaned, which takes time. What the researchers have done is added a central pipe to the center of the CCT, with an open bottom. This central pipe can be used to move the liquid from one CCT to another, allowing the fermentation process to continue in the second CCT. Such a design enables the fermentation process to be distributed across multiple tanks, and the yeast to be reused.

This continuous fermentation design will greatly increase a brewery’s efficiency as less time will be needed to clean, and it will reduce energy peaks. The researchers have already filed for a patent and a small pilot plant is current running at the Research Center Weihenstephan.

Source: Technische Universitaet Muenchen

Alltech could double beer brewing production with planned expansion

Alltech founder Pearse Lyons said Monday that the Nicholasville-based nutrition company was pressing forward with plans to expand its brewery in Lexington.

“We just ordered the equipment,” he said.

The expanded brewery probably will be on Angliana Avenue, where Alltech stores its bourbon barrels.

The new 300,000-square-foot Town Branch brewery could be up and running by the end of 2014 if everything goes as planned, Lyons said.

“In 15 months from now, we’ll either have it in Angliana Avenue or another location,” he said. The brewing and bottling equipment will come from Germany in about nine months, he said.

And Alltech needs it, he said, because it needs the beer production.

The company’s Alltech Bourbon Barrel Ale has become the biggest-selling craft beer in Ohio, according to its distributor, Lyons said.

His existing brewery can produce as much as 30,000 barrels a year, but with the expansion, capacity could nearly double, Lyons said.

He predicted that within five or six years, Alltech could become the fifth-largest craft brewer in the United States.

Lyons dropped the nugget of news into his speech to more than 2,400 people from dozens of countries who are attending the annual Alltech Symposium in Lexington.

The symposium discusses everything from marketing to animal nutrition, with an eye to the global business climate.

Alltech also will host a brewing and distilling symposium in Ireland in July.

The interest in brewing, Lyons said, comes from his roots: According to family lore, one of his ancestors was an original member of the guild of coop ers, or barrel makers, founded in 1594 in Ireland.

Lyons founded Alltech on his interest in yeast, and it has been the building block of his expansion into everything from Alzheimer’s research to beer, and now bourbon with Town Branch Distillery.

“If you really want to get me excited, ask me about yeast,” Lyons said at a news conference.

“Or whisky. Or beer,” chimed in Mark Lyons, his son.

“It’s all yeast,” Pearse Lyons said with a shrug. “It has amazed me, the growth in the craft brewing industry in the United States. The beer industry in the U.S. is flat; the beer industry in the world is flat. But craft brewing is growing.”

He said he recently attended a craft brewing convention in Washington with thousands of enthusiasts.

“What you sense was a cult, but a sustainable cult,” Lyons said.

“Brewers are fun people to be around. … That’s our background. We’re in the brewing business.”

Janet Patton: (859) 231-3264. Twitter: @janetpattonhl.Janet Patton: (859) 231-3264. Twitter: @janetpattonhl.

Banks installs new beer brewing system

Banks DIH Limited has installed a new Stromboli system as its multimillion brewery modernisation programme intensifies at Thirst Park, a release from the company said.

Matthew Kendall, Brew-master at Banks said the Stromboli system within the new Wort Kettle will provide many advantages over the present one such as higher wort quality, energy conservation, loss reduction and overall consistency of wort. Wort is the liquid extracted from the mashing process during the brewing of beer and it also contains the sugars that will be fermented by the brewing yeast to produce alcohol.

“This state-of-the-art system is presently installed in over 50 countries worldwide and having it set up here will propel Banks DIH Limited to a group of elite breweries that consider these and  …..To continue reading, login or subscribe now.

Foolproof Brewing Company Joins RI Beer Scene

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Saturday, April 06, 2013

Kalena Crafton, GoLocalProv Contributor

How’s that look? Foolproof Brewery is producing local beer that’s created with activities in mind.

Watch out other craft breweries–there’s a new beer brewing company tapping into Providence this year.

Since Nick Garrison got a brewing kit from his parents for Christmas and brewed the beer for his own wedding, he’s had a passion for brewing, a passion that has led to the birth of Providence’s hot new brewery: Foolproof Brewing Company.

GolocalProv took time to speak to Nick Garrison, the founder and owner of Foolproof Brewing Company, and and their professional brewmaster, Damase Olsson.

Could you explain your brewing process?

Nick Garrison: We approach brewing a bit differently at Foolproof. Before we even start talking about ingredients, flavors, and beer styles, we look at life experiences. We actually brew our beers with specific activities in mind. The names of each of our brews reflect these sacred beer drinking experiences.

We’re basically trying to get people to think about and treat beer as more than just an alcoholic beverage, but instead as an experience that should be savored and enjoyed.

I truly believe that we as beer drinkers consciously (or subconsciously) associate beers with various experiences, weather, places, moods, and activities. At Foolproof, we really wanted to take that concept to the next level, and that’s how we developed our philosophy of experience-based brewing.

We treat each of our beers as a tribute to a specific experience, and we encourage our friends and fans to go out and create their own experience. I love the idea of somebody picking up a six pack of our beer and taking it camping, heading to the beach, or maybe just staying at home on a rainy day and then sharing that experience with us.

Are there any traditions, or special styles you follow?

Damase Olsson: I do try to use only malt, water, hops and yeast in my recipes. I will also add various other things such as vanilla or honey if that is a flavor I am looking for in the beer. As for styles, I tend to brew mostly ales (as opposed to lagers), as ales will ferment more quickly (two weeks as opposed to five to six weeks), though I do enjoy brewing good lagers when I get the chance and time in the brewery permits. One style I have consistently brewed is a Russian Imperial Stout, so maybe that would be my special style.

A secret recipe?

Olsson: Now that would be a secret, wouldn’t it? But in reality, I have no secret recipes, as each brewer can take the same ingredients and have a slightly different flavor, depending on their brewhouse. After all, with only four ingredients, it is tough to have secrets.

How long have you been brewing beer? Have you hit any road bumps or accidents along the way?

Olsson: I have been brewing non-professionally since 1993 and professionally since 2006. I haven’t had any real bumps or accidents along the way, professionally at least. As a home brewer, I have made my fair share of mistakes, one of which was dropping a batch down a flight of stairs. Glass carboys will always lose a battle with a cement floor.

Garrison: I’ve been brewing for about five years and have been running a brewery for less than three months. It was certainly a challenge pulling this whole crazy idea together. It took me four years to take Foolproof from a dream to reality, and we definitely hit some bumps along the way. Financing, equipment, licensing, branding issues…you name it. Every new brewery faces an uphill battle, but I think we’ve done a great job working through all of the hurdles.

I’ve dumped my fair share of homebrew (things don’t always work out as planned!), but as Damase [Olsson] mentioned, we can proudly say that we haven’t had to dump any beer down the drain yet at Foolproof. I think it’s a testament to Damase’s talent as a brewmaster.

What made you decide to start brewing beer?

Olsson: I enjoyed the flavors of craft beer (though it was called microbrew back then), and I had the opportunity to take a weekend course taught by URI professors when I was living in Narragansett, so I decided to give it a go. Been giving it a go ever since.

Garrison: I received my first home brewing kit as a Christmas gift from my parents. I never thought that two plastic buckets could actually change my life. Within a year of picking up homebrewing as a hobby (ok, borderline obsession), I knew this was what I had to do with my life.

What does beer mean to you?

Olsson: They say beer is what started civilization, and I tend to believe that. Beer is the great equalizer. Every society has had a grain-based beverage, whether it be from corn, wheat, sorghum, or barley. Beer is consumed by folks in every level of society, so if civilization began with beer, every society has had some form of beer, and every strata of society drinks beer. I guess you could say that beer is what keeps the world humming. Or, to paraphrase Groucho Marx, “Sometimes a beer is just a drink.”

Garrison: Working at a brewery for a living, beer is obviously a very important part of my life. In fact, it changed my life. To me, when enjoyed responsibly, beer is something that brings together family and friends, and ultimately, we drink beer because it’s fun. I really wanted the Foolproof brand to reflect that idea – good beer is something that will always bring people together.

Pairing Your Brews

In the mood for getting together with friends for a BBQ? Backyard will match the friendly, smokey atmosphere. Olsson gives us the inside scoop on how to pair Foolproof with your experience, and what to pair it with to make your taste buds tingle:

Barstool – something light in flavor, so it will not overwhelm the beer. Some folks have had it with sushi and loved it. So I would definitely say fish, chicken (not BBQ’ed but baked or lightly grilled), or even a salad.

Backyard – Now there is a BBQ beer, so something more robust, and spicy. Mexican would also work well with this beer.

Raincloud – The roasty flavors remind me of a nice roast, beef, or pork, which would all work very well with this beer.

Revery – I am going out on a limb here, but a French vanilla ice cream beer float works very well. But if you do not want to put ice cream in your beer, you can have it on the side, on top of a warm brownie.

Bringing in a Local Taste

The local brewery hopes to get even more local in the next year, looking to use Rhode Island hops in some of their batches. Currently, the brewery uses hops from all over the world. “We have hops from the Czech Republic, England, Germany, and the Northwest of the United States,” Damase says. “We hope to be using Rhode Island hops next year in some of our batches.”

Try a Taste

Get down and check out the brewery for yourself, see the brewing process, and try the beer a tour Fridays and Saturdays for $10. You can grab a taste of the golden drink at any of these locations.

Foolproof Brewing Company, 241 Grotto Avenue, Pawtucket. Click here to visit the website and for more information.

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Home Brewing Adventures: Part II – Baltimore Post

A few weeks ago I wrote about home brewing, but I didn’t give you the whole story.  When I ended that blog, the beer was sitting happy in it’s dark, cool, fermenting place.  Today, I’ll tell you what happens when it’s time to bottle.  One of our favorite things about bottling day is cracking open the lid to the fermenting bucket, inhaling the smell of two weeks worth of pent-up brewed goodness.

There’s not much to the process, it seems like sterilizing the equipment takes more time than anything else, but once that gets out of the way, everything else takes about an hour.  To sterilze the equipment we use an iodine-based solution, diluting it with water in the bucket we use and soak the siphon, hydrometer, and bottle filler in it.  The easiest way to sterilize bottles is in the dishwasher.  Send it through a pots and pans cycle without soap, and set on a hot dry.  Skipping to the good part, here’s what you do.

Siphoning the beer into the bottling barrel is just part of the fun.

Pour 2 cups of water into a sauce pan and bring to a boil.  Add 3/4 cups priming sugar, stir until dissolved, turn off heat and let cool. Pour this mixture into your bottling bucket.

Adding this extra sugar wakes up the dormant yeast in the brew, and sealing them together in a bottle produces carbonation.

Siphon beer from it’s fermenting bucket into the bottling bucket.  Attach bottle filler to your siphon.  Fill sterilized bottles and cap.  Leave in a cool dark place for at least two weeks.

Transferring the beer from the original bucket to the bottling bucket helps in clearing out the trub, the dead yeast and loose grains that may have gotten into the fermenting bucket, leaving less silt in the bottom of each bottle.

After two weeks it is ready to drink, though aging it for longer makes a smoother.  You’re more likely to enjoy the last bottles you drink than the first, but that doesn’t make the first bottles bad.

This particular batch filled two cases of bottles, as predicted, and after my husband did the math, it’s expected to be about 7.1% alcohol.  Making our own beer is a lot of time and a fair degree of effort, but so completely worth it.  Not only do we get the flavor we want, and it’s tax free, it’s so cost effective.  Most times it comes out to about a dollar a bottle to brew.

The other thing that comes from brewing that I really love is making bread.  Each brew day I save about a cup or so of spent grains, and with it I make some pretty tasty artisan bread.  When I found this recipe, I was surprised by how little grains actually went into the bread – only half a cup.  In this recipe, a little goes a long way, there isn’t a lack of flavor to the bread, though.

Fresh out of the oven – perfect!

Brew Grain Bread

• 3½ Cup flour
• ½Cup spent grain
• ¼ tsp. Kosher salt
• 1 Tbsp. Bread yeast
• 1¼ Cup lukewarm water

Stir dry ingredients together in a large bowl.  Make a well, then pour in the water, mix well. Let rise 2-3 hours, until the dough has leveled on top.

Form dough into a loaf and score top place on a baking sheet.  Let loaf rise while the oven preheats to 425 degrees.  Pour 1 C on a separate baking sheet and place on the rack at the lowest setting.  Bake the dough on the middle setting rack for 30-45 minutes, until it sounds hollow when tapped.  The water in the baking sheet below your baking bread will steam while your bread bakes, creating that wonderful thick while keeping the inside of the bread soft and tender.

 Tip of the week:  When slicing fresh bread, flip the loaf over and slice from the soft side.  It keeps the bread from crushing under your knife.

Something’s Brewing In Brookings

BROOKINGS, SD –

It may be known as one of South Dakota’s college towns but an education isn’t the only thing brewing in Brookings.

“He was taking some entrepreneurial classes and did a business plan and he was really excited about. We just took this plan that he made in class, took it into real life and started doing the company,” Heist Brewery owner Thomas Strubel said.

Last year, Strubel started up Heist Brewing along with Luke Rensink. But when Rensink got married, Strubel became the sole owner.

“From ordering the product to brewing, to kegging, to talking with the distributor and bars, it’s pretty much what I’m doing. I have help from the brew club, kind of word-of-mouth spreading stuff,” Strubel said.

Strubel went to school for German and civil engineering. While this may not be the expected career path for either of those two fields, it’s not completely foreign either.

“Every once and a while I run across a German word, there’s math in brewing too though so that works out,” Strubel said.

These boilers are where grains, sugar, and yeast start their process that ends in one of the world’s most enjoyed beverages.

“You definitely have to do some experiments. Right now I’m producing 31-barrel batches so of course you don’t want to experiment on that.  So you kinda do that home brew scale, the five-gallon batches. And yeah it takes a few batches to get it where you want it,” Strubel said.

Strubel currently has a stout and an IPA that are selling well. He’s also working on a line of seasonal beers. It’s something beer fanatic and local home brewer Rose Heeb likes to see.

“I love it when my family comes to visit or I have friends come to visit and they’re beer lovers as well.  And you can take them to the bar and say, ‘hey I know the guy who brews this,’” Heeb says.

Heeb is part of a local brew club along with Strubel. She says being able to get together and bounce ideas off each other works great with someone who knows his stuff.

“So learning the process and refining things is exciting. Making beer is a learning process so having a local expert is wonderful,” Heeb said.

Strubel also has a home brew store for people such as Heeb. You can come in and get everything you need to make your own concoction right at home.

“I actually have two batches coming up. I’m going to be doing an oatmeal cream stout and an Irish red and Tom has those things on order for me.  So I’m excited to see those things come in and I’ll probably bring samples to share,” Heeb said.

And while it’s fun, it’s the future that Strubel is looking toward. You can already find his beer at JL Beers in Sioux Falls and North Dakota and at Cubby’s and Brownstone in Brookings.

“I’d just like to up production and supply South Dakota more, kind of branch out into some more of the cities and then hopefully get West River,” Strubel said.

Strubel says many surrounding states have multiple craft breweries. While he may be one of the few in South Dakota, he hopes it’s something more people will get involved in.

“It’s a great hobby and the more people the merrier. It’s something you need to share. If you keep it to yourself it’s not going to be as fun as it could be,” Strubel said.

Because let’s face it, if a beer is better around a table with friends, brewing must be the same.

Strubel hopes sell off-sale beer at his brewery by the end of the year. If you’re not old enough to drink, he’s even having a Root Beer brewing event November 16.

Were you ‘Seen’ at Art of Beer?

Beer, a happy accident 9,000 years ago when some water-soaked bread caught yeast in the air and something magical (fermentation) happened, was on display Thursday at the Art Museum of Southeast Texas like a painting.

This, however, was not acrylic on canvas or oil on linen, but liquid art.

It was the sixth year of the annual Art of Beer at the museum. Intended as a fundraiser, it also has brewed up an appreciation for finely crafted beer that doesn’t have high-powered marketing, slick TV ads or temperature so cold you can’t taste it, said event chairman Brandon East.

“People can understand the breadth and depth of beer,” said East, 31, who by day is a marketer at Games People Play on College Street.

Read more of this story in Friday’s Enterprise.

Brewing beer the presidential way

To make the beer, we steeped whole-grain biscuit and amber malt in a mesh bag to add color, added two bags of dried malt and two cans of malt extract, and brought the pot to a boil. After it cooked for a while, we added two kinds of hops. Five minutes before we turned off the pot, we added the honey. We chilled the mixture, now called the “wort,” before transferring it to the fermenter (in our case a big glass jug) and adding yeast.

Add a Shot of Green to that White House Beer Recipe

 
President Obama finally okayed the release of the much sought-after White House Beer recipe over the weekend, and you can practically hear the yeast bubbling as home beer brewers celebrate across the country. The news is likely to generate interest among a whole new generation of home brewers, too, and we’re guessing they could probably use some advice on conserving water and energy while they enjoy their new hobby. So, we’re offering up some tips we’ve gleaned from the ‘tubes, and if you’d like to add your own please contribute to the comment thread.

How Green Was My Beer Then?

While an interest in sustainability has motivated many an enthusiast to take up home brewing, the process is only as green as you make it. You’ll still be using energy, water, and raw materials as well as buying manufactured equipment and supplies, same as any other brewer.

It may be the case now that, on balance, homemade beer has a smaller footprint than its mass-produced cousins, but the status quo might not necessarily hold for long. Small and large brewing companies alike have been stepping up their green beer game in terms of supply chain, recycling, water conservation, and use of alternative energy.
 

 
Also, global beer giant AB-InBev is venturing into brewery waste reclamation processes that involve green technology beyond the reach of a typical home kitchen, at least for now.

Green Brewing Advice

Here are a few drops of green brewing wisdom resulting from a quick search of the Internets:

Glorioushomebrew.com suggests re-using water left over from cooling, cleaning, and washing up in a variety of ways, including from doing your laundry or watering your plants.

The same folks also recommend composting spent grains, or using them to make tasty dog treats.

The forum at northernbrewer.com provides some tips along similar lines, with the additional suggestion of looking for domestically and locally sourced raw materials whenever possible.

Triple Pundit ran a post earlier this year with some great advice for new brewers. The list includes joining a brewing community to learn more about the process, which will help avoid wasting supplies due to mistakes.

Learning how to brew beer in kegs and growing your own hops (apparently, easier than it sounds) also make the cut.

The Chronicle of Higher Education offers up a profile of one dedicated home brewer whose home includes solar panels. Depending on the size of the installation, solar or wind power could pretty much make the energy consumption issue a moot point.

If you’re in a good position to invest in alternative energy for your home, taking up home brewing will provide you with a really good excuse to go ahead and do it.

Green Beer, Green Jobs

Due to the timing of the White House Beer announcement, some media outlets, such as the Washington Post and ABC News, have speculated that it’s all part of a ploy to win over working class voters (seriously, like nobody else drinks beer?).

On the other hand, release of the White House Beer recipe could very well put more people to work, by helping to grow the market for beer making kits and home brewing supplies. That’s a good thing, right?

Regardless of your politics, drink up! And don’t forget to share your favorite sustainable home brewing tips in the comment thread.

Image: Green beer. License Some rights reserved by piervix.

Follow me on Twitter: @TinaMCasey.

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