Recent content by DoctorHops

In Albuquerque, try La Cumbre, Il Vicino, and Marble. If you detour to Santa Fe, Second Street Brewery or Santa Fe brewing are good bets.

As to taking samples from the primary, I use a sterilized turkey baster. Don't return the sample to the fermenter, drink it. Share it with your significant other, children and friends. Drinking beers at the various stages, from the wort to the bottling bucket, will tell you a lot about how your...

This sounds weird to me. Has anyone tried it? Or even heard of it before? I received an auto syphon and a Vinator(tm) for Christmas. On the instructions for the Vinator(tm) there are two types of instructions for sanitizing bottles. The first, and how I expect to use it, is to fill the...

Virginia made a batch of mozzarella today with Mickey's whole milk. It set up curds very nice and very quickly. The mozzarella is firm and has good flavor. We had previously used Shurfine milk from the local independent grocery store, but it made mozzarella that was too runny. We are in...

Yes, in college, Alton Brown too dried ...er hops.

Physicist, PhD Daughters brew beer as well: 1. Poet, getting PhD in creative writing/literature 2. Equestrian It is a great Father's Day activity.

My Apfelwein smells yeasty or bready when the bottle is first opened and poured. It does not taste bready or yeasty though, and the smell dissipates quickly.

"...dump sample down sink." Real brewers drink, they don't dump. :^)=

This is what happens when one sleeps through Freshman Chemistry and doesn't take Introduction to Logic. The piece must be very old, brewers haven't put Cobalt in Beer for over 50 years. Didn't Paul write to Timothy advising him to have a little wine as it was good for the stomach? My...

Life got easier for me when I had the revelation that there really was no need to remove the labels. I pour the beer into glasses and drink. For company or gifts, I suppose it is tacky to serve beer from bottles that still have someone else's label, so I save the naked bottles for guests. Now...

Not sure what the Utah laws are now, but when I lived there 30+ years ago, bootlegging tickets were nothing to sneeze at. Lots of Salt Lake City citizens would drive up to Evanston Wyoming to choose from the wider selection of beers that had been stored properly. The Utah State Liquor Monopoly...

Hops are pretty frost tolerant. Mine have survived two nights of below freezing weather since they emerged. one at 31 F and the other to 27 F. There has been no visible damage either time.

Not to throw a wet blanket on all this, but some of the worst tasting water I have ever drunk came from an artesian well. Artesian means that the aquifer is under pressure and the water will come to the surface without pumping. It has nothing to do with the taste and quality of the water...

While Mexican oregano is preferred, regular oregano can be substituted without a whole lot of loss in flavor. Fresh is better than dried.

When brewing with a Coopers kit, I use another yeast, usually SafAle 05. I toss the Coopers Yeast in the boiling wort towards the end. That kills the yeast and provides nutrients for the SafAle. Or so my thinking goes.