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Every year in August I go to this huge music festival in the mountains in Southern West Virginia. I also usually brew up something special to share with friends I meet there. Seeing as how pawpaws are known as the West Virginia banana, and seeing as how a wheat beer would be refreshing on a...

So I brewed a Christmas Ale on Oct. 15th using: 10lbs 2-row (may have substituted some 6-row in there, not sure now) 1lbs cara-red 1lbs Special B .5lbs honey malt .5lbs black roasted barley about 10oz of molasses I pitched the Safebrew t-58 high gravity yeast and it took off pretty...

I brewed a Christmas ale last night, with molasses and spices and such added during the boil, then I cooled it, put it in my bucket and pitched the yeast. Within 4 hours I had a few bubbles in the airlock. I get up this morning and it's bubbling like crazy... so far so good right? Except, the...

I recently read Michael Jackson's Beer Companion and found myself fascinated with the descriptions of some of the Belgium brews and of porters fermented with bret. So... logically I began working with wild yeast(s). As of yet I have not finished a beer using wild yeast, but I have one underway...

Anyone familiar with black walnuts? If you've spent much time in the Appalachian mountains you may have come across them. Compared to English walnuts they're more earthy, dark and sort a musky tasting, pretty strong too. I've got some and I was going to use 'em to make bread or brownies but...

I bought a turkey fryer off Craigslist this weekend. I want to use it for frying turkeys, chickens, boiling sweet corn, etc but I also want to use the burner for brewing. Obviously I'm going to use the pot that came with it for cooking. My brew pot is a really nice 9.5 gallon stainless steel...

I bottled some peach wine tonight. I made it from peaches that grew in my grandfather's back yard which he had sprayed with sulphur (I think). I washed the peaches before I mashed/fermented them and I sulphited the must before adding the yeast. During fermentation, there were some awful sulphur...

I have a crazy idea. I want to culture wild yeast from around where I live to brew with. I got the idea when I was making blackberry mead, using honey from a bee keeper up the road and blackberries from the back field. I thought if I just had some wild yeasts contained somehow, it would be...

MEL-o-mel? MEL-o-meal? mel-O-mul? MELLOW-mel? Anyone know what's the "right" pronunciation?

I live in a crappy little shoe box of an apartment, so I've been doing partial mashes for a while now. My girlfriend just moved into a nice big house and I seized the opportunity. Over the summer I built my MLT and IC, when I get the money I'm going to get a turkey fryer burner and a much bigger...

I picked a mess of pawpaws this weekend primarily with the intent to brew with them somehow. In case you don't know, they're a very tropical tasting fruit and is the only fruit native to North America. They grow only in/around the Appalachian Mountains too. I know the Marietta Brewing...

I bought a 5 gallon Ale Pail with the lid and airlock at a garage sale for a $1 last weekend. The catch? Oh, it stinks. Bad. I don't know if the guy kept it empty in a moist basement or what, but it smells like dirt. Seriously, like potting soil or something. So far I've left bleach water in...

It's that time of year, it happens every year, the infestation of the fruit flies.... I'm slowly winning the battle after making a couple fly traps and cleaning the kitchen really well. I know this time next month they'll be long gone but so far 3 or 4 fruit flies drowned in the airlock on...

Tune in tonight at 10:00 to check out beer on a show that explains how everything "works."

"Boatin' Up Sandy" - American wheat ale with honey and lemon Won 3rd place in specialty beer at Ohio Brew Week 2008! OG: 1.055 FG: 1.015 ABV: 5% Ingredients: 3lbs malted wheat 3.3. LME extract (wheat extract) 1 pint of local honey (sterilized by baking in a saucepan @ 180* for 30 min.) .25 oz...

Be forewarned, I just want to brag a little... Ohio Brew Week is this week. It's a state-wide festival held in Athens, Ohio celebrating craft beer. They had a home brew contest open to contestants all over the country. I know I heard of entries that were shipped in from North Carolina and...

I was in an antique store today and he had a bunch of old beer bottles. We're talking super old here.... some from the mid-1800's, other from around 1900 to prohibition or so. I bought 7 just because they were from Ohio, one being from my hometown (a tiny, tiny little river town that before pro...

I snagged a free chest cooler today. It was given to me because the spout's cap was loose and was leaking. Seeing as how I was planning to tear that out anyway, I jumped on it. Here's the catch... in the bottom someone must have dropped a chunk of ice or something heavy and cracked the...

I've made several batches so far but never a true all grain... It's not that I don't want to, it's that I live in a crappy tiny apartment and don't have storage for all my equipment. I was thinking I could do an all-grain half batch by steeping my grains in cheese cloth instead of floating...

I started a 3 gallon batch of honey-lemon hefe yesterday. Since I was putting lemon slices in it, for ease of cleaning I didn't used my 5 gallon glass carboy, I just used my 7 gallon plastic wine pail, even though it's only half full. Here's the problem. My hydrometer barely was able to...