brewing

Spices and Flavor Extracts in Beer Brewing

by Brad Smith on January 14, 2022 · 0 comments

This week I take a look at the best way to incorporate spices and flavor extracts into your beer brewing process. Examples of Spices, Herbs and Flavor Extracts Beer was not traditionally made with hops. In fact, the use of hops in beer dates back only about 500 years, while beer itself was introduced at […]

The 2021 BJCP Beer Style guidelines were released on 29 December, 2021 by the Beer Judge Certification Program, and are now available for BeerSmith web and desktop. The 2021 guidelines are considered a modest revision of the 2015 style guide, and an effort was made to maintain the majority of the categories and style names […]

This week I take a look at some of the recent research into dry hopping during active fermentation to create tropical and fruity flavors in beer. Fruity IPAs and New England IPAs There has been an explosion of recent research into hop utilization to maximize fruity and tropical flavors that are characteristic of popular fruity […]

Hop Forms and New Hop Products

by Brad Smith on December 7, 2021 · 0 comments

This week I take a look at some of the new hop products and forms of hops available to professional and home brewers. We’re fortunate to live in an era of hop forward beers, and brewers have a wide variety of products available to create great beers. Dried Hop Forms The vast majority of hops […]

John Palmer and Denny Conn join me this week to discuss simplified homebrewing and ways to save time and keep your beer brewing fun. Subscribe on iTunes to Audio version or Video version or Spotify or Google Play Download the MP3 File– Right Click and Save As to download this mp3 file. Your browser does […]

This week I present the mash temperature calculations in BeerSmith and how you can adjust your equipment profile and mash profile to hit your mash temperature the first time. Mash Steps and Profiles To understand the mash profile system in BeerSmith, lets start with the mash profiles themselves. You can edit and create mash profiles […]

Hop Aroma Oil Survivability in Beer Brewing

by Brad Smith on November 5, 2021 · 2 comments

This week I take a look at how well hop oils survive the brewing process to make it into the finished beer. Some oils and hop varieties do much better depending upon when they are added when brewing. What is Aroma Oil Survivability? Aroma oil survivability is simply a measure of how well an aroma […]

Using All-in-One Brewing Equipment with BeerSmith

by Brad Smith on October 30, 2021 · 0 comments

With the growing popularity of small tabletop all-grain brewing systems I decided to take a look this week at how to set up and use these systems in BeerSmith. Tabletop All-in-one Brewing Systems There has been an explosion in the popularity of small all-in-one all grain electric brewing systems. These include systems like the DigiMash, […]

Gordon Strong joins me this week to discuss his trip to Ecuador, the Chicha beer style and the upcoming BJCP beer style guide update. Subscribe on iTunes to Audio version or Video version or Spotify or Google Play Download the MP3 File– Right Click and Save As to download this mp3 file. Your browser does […]

This week I take a look at malt enzymes vs malt color and how enzymes affect conversion of the malt during the beer brewing process. Malt Enzymes and Mashing In all grain brewing, enzymes are very important during the mash as they are needed to convert the longer starch chains in the malt into shorter […]

Brent Manning joins me this week from Riverbend Malt to discuss his experience with Craft Malting in North Carolina for the last 10 years. Subscribe on iTunes to Audio version or Video version or Spotify or Google Play Download the MP3 File– Right Click and Save As to download this mp3 file. Your browser does […]

Flavor Depth from Grains in Dark Beer Brewing

by Brad Smith on October 8, 2021 · 0 comments

This week I look at how to create layers of flavor in your darker beers by mixing grains from different groups and judicious use of harsh zone malts. Depth in Beer Flavor I want to first introduce the concept of depth in beer flavor. Depth refers to a beer that has layers of flavor and […]

Enzymes in Beer: Alpha and Beta Amylase

by Brad Smith on October 2, 2021 · 0 comments

This week I take a look at the differences between alpha and beta amylase which act during the mash to convert longer starch chains to simple sugars in beer. Alpha vs Beta Amylase Enzymes are naturally produced in malted barley during the malting process. Chief among these are alpha amylase and beta amylase. They are […]

Hop Utilization Models for Beer Brewing Compared

by Brad Smith on September 23, 2021 · 1 comment

This week I take a look at the three major hop utilization models: Tinseth, Garetz, and Rager used to calculate bitterness in beer brewing. Bitterness Levels and IBUs The bitterness of a beer contributed by hops in the boil is typically estimated using one of three major hop utilization equations. All three attempt to estimate […]

Working with Fruits in BeerSmith 3

by Brad Smith on September 19, 2021 · 2 comments

This week I cover some of the basic concepts of using fruit in BeerSmith for making beer, wine, cider or meads. Fruit Basics BeerSmith 3 supports the use of fruit juice, purees, honey and whole fruits natively when making beer, mead, wine and cider recipes. Typically most fruits are added during primary or secondary fermentation. […]