The basic idea behind malt conditioning is to soften/moisten the husks ever so slightly so they don’t shred when milled. This does a few things: 1) hopefully improve your efficiency as you can mill it slightly more, 2) improve lautering as the grain bed will not compact as much, although small particles will now make it through as the grain bed isn’t as compacted, and 3) reduce the chance that the husks contribute tannins (bitter, astringent flavours) to your mash as over-shredded husks will do so.
How to do it?
You just spray your malt with 2% (by weight of grains) of water. Spray the top layer of grains, mix the grains around and repeat until your 2% is up. Now, because the husks are staying intact, you can slightly tighten up the gap on your mill for a finer crush. I’ve conditioned twice now, the first time not changing the gap and everything working wonderfully and the second time closing the gap and crushing it just a hair too much (the mash was getting stuck, but I managed a 93% extraction efficiency!). I’ll ease off a tiny bit next time and will hopefully settle somewhere in the high 80%’s, efficiency wise.
This doesn’t really have anything to do with beer or brewing but as it’s a magazine that I love to read, I thought what the hell. They have apparently partnered up with Google to scan all 137 years of the magazine with just a basic search available now and more advanced features to come.
Scientists in Korea have discovered that oxygenated alcohol helps to sober you up faster and possibly even help prevent that usual mind-numbing hangover.
A Korean company is soon to release soju called O2 Lin, which has been pumped full (around 33ppm) of oxygen. As far as I’m concerned, if you torturing your taste buds with that shit, you deserve the hangover!! Hahaha.
Here is a cool video series with Greg Kosch from Stone brewery (and a few others) travelling to Norway and Scotland to brew some beer, meeting up with the BrewDog guys alone the way.
From the Stone Blog:
…a documentary of Greg, Mitch, and Steve’s trip to Norway and Scotland, where they brewed-up batches of collaboration beers at Nøgne-Ø and BrewDog. Along the way, watch as our intrepid crew relishes a Viking feast, braves the choppy waters of the North Atlantic, and seemingly attempts to bribe their way (with beer) into owning a lighthouse.
BrewDog has fought back and reclaimed the title of world’s strongest beer with Sink the Bismark, a quadruple IPA. Here is the ‘release video‘ for Sink the Bismark from BrewDog:(Sorry, can’t seem to embed it).
Below is a short video full of taste testers comments from people lucky enough to sample it:
And lastly, here is a radio interview from the BBC Radio 5 with both BrewDog’s James Watt and Schorschbraeu’s Georg Tscheuschner:
So after a combination of sitting at work with literally nothing to do and the talk of calculators and the like on the forums, I decided to install BrewBlogger. It’s a free, open-source “blog” that allows for recipe creation. It has all of the major malts, hops, etc (descriptions included) as well as several tools needed for the brewing process. It also has detailed descriptions for each beer style. One of the most important features (I think) is the fact that it can import/export BeerXML files. Check it out and share your thoughts and feelings on the forums in the BrewBlog: Recipe Creation on Homebrew Korea thread.
I have yet to add any recipes (as I’m at work), but have a look around…Homebrew Korea BrewBlog. You can sign up here. My appologies for having to signup/login twice. It doesn’t integrate with the forums software.
Did I really need another reason to drink beer?!? Ya gotta do, what you gotta do!! Right??
Research of the past few years has shown that silicon, which is present in beer, is key to bone density and overall bone health. Apparently when we were drinking all that milk for the calcium we had it all wrong. Silicon is where it’s at. Vegetables are a good source of silicon, but the benefit of getting it from beer is that it is more easily absorbed from beer. And the best part is that of all the beer styles, my favourite (IPA’s), has the highest concentration of silicon with around 41ppm versus ales at 33ppm and lagers at 24ppm. I knew there was a reason I’m not a big fan of lagers!!!
Brewtarget helps you brew beer. It is a beer calculator for brewing beer. Available for Linux, Mac, and Windows. Compatible with BeerSmith. Generates instructions for you from the recipe! Hit all your targets with brewtarget.
Brewsta, design, store and edit beer recipes. Cross platform home brewing software.
I haven’t used them, but they appear fairly decent. If you are looking to a free alternative to BeerTools and BeerSmith, these are a few more options for ya.
Our friends at BeerSchool have just received a shipment of hops. Instead of the usual three or four kinds of hops, we now have access to EIGHTEEN different varieties of hops. Browse to their hop listings and have an eye. It doesn’t say, but i’m guessing that they are pellets. The average price for an ounce (28g) is around 5,000won with some hops going for around 10,000won (Northern Brewer: 10,000won, Simcoe: 10,000won Amarillo: 9,000won, Fuggles: 5,500won, Cascade: 5,000won).
Nearly 2 and a half million times, RateBeer.com beer reviewers worldwide have raised a glass to review a new beer. The RateBeer administrators have tallied the scores and presented them in the their annual RateBeer Best competition results.
It’s too bad we can’t get any of them here. I’d love to sit down one afternoon and sip away on the top ten!! It’s looks as though S. Korea unfortunately didn’t make it into the top 100. Maybe next year OB and Hite!!! Hahaha.
