Beer

A week after brewing our first batch of beer, it was time to transfer it from the primary fermentation bucket into a clean carboy. We’ve never actually siphoned anything before, so this was quite an adventure!1. The End Goal – It’s not completely necessary to transfer the beer into another container at this point. Some sources say that the beer can start to develop off-flavors from the dead yeast or evaporate too much due to the bigger surface area.

We’ve brewed the beer, let it ferment, and now we’re finally ready to get it into bottles. We’re so close to having homebrew we can almost taste it! And in fact, we did sneak a little taste – for purely scientific reasons, of course. Take a look!1. Fermented Homebrew – This beer has now been fermenting for three weeks – one week in the primary fermenter and two weeks in the secondary.

Can you tell whether this photo is of a porter or a stout? We can’t! These are both dark beers with a similar range of malty, roasted, and bittersweet flavors. They also both have a reputation for being fairly heavy and for making us feel quite toasty while sipping them. So is there any difference at all between a porter and a stout?This mystery has bothered us for quite some time, so we dove into research and discovered some interesting facts!

This beer is absolutely unlike anything else we’ve ever tasted. In fact, when we first tried it a few years ago, we hated it! But now that our taste in beer has grown up a bit, we decided to give this spicy, fruity beer another shot.Beer Details – Golden Monkey from Victory Brewing Company in Downington, Pennsylvania. This is a Belgian-style tripel ale, meaning that it is brewed with triple the amount of malts typical of Belgian ales. (9.

A few weeks ago, we got very lucky. Not only did we manage to snag a bottle of the 2009 Widdershins Barleywine, newly released from Left Hand Brewing Company, but we also stumbled across an old bottle of the 2007 Widdershins lurking at the back of a shelf. A vertical tasting was most definitely in order!The idea of aging beers is a relatively new concept to us and a lot of other folks.

When we’re standing in front of a wall of beer at the store, we often have trouble remembering our dopplebocks from our imperial stouts and our pilsners from our pale ales. As much for our benefit as for yours, we wanted to do a few round-ups of common beer styles for handy reference. First up: lagers!Lagers are on one branch of the beer family tree, with ales on the other. Lager beers are made with a particular kind of yeast that ferments at cooler temperatures than ale yeast.

Browse through the beer section of any well-stocked store and you’ll notice the word “imperial” showing up in front of many of your favorite beers: imperial stout, imperial pale ale, imperial pilsner and who knows what else. That word might actually mean something different than you think!The term “imperial” was used in the 1800’s for beer (usually stout) that was brewed in England but then shipped to Russia – specifically the imperial court of Russia!

We’re probably going to catch some heat for saying this, but we find it infinitely easier to pair food with beer than with wine. Between the roasted malts and the herbal hops, craft brews have so many nuances of flavor that it seems like there’s gotta be something in there that you can match to your dinner. Here’s where to start!The very first rule of pairing beer and food is that anything goes. Seriously!

When we reviewed their Dirty Bastard Ale a few months back, several of you professed your love for another one of Founders offerings: their seasonally-available Breakfast Stout. Well, it’s now out in stores and we finally had a chance to try it. Hoo boy, you really weren’t kidding about this beer!Beer Details: Breakfast Stout from Founders Brewing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan. (Double Chocolate Coffee Oatmeal Stout, 8.

If you like your beers bitter, hoppy, and crisp, the family of pale ales is the place to go. Curious what makes a pale ale pale? Or an India pale ale distinct? You have questions, and we have answers.You can think of these beers as a spectrum with more mild pale ales on one end and aggressively-hopped double IPAs on the other. There is a lot of variation within the spectrum and an exception to every rule, of course, but you can follow this as a general rule of thumb.

I’ve been mighty curious about these one-gallon homebrew kits from Brooklyn Brew Shop. They’re designed for apartment dwellers (check!) who don’t have a lot of space for brewing equipment (double check!) but who still want to brew great beer (triple check!). Talk about microbrewing!Nearly everything you need for a one-gallon jug of homebrew is included in the package: grains, hops, yeast, sanitizing powder, siphon canes and hoses, and the jug itself.

Now, we’re not trying to get into a “Which is better: beer or wine?” debate here. It’s just that we believe that there are some beers that you steadfast wine drinkers out there might really enjoy. Call them cross-over beers. As in, they cross the line between beer and wine. As in, come on over and we’ll pour you a pint.These beer styles draw on many of the same flavor profiles as our favorite wines: robust, fruity, and spicy; crisp, tart, and dry.

Back in college, being handed a foamy beer was cause for exasperated eye-rolling. But glance through any beer review these days, and you’ll see effusive odes to creamy heads of foam and the delicate lacing they leave behind. What gives? The foamy head on a glass of beer offers a few different things for our beer-drinking experience. For starters, each one of those little bubbles is carrying a puff of aroma.

When I first started brewing beer at home, I was a five-gallon girl — much like most new homebrewers. It’s just what you do. But there were drawbacks almost immediately. Brewing this much beer meant clearing out a precious coat closet for storing carboys and bottles, always having a buddy on hand to help lift the heavy (and hot!

Today’s topic: What’s going on inside the bottle right now, plus 5 amber ales to try while you wait The Kitchn’s Beer School: 20 lessons, 7 assignments to brew your first 1-gallon batch of beer. Sign up & see all the assignments! The Kitchn’s Beer School One more week to go until your beer is ready to drink! Are you feeling tempted to sample a bottle a little early? Totally understandable.

My sister went to college at Tulane University in New Orleans. Each summer she’d come home bragging about the Ponchatoula Strawberry Festival, a weekend-long, mystical-sounding party of music, games, rides, and, of course, strawberries. I was always envious of this celebration, but on the plus side I have her to thank for learning about what is now one of my very favorite parts of strawberry season: strawberry beer, specifically Abita Strawberry Harvest Lager.

When you are a self-professed booze-hound and a baker at heart, it is almost too easy to incorporate flavorful alcohol into everything from weeknight dinners to luscious birthday cakes. Honestly, though, I’ve made more than a few mistakes along the way when trying to add the smoky sweetness of bourbon to dinner or the dry sweetness of Champagne into cake.

Maybe it’s the rising popularity of craft beer, the fact that my partner is an aspiring hops farmer and brewer, or the simple truth that I am a broke millennial, but when it comes time to chose, I always pick beer over wine. I even (gasp!) think you should leave the wine corked and drink beer instead with your steak dinners.

If there was ever a time to put a seasonal, boo-zy spin on the beloved ice cream float, it is right now. Grab your favorite pumpkin beer along with some ice cream, and consider this your invitation to skip the PSL in favor of something a bit more festive. If you love beer and ice cream separately, but the thought of them together leaves you slightly skeptical, let me reassure you that not only does this duo work, but it’s also an exquisitely delicious treat.

The fizzy bite of beer makes it a useful ingredient in your cooking. We love bringing it to our favorite dishes in fall and winter, but we keep a few key tips in mind to get the most out of its flavor. Here’s what you need to know for better cooking with beer. When using beer in marinades, brines, vinaigrettes, and even lightly cooked dips, be sure to balance beer’s bite to avoid it overwhelming the recipe.

Of all the alcoholic beverage options out there, beer is probably the best at quelling the heat and quenching chile-induced thirst. For starters, beer tends to be fairly low alcohol — five to seven percent ABV compared to 10 to 15 percent for wine and 40 percent for spirits. Carbonation also helps remove the fiery heat of capsaicin from the palate. But not all beers are created equal — just like not all spicy foods are created equal.

There’s something supremely satisfying about an ice-cold brew on a hot summer day. It’s crisp, refreshing, and lower in alcohol than most wines and cocktails, which means you can indulge in a midday pint without succumbing to a midday nap immediately after (unless you want to). While you can, of course, drink whatever you like, there are certain brews that are best-suited for the season.

I’m a big fan of ginger drinks, especially since I love that fiery, spicy kick ginger adds. My refrigerator always contains ginger ale or ginger beer. But what is the difference between the two? And is ginger beer actually beer (and therefore alcoholic)? Ginger beer was originally an alcoholic brew made from fermenting ginger, sugar, and water, although most commercial ginger beers nowadays are non-alcoholic. Ginger ale is a non-alcoholic, sweetened, ginger-flavored soft drink.

We all have those friends who pigeonhole themselves into the beer-drinking category. Maybe they had a bad first wine experience, or perhaps they haven’t even started to explore the world of wine yet. I say, “Why choose sides?” Choosing a wine style similar to the style of beer you enjoy is a good way to make the transition. Finding a good wine match for a beer-lover is all about pairing weight, texture, and notes — like fruit, herbs, and earth.

Today’s topic: Taste your finished homebrew The Kitchn’s Beer School: 20 lessons, 7 assignments to brew your first 1-gallon batch of beer. Sign up & see all the assignments! The Kitchn’s Beer School Today is the day! Your homebrew is finally ready to be tasted.

Today’s topic: Bottle your beer The Kitchn’s Beer School: 20 lessons, 7 assignments to brew your first 1-gallon batch of beer. Sign up & see all the assignments! The Kitchn’s Beer School In the past three weeks, your homebrew has gone from raw grains to sugary wort to actual beer — all that’s left to do is bottle it up. Let’s get to it!

Today’s topic: A few ideas for passing the time until your homebrew is ready. The Kitchn’s Beer School: 20 lessons, 7 assignments to brew your first 1-gallon batch of beer. Sign up & see all the assignments! The Kitchn’s Beer School One more week until your beer will be ready to bottle, and another few weeks after that until it’s ready to drink — how can we make that time pass more swiftly? Well, one answer is obvious: Make another batch of beer!

Today’s topic: All the easy ways you can tweak a homebrew recipe The Kitchn’s Beer School: 20 lessons, 7 assignments to brew your first 1-gallon batch of beer. Sign up & see all the assignments! The Kitchn’s Beer School With your first batch of homebrew still waiting to be bottled and a now-empty fermentation bucket staring you down, perhaps you’re contemplating … doing another homebrew? I fully support this plan!

Today’s topic: How to figure out what went wrong with your beer The Kitchn’s Beer School: 20 lessons, 7 assignments to brew your first 1-gallon batch of beer. Sign up & see all the assignments! The Kitchn’s Beer School Even the most experienced, gifted, and diligent homebrewer still occasionally gets a bum bottle. It happens. And when it does, it’s useful to take a few minutes to try and figure out what went wrong — and how to avoid it next time.

Today’s topic: A walk-through of the whole bottling process from start to finish. The Kitchn’s Beer School: 20 lessons, 7 assignments to brew your first 1-gallon batch of beer. Sign up & see all the assignments! The Kitchn’s Beer School If you’ve been following along with our Beer School timeline, you’ll still be a little more than a week away from bottling your first batch at this point.

Today’s topic: How homebrews go from flat to fizzy The Kitchn’s Beer School: 20 lessons, 7 assignments to brew your first 1-gallon batch of beer. Sign up & see all the assignments! The Kitchn’s Beer School Beer’s refreshing fizziness is at least half of what we love about it, and right now, I’m sorry to say it — your homebrew has none. Zero fizz. It’s flatter than a can of soda left out after a party. But we’re going to change all that.

Today’s topic: Understand what’s happening to your beer right now The Kitchn’s Beer School: 20 lessons, 7 assignments to brew your first 1-gallon batch of beer. Sign up & see all the assignments! The Kitchn’s Beer School With the first exciting week of active fermentation behind us, it might look like nothing is happening in your beer — but looks can be deceiving. The next few weeks are a quiet, but important, time for our freshly made homebrew.

Today’s assignment: Transfer your beer from the primary to the secondary. The Kitchn’s Beer School: 20 lessons, 7 assignments to brew your first 1-gallon batch of beer. Sign up & see all the assignments! The Kitchn’s Beer School In the last few days, you probably noticed the bubbles in the airlock getting slower and less frequent — a sure sign that the first stage of active fermentation is winding down.

Today’s topic: Learn how to siphon beer from one container to another. The Kitchn’s Beer School: 20 lessons, 7 assignments to brew your first 1-gallon batch of beer. Sign up & see all the assignments! The Kitchn’s Beer School Of all the steps of brewing beer, I actually think it’s siphoning that really trips people up, at least to begin with. It seems so simple — we’re just transferring beer from one container to another using a rubber hose. Easy-peasy.

Today’s topic: How to be a polite, considerate homebrewer The Kitchn’s Beer School: 20 lessons, 7 assignments to brew your first 1-gallon batch of beer. Sign up & see all the assignments! The Kitchn’s Beer School Let’s take a break from our big homebrewing discussions today and talk about something that doesn’t always come up: the etiquette of brewing beer at home.

Today’s topic: Finding the best spot in your house to stash your fermenting beer The Kitchn’s Beer School: 20 lessons, 7 assignments to brew your first 1-gallon batch of beer. Sign up & see all the assignments! The Kitchn’s Beer School You want to stash your fermenting beer somewhere out of the way so you’re not constantly tripping over it, but where it’s still accessible so you can get to it when you need to.

Today’s topic: What’s happening during the primary fermentation The Kitchn’s Beer School: 20 lessons, 7 assignments to brew your first 1-gallon batch of beer. Sign up & see all the assignments! The Kitchn’s Beer School By this point — a day or two after your brew day — you should start seeing bubbles popping up through the water in your airlock.

Today’s topic: Detailed look at cooling the wort and adding the yeast. The Kitchn’s Beer School: 20 lessons, 7 assignments to brew your first 1-gallon batch of beer. Sign up & see all the assignments! The Kitchn’s Beer School After mashing the grains, making our wort, and then adding the hops, there’s really only one thing left to do in the beer-making process: add the yeast.

Today’s topic: Detailed look at boiling the wort and adding hops. The Kitchn’s Beer School: 20 lessons, 7 assignments to brew your first 1-gallon batch of beer. Sign up & see all the assignments! The Kitchn’s Beer School By this point in the brew day, we have finished making the base of our beer — the sugary wort — and now it’s time to introduce some other flavors. This happens in the form of those tiny, very aromatic, rather pungent hop pellets.

Today’s topic: Detailed look at how to sparge the mash and separate the sugary beer wort. The Kitchn’s Beer School: 20 lessons, 7 assignments to brew your first 1-gallon batch of beer. Sign up & see all the assignments! The Kitchn’s Beer School After the mash, the next major part in the beer-making process is separating out the sweet liquid we’ve made and sparging the mashed grains.

Today’s topic: Detailed look at the mash step of brewing beer The Kitchn’s Beer School: 20 lessons, 7 assignments to brew your first 1-gallon batch of beer. Sign up & see all the assignments! The Kitchn’s Beer School Every batch of all-grain beer starts right here, with the mash. This is where we take the dry, cracked grains, combine them with some warm water, and make the malty, sugar-filled liquid that will be the base for our homebrew.

Today’s topic: An overview of the four stages of your brew day The Kitchn’s Beer School: 20 lessons, 7 assignments to brew your first 1-gallon batch of beer. Sign up & see all the assignments! The Kitchn’s Beer School This week in Beer School, we’re focusing on the actual brewing of a batch of beer — that is to say, how we turn a few pounds of dry grains into fresh, fermentable beer wort.

Today’s topic: A rundown of the basic ingredients you’ll need to brew a 1-gallon batch of beer The Kitchn’s Beer School: 20 lessons, 7 assignments to brew your first 1-gallon batch of beer. Sign up & see all the assignments! The Kitchn’s Beer School All right — what do you need to get this beer going? All beer is made with just four base ingredients: malts, water, hops, and yeast.

Today’s topic: I introduce the beer we’ll be brewing — and talk about why we chose this one. The Kitchn’s Beer School: 20 lessons, 7 assignments to brew your first 1-gallon batch of beer. Sign up & see all the assignments! The Kitchn’s Beer School Hello, Beer School students! We’ve answered some essential questions people have before they brew beer and covered the basic timeline for brewing it at home.

Today’s Topic: A quick overview of the next 5 weeks, from brew day to pouring the first glass.The Kitchn’s Beer School: 20 lessons, 7 assignments to brew your first 1-gallon batch of beer.Sign up & see all the assignments! The Kitchn’s Beer School Brewing a batch of beer is not an overnight affair (unfortunately!). From brew day to cracking open your first bottle, you need to allow a minimum of five weeks.

Have you ever heard that alcohol doesn’t freeze, and wondered why? Well, it’s actually a common misconception that alcohol doesn’t freeze. Alcohol does freeze, just not at the temperatures that home freezers are kept at. Here’s what it takes to freeze alcohol solid. Ethanol, the alcohol found in beer, wine, and liquors, has a melting point of -114ºC (-173ºF).

Science and food are natural buddies. Take the discovery of fire for example: it not only makes food super tasty, but cooked food is both safer, and easier to digest. Thanks to advancements in food science, we consume food in a way that would’ve been unheard a mere century or so ago. And modern life is not only made easier by these discoveries, it’s made possible by them.

If you’ve been shying away from buying brews in larger bottles, here are five reasons to think big when it comes to beer. Many brewers use a larger bottle style because they want to capture the nuanced flavors of bottle conditioning. Heck, it’s how some of the best Belgian beers have been made for centuries, and it’s only appropriate if you’re an American brewer creating a Belgian-style ale to do the same.

We’ve already discussed the fact that the color of a beer isn’t always an accurate indicator of its taste, but we can make some sweeping generalizations about what we’re drinking based on looks alone: pale beers like German and American pilsners will be crisp and clean; amber beers like doppelbocks and brown ales will be caramelly and sweet; and dark, near-black beers like Guinness and other stouts will be rich and roasty.

Tart. Velvety. Earthy. Fruity. There’s nothing like the complex, satisfying taste of a glass of wine. Well, maybe not nothing. Would you believe me if I said you could find that same palate in a glass of beer instead? Though there will never be a perfect one-to-one taste parallel between wine and beer—one’s made from grapes, and one’s made from grains—Belgian and Belgian-inspired beers best echo the nuanced flavors of wine.

Some craft beer labels are works of art. Others read like scientific formulas. At the store, on bar menus, and online, acronyms like SRM are moving from the province of the professional and the homebrewer to the everyday beer enthusiast. “These numbers can be meaningless gibberish until you calibrate yourself to what they mean,” says Randy Mosher, author of Tasting Beer.

In my house, the late days of summer are a study in contrast. We’re trying to squeeze in one more cookout and one more trip to the shore while also revving up for baseball playoffs and the beginning of football season. Luckily, I’ve got a beer that bridges the gap from the backyard to the beach to the tailgate cooler: kölsch. Kölsch comes from the German city of Cologne, or Köln, as it’s known locally (see what they did there?).

So you’ve been trying more beer lately—not just the brands that you see on commercials that tout things like “crisp and cold from a mountain stream!” or “beer for tonight’s party, man!” but beers that say things like “double Imperial hopped in a barrel” on their labels. And sure, they taste great, but what the heck do all those words mean?

The world of cocktails is a deliciously diverse one. You’ve got the soul-warming depth of whiskey drinks, the crisp refreshment of vodka tonics, the debonair charm of gin martinis, the tropical breeziness of pina coladas and daiquiris — and that’s just scratching the surface. There are floral cocktails, herbal drinks and everything in between. But guess what? The world of beers is just as wild for flavor!

Yuengling, as you all darn well know, is America’s oldest brewery. And if you grew up in Pennsylvania as I did, its flagship brew was likely one of the first to pass your lips. If you grew up with Yuengling and love it, but want to branch out a little, here are five more beers to try. As a Bucknell University alum of a certain age, I spent many nights at the Bull Run Inn (aka “The Bar”) downing $4 pitchers of Yuengling and savoring its easy-drinking smoothness.

As I stroll the aisles of my favorite beer stores this time of year, I’m surrounded on all sides by a flotilla of summer-themed brews, from cases of lemon-tinged shandies to six-packs of fruity blonde ales. These thirst-quenching styles do the trick, but there’s a funkier alternative out there that happens to be original summer seasonal: the Belgian style known as the saison or farmhouse ale. Here’s a little more about saisons, and why they are the original summer beer.

The minute we moved into our new house, which came complete with a coveted basement refrigerator, I took a cue from what I saw at the bars and threw a couple of pint glasses in the freezer. It became a habit to grab a frozen glass as we pulled a bottle from the fridge for drinking on the back porch. But as I learned more about beer serving and tasting over the past few years, I wondered if I might be doing something wrong by keeping my glasses icy cold. Was I revealing myself as an amateur?

Just like bacon is the gateway meat, Blue Moon seems to be the introductory brew for those just starting to dip their toes into the waters of craft beers. And although Blue Moon has big-name financial backing (it’s owned by MillerCoors), it’s emblematic of a light and citrusy style of ale that’s been brewed in Europe for centuries.

To cap off this week’s series on my All-American Beer Bottling Party, I wanted to share some of my best do-ahead tips to — hopefully! — reduce the stress many of us often feel in the days leading up to, and the day of, a big dinner party. I have not always been the world’s most calm and collected hostess (…ahem…), and these tips have been hard-earned. But they’re easy! More like habits, really.

This is a very exciting spring for books here at The Kitchn! A couple weeks ago we told you about my new book, Bakeless Sweets, and this week we’re turning the spotlight to another book from our team: True Brews, by Emma Christensen, our very own recipe editor. Emma has written about beer for The Kitchn for many years, and she has become a knowledgeable expert in brewing it as well — and her new book shows you how you can make it for yourself.