Category Archives: Handcrafted Ales

My adventures in making my own ale.

T-10 Pumpkin Ale

Brewed: 10/23/2008 Knowing that the fam was getting together on Thanksgiving, I thought it might be a hoot to have some good old fashioned Pumpkin Ale, not just something with some pumpkin pie spices in it, but a real honest to goodness made with some real live pumpkin ale. I located a tasty looking recipe

T-9: Inklings Ale

C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams used to meet in the Eagle and Child pub in Oxford. They’d share a pint and conversation about their literary works, theology, or whatever other ideas tickled their fancy. Shortly after beginning this new hobby of homebrewing, I got it into my head that it would be cool

Not dark but dim

Regular followers of this site may remember my logs of homebrewed adventure from last summer. Those logs took me up to batch T-8. Then…nothing. No posts to the site. That doesn’t mean that I’ve been idle. It just means that for any number of various reasons (laziness, lack of energy, forgetfullness, disappointment) I haven’t posted

MMM mmm gooood

Over at Basic Brewing they had a podcast about “marketing” homebrewed ales to folks who might not necessarily be open to the idea. Turns out I was already planning one of their top ideas. Last Saturday night, we had about 10-12 folks over to the house for a blind tasting of six pale ales. We

T8: Simcoe Pale Ale

I was pretty excited about batch 8. Besides being the last brew in the summer of Pale Ales, it was also going to be the first ale I was going to make according to my own original recipe. Sure, I’ve tweaked kits here and there in the past year, but I hadn’t actually started something

T7: American IPA- Alpha King

The Morefields were visiting during the turn-over between batches, so Cindy got to see the entire brewing process, if in reverse. She helped me bottle T-6 and then got to brew T-7 with me. Since Cindy has developed quite a taste for hops, I chose G&G’s American IPA–Alpha King, which features 10–TEN!–hop additions. Almost 6

T6: American Pale Ale

Batch Six turned out to be a smooth as silk operation. I didn’t really have any concerns about the recipe itself since I was simply using the G&G American Pale Ale ingredient kit. I’ve said it before; I’ll say it again. G&G provide excellent service and excellent products; they are what a store should be.

The Pale Summer

The Pale Summer May: English Pale Ale July 1: American Pale Ale July 14: American IPA August 12: Simcoe Pale Ale Ever have one of those times when you complete a series of tasks or perhaps go through a period of time, look back on it, and realize there was a theme going through it,

T6: American Pale Ale: The Plan

I’d purchased this ingredient kit when I thought I’d be able to reuse the yeast from T5. However, one must roll with the punches. Inspired by the difficulties of the last batch, I picked up some new equipment that I am keen to try out. Namely, an aerator, a stick-on thermometer, an auto-siphon, and a

T5: Limping Dog Pale Ale

My fifth batch of homebrew turned into something of an Odyssey: what should have been a short two-week proceeding stretched out into two months of bother. What follows is something of a journal of that odyssey. 5/3 What with the Grand Cru and Porter in the cellar, I think I need something normal-ish, so I