Hello!
I started brewing 20 years ago in my hometown of New York City, going straight to extract recipes after using up the kit that came with my homebrew gear. Soon after that I got into partial mashes and then brewed like a fiend for many years. After a while, I brewed off and on, and also explored fermenting other foodstuffs, such as kombucha, miso, pickles, wines, etc.
I've been doing exclusively all-grain brews more recently, and after moving to England last year I started up brewing again. I had a one-gallon BIAB setup but that didn't last long after my husband declared that I was not producing enough beer!
I now have a 20-liter Braumeister system, which is absolutely fantastic. For those of you not familiar with it, it uses one vessel for everything: a HLT to heat the water; you insert a mash "tube" inside, in which you put your malts and lift up and drain after mashing; then you do your boil in the HLT. It's got a pump to circulate the wort during mashing and programmable temperature controls, so step mashing is easy.
When I first moved to England I thought it was going to be AWESOME sampling all the wonderful British ales. Well, a couple of them are really fantastic but, like most things, most of the beer out there is simply mediocre -- and they are very conducive to hangovers, even in small quantities. I soon started to miss the variety offered by the American craft scene, so I decided I'd just have to make my own. I love good lagers, Belgian everythings, obscure styles, and especially the experimental stuff by the likes of Dogfish Head that you just don't get here.
I started sharing my homebrew with people I know and they're really blown away. People are offering to buy cases of it (even people who have never tried it!), so I guess my beer must be pretty good. Or maybe they just like the different styles.
I'm really interested in yeast. I love how they contribute to the variety of flavors in the beer universe and how they behave in different environments. I have the most respect for them because they do all the alchemy that goes into making beer.
Anyway, that's probably more than you want to know about me. I look forward to talkin' beer with folks!
I started brewing 20 years ago in my hometown of New York City, going straight to extract recipes after using up the kit that came with my homebrew gear. Soon after that I got into partial mashes and then brewed like a fiend for many years. After a while, I brewed off and on, and also explored fermenting other foodstuffs, such as kombucha, miso, pickles, wines, etc.
I've been doing exclusively all-grain brews more recently, and after moving to England last year I started up brewing again. I had a one-gallon BIAB setup but that didn't last long after my husband declared that I was not producing enough beer!
I now have a 20-liter Braumeister system, which is absolutely fantastic. For those of you not familiar with it, it uses one vessel for everything: a HLT to heat the water; you insert a mash "tube" inside, in which you put your malts and lift up and drain after mashing; then you do your boil in the HLT. It's got a pump to circulate the wort during mashing and programmable temperature controls, so step mashing is easy.
When I first moved to England I thought it was going to be AWESOME sampling all the wonderful British ales. Well, a couple of them are really fantastic but, like most things, most of the beer out there is simply mediocre -- and they are very conducive to hangovers, even in small quantities. I soon started to miss the variety offered by the American craft scene, so I decided I'd just have to make my own. I love good lagers, Belgian everythings, obscure styles, and especially the experimental stuff by the likes of Dogfish Head that you just don't get here.
I started sharing my homebrew with people I know and they're really blown away. People are offering to buy cases of it (even people who have never tried it!), so I guess my beer must be pretty good. Or maybe they just like the different styles.
I'm really interested in yeast. I love how they contribute to the variety of flavors in the beer universe and how they behave in different environments. I have the most respect for them because they do all the alchemy that goes into making beer.
Anyway, that's probably more than you want to know about me. I look forward to talkin' beer with folks!
