Contents

This encyclopedia is written for home brewers striving to improve beer quality by making better raw material choices and using better brewing technology.

• Beer production
  • Milling
  • Mashing
  • Background: Starch • Sugars and dextrins • Protein • Lipids • Beta-glucans and arabinoxylans • Phenolic compounds • Oxidation
  • Tests: Iodine testing
  • Additives: Tannins
  • Modern sour beer and Kettle souring
• Off-flavors
  • Hydrogen sulfide
  • Tetrahydropyridine (THP)
• Microbes and their products
  • Pellicle
• Equipment
  • Reverse Osmosis (RO) water purification systems • TDS testing
  • Passivation

Recent blog posts

Think like a scientist: Sieve testing

(created by Adam on Wed Feb 14, 2024)

In this series we take a look at how we can apply the scientific method to our home brewing practice, helping you learn to think like a scientist. Here we will investigate granulometry, commonly known as "sieve testing", which is a way to objectively measure how well the grain was crushed during the milling process. What is sieve testing? In a nutshell, a sample of milled grain is passed through a series of sieves, separating it into fractions based on the particle size. read more

Science, The Foundation of Modern Brewing

(created by Adam on Wed Feb 14, 2024)

Imagine the following scenario with two brewers: A guy named Charlie is brewing a beer. On brew day as the wort begins to boil, he opens the freezer and grabs a handful of hops from a large bag. He tosses the hops into the wort. A guy named Steve is also brewing a beer. During preparation for brew day, Steve looked at the alpha acid level of his hops and entered that into a calculator to determine the quantity of hops needed to achieve the level of bitterness appropriate for the beer style. On brew day, he uses a scale to measure the calculated quantity of hops and then adds them to the wort at the start of the boil. read more

For the Love of Sours: Cocktails

(created by Adam on Wed Feb 14, 2024)

My enthusiasm for high-quality sour drinks doesn’t stop at sour beer or tart fruit wines. It goes much deeper than that… Recently I’ve been indulging my love of great sours in the form of mixed drinks. The basic recipe for a sour is 1) liquor, 2) citrus juice, and 3) a sweetener to balance the acidity. read more