What's Brewing

Currently Drinking

Hefeweizen. I did a split batch, with a basic 50% wheat grain bill, and used two different yeasts from the club bank. This one is the Lubsch.

In Keg

Cyser MM
Cyser MCMLXXXXIX
Cyser MCMLXXXXVI
Cyser MCMLXXXXVII
Cyser MCMLXXXXVIII. I used currants in this one.

In Carboy

Summer wheat beer. And this one uses the Firkins ale yeast. For some reason it's taking a little longer to ferment out than the other half of the batch.

In bottles

Cyser MCMLXXXXV
Cyser MCMLXXXXIV

The Cysers listed above are something I do once a year. Cyser is a term for a brew where the liquid is apple cider and most of the fermentable sugars are honey. Every October, the Boston Wort Processors have a picnic in an apple orchard, and have cider pressed without preservatives, and with a mix of styles of apples (rather than all Macintosh, which is a common way to make cider). Alden Marshall, beekeeper, comes, and sells honey by the gallon to anyone who wants it. So I buy a gallon of honey, and 4 or five gallons of cider, and make a batch of cyser.

It's fairly strong, and not as suitable for drinking the evening before the morning you want to get any work done as the beer I make is, so I actually seem to make more cyser than I drink, which is why there are so many years listed for this style. But it gets better with age -- the 5 year old stuff is noticeably smoother than the stuff that's only a couple of years old.

Yeast Started

Brewing links

Here are some previous successful recipes.
The Boston Wort Processors Home Page. If you're anywhere near the Boston area, this is a good place to go to find out more about home brewing, and even if you're not, it has a good collection of information, links, pictures, etc.
Article I wrote for "Brewprint", the newsletter of the Boston Wort Processors, after my trip to Japan.
Article about the beer (and other drinking) in Spain, after my first trip to the Daroca Early Music Festival.
Norwegian beer article. No, I haven't been to Norway -- this is an email interview with a Norwegian friend from the abcusers music publishing list.

Last modified: 2002-09-13 09:22, 2007
www.laymusic.org/brewing.html