I love my smoked beers, love my scotch style ales, and I really love the Wee Heavy’s that are just a bit smokey.  Here is my Wee Heavy with Peat smoked malt.  Be sure to check out the photos at the end! (more…)

Earlier in the year Lee Williams (aka @hoptopia) and I had been talking about brewing a beer together. In May Lee, Stevie Caldarola, and I finally did.  We both wanted to brew something in an english style. I wanted to include rye and Lee wanted to use Northdown hops, so we came up with this recipe.  Unfortunately the Northdown hops were not available when we brewed this, so we substituted Challenger hops instead. As always, please use this recipe and if you brew it, let me know how it turned out and what you might change or what you did change. (more…)

Inspired by the ingredients from Iron Brewer (batch 2 Round 1) I brewed this Organic Wit with Cardamon.  I’m extremely happy with this beer, especially for a first run.  First, it was extremely well received at the Get Real New York Belgian Ale fest. Then this beer was one of the 3 runner-ups in the New Brew Thursday / Bison Brewing homebrew competition.  And finally a Bronze metal at the 15th Annual NJ State Fair Homebrew Competition for cat 21A (spiced).  Not bad for a first time recipe with such a potent ingredient like Cardamon. Check out the recipe below.  If you use this recipe, please leave a comment and let us know what you thought of it.

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Brewed for my wife’s birthday, this was a fantastic beer. If you want an extra punch of aroma, dry hop the beer for a couple of days.  If you brew this recipe, please leave a comment with some feedback, Cheers! (more…)

This is a wonderful recipe.  This Saaz Pilsner is such a refreshing beer, but I do suggest making a giant starter for this beer.

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About a year and half ago I brewed the second version of this Roggenbier which was roughly 42% Rye.  I really enjoyed it, but wanted to do it again with even more rye.  I love the bite the rye gives the beer.  This time I bumped up the rye to 60% and it is super nice.  I also used a trappist yeast in this version to give the beer a fruity punch.  I know it is no longer a Roggenbier, but oh well!

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