I bought a couple Rubbermaid coolers to use for my All-Grain brewing, but the one thing they didn’t come with was a thermometer.  I had been using a digital probe thermometer until one brew session the temp was off by over 30 degrees.  last time I checked water doesn’t boil at 185° in New Jersey.  So after a bit of searching on the internet for cheap ways to add a thermometer, I found a forum on homebrew talk that used a rubber stopper and a simple probe thermometer to inexpensively solve this problem.

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I posted on twitter a link to my latest homebrew recipe, a Schwarzbier (a German Black Lager),  Soon after the post I received two tweets.  One was a 140 character rant on many homebrewers not sharing recipes and the other was a thank you for posting the recipe.  This got me thinking about why homebrewers can be very secretive about their recipes; I thought, rather think, the beer community is about sharing and helping fellow brewers.  I may be naive in my thinking, but read the rest of this and let me know what you think.

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I’m a huge fan of Schwarzbiers otherwise know as black lagers.  Being a fan I had to brew one.  Here is the recipe:

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Last week I ordered some new yeast, but when I got it one of the Wyeast packs was already swollen.  I probably could have sent it back because I’m a pretty good customer at this retailer and they have great customer service, but I decided to do an “emergency” brew.  So I just threw this recipe together.  I knew I wanted to brew an IPA or Pale ale with the yeast and the several ounces of hops I had in the freezer.  To be honest it started as a Pale ale, but I kept adding more and more hops, because I do that sometimes.

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Ever heard of Patersbier? Can’t blame you, not many people have, there are no commercial versions. This beer is only brewed for the Trappist monks as a lower abv beer. Since I’d never heard of this beer, I bought an All Grain Kit from Norther Brewer, because it sounded like a great summer beer. But alas, like most kits I buy I can’t leave well enough alone, I need to make it my own…

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I don’t know why this style of beer is not made more often in the states.  This beer is a light bodied with a low bitterness, but dark in color and full of malty flavor.  The best part of this malty beer, very low ABV 4.3%.  That’s right a real flavorful session beer.

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