homebrew -

by snebbu

Hey Ma, Send Me to Beer Camp!

ATTN: Homebrewers, Self-Proclaimed Beer-Aficionados, Bearded Men, and “Self-Employed”

Sierra Nevada Brewery announced the 4th Annual Beer Camp – two days of paradise for beer lovers. Sierra Nevada is welcoming a select 20 beer lovers to their brewing campus in Chico, California. The catch? A creative, intriguing, interesting, and most likely bearded two-minute video entry illustrating why you deserve to attend beer camp. 10 submissions will be voted on by the common folk. The other 10 winners will be selected by “employees from departments all over the brewery.”

Attack of the Clones!

Every so often, homebrewers have that moment when they taste some great suds and begin scripting a recipe that they hope will produce the same results as the craft beer being enjoyed. So begins the search for a clone recipe. Sometimes third party clone recipes are available, and if you’re lucky, a brewery may release a recipe. After all, many brewmasters and craft beer CEO’s started as homebrewers. Now, the next wave: Flying Dog Brewery is releasing their own clone kits – STOVETOPPERS.

These kits include EVERY ingredient needed to brew an all-grain batch of beer (even the yeast!) All-Grain: you create the extract from the malt and then add all of the other ingredients that you would to an extract brew or extract/specialty grains brew (all grain = do it like the pros do).

Flying Dog Brewmaster Matt Brophy explains “Homebrewers spread the gospel of craft beer through their craft and ours, so I think breweries have a responsibility to foster and inspire the homebrewing community.” Agreed.

100 Ways to Use Beer in Food and Drinks #1: Pizza

In case you thought we were bluffing in our quest to make 100 foods and drinks better by adding beer, we weren’t. Here’s dish #1.

I like pizza. I love beer. So why hasn’t anyone thought to put beer in the pizza? Well it doesn’t matter now, because I did. I’ve long realized that homemade pizza (with store-bought sauce and crust) is better than delivery by a long shot, so homemade pizza with beer in it should be even better, right?

Last night, my girlfriend and I tried it out. I figured it would be cheese, broccoli, green peppers, and pepperoni, with a beer-spiked sauce. Then my wonderful girlfriend picked up a package of pancetta to add in to the mix. To balance that out, we went healthy with a whole wheat crust.

I had a batch of my “fuggly winter Belgian pale ale” and some Yeungling Lager in the fridge. At first I thought I’d use the lager, since it is a smoother brew with less of a hoppy flavor. Then I rethought, and figured the earthy tastes of the fuggles dry hopped in the beer along with the cinnamon I added to the beer would complement the pizza well. Plus, I brewed the “fuggly” beer myself. I figured there’d be more reason to brag if it was good with my own brew. It was.