Coastal Brew Day Blog

  What’s Wrong With My Beer?   Sometimes bad things happen to good brews. Seemingly everything can go correctly on your brewday, but in the end, an element fouls up, or a mistake was made, and your beer has to go down the drain. The list below, organized into types of mistakes, identifies and solves some of the most common fouling of beers. Sometimes the fix is simple, like aging, or adding an element during secondary fermentation. Other times, it's more tragic and you have to pitch your entire batch due to infection. So if you have issues with your beer, use this as a resource to help you identify and fix the issue. Group 1 - Acetaldehyde (Green Apples): Not enough oxygenation when before pitching yeast, yeast needs more time to work.  Solution: Agitate beer in fermenter, repitch yeast, let beer age longer. - Diacety l (Buttery, Movie Popcorn, Butterscotch): Potentially infected batch. Caused by temperature fluctuation, improper sanitation, lack of nutrients and oxygena...

Tips and Tricks, Vol. 1  We're brewing another Belgian Stout this week, so if you want to learn more about that, see a recipe (a really good one) and get into that big beer world, check out the Bourbon Barrel Belgian Stout entry. So instead of repeating ourselves, we are going to help you out with some tips and tricks we've learned along the way. We've made pretty much every mistake you can possibly make, so we decided to help you not live like us.  - How to avoid bottle bombs : Bottle bombs, or when over-carbonation creates a foam volcano billowing out of the bottle, or even exploding due to the extra pressure. Exploding bottles can take out the neighboring bottles as well, a tragic event that does occasionally happen. To avoid this, and under-carbonation as well, a good practice is to stir your primed beer (beer with priming solution) well before your bottle. After every 4-6 bottles you fill, or 5 minutes if you take your time, stir the mixture again. This will ensure tha...

Witbier The Witbier, or Belgian Wit, comes from a very specific place. Hoegaarden, a small village in the Flanders region of Belgium, was the birthplace of the Wit all the way back in 1445. The beer grew in popularity and the enclaves surrounding Hoegaarden desired it at a feverish pace. Its popularity carried it well into the 20th century, with 13 breweries operating in the 19th century. However, after the destruction two massive wars caused the region, the breweries had to cease operations, with the last one shuttering in 1957. About ten years after that, however, a native of the region named Pierre Celis revived the Wit in a small brewery he started in the barn on his family dairy farm. His Wit grew, and the Hoegaarden brewery started to succeed in the town for which it's named. Since Celis brought the style back, it has steadily regained its popularity. In the United States, commercial Wits like Blue Moon and Shock Top are produced by the mega breweries, while craft breweries o...

DOPPELBOCK As it is with so many European brewing styles, the Doppelbock was developed by the Monks. Friars in Bavaria adapted a traditional Einbecker beer, what we know as a Bock, and made it bigger, darker, and more ready for the annual celebrations that Germans take so seriously.  The Bock was created in the German city of Einbeck. Einbeck, a smallish city (about the size of New London) with a rich brewing tradition, was once part of the Hanseatic Trading League during the 14th-17th centuries. One of its main functions for the League, other than being a trading post, Einbeck was a brewing region. Their local brew was the lager that eventually became known as a Bock.  As the Hansa League expanded south, the Bavarian brewers wanted in on the action. The monks of t South German region enjoyed the beer of Einbeck so much that they decided to make their own version of it. Things got interesting when the Bavarian vocal dialect bastardized the town name Einbeck to "ein bock," or ...

BLACK IPA The Black IPA is highly unusual beer. For starters, the name itself is oxymoronical. The "P" in IPA stands for Pale, so having something that is simultaneously black and pale can be confusing. It is, in fact, the best of both worlds. This esoteric brew combines the hoppy dryness of typical IPAs and the roasty characteristics of dark ales and lagers. Its color is, of course, black, and thus the style of beer. The Black IPA is a very new style, created by a brewpub in Burlington, Vermont in the early 1990s. Since then it has seen a growth in popularity among the craft beer circuit through the 2000s and with homebrewers up until today. Its presence has waned in recent years as small brewers have pivoted to the hazy New England IPAs that have dominated the craft scene for the last five years or so.  Even though the Black IPA is among the youngest styles of beer, its roots can be seen back in the 19th century. In a beer book published in 1888 called The Theory and Practi...

Red Ale   If there were ever a beer that a person would assume a long and storied brewing history, it would be the Irish Red Ale. That assumption would be incorrect. While it's true that Red Ales have been brewed for generations in Ireland, its history is essentially that of the English pub beer. The Red is, and has always been, an easy to drink beer that is a staple of pubs throughout the years.  The Red Ale is immensely popular in the craft beer world, as smaller batch brewers have taken the more popular Reds, such as Smithwick's and Killian's, and added their own twists to them. As the beer itself is relatively boring, it takes well to adjuncts like hot peppers and rye. Red Ales are also used by small brewers as an introduction into the craft beer universe. Its easy-to-drink nature and moderate alcohol level make it a perfect beer to pair with food or casually sip during the course of an evening.  The red color of the beer is a result of specialty malts. Roasted barley...

Sad Christmas Porter   Generally speaking, holiday ales all have certain similar characteristics. Spiced, hearty, and aromatic, these beers are often called Winter Warmers. Winter Warmers or Holiday Ales generally aren't considered a traditional beer style, however their roots go back centuries. Many Winter offerings can trace their lineage back to the English or Belgian Strong Ales and Wassail of bygone eras.  Wassail is both a drink and a celebration. Warm cider or mead is flavored with a combination of citrus peels, apples, and mulling spices to create what we today would call a mulled cider. Wassailing traditions are a Norse creation, and Vikings brought the Winter events to what is now England during their era of conquer. Many times the brew was communal with people drinking out of special Wassail bowls together in the town taverns. In England, the Yarlington Wassail has been held since the 17th century, and it is quite the event. According to Wikipedia: " The   Yarl...