MdV: Merchant du Vin beer
e-newsletter –
When Samuel Smith's Winter Welcome
Ale first came to the
http://www.merchantduvin.com/pages/1_about/Samuel_Smith_Winter_Welcome.gif
Click now, and have the perfect
holiday gift for the beer lover in your life: our e-store now features Bar
Kits, a selection of accessories from some of our fine breweries. Check ‘em out at:
http://store.merchantduvin.com/e/mdv
BEER = COLLEGE: Merchant du Vin teams up with Bellevue
Community College for a class that will teach beer history, styles,
ingredients, and some brewing techniques. Includes tasting! Held
at the Pike Pub in downtown
http://at-campus.net/bccsched/index.html?print=/bccsched/output/course_8000.htm
http://www.merchantduvin.com/pages/1_about/news.html
Beer Chat from the
At a restaurant, don’t you appreciate
marinara, pad thai, or baba ganouj more if you have made the same dish at
home?
Many homebrewers understand and
appreciate classic brewing styles deeply because they have replicated them in
their own homes – they tried commercial examples, chose ingredients, learned
techniques, tasted the final product critically, and made adjustments on the
next batch. In a manner similar to a
cook who has been perfecting a recipe for years, people who brew their own beer
understand the classic beer styles. A
very large proportion of American professional brewers began as homebrewers.
Currently, homebrewers have great
resources: books, clubs, websites and newsgroups. Other than running water and a kitchen range,
brewers need very little to start: a good-sized kettle (16-quart or bigger), a
bottle capper, a siphon hose and airlock, a fermenting vessel, and a plastic
bottling bucket. The bottles to be
filled can be acquired for free by saving your empty store-bought beer bottles,
and the recipe ingredients can be purchased at your local homebrew store or via
the internet.
Most homebrewers start with malt
extract, a syrup made from malted barley that has already been mashed and
concentrated. (See
Some homebrewers choose to invest in
extra equipment, and make their brew day a bit longer: they start with malt,
and mash & lauter it themselves.
This allows some additional flexibility for the committed (or obsessive)
brewer – “all grain” (meaning “no extract”) brewers have more options to
influence the final flavor of their beer.
Likewise, brewers who figure out a way to keep fermenting beer in the
45-50 deg F range can homebrew lagers. (See
Homebrewing had a difficult
reputation during Prohibition, because ingredients were hard to get and
technical information was sketchy; furthermore, homebrewers couldn’t buy great
commercial examples to use as a benchmark!
Since the 1970s, homebrewing has been legal in the
Many brew clubs sponsor classes,
competitions, and beer events. Typically,
folks who brew their own beer enjoy sharing opinions . . . and a cool
pint. They know the classic brewing
styles; they push the envelope; they appreciate flavor. They choose fine beer, even if somebody else
brewed it, and homebrewers have been one of the sparks of the the Good Beer
Revolution.
Merchant
