I grew up thinking I knew what Wassailing was. That is such a strange word. What exactly is a wassal and why would you want to wassail it? Ya, to explain it to the young we were always told that we were going caroling. For most of us it would end there, an old antiquated…
I am probably beating a dead horse at this point. But fall is my favorite season. The fall seasonal beers are some of my favorites. What do you do when you are at a place where you are less likely to find a good variety of beers? Sometimes you are stuck with the lesser of…
I did it. I bottled the evil beast. I ended up with 9.5 champagne bottles of sake. Not my best haul but not too bad. As I write this I have a glass beside me and I am enjoying the fruits of my labor. The simple verdict, I like it. Now let’s get a bit…
It has been a while. I should have done this I don’t know how long ago. I could give excuses and reasons and all sorts of other things that don’t really matter. But ya know, life happens sometimes. I transferred the sake to the bottling bucket recently. I haven’t bottled it yet. I had hit…
It seems forever since we have talked about this. The sake is should finally be done. During the time of its birth quite a bit has happened. One of the big time events being the birth of my grand daughter. It seems that lagering the sake in one of my kegerators has worked in my…
The start of American Craft Beer Week found me at Central City Tap House in downtown Kalamazoo. They were hosting a Bell’s tap take over and I was hoping to find their Kal-Haven ale. A beer commemorating the Kal-Haven trail. The Kal-Haven trail follows the old railway from Kalamazoo to South Haven. This 33.5 mile…
I mowed today. We don’t have a riding mower. We don’t even have a typical gas powered mower. No, our mower is an old model push mower. It runs on people power. With the amount of rain we have had, our grass was pretty long. Today was hot. Imagine what that must have been like.…
As I mentioned last week, we will be exploring session beers this month. To start the exploration we will look at a couple classic session beer styles. Both of these come from classic beer styles. These beers are the English Style Bitters and the Mild ale. When looking at these beers it is almost a…
April is an important month in the world of beer (and alcohol in general). April 7th is the official day that small beer was allowed in the US when prohibition was in the process of being repealed. Small beer was defined as beer of 4% alcohol or less. The 7th is referred to as mini…
Lager beers take a bit more time than ales. They also require some more specialized equipment than ales. These contraints make them a bit more special when you are able to make your own. I consider myself lucky that I have the space to add them into my line up from time to time. With…
