Brewsci.com

Just thought you should know that when you type puppy into google you get 61,800,000 sites but when you search for beer you get 145,000,000 sites.  But when you search for the two together you get this.  What does this prove? That it is time for me to go to bed.

I know you have missed us.  We have missed you as well.  Well we missed Zeke most of all, but who wouldn’t miss a puppy that loves the taste of beer.  Things have been a bit hectic for the Brewsci Boys (as we refer to ourselves hoping it will land us our own TV show).  I show this clip for two reasons.

1) To prove to my mom that there is money to be made off of talking about beer

2) Because Denver is where the annual Great American Beer Festival is held each October

Why should you care about the GABF?  Because it is one place where you can meet hundreds of brewers face to face and see the pride they take in each barrel of beer they produce.  It is also a great place to meet great beer bloggers, and to try beers you will find nowhere else.  This year marked the first of what will become an annual retreat to the Mile High City to bask in the culture that is beer.

Since this trip, we have brewed a festive pumpkin ale that tastes of pumpkin pie in a bottle and our very own American Style IPA (India Pale Ale) using homegrown hops (from a home, not ours).

Also, in the spirit of giving.  We gave ourselves Christmas and Birthday gifts of the brewing variety.  Our first purchase was a 60,000 BTU/hour camp stove that reduces the boiling time of 8 gallons of water from 90 minutes to 55 and our own kegging kit.  We can now produce our own 5 gallons of beer on tap.

Finally, we have decided that the next year will be spent making great beers to be shared with family and friends, learning more about what it takes to make a great beer with each new batch, and turning our thoughts towards just what kind of brewery we would run if given the chance.

Happy Holidays

The first people to utilize the concept of pH, made famous by the Danish scientist Soren P.L. Sorenson who demystified the concept by establishing the pH scale, were in fact Brewers.  Brewers understood that different kinds of malts and water from varying locations could produce extremely different beers.  With this knowledge, brew scientists were able to determine that the combination of alkaline properties of the water and the general acidity of grains resulted in specific pH levels.

These specific pH environments activated different enzymes that cause the sugar conversion while mashing the grains and resulted in different beer styles.  That means that a brewer could use the same grains but use the tap water from either side of the historic golden gate bridge and get two different tasting beers (the same thing can be applied to whatever might be historic in Idaho).  So the next time someone argues that you are wasting your science degree by brewing, you can respond that you are just going back to your scientific roots!

So after a long time of being reluctant to post, I open my promising Blogging career discussing one of the the more pressing economic issues of the current day.

In light of the recent subprime crisis, the chapter 11 bankruptcy of Lehman brothers, and the financial struggles of AIG I ask myself: How are we going to afford beer in our new economy?  While mulling over the depressing outlook of a world with out beer, that I came to the realization that we must conserve.  Thus I did my due diligence as a researcher and came across a study done by the fine institution Guinness.

Guinness estimated that over 245,000 gallons of beer are LOST each year in Great Britain to the beards and mustaches of the drinkers.  That is an astounding 2,613,333 and a third 12 oz beers or $10,453,333.33 (it is only 3,920,000 at happy hour and if you’re cheap and don’t leave a tip) in Britain alone.  Knowing that the United States is much larger then Great Britain, our rich history of wasting things and the strange facial hair fads of resent memory who knows how high that number could be!

In conclusion, I ask the loyal readers of brewsci.com to spread the awareness this unjust waste of beer and economic resources.

Living in Berkeley maybe it’s a worthy cause for the now causeless tree sitters? … although that would require most of them to shave so not likely.

It’s been awhile but we just tasted the chocolate stout.  Hands down this is our best beer yet.  It’s only a week old but has made us so proud already.  Well balanced and complex it is all we could have asked for in a stout.