Beer Brewing

Building a yeast bank with glycerin stocks has extended my brewing significantly — strains I obtained years ago remain viable and available without the recurring cost of purchasing new yeast packs, and my collection of over a dozen preserved strains

Belgian lace — the foam ring patterns left on the glass as you drink — became something I actively engineered rather than hoped for after understanding the specific proteins and hop compounds responsible for it.

Residual alkalinity and its relationship to dark malt roastiness is a water chemistry subtlety that took me several stout batches to fully appreciate — the “roasty bite” in poorly water-adjusted dark beers is a harsh, acrid, almost metallic sharpness

The “5.2 is the magic mash pH” myth was one of the most persistent simplifications I had to actively unlearn — the idea that targeting exactly 5.

Biotransformation was the concept that finally explained results I’d been seeing empirically without understanding — certain yeasts pitched into dry-hopped beers produced tropical flavour compounds I hadn’t added as hop varieties and couldn’t account

Reverse osmosis water was the solution to a water chemistry problem I couldn’t fully solve any other way — the bicarbonate alkalinity in my municipal water source was high enough that the acid additions required to hit pale lager target …

The phosphoric versus lactic acid decision for mash pH adjustment is one I revisited after a few years of using lactic acid exclusively — the flavour contribution of lactic acid at the doses needed for significant pH correction in high-alkalinity …

The sulphate-to-chloride ratio was the water chemistry concept that most changed how I think about flavour balance in beer — I had been adding minerals to hit target ppm values for individual ions without understanding that the relationship between s

Water chemistry was the brewing variable I understood last and improved most dramatically when I finally engaged with it seriously — I’d been removing chlorine with campden tablets for years and thinking that was the full extent of water chemistry …

Automatic keg washers occupy a specific niche in homebrewing equipment — they address a genuinely unpleasant task (manually cleaning corny kegs involves significant physical awkwardness given the keg geometry) with an automated pump-driven system tha