Brewing Techniques and Advice


How to Serve Beer on Nitro

Few things are as mesmerizing to a beer enthusiast as the cascading effect from a perfect nitro pour.

Decoction Shortcuts

The decoction process offers the promise of deeper malt character and clearer beer, but it takes extra time and involves extra processes that many brewers find too daunting. We have some alternatives that will get you the same results, but in less time.

The Right Way to Steep Specialty Grains

Avoid introducing off-flavors into your extract-based beer by following these steps for steeping grains.

How to Cold Crash Your Homebrew

Cold crashing is a tried-and-true way to clear up beer that involves no seaweed or fish guts whatsoever, just gravity and a cold nap. Here’s how to do it.

Make Your Best Tropical Stout

The trick to a tropical stout is making a beer that is sweet (but not cloying), fruity (but without the kinds of by-products that ramped-up esters tend to create), alcoholic (but not hot), and roasty (but not dry). Here’s how.

DIY: Hop Spider

A hop spider allows you to add hops to your boil without the nasty sludge from pellets or the leaves from the cones that can clog your equipment. It’s easy to build, and we will show you how!

Hops and Lagers

Hops-forward lagers may be the last genuinely unexplored area of beer composition and style: let’s enjoy it and help define it.

When to Use a Blow-Off Tube

Most of the time, I do just fine with the standard-issue airlocks you find at homebrew stores nationwide. But sometimes, an airlock just doesn’t cut it. And that’s when I bust out the heavy artillery. I’m talking about the blow-off tube.

Make Your Best English IPA

The English IPA is another iteration of the popular style and is more balanced than its American counterpart.

Single Barrel, Double Barrel? No Barrel!

Getting your hands on a barrel for brewing can be a pricey and lengthy experience. Learn to get the same flavors with ingredients that are much easier to get and are kinder on the wallet, too!