Belgium’s dark, strong ales are among the most complex and impressive beers in the canon—yet extract brewers can tackle them as well as anyone, as long as we pay attention to a few key points.
By taking a step back to think more deeply about why we love fruit—and why some fruit beers really shine—we can better plan a truly great one. Randy Mosher peels back the layers and gets to the core of it.
Extract brewing provides a more-than-capable canvas for getting creative with the unusual fruits that arrive this time of year. Annie Johnson breaks it down.
You don’t need a truckload of grain and a giant mash tun to brew a big, rich imperial stout perfect for laying down for months—this one is right in the extract brewer’s wheelhouse.
Maybe that P in IPA can stand for “pitch-black.” Once again helping us to extract the most characterful beer from extract brewing, Annie Johnson has the details on Cascadian dark ale, aka American black ale or black IPA.
Besides a hearty embrace of spicy Saaz hops, this partial-mash recipe for a Czech-style pilsner includes a method for pressurized fermentation in a corny keg.
Die-hards will say you need to go all-grain to brew a great pilsner. They’ll also say you need strict temperature control. That’s fine—we don’t have to share our beer or our tricks with them.
Brewers are in the early days of experimenting with liquid hop terpenes—incredibly potent isolates of aromatic compounds that can deliver a big boost to the IPA bouquet.
Are you getting the most you can out of the hops you use? Could you get even more? Brandon Capps thinks so. He’s been exploring the limits and potential of brewing with extracted terpenes.
With saison’s high attenuation, delicate body, fermentation-driven complexities, and lasting foam, it would be easy to assume that extract brewers are at a disadvantage. Not necessarily, as Annie Johnson explains.