The 2022 Sunshine Challenge was an outstanding success! Relive some of the moments from the entire event in this online gallery.

Clear beer can be a thing of beauty, and for some styles, it may be a necessity. The term "clear" or "clarity" is used as a defining appearance characteristic in over 50 sub-styles of beer in the BJCP 2021 Style Guidelines. Somewhat frustratingly, a crystal clear American Lager will only garner you 3 points on your total score - assuming all the other appearance characteristics meet the judge's marks.  Whatever the reason you're looking to get the clearest beer possible, we, as home brewers, have a few options in the way of Fining Agents to help us out at virtually every step of [...]

IPA might be the most common three-letter description you hear in a local brewery these days. Still, I'm looking for a different trio when I check out the menu – ESB. EBS, Best Bitter, and Ordinary Bitter beers are some of the most satisfying, malt-forward, not-so-bitter (as the name suggests) beers in a wide range of beer styles. These styles will appear now and then at our local breweries, and it's usually a treat when they do, much like "Burton Ernie," recently found at Deadwords Brewing. They also don't tend to last long on tap, for a good reason. The sweet, light [...]

Sour beers have become a significant part of the craft beer community. The style has passionate fans, entire breweries dedicated to their creation, and even a sub-style in the 2021 BJCP Guidelines (Style 28D. Straight Sour Beer). But for many homebrewers, the usual process of souring beer can be intimidating, maybe even a little frightening, given its "infectious" nature. Lallemand and the University of Sciences have come to the rescue for brewers hesitant to enter the world of sours! Summer of 2020, Lallemand introduced a new product in their "Wildbrew" line. The product is called "Philly Sour," a new yeast. But [...]

In late 2019 I ordered the 6.5 Anvil Foundry All-in-one electric brewing system. The original intent was to make fast, somewhat easy, 1-gallon to 2 and half-gallon test batches before committing to a full brew day on my three-vessel propane “brew house.” Two years later, the visible layer of dust on top of my old mash tun speaks volumes. And now that three-vessel system looks incredibly lonely, sharing shelf space with my new, second Anvil Foundry All-in-one electric brew system – this one being the 10.5-gallon version. I’m not the only one in the club that’s jumped on this ever-increasing all-in-one [...]

One of the things I love about homebrewing is there’s always something new to learn. A new process. A new piece of gear. A new style. Just about every facet of the hobby ends up getting a new element somewhere along the line that offers an opportunity to learn something new in the hobby. This includes new things in base ingredients. One core ingredient in brewing that allows us to try something new nearly every year, is hops! Here are 4 new experimental currently available from Yakima Valley Hops you can experiment with now! HBC 431 Alpha Acids: 14.0 – 16.0% [...]

There’s never been a better time to be a homebrewer. There’s also never been a better time to access on-demand, free media. When those two worlds collide, there really is no better time than right now. In the modern digital information age, there’s almost no piece of information about home brewing you won’t be able to find with just a bit of searching. YouTube, Blogs, Vlogs, Webcasts, streaming media, online communities, and social media are just a few of the resources available to absolutely anyone that wants to learn anything about home brewing. In this article, we’ll take a look at [...]

A little more than one year ago, my brewing started to ramp up. I bought more gear to brew with, more kegs to store the beer, and more taps to serve the beer. I even purchased an additional CO2 tank dedicated to carbonating the beer. The one thing I couldn't buy was a time machine that could fast-forward the carbonation process to attach that tank to more kegs more often. For the most part, I'd been doing the "set it and forget" method of force carbonating my kegs. I'd attach the tank, dial up to the pressure setting according to the [...]