01/13/2020

Last month, two of Hugh and my beers won bronze medals at the Happy Holidays Homebrew Competition in St. Louis.   The first was a batch we brewed for the Chicago Chorale's Suds in the City event.  Its an English-style pale ale brewed with honey.  It features an English yeast (Windsor) and English hops (East Kent Goldings and Challenger).  Our recipe was adapted from the White House Honey Ale, formerly brewed by the White House chef for President Obama.  The Chicago Chorale is an extraordinary

12/13/2019

Jeff Whelpley and I will present the third of six monthly workshops on beer styles and evaluations on Wednesday January 22nd at 6 pm at Great Central Brewing's Taproom at 221 N. Wood - two blocks from the Green and Pink lines and the Damen and Ashland buses.   RSVPs are required, follow this link to let me know if you'll be joining us.   Our focus this month will be on porters and stouts.  The styles we'll cover include Baltic Porter, English Porter, Irish Stout, Irish Extra Stout, Sweet Stout,

12/09/2019

Yesterday, after about three weeks of focused study, I passed the BJCP Cider Entrance Exam, a prerequisite to take the Cider Judging Exam.  This whole process is to gain an endorsement from the BJCP that I am competent to evaluate ciders.  While there is some similarity between beer and cider evaluation, there is perhaps more commonality with wine evaluation.  Or at least its a melding of the two.   Because the BJCP cider endorsement program is so new, there are less than two dozen judges in