In this post, I show how I chopped the top off a Cornelius keg and had it welded to a Sanke keg. The other day my good friend from the late Half Sugar Brewpub stopped by for a visit. I ended up running out the door with him to fetch […]
Yearly Archives: 2018
13 posts
A simple but effective Blond ale recipe. Not all my beer names have a story behind them but this one does. Pete’s a friend of mine that has spent many-an-hour with a chainsaw in hand. He used to build log homes in the mountains of Colorado. Out in the log […]
It’s November and autumn is slipping past here in Qinghai. Riding my bike in the early morning with a fresh coat of snow layering the fallen leaves makes me think of cider. Cider translates into Mandarin as 苹果酒 (ping guo jiu) meaning apple alcohol or apple wine. Cider is delicious. I […]
I’ve wanted to brew a hua jiao saison for a while now. My brewing friend here told me it was a bad idea. He tried once and failed. His beer came out overwhelmed by the additions he made. Hua Jiao (花椒) or Sichuan pepper is a spice famously used in […]
This is the recipe reiteration of the original Calamity Grain Stout as featured on episode 69 “Sunshine, Hop Dreams and Disastrous Days” on the Experimental Brewing Podcast. Give it a listen or read the full story here. Last week I got together with my good buddy Brian to brew yet […]
A couple weeks back I noticed my keezer wasn’t maintaining temperature anymore. After a little investigating I determined my compressor was going out. I decided to build a new one and reasoned that I could most likely still use the old keezer as a fermentation chamber (turns out that it […]
This is the story of Half Sugar. In the summer of 2016 I found myself singing and playing guitar for the grand opening of a brewery called Half Sugar. In a previous post, I talked about the bizarre nature of this name. Fortunately, I was not the only act. I’ve […]
Fall makes me think of delicious malt forward brews. A couple weeks ago I decided try my hand at brewing a traditional bock. I drew heavily from the recipe found in “Brewing Classic Styles” by Palmer and Zainasheff. I like to use this book as guide. I always end up […]
This isn’t a post about brewing with table sugar. “Half Sugar” isn’t a click-bait title. This is about the name behind a little brewpub in Xining, China called 半糖趣 (Ban Tang Qu). Translation…half sugar. First off there are definitely better names out there. A fancier translation for the brewery would have […]
Fall is here. It’s here with passion. I took a trip to our favorite hiking and camping spot with my family last week. The colors where in full swing. On our way, I saw some farmers sorting grain on the road. They had a stretch of road covered with grain. […]
In August of 2017 my daughter Dakota was born. Per the recommendation of a friend I decided to brew a lambic to have a special brew around when Dakota is old enough to drink. The actual brewing took place in March (3-04-18). The day this was brewed will go down […]
About seven months back my buddy Brian came over for a collaboration brewday. We had planned out a double brew, fifteen gallons of lambic and ten of imperial stout. Things started off well and we got through a turbid mash schedule for the lambic and had it boiling nicely before […]