Antique German Beer Steins

Chick Beer For The Ladies Calls For New Beer Steins Too

The name says it all: Chick Beer. The website and packaging may say even more. In an unapologetically, bubblegum pink color scheme with the LBD — little black dress — as its logo and a six-pack designed to look like a purse, the latest beer marketed for dainty female drinkers has caught the attention — and indignation — of lady blogs.

A post on Jezebel.com this week titled “Chick Beer: Ugh, Really?” called the concept “offensive” in reference, perhaps, to the sales pitch on Chick Beer’s website: “We love Chick Flicks, Chick Lit, and now we can love Chick Beer!! Enjoy!”

The upstart from Maryland is the latest brewer to try and lure female beer swiggers with promises of low-calorie, smoother, lighter and less carbonated brews to prevent the pesky side effects of bloating.

Carlsberg and Molson Coors also recently launched girlie beers, with Copenhagen and Animee respectively. Copenhagen is a wheat malt and rice-based beer, while Animee is described as a “lightly sparkling and finely filtered” beer that also comes in pink ‘rose’ and zesty lemon flavors.

Chick Beer also donates five percent of all profits to charities that empower women.

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Beer and Home Brew Learning Center

Running beertaps.com has been an interesting ride that was more involved than I thought it would be.  But, it has been fun.  Each new challenge has presented an interesting and useful solution.

For instance, when I was asked about the kegerator a customer just purchased, I realized that there probably are more people out there who have the same questions.  So, I wrote a report and published it on the site.  Then, I wrote an article to let everyone know that I wrote the report.

That’s about the time the second question came in about keeping beer lines clean.  Then, about home brew recipes.  So, I kept writing reports to help people and I kept writing articles to make people more aware.

It started out as a big gaggle of reports that I finally organized into a Learning Center that is now populated with great stuff.  From Home Brew Tips and Tricks to DIY Home Bar Projects, I keep adding to the learning center.  But, I’m always willing to hear what you want to know.  I have a form for questions at http://www.beertaps.com/contact.html

But, the recent interactive is the forum I created.  It’s easier than a report to write a simple answer.  Some answers aren’t as involved as putting an entire article together with pictures and everything.  So, I populated the forum with a few items.  But, it’s new.

I’d love to see some people on there soon.  Start some topics and get some feedback.  How else do you expect a forum to get started?

http://brewdrinker.com/thepub/

Hope to see you there!

Happy Thanksgiving Beer Steins

This year when we’re drinking our home brew for Thanksgiving…

What?  You’re not making beer for Thanksgiving?  You don’t have a home brew that you make special for Thanksgiving?

Well, how weird is that?

It must not be a tradition everyone shares.  But, see if you can relate to any of these:

• Sitting on the couch and eating Thanksgiving while watching football.
• Same thing…sitting on the recliner with a food tray.
• Saying, “It’s not worth it.  We’re going to a restaurant.”
• I ordered Pizza and Wings one year…

That was the year I had just finished my home bar and I made my first home brew for our New Happy Thanksgiving Tradition. 

I hope everyone has a Happy Thanksgiving and enjoys their own traditions, whatever they may be!

All You Need To Know About Homebrew Kits

With all the right tools, equipment, supplies, hops, and tidbits included in homebrew kits… they are perfect for people to start brewing their own beer from the comfort of their own home. When starting out, you just want to first get to a point of brewing good tasting beer, and you can’t go wrong with a kit.

Before you go and run out to buy yourself a homebrew kit, you will need to consider your needs. So how much beer do you want to brew? How technical do you want to get? What flavored beer do you want? Etc… Then once you decide on all the important things, you will need a home beer brewing guide to teach you the essentials because quiet simply, the instructions that come with homebrew kits are useless at best. Then once you are well informed, it’s time to buy your kit, clean your equipment, brew your beer, and then drink it (in simple terms).

There is a variant if you would want to determine the color of your beer, and the style of your brew – other than the classic canned beer taste. You can opt to have a different set of ingredients. These are still all-extract kits though as they give you preformulated ingredients.

All extract brewing is a fairly simple process because the boiling off certain ingredients to get certain flavors has already been done for you on a mass scale. As you gain experience, it is advisable to start with partial mash brewing for more refined flavors and textures of home brewed beer. As a partial mash brewer, you are involved in boiling ingredients, choosing specialty flavorings, and crafting your beer from start to finish… and this is a lot harder than simply adding the ingredients to a pot and stirring.

The kit comes with a guide which tells you what an ingredient’s effect is to your brew. You can even choose right from the start if you want to have your extract hopped or unhopped. The hops are what determine the bitterness of your brew. You can then add the hops later in intervals to give your mix the difference from your neighbor’s – who also has an all-extract kit – beer. To give you a better ambiance while pouring youself a drink, some kits even have a keg system instead of the usual bottles.

Home beer brewing is essentially a fun and very rewarding hobby… the best there is! You as the home brewer should experiment, try new things, and graduate from homebrew kits to more advanced brewing techniques over time. Some home brewers have take a simple hobby and turned it into a career by opening a commercial micro-brewery or two… the choice is yours!

Homebrew kits will assist you get introduced and become proficient at brewing beer at home. Luke Porter is an expert brewer who is happy to share the secrets of brewing kits available in the shops today.

Home Beer Brewing Easy As 1-2-3

Brewing beer at home must be one of the most rewarding, and delicious hobbies known to mankind! When you get involved with home beer brewing, you will never look back once you taste your first hand-crafted beer. To get started all you need is some instructions and a kit of equipment… then it’s all up to you.

A home beer brewing kit is a great gift idea for people that are looking to get involved with brewing beer as a hobby. A kit will provide them with everything they need to get started with, including all the equipment and supplies… such as extract, yeast, bottles, and other important gear.

Tips For Your Home Brewing Success:

One – make sure you have allocated enough room to do your home brewing, whether it be a separate room, outside, or even your shed… you will need a dedicated area just as you need dedicated equipment. Also be sure to remember that all your gear needs to be properly sterilized and cleaned before use!

Two – fermentation needs constant temperature, different temperatures for lagers and different for porters. This means that you will need a proper thermometer and the ability to modify conditions to make sure your beer has the best chance of properly fermenting.

Three – refrigeration, the colder and larger the better. Let’s face it, this is the most important area, tasting and drinking.

Brewing your beer and then labeling it with your own custom label that your kids drew is just an amazing experience… think about it! Once you have the right equipment and the right supplies, the world is yours, just as the best tasting beer is yours too. A little money can go a long way with this awesome hobby, just start with the bare essentials and then add to your collection as you improve

Are you serious about starting your own Home Beer Brewing? Then check out the website below, you will find all the information you need to get you started as well as good practical tips and recipes. Have fun, Cheers.

The home brewing beer ultimate guide is your one stop shop of brewing beer at home. One chapter is fully dedicated to teaching you the ins and outs off brew kits, so you are always one step ahead off the home beer brewing game!

American Home Brewing As We Know It Today

American home brewing adapts to the changes in the political and economic climates of the country. Back in the 90s, America had been the top producer of beer. However, with the global recession that is happening now, many companies are closing. Although of course, some argue that as the economy worsens, beer sells more – many get depressed and thus forget their economic woes through the messy route of drinking. Some people, instead of wasting precious money by raking the bars every night, adapt to the situation – and that is by turning towards home made beer.

Over time there has been lot’s of change in the American Home Brewing scene. Once upon a time, greats such as Thomas Jefferson and George Washington participated in brewing their own beer… and they absolutely loved it! Through their guidance, many people were passionate about making their own beer at home.

During the prohibition, no one was allowed to brew their own drinks at home. A penalty of one thousand dollars was imposed on those who were caught – and back then one thousand dollars went a long way. Either that or they were sentenced one year imprisonment. Everybody had to content with a watered down lifeless beer – well not really beer but something which was a very poor substitute for it. Nothing substantially alcoholic was allowed and few took efforts in making their drinks less alcoholic but tasty. Thirsty daring beer lovers stealthily bought ingredients and beer brewing equipment. Some very enterprising shop owners found ways of selling them without associating them with beer making or anything about beer at all. Beer ingredients, after all, are as normal as other ingredients – grains, yeast, etcetera, and the equipment – buckets, vats, what really is there to question when they are put up for sale? The situation varied from state to state. In some states, only those selling home brews were caught while in some, brewing for personal consumption also meant facing legal charges. And since ingredients and materials had to be sold and bought discreetly, there really was nothing much to experiment on. Those years could probably be considered the dark ages for home brewing.

One of the pioneers of legalized home beer brewing was Charlie Papazian. He was the man responsible for teaching thousands of others how to brew their own beer at home, and obtain the permit they needed for doing so (as it was still illegal to brew beer at home without one). Some say that his work led to the laws eventually being completely relaxed, but it is unclear as most history is so. Nonetheless, 1935 was a great year for home brewers and changed the way the world views home brewing today.

But thankfully, in 1978, Jimmy Carter rescued the doomed souls of beer loving Americans and signed Senate Amendment 3534 allowing households to brew their own beer as long as they don’t go beyond 200 gallons a year. After the lifting of the prohibition on alcoholic beverages, it was home brew beer enthusiasts who worked hard to revive the brewing industry. Today, there are over 1,463 breweries in the United States, a much improved American home brewing state.

American Home Brewing is alive and well today, so of-course it’s time to sit down, relax, and enjoy a home brew. For those still not up to speed with home brewing beer, follow the link to find out more!

Brew Your Own Beer And Save Money

There are few pleasures in life to match a nice cold beer on a hot day, and the best way to round off a hard days work is, in many peoples mind, a trip to their favorite bar to partake of a couple of glasses of their chosen brew.

Unfortunately though, the rising cost of beer over the years has resulted in lots of people having to think twice before indulging. The reason for these prices rises are well documented – taxes and the increased price of the raw materials, and though we understand that prices for everything rise over time, the speed at which it is has risen for beer has led many of us to think that maybe it just isn’t worth it.

People have been aware of the benefits of having a home brewery for some time now. However, there is a sense, as with many things, that it just isn’t the same. With well-stocked stores and bars all around them, some people simply think “Why should I bother to brew my own?”. However, as prices at the liquor store and the local bar climb ever higher, it is now more than ever an option to be considered. A home brewery allows you to have a few beers when you want at a price that suits your pocket.

It is just a myth that paid for beer is better than home-brewed beer. With a little trial and error, home brew can be even better than that stocked in your favorite bar. There are few of us who are skilled or lucky enough to have our first batch of home-brewed beer turn out to be just as good as, or better than, the frosty glasses of ale served up at our local tavern. However, with persistence and experimentation, it is possible to brew beer to suit our own tastes.

Home brewery kits are not expensive. In fact, when compared to how much you would normally spend watching a few games at a sports bar every month, they are positively cheap. But you think the atmosphere will be lacking? Not if you invite your friends around to watch the game and enjoy your home brew too. Believe me, by the time you’re producing a quality end product, you’ll have no shortage of people wanting to pay you a visit .

As hobbies go, home brewing is something that can make perfect sense. Rather than having a hobby that goes nowhere, the beer lover can enjoy the feeling of making something themselves, with the added advantage that no beer tastes finer than that which you have brewed to your own recipe. The endless variations that you can come up with will make it more fun than you could imagine, and all for a reasonable price.

Luke Porter is a home brewing beer enthusiast, and an expert author. You are invited to discover the simple secrets of brewing world class beer from the comfort of your home by reading his latest book, “Home Beer Brewing Secrets” available online today!

categories: home brewery,home brewing,beer brewing,brew beer,beer,alcohol,recreation

Home Brewing : A Recipe For Success

Brewing beer at home is something that has stood the test of time. Still, many are resolute that convenience is best for them and continue to drink only beer that they have paid for at a liquor store or at a bar. However, as with everything else in life, convenience costs. It may not be much at the time, but add it up over a years worth of parties, games, dinners and nights out and it starts to amount to a lot.

Paying for your own beer brewing supplies may not seem to make sense at first, as you will think to yourself that you could have a few nights worth of drinking for the same price and not have to go to the effort of ensuring that your brew tastes like it is supposed to. However, look at the situation beyond just a few weeks ahead and you’ll see that home brewing is a much better option. After the initial amount that you pay for the kit and supplies, which is little more than the cost of a few crates anyway, you’ll have the potential to make enough beer to see you through the next couple of months.

As well as the initial costs, some people are put off home brewing because it sounds like a lot of effort. It must be better to just let the breweries take care of all of the behind the scenes stuff for us, right? Well, yes, the breweries are there to make your life easier, but think of it this way – it’s like eating out at a restaurant all of time compared to cooking at home yourself. At first restaurant food seems better than anything you could possibly cook yourself, but, with a little practice, you soon develop your own recipes that are superior. It’s exactly the same with beer brewing.

As for the supplies you need, these can be found easily enough. Most larger towns will have a specialist store that stocks the required equipment and ingredients, but don’t worry if your town doesn’t as there are plenty of suppliers on the internet. In fact, buying via the internet may be the best option anyway as the prices tend to be lower. Do a little online research first to find out what you need. There are various beer brewing forums that are full of like-minded beer lovers who will be more than happy to point you in the right direction.

Once you have bought the necessary equipment and supplies, you will just need to follow the instructions that come with them. It is simple enough, just remember not to miss out any of the steps. The best way to learn how to do something right is to keep doing it and get the technique down. Once you have the basics learnt, you can then start deviating from the standard processes in order to make your own special recipes. You’ll soon be viewing it less like hard work and more like fun!

Luke Porter is a home brewing beer enthusiast, and an expert author. You are invited to discover the simple secrets of brewing world class beer from the comfort of your home by reading his latest book, “Home Beer Brewing Secrets” – available online today!

Home Beer Brewing

Beer is one of the most prevalent drink that dates back to as old as Neolithic age. The beer brewing activity is becoming increasingly famous at domestic level. I should rather say that it has been taken as a hobby work shop by many beer lovers. No doubt a rich drink is what you get in home beer brewing that is really incomparable to all the tastes. All you need to have is a good knowledge of the preparation that is needed for the same.

Among the beer enthusiasts this activity is becoming well-liked day by day. Home brewing may include brewing of beer, wine and cider. For the unknown this can be a black art but believe me this process of turning grains, water, yeast and hops into beer is really a simple one. Rather the heroes in the whole process are the yeast cells that lead to a rich yield of a good beer. The activity may include seven basic steps: Mashing, Lautering, Boling, Fermenting, Conditioning, Filtering and Filling.

There are various home brewing kits available for this purpose that can help you in making the beer in an easier and convenient way. These kits usually provide a liquid or dry malt extract, yeast or the hop extract. These when reconstituted with water produce wort. It is the easiest method available as this doesn’t require boiling or other preparatory methods. You can add sugar according to your liking.

Though these kits can meet the standards as of a commercial beer but they are definitely not as good as the beer that is home brew made from all grain methods and malt extract. The real flavor of beer does lies in the indigenous methods adopted in its making.

Brewing beer at home can be exciting and cheaper than its commercial equivalents. You can yield a beer according to your taste and liking. It is environment friendly as it uses less packaging materials and transportation. There are various information sites available where you can get relevant step by step information about the home made brewing. This will definitely help you in learning this process in an easier style.

After reading this article I am sure that you must be planning to take this activity as a home practice. Hope you will surely enjoy the fervor of the drink with your family and friends!

Learn how to find out about all the secrets of making a better home beer brewing.