Rantings by Nick Buraglio

I’ve been making mead as long as I’ve been making beer, and frankly, mead is much easier. I’m not a big wine drinker or really even a fan of wine, but mead is so easy to make and it turns out well with minimal work so I make it a few times a year. Here is a quick and dirty howto on making simple, traditional mead that I threw together a few nights ago:

Mead is a good choice for those wanting to start with zymology, as it takes few ingredients and can be done on a budget. Mead is simple. Many folks, like in brewing, have a lot to say about checking this and that, boiling the must, etc.
I choose to go very basic, start with a base mead and then add fruit later.
If you’re interested in making mead and want some quick mead recipes or just general information, check out gotmead.com, they have links and a wealth of information on the subject.

I decided it was finally time to brew one of my favorite styles for myself. I jumped in with both feet on this one, what I hope to be a VERY hoppy Pale Ale, which I’ve so creatively titled “Buraglio’s Pale Ale”.
The recipe can be found on Google Documents here.
Here is an image of it fermenting after 2 days. This was my first batch ever that actually needed a blow off tube rather than a simple airlock.

From the recipe you one can see that I added a lot of not only high IBU hops, but just a lot of hops in general.
As an aside, I’ve never used whole hop cones before (thanks to Kat Wefel for the hookup of her home grown Nugget hops). They’re a little different to deal with, needing to be strained before the move can be made to the primary fermentation vessel.
I’m still undecided regarding the dry hopping. I may wait for version 2 to give that a try or maybe I’ll get ambitious, only time will tell.

Since many folks have asked for this recipe, I decided that I should actually go and copy it from my notes to my Google Docs archhive of recipes.

This beer was a bit of a surprise, I made it with some pretty old ingredients a little last minute and didn’t expect much from it.  I pitched it onto an existing yeast cake from my vanilla porter and just let it go.  It was the 3rd batch I’d ever done and, boy, it turned out GREAT.  I still think this is the best brew I’ve ever made.  I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to *truly* recreate it’s uniqueness in origin but I will certainly be making another batch of this in the next few months.

A link to the Google Document can be foundhere, or a local copy can be found here in my brew archive.

This is a good one. If you like a good sweet stout then by all means make a batch of this.