Brewing Beer At Home Thats So Good You Can Serve It To A Friend: Even If youve Never Done It Before

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So my advice is to try as many styles and beers as possible. But anyway, I have to stick to the rules. My kind of beers. Zinnebir has a cloudy orange colour and a great nose of honey, pollen, and lemon zest, and light exotic fruits. The taste is malty, with a fine bitterness and a long aftertaste. The beer is the masterpiece of Rosa Merckx, the first female brewmaster of Belgium. After the second world war she started as a secretary at the Liefmans brewery and worked herself up to the position of brewer.

Now ninety years old, she still lives next to the brewery, where she checks the beer at least once a week. The wort is brewed at Duvel-Moortgat but ferments in open tanks at their historical brew site in Oudenaarde. There, the lactic acid bacteria form the typical sour taste and character during a long maturation of up to 8 months.

In the flavour you also get hints of raisins and red apples.

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Sour meets sweet at a sublime level. Classic Belgian beers are very balanced and complex, and Westmalle Tripel is a perfect example of this. In aroma it is fruity overripe banana with a fine hop bitterness and soft maltiness fighting for attention. The flavour is just as complex: Westmalle Tripel is the mother of all tripels — a world classic! This beer absolutely blew me away when I first tried it last year. Oak is subdued and the yeasts it contains provide flavours reminiscent of grapefruit, nectarines and pineapple. This beer is either loved or hated.

Marc Mertens has since been a member of the Objectieve BierProevers, now Zythos, and he is the current national editor-in-chief for De Zytholoog. Photo by Adams K. It is a simple, honest beer, brewed by the monks themselves and made better by the surroundings. It smells and tastes lightly fruity at the outset, the hops providing an earthy, sometimes grassy character, leading to a firm, bitter, dry finish. It seems like a beer that Saint Benedict, who advocated that monks should live by the work of their own hands, would have appreciated.

One of the most underestimated triples in our country is the Chimay Tripel, formerly known as Chimay Blanche.

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It is a bit cloudy with a lovely head, mostly hoppy on the nose but when swirled in the glass, it releases a hint of ripe fruit. The taste is more intense, more bitter than malty. Dry, fresh and mature, with a bone dry and very lengthy finish. Trappist beer is collaboration brewing lifted to another level, a link between the sacred world of the Cistercian monastery and the profane practice of the brewer.

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And when a glass of Orval is lifted to the lips, I find it difficult not to be profane as I take my first sip, such is the magnificence of this beer. This is a beer I could contemplate for all time. Adrian Tierney-Jones is a journalist and writer specialising in beer, pubs, food and travel and how they all collaborate with each other in making the world a more pleasing place. He blogs at http: The beer is grace itself, soft and subtle with delicate flavors. A silken mouthfeel and tropical fruit aromas with a touch of sourness balanced beautifully with spicy hop character.

I had the pleasure of meeting her, too, last year during a press junket and her entire range of beers is great, but the tripel remains a divine favorite. This beer is grain yellow and foggy with a rich foam. It smells of citrus, exotic fruits and wet grains with dry hopped undertones.

How to design a beer label: the ultimate guide for craft brewers

Due to its more moderate sweetness compared with other Belgian blondes and a kind of infection from wild yeasts, this blonde associates more with lambics and sour beers. This is not such a strange occurrence, given that the brewmaster at Slaghmuylder is Mr. Karel Goddeau, the same guy brewing at De Cam Lambic. Espen Smith is a Norwegian beer critic, well known in Norway from television, talk radio, newspapers and magazines where he gives his open opinions on the newest trends in food, beer and liquor.

The passion among beer lovers for increasingly flavourful beers that are hopped using powerful, aromatic varieties is not restricted to just Britain or the US. The resulting beer is a riot of grapefruit and redcurrant flavours underpinned by bready malt and a pinch of white pepper in its dry finish. Matthew Curtis is a beer writer and speaker based in London and author of beer blog Total Ales.

In he co-authored Craft Beer: The Belgians are famed for many things including beer and cycling. And so they crafted their own beer. Made with three grains — barley, wheat and oats — the golden 7. Tim Hampson has travelled the world in search of the perfect beer. Follow Tim Hampson on Twitter: XX Bitter is an early example of how you can use hops to give a beer character, without making it harsh or difficult to drink. The beer covers a lot of bases. But if you want to drink a couple with your friends and not think too much about it, it works great too.

Bitter before bitterness was trendy. Belgian Beer and Food publisher and editor-in-chief Paul Walsh is from Ireland, but came to Belgium ten years ago to study philosophy at the historic Leuven university. He was working in another branch of the media when he had the bright idea to start a Belgian beer magazine. He lives in Brussels, whenever he manages to get home. Would you like to hear more about Belgian beers from us as we continue our adventure in taste? Sign-up for free updates below no spam:. I get great satisfaction when I see people enjoying beer. Duchesse de Bourgogne has become my go-to beer in this situation.

The label just might be from a bottle of wine. And that same experience comes out of the bottle.

This beer is vinous, sweet and sour, with a slight vinegar touch. Months later, people keep coming back to me about that particular beer and, secretly, I hope it eases people into more sour beers like lambics and gueuzes. If you are searching for the wonderful dark ales of Belgium — apart from the Trappist beers — your path should lead you to the cosy town of Mechelen.

Here you will find the Het Anker brewery close to the centre of the town.

The interpretation of the style made by Het Anker is not even close to the sour beers of ancient times. You will taste a sweet, delicate and very well balanced beer. It is heavy on the palate but smooth and slick and with a wonderful finish. An amazing ale to be enjoyed on every imperial occasion. Carsten Berthelsen has been an author, broadcaster and professional beer writer for more than 25 years in Denmark. In May H. One of my favorite places in the world to drink a beer is De Dolle Brouwers in Esen.

It is here that I first fell in love with this beer. Its assertive, yet balanced hop character makes it the perfect thirst quencher anytime of year. If you are in Belgium on a Sunday, you should be sitting in the cafe at the brewery with an Arabier in your hand. The farmhouse Saison style has been the darling of many a craft brewer but Saison Dupont is considered by many to be the ultimate benchmark.

Wafts of fragrantly floral hops, scented alcohol and a touch of phenolic spice greet you from the first pour. As it warms, the malt brings buttery biscuits while yeast and sugar evoke a candied fruit sweetshop adjoining a bakery. Alcohol warmth offsets a floral dryness that fades to a smooth, gently sweet finish. Actually you have to be crazy to make it as the flower is added by hand to every single bottle before bottling. A whole new wave of craft brewers have begun to make their mark on the brewing scene in Belgium.

All their beers are based on their excellent triple, including the Generaal. From a design and marketing perspective, knowing your brand personality and target customer will help you figure it out. Making a hefeweizen perfect for picnics and beach BBQs? Portability might be the most important factor in choosing cans. Got an Belgian that pairs well with dinner? Now you have to translate that personality into a visual brand identity.

Before you start picking out the colors for your label, you want to think about the colors of 1 your bottles and 2 your beer. There are three common beer bottle colors: In terms of functionality , brown bottles filter out ultraviolet and regular light, which protects the beer and keeps it from getting skunky.

Because these beers were extremely high quality, the green bottle became a status symbol for good beer. Heineken, Stella Artois, Carlsberg. Green bottles are traditionally paired with black and white labels, perhaps with a pop of red which is complementary to green. Brown bottles offer a neutral background for your label and really any color works.

The most common are warm colors: Shockingly, this is also the color of beer! Using a color scheme like this reminds customers of your product and provides a more traditional feel. Clear bottles are unique in that the color of your beer becomes the background for your label design. Many brewers who use clear bottles play this color up in their label, either with a label color that nearly matches, or that contrasts.

Label shapes are a consideration specific to beer-makers. Do you want a traditional shape and size, or something custom die cut , which will make your bottle stand out, but may increase the printing cost? Do you want a separate label for the neck, front and back, or do you want one label that wraps around the body?

Do you want to go with standard paper, or maybe something unique with a transparent background?

Standard beer bottle label sizes are 2. Another consideration is the type of bottle: Stubbies, longnecks, growlers or even some custom shape like a cone. Make sure you have this all figured out before you start designing so everything goes together! Like colors, the fonts you choose communicate a lot about your brand personality. Serif fonts the ones with little feet or script fonts give your label a more classic feel. Sans-serif fonts make it more modern. It can be tempting to go with a really fun, crazy display font, but remember that readability is very important. You want customers to be able to read your name so they can remember you.

And read the rest of the words on your label so they can make an informed purchasing decision. Traditional beers have a traditional label style: With the rise of craft beer, though, labels have become an art form. We see everything from cartoon-like illustration to hand-drawn masterpieces to photographs to extreme minimalism. I walked though the door to a room full of picnic tables and about a dozen patrons, thier beer menu board had lots of styles to choose from, I had thier Amber which tasted very good, my point is with this, I see the local community supported micro breweries are growing in the small towns all around my area, they all become the pride of the town and supported by the local beer drinkers growlers in hand.

Home Beer This is why my brewery shut down. Reach him at zach draftmag. August 16, at 9: August 16, at August 16, at 1: August 18, at 7: August 30, at 5: August 18, at August 20, at August 21, at 1: August 25, at 9: August 25, at August 29, at 1: August 25, at 3: Edward W Chainey says: August 25, at 4: August 26, at 8: September 2, at John D Navin says:

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