We decided early on that we wouldn’t do seasonal beers for the sake of doing seasonal beers. For us, beer comes first, much as Stone Smoked Porter came first. Actually, it came second, oddly enough, in the form of a seasonal. But rather than relegating fans to nine peat-smoked-porterless months, we made it a year-round release. Nowadays, we brew a trio of tasty takes on this smoky, sultry…
This righteously flavorful imperial stout has been a favorite among our fans—and us—since its inception in 2013. In celebration of its third brewing, we’ve upped the barrel-aging quotient for 2015, adding to the mix a version of last year’s vintage that we aged in bourbon barrels for a year. This whopping, complex stout will cellar beautifully—if you can wait that long.
Eisner Award-…
Our 19th anniversary release brings the boom, delivering it to the palate in a voluminous, hop-driven thunderclap. This double IPA owes its considerable oomph to a quartet of Australian hops—Topaz and Galaxy, plus two newcomers, Ella and Vic Secret, that scored impressively in test batches. We’re also applying the all-Aussie theme to the malt bill, which is composed entirely of an Australian…
We took a random bottle off of the packaging line to analyze it for the concentration of dissolved oxygen present in the beer. We punch a hole in the cap and pressurize the bottle using nitrogen - and we push the beer through a special device that detects to the part-per-billion level of oxygen in solution. Oxygen damages beer flavor over time, so we want to have the lowest possible…
The Anton Paar Alcolyzer is a nifty (and expensive) piece of analytical equipment that allows for the determination of alcohol by volume (ABV) in beer – among other key specifications. The Alcolyzer uses near-infrared technology (NIR) to determine how dense a liquid is. Knowing that alcohol has a certain density along with plain water, it can measure the difference between the two, giving us…
Titrations need four things: sample, acid, base, and an indicator. You add acid to a base and indicator-infused sample and by knowing the exact volume of acid added to neutralize the basic solution and change from pink to blue, you can determine how much of a substance is in solution. Titrations are used to determine the total amount of hardness, calcium, and alkalinity in brewing water. This is…
Without yeast there would be no beer. Here are two pictures from our automatic cell counter. The one on the left is a brightfield picture of our house yeast. The one on the right is our house yeast stained with a fluorescent dye called propidium iodide. The dye will bind with non-replicating DNA in yeast cells. Basically, if you see a glowing cell, it’s dead. This is how we determine how viable…
This is a High-Performance Liquid Chromatograph (HPLC). This awesome piece of analytical equipment can measure the concentration of different compounds present in beer, wort, and hops. We use it to measure the concentration of humulone, cohumulone, lupulone, and colupulone in hops. These are collectively known as alpha and beta acids in brewing terms. The alpha acids (…
UV-vis spectrophotometers are the swiss army knives of brewing chemistry because of the sheer amount of compounds it can analyze for and for the cheaper price tag.
Spectrophotometers (“specs” for short) are used to measure the amount of iso-alpha acids in beer, which gives you IBUs.
Specs can also measure, in wort and beer, the amount of free amino…
