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You are here: Home / Archives for Equipment

Canned Beer, Sustainable and Sexy

Posted on January 27, 2016 · Leave a Comment

Let me be the first person to say, I don’t understand why more people drink boxed wine?  I’m not talking about the cheap Franzia wine from college.  I’m talking about the nice boxed wine from Trader Joes.  It’s cheaper, last longer, more sustainable and when it’s in a glass, no one knows it came from a box.

Sometimes I wonder if the same perception has happened to beer?  When people see a can of beer do they immediately think of Bud or Coors?

Don’t get me wrong, I love bottled beer, as a home brewer, I get to enjoy a great craft beer AND get free bottles for my next batch of homebrew.  That being said, I’ve fallen in love with canned beer for the same reasons I’ve fallen in love with boxed wine.  When it comes to camping, back packing, and rafting.  It’s way easier to pack out crumpled cans than glass bottles.  You don’t have to worry about broken glass.  Plus, there seem to be more backyard beer games played with beer cans than beer bottles.  Thanks Steve for introducing me to my new favorite backyard game, Polish Horseshoes. Aluminum is a naturally occurring substance found in bauxite ore.  It is one of the most widely used metals in the world due to its abundance, durability, lightweight and conductivity.  Not to mention canned beer last longer, because of the opaque cans, where glass bottles (even brown ones) let in some light, which is bad for beer.  Shipping is easier, no broken bottles and less CO2 emissions since aluminum is lighter than glass.  As Marty Jones of Oskar Blue Brewing says, “About 35% of the weight of a bottle of beer is in the bottle.  Beer is shipped by weight, so we get 35% more beer on truck.”

My favorite canned beer!  Abominable from HUB.

My favorite canned beer! Abominable from HUB.

Other noteworthy reasons to drink canned beer:

  • Aluminum is 100% recyclable and can be recycled almost indefinitely without loss of quality or durability.  (Hello, closed-loop system!)
  • Aluminum beverage cans can be recycled, repurposed, and back in the store in as little as two months.  (Just think, that Bud Light you are drinking now could be a new can of craft beer in two months!)
  • The average recycling rate of aluminum cans is 68%, the highest rate of recycling of any resource.  (Everyone is doing it, you should be too, and it’s easy!)
  • The use of recycled aluminum in manufacturing utilized 95% less energy than creating aluminum from raw materials. (So keep it up!)  Thanks Chasing Green for the facts.

Also, did you know that some cans are lined with a water-based epoxy so aluminum and beer never meet?  This actually improves the design by eliminating the “headspace”, the little pocket of air that you see at the top of the bottle.  Oxygen, if you didn’t know, is also bad for beer.  This epoxy also helps fight the myth that canned beer has a metallic taste. Two notable breweries in Oregon that are literally crushing it when it comes to caned beer are: Hopworks Urban Brewery and Fort George Brewery.

What are your perceptions of canned beer?  What is your favorite canned beer?

Filed Under: Equipment

Hop Hands is Here!

Posted on June 24, 2015 · Leave a Comment

It’s finally here! Hop Hands is live and we need your help!

Here is what you need to do:

1.  Head to the Hop Hands Kickstarter and support our cause.  We need your love and your dollars, anything from $1 – $1,000.  Donate and get some awesome swag.
2.  After you donate, tell people about it!  Share on social media and email.  Heck, call and text people about it too.
3.  Finally, let Emily and I know if you know of any opportunities to help get the word out.  Your local brewery or bike show, someone in the news, a rich family friend.  You know them and now we want to know them too!

Thanks again for all the love and support.  We wouldn’t have come this far without you.  Feel free to reach out to us, if you have any question or comments.  Just hit reply and we’ll get the note.

Seriously, we can’t say it enough, but thank you!
-Jenna and Emily
P.S.  If you are nervous about donating online, please let us know. We’ll help you out.

Filed Under: Equipment

How to Kill Yeast (and solve the problem)

Posted on January 18, 2012 · 16 Comments

My Bentley/PDX friend, Garrett, made the a New Year’s Resolution to 1) learn how to brew beer and 2) brew beer in 2012. I offered to let him borrow my homebrew set up since I haven’t been doing that much brewing these days. We met up last Sunday to watch the Patriots (WIN!) and brew some beer. The recipe he selected comes from Homebrew Exchange, called: Kevin’s Amber Ale.

The recipe is as follows:

  • 6.0 lb Light Liquid Malt Extract
  • 1.0 lb Crystal 80 Malt
  • @60 mins 1.0 oz Centennial hops
  • @ 5 mins 1.0 oz Centennial
  • @ 5 mins 1.0 oz Mt Hood hops
  • (dry hop 7 days) 1.0 oz Mt Hood hops
  • @15 mins 1/4 tsp Irish Moss

In about 2 quarts of water, steep crystal malt at 155F for 30 minutes. Remove grains and rinse with 2 qt hot (~170F) water. Discard grains. Bring total volume in pot to 3 gallons. Bring to a boil. Turn off heat and add half of malt extract. Stir until dissolved. Turn heat back on and bring to boil. Boil for 60 minutes. Adding hops and Irish moss according to schedule. At 15 minutes before end of boil, add the rest of liquid malt extract (turning off heat to avoid scorching). Cool wort to about 75F, add to fermenter. Add clean H2O for total volume of 5 gal. Pitch yeast around 70F.

That last part is key.  Pitch yeast around 70F. For those of you who don’t know, yeast is a living organism.  If it gets too cold, it dies.  If it gets too hot, it dies.  Since I don’t own a wort chiller I drop the temperature in my carboys by filling it up with a bag of ice before adding my hot wort.  Since I was brewing at a friend’s house I completely forgot to add ice and thus pitched the yeast when the wort was ~100F!

What a great teacher I am!

Needless to say, we had some dead yeast in our beer.  Lucky enough, wort doesn’t go bad with 100 billion dead yeast cells in it.  (I know, gross, just don’t think about it.)  Garrett ran to the store, bought another Yeast Pack and saved the day.  We are now a couple of days into fermentation and the beer is happily bubbling away.

What is your worst home brewing mistake?

Filed Under: Equipment, Recipes

“Bars close at 2AM, My House is Always Open”

Posted on May 23, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Here’s a post I did on my old blog when I first got started homebrewing on my old blog.  I love micro brews. Maybe it’s because I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, the micro brew capital of the world. Or maybe it’s because I like the taste. Or maybe it’s because I compare beer tasting to wine tasting (I’m classy like that). Or that trying out local breweries gives you the opportunity to learn about the local community and the stories behind the beer. Or maybe it’s all of these reasons… yeah, I think so too..

I graduated in May 2008 from college, my mom asked me what I wanted for my graduation present. I said “an iPhone!” Mom promptlysaid no. And I countered with a home brew kit. After a year and a half of stalling. I got one! Granted it’s borrowed from a family friend but I got permission to brew in the house!

I’ve started my own micro brew adventure. Luckily I found Above the Rest Homebrewing Supplies, in Tigard, Oregon. Not only do they support locally sourced and organic products, they give FREE classes! How sweet is that? To top it off, Aaron, is a genius and can pretty much answer every question you have. He just loves beer, the science, the freedom, everything! Shameless plug, buy something at Above the Rest Homebrewing Supplies and mention my name and I get 10% of my next purchase. So support a great family owned company and me and buy from them!

Side note, Aaron no longer works at Above the Rest Homebrewing.  And I actually don’t go there anymore (since I moved it’s even further away from my new location).  I do still believe it’s a great place to get started when homebrewing.  If you do go there, and use my name, let me know so I can use the discount.  Thanks!

Side side note, the title of this blog post is one of my favorite quotes from Aaron.  I love the idea of always have the ability to have people over for good homebrewed beer no matter what time it is.

Filed Under: Equipment Tagged With: Above the Rest Homebrewing, Tigard OR

Jiving at Jive [Pint Glass Collection]

Posted on May 20, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Two weeks ago I went to a happy hour event at Jive, a software company based here in Portland, Oregon. Not only do they have a great product and a sweet office. They also have their own custom pint glasses. Needless to say, I kinda wanted one…

Last week I emailed a friend who works there and offered a trade. One Jive pint glass for one home brewed beer (Blueberry Pale Ale). He agreed and we met for lunch this week to make the switch.

Aren’t they cute? Does your company do custom pint glasses? Let me know!

Filed Under: Equipment Tagged With: jive, pint glass

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Jennas Pretty Face

My name is Jenna.

I'm small.

I like beer.

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