Tricks for Making a Great Beer
June 30, 2011
Tricks for Making a Great Beer
Assembling the equipment and the ingredients to make beer is a cut and dried operation. The process of making beer at home isn’t really a mystery. That is one of the reasons that home brewing has become so popular. Because you can get set up to brew beer at home with a relatively low investment in equipment and ingredients, it’s easy to get started on making your own beer. And when you finish that first batch and it is stored away to be sampled in a few weeks, the excitement that you soon will be drinking your own beer is a unique feeling and one you want to repeat often.
Once you have confirmed that you can indeed make beer, the next question comes up is – can you make GOOD beer? When you tasted that first batch, you were pretty excited because it really was beer. But you may have noticed some aspects of the beer you would like to improve. The beer may have been too bitter or have too strong a hops flavor. The clarity of the beer may have been imperfect or you could see stuff floating around in your beer.
But these flaws are acceptable at first because they drive you to want to become a better beer maker. You want your beer to be so flavorful and enjoyable to drink that your guests say its as good or better than store bought beer and that it even lives up to the quality at the local beer pub. That’s a tall order but part of the fun of brewing beer at home is to strive for those goals. To get there, some of the tricks that the old pros of home brewing know will help a lot. Some of their wisdom can help you move from a rookie beer maker into the ranks of people and actually know what they are doing.
Most recipes for making beer at home call for making a batch of five gallons of beer. That’s a lot of beer. So sometimes home brewers try to cut the batch to make less beer. It’s done with good intent. It’s hard to store five gallons of beer. And if you don’t drink your own beer up pretty fast (or give it away), the beer can go stale or bad which is hard to see watch happen to “your” beer. But old pros tell us don’t cut the batch and go ahead and make beer up five gallons at a time. You need that quantity to get the full value out of the brewing process. And it’s hard to adjust the recipes for a smaller batch which means that there is a good chance you will end up with a beer that does not have the right balance of malt, hops and yeast. The outcome can be a beer that is difficult or impossible to drink and it all gets thrown out. Better to make five gallons of good beer than three gallons of undrinkable brew.
The more you study and learn about beer making, the better you will become at home brewing. Don’t just go from the instructions that come with the equipment. Sink your teeth into learning all you can. The beer you make will benefit from the homework you do. And you will have more fun too.
Just as it’s not advisable to cut the size of any batch of home made beer you produce, also avoid cutting corners in terms of time or clean up. Sometimes it seems that boiling the beer in progress which is called the “wort” for an hour to an hour and a half seems like a lot. But the long boiling time helps the ingredients mesh in just the right way. It also boils off bad elements of the mixture that you don’t want in the beer and it brings out the flavors of the malt, the grains and the hops so you are getting the best of those ingredients. Finally, don’t be worried about being too fussy about cleanliness. Keeping your boiling pots and fermentation tanks absolutely clean and sterile assures that nothing will get into the beer except that pure wort that you so carefully brewed. So go ahead and be fussy. The beer you make will be better if you are.
Advertising Via Beer Coasters
June 24, 2011
Advertising Via Beer Coasters
If you want more traffic on your beer label’s website, the simple, useful and well-accepted beer coaster may be the answer! A recent German market survey describes the beer coaster as one of the consumers’ favorite forms of advertising. Survey participants classified beer coaster ads as entertaining, eye-catching, appealing and non-intrusive. More than 50% would take a coaster home with them – and they’re a lot more useful than a soggy cocktail napkin. Their durability is what makes coasters a viable advertising format.
The direct marketing situation is ideal. Your customers come across a beer coaster in their free time in a relaxed atmosphere where their attention will be drawn to the coaster on the table. With your brewery’s website address prominently advertised, the message is immediate. Integrating creative ideas such as contests, merchandise sales and the promise of details on your website will prompt the customer to visit the site and extend the temporal attachment to the advertising medium. If you have joined the growing number of companies buying advertising space on the beer home page you will see how beer coasters or beer mats drive up the traffic count.
The next step is getting your beer mats under the noses of your target audience. Of course it is common practice to supply beer coasters to the brew pubs, restaurants and clubs that sell your beer. Let’s extend the market! Do you sell your product in cyber-pubs, or non-alcoholic beverages in cyber-cafes? Providing coasters to these venues is a marketing opportunity that is bound to succeed.
Besides making beer coasters available at your booth, roam the crowds at beer festivals giving out coasters as you go. Contact sporting events and local fairs offering beer gardens – you will supply their beer coasters! When your company sponsors or provides beverages for a charity or special event, include beer coasters in your handout goody bag.
Contests are an interactive way of attracting attention to your coaster and on to your website. Along with your logo and company name, ‘Win A Pub Crawl In New York’ is sure to get attention! Add an arrow or ‘turn over coaster to learn how’ and use the flip side to ask the customer to visit your website for details.
Contest advertising on coasters is ideal for distribution at events and festivals. Attend with a display table and a computer with your website running so people can enter and join the fun instantly. Signage will prompt those present to look at the coaster and visit your site.
Coasters are collectible. A simple Internet search proves their popularity. Including your brewing company’s website address on special collection editions, lottery or coupon campaigns, etc., will enhance the coaster’s value for beer enthusiasts and coaster collectors.
Remember, beer coasters may not be potable but they’re portable. Not many customers take home a beer bottle with its label, set it in front of their computer and log-on; but they will take home a beer coaster!
Go For German Beer
June 21, 2011
Go For German Beer
One of the various things the German people are famous for is beer. With more than thirteen-hundred various breweries spread across the country, beer is a crucial piece of their culture and ancestry. The Czechs and the Irish are the only nations above the Germans as far as beer drinking per capita. The monks started to experiment with brewing around one-thousand A.D. back in the beginning of German history Eventually, brewing started to become very profitable for the monks and the country’s leaders started to regulate the production of the beer. The Bavarian Reinheitsgebot, or purity requirement, was written in fifteen-sixteen and remains the most prominent and significant factor to effect Germanic brewing.
The Bavarian Reinheitsgebot was ordered by Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria to ensure that Bavarian beers were made of the highest quality. The regulation states that beers should only consist of barley, hops, and water. The Reinheitsgebot is the oldest regulation put on food in the world and has not been changed in nearly five-hundred years. Yeast is the only augmentation to the list of vital ingredients in the act. Yeast that was naturally in the air was what manufacturers before used. Bavarian breweries were soon known as the best producers of beer because of the strict standard of quality followed by the purity standard. As the notoriety of the Bavarian breweries spread across the nation other producers began to follow the proclamation also.
German beers have a long-standing notoriety of making quality beers made only from the best ingredients as a result of the Reinheitsgebot. As time passed and Germany began to export beer, a lot of cities became famed brewing locations. The city of Bremen had over 600 breweries by fifteen-hundred and was the leading exporter of beer to Holland, Scandinavia, England, and even as far as India. Einbeck and Braunschweig were two more famous brewing towns. In modern-day Germany, most of the nation’s beer-drinking people still prefer fabbier, or draught beer, over bottle beer because of it’s robust taste and right amount of foam. In an attempt to curtail further outbreaks of the bubonic plague German beer steins became popular about the time the purity requirement came out and are still in use today.
During the time of the black plague, Germany started several regulations to stop its people from becoming ill. Large amounts of infected flies would fly in people’s food and spread the infection. This led to the stein, a drink holder with a closed top that could be operated with the thumb so a person could stop disease and still be able to drink with their free hand. Beer consumption rose exponentially as people began to realize the disease spread in unsanitary conditions with stagnant pools of water. Originally crafted from stoneware with pewter tops, steins grew in popularity. As the pewter guild grew, steins began to be made completely of pewter and stayed that way for over three-hundred years. Still produced today, silver and porcelain steins were eventually introduced.
Today there are over thirteen-hundred and fifty breweries within Germany’s lands that make over five-thousand brands of beer. The oldest beer maker in the world still in operation in the present is the Benedictine abbey Weihenstephan, that has been making beer since 1040. The most concentrated area in Germany for beer makers is the Franconia region of Bavaria by the city Bamberg. Most beers can be placed by ales and lagers but German beer makers produce a large variety of flavors. Some types of beer can have an alcoholic content as high as 12%, making them stronger than most wines even though most beers have an alcoholic content from 4.7% to 5.4%.
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