Open Source Craft Brewery Shares More Than Recipes 50
Jason Hibbets writes An open source craft brewery in Saint Paul, Minnesota is taking open source beyond sharing recipes. The goal for Tin Whiskers Brewing Company is to "engage and give back to the community by sharing an inside look at opening and operating a craft brewery." In this interview with co-founder George Kellerman, we learn a little more about why the trio of hobbyists who started the brewing company took the path to becoming professional brewers and why they decided to be more open. "The brewery community was extremely helpful and open, so being open ourselves seemed like a great way to honor that," Kellerman said.
Free as in (Score:5, Funny)
BEER!
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Why is this even an article? The local brewcraft shop down the street has dozens of great recipes, and they will even make one up for you on the spot when you order the ingredients for a 5-gallon batch of beer. They have a small area where you can grab a copy of many of their past recipes for beer as you walk out the door. Big deal. It's my understanding this is quite common. Why is this an article again?
the (Score:2)
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Shares More the Recipes (Score:2)
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While Google just watched the eye-wear, eh samzenpus?
Open source business plans (Score:2)
Don't get you open source business loans. Let's be honest: banks and investors decide what local businesses are going to happen, except in the case of people who are already rich.
Not really open source (Score:3, Interesting)
The recipes lack IBUs as well as grain percentages which are needed to actually produce one of these "recipes". Sure a good brewer could pretty easily guess for basic styles but is still a far cry from open source. Its like having a specification for an engine be "iron, steel, gaskets, crankshaft"
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I believe it is traditional for "free beer" to not compile properly on the first version.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Beer
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The "Open Source" part is complete bullshit. There is tons of freely available information about brewing, recipes and how to start a brewery.
http://www.probrewer.com
They are doing nothing new except being pretentious about it.
Open source this, open source that... (Score:2)
This is not new (Score:5, Informative)
Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River published a homebrew recipe for Pliny the Elder along with a detailed description of how he designed it
Mitch Steele of Stone wrote a book on IPA which included recipes for many of Stone's beers
Craft brewing and homebrewing have a long and interconnected history
Many craft brewers started as homebrewers and many craft breweries own homebrew supply stores and support homebrew clubs
The craft brewers I have visited freely answered any questions I asked
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Northern Brewer sells a full line of pro series kits [probrewer.com] that were designed with the various brew masters.
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You will note that Mr. Cilurzo has not published recipes for Pliny the Younger, which causes people to foolishly camp outside the brewery and go on ridiculous searches for the beer as soon as rumors abound that it is in season.
--Jeremy
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PtY is not difficult to reverse-engineer. It's expensive to make, though, and the ratio of beer nerds to homebrewers is high enough that making it yourself doesn't really put a dent in their market.
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Many crafter brewers will simply give you their recipes -- or at least, the important details -- if you e-mail them and ask.
The real trade secret is the yeast (Score:5, Interesting)
From my understanding, the most successful breweries are not as concerned about their recipes being stolen because they have a proprietary yeast strain that they own and no one else can get.
For example: http://globalnews.ca/news/1542... [globalnews.ca]
The website states exactly what yeast (Score:5, Informative)
strains they use to brew each beer:
Short Circuit Stout--Wyeast 1084 (Irish Ale)
Flip Switch APA--Wyeast 1272 (American Ale II)
Wheatstone Bridge--Wyeast 1010 (American Wheat)
Ampere Amber--Wyeast 2112 (California Lager)
Schottky Pumpkin--Wyeast 2035 (American Lager)
All commercially available to anyone who wants them:
https://www.wyeastlab.com/ [wyeastlab.com]
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I am by no means an expert. I have never made beer myself but have friends that take it very seriously. It's possible to start with a commercial strain and have it evolve into something your own.
Maybe this was a better link to post, although I found the first one more interesting:
http://www.answers.com/Q/What_... [answers.com]
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I had to go back and check because you made me doubt myself. As stated in the article:
“As the yeast becomes more unique over time it contributes those characteristics to the flavour and the character of the beer, so potentially this is different than yeast used anywhere else,” said Wall.
“It’s been pretty much separated from mixing with any other yeast and is kept alive, so each batch you keep a little bit and use it in the next and it grows up more, the same thing can be done trad
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That's only true if you propagate yeast (internally) for many generations. You can also buy yeast, which a lot of brewers do because it saves them the trouble of doing careful quality control on a microbial culture.
It's also possible to acquire other brewers' yeasts unless they filter or sterilize their beer. Yeast labs do this on a regular basis and then sell it to other breweries (and to homebrewers). The yeast from The Alchemist, for example, is available from a couple of different companies now.
Only a h
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Re:The real trade secret is the yeast (Score:4, Informative)
Not to mention...not all breweries are the same. For instance, many German brewers use a traditional method called decoction mashing where portions of the mash are drawn off and boiled and then returned to the main mash to raise the temperatures for various enzymatic reactions, which will yield malty flavors that are difficult to achieve otherwise. Very few breweries outside Europe have this capability, in fact many smaller US craft breweries only allow for one step infusion mashing (hot water added to grain where the mash can only have one temperature stage) which limits the kinds of malts that can be used as the lightest and least modified malts require multiple stages of temperature rests. This is why it is exceeding rare for N. American breweries to be able to fully reproduce the flavors of e.g., a German Pils.
So much of brewing relies on process that just knowing the "recipe" (i.e., just the specific ingredients) is not a guarantee of being able to reproduce the beer.
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It can be but it isn't
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Not the OP, but am a brewer.
There are 3 ways to conduct a decoction mash: single, double and triple. You start the mash by adding milled grains to hot water, as you would with a regular step or single infusion mash. Then, after a certain period of time (say, 30 minutes), the brewer removes a portion of the grist (wet, soggy grains) from the mash tun and places it into a kettle, where it is then heated until it boils. This is then returned to the mash tun to continue mashing. Part of the effect here is
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Very few breweries outside Europe have this capability, in fact many smaller US craft breweries only allow for one step infusion mashing (hot water added to grain where the mash can only have one temperature stage) which limits the kinds of malts that can be used as the lightest and least modified malts require multiple stages of temperature rests.
Somehow I find that hard to believe, as even my buddy's little home brew machine can do that. All you need is a temperature sensor and timer hooked up to the heating element, a typical schema looks like "52C/15 min, 64C/20 min, 72C/20 min, 77C/5 min". Heck, you can even do it manually with an egg timer but if you only have a simple cut-off temperature switch I'd rather go with a simplified scheme like "66C/60 min" and spend that hour doing something else. I can't really imagine industrial equipment without
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Don't know what to tell you, but I've toured I-don't-know-how-many US/Canadian brewpubs and they were all single-step infusion set ups. I can't speak to your buddy's homebrew machine, but in many ways a home brewery can be much more flexible than a small commercial brewery. Generally speaking, to do proper step-mashing you need a separate vessel for heating the mash in addition to the lautering vessel, which is obviously more costly and takes up more space. You can do limited step mashing in a single mas
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Misinterpretation (Score:2)
Magic (Score:1)
More hops (Score:4, Funny)
The secret to craft brewing beer?
With the price of hops these days... (Score:2)
adding more of them seems a strange way to increase profits...
https://beerfests.com/blog/bee... [beerfests.com]
It's not that hard (Score:2)
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They do say which commercially-available strains they use.