11 Great Blogs Homebrewers Should Follow
According to some of the research we’ve done, about 1 in 6 American men say that their garages are a sort of sanctuary for them. You’ll often hear such garages referred to as “man caves.”
Now, each sacred place these guys (and women, too) create for themselves differs primarily according to what goes on inside. Some people use their garages for woodworking projects. Some have project cars and bikes they work on. However, everyone who works in a garage can agree on the importance of cleanliness and having the right garage organization system for your needs!
Increasingly, people over the last decade or so have been using their garages to brew beer. Just like the old European monasteries, these sanctuaries have their own beer-making facilities.
Numbers from 2013 indicate that America has at least 1 million homebrewers, and about two-thirds of those hobbyists are relative newbies, having taken up homebrewing since 2005.
If you are one of the million-plus homebrewers in America — or really if you’re a homebrewer anywhere — this post is for you. It’s fall, so that means Oktoberfest beers and saisons and pumpkin ales are going to be fermenting in garages all around the country.
Below are 24 homebrewing blogs we think are worth following. These aren’t the big blogs that crank out the same posts season after season but real nuts-and-bolts informational resources. Check them out for recipes, hardware reviews, forums, and maybe a little help perfecting that chocolate stout for winter.
Four Brewers podcast
Not really a blog but informational all the same, the Four Brewers podcast is a weekly chat among four dudes who brew and drink tons of beer.
Learning To Homebrew
The team at Learning To Homebrew has been brewing beer for a decade and drinking beer for much longer. Their blog provides in-depth brewing resources, answers common brewing-related questions, and shares their love of beer culture and history!
The BeerSmith blog
Brad Smith has been brewing beer for about a quarter century, has created a special piece of software just for homebrewers, and can get super in-depth about pretty much any aspect of beer making.
The Mad Fermentationist
Michael Tonsmeire is an economist by day, but by night he is a certified beer judge, beer consultant and fermentation experimenter. That simply means he creates lots of interesting beers, and he goes into real depth on his blog as to how he creates his recipes.
Accidentalis Brewing
Blogger and garage brewer Matthew Chrispen is a Texas guy whose brewing tutorials are generally well researched and informative. Also, his site features a tried-and-tested recipe for an American Pale Ale that’s worth attempting.
Matt Humbard’s blog
Matt Humbard has a Ph.D. in microbiology and cellular biology, and he’s also really into brewing beer. That combination of expertise and interest makes for some really creative, thoughtful, and meticulously labeled beer recipes.
Homebrewtalk.com
OK, so the Homebrewtalk.com forum is one of the biggest and best-known resources online for homebrewers, but that’s because there is a lot of quality information on the site. Some of the best ideas are distilled in the site’s blog, which we recommend following, even if you aren’t active in the forum.
Growing Hops Yourself
Tony Saldin is in Year 6 of his experiment to grow his own hops, and the various stages since 2009 have been well documented. If you have any plans to grow hops on your own, Tony’s blog is a good starting point.
Eureka Brewing
What is it with homebrew bloggers having degrees in microbiology? Sam, a Swiss homebrewer, conducts experiments and analyses in the Eureka Brewing facility, and the posts are highly recommended, especially if you tend to geek out over specific strains of yeasts.
Brew Beer Blog
This is another general craft beer blog that covers everything from commercial breweries to industry news to beer reviews. It also has a separate section of recipes for homebrewers that will continue to grow with the blog’s community.
The Screwy Brewer
New Jersey-based Vince Feminella is one of the deepest resources on homebrewing available. He has been blogging since 2010, and his posts are lengthy, knowledgeable, and illustrated with lots of graphs and photos.
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