Zymology: the study of fermentation...
I enjoy the process, product, and companionship of all things fermented. And in search of such enjoyment, I've made over 200 batches of Beer, Mead, Wine, Cider, Sake, and Soda Pop in my zymological career. There aren't many hobbies where you can create something, consume something, and share it with your friends. And you'd probably drink beer anyway. Real beer I mean. Not that "barley pop" that passes for mass-consumption beer here in America. And I quote from a non-enlightened friend of mine:
"But I like my beer to taste like water!"
Such educated consumers need not apply to these pages...
My Stuff
I wrote this Beginner's Guide to Advanced and All-Grain Brewing. You might even learn something..
I also wrote The Beginner's Guide to Mead Making
And here's the hand outs that I use when I teach classes on how to make mead. (Word format document)
(and not to be too redundant) I also wrote an outline for Sake Making.
Here's a table to help determine the sugar and acid contents for various fruits. This is very useful information when making fruit flavored meads, or fruit ices and sorbets.
Here's a lecture on The History and Magic of Mead, and another one on The Legend and Lore of Porter.
My very own tabular Guide to Beer Styles, and another styles table documenting what one of my homebrewing clubs, the Impaling Alers, did for National Homebrewing Day
Here are recipes for award winning meads and beers:
- No Name Mead
- Honey Bucket Braggot (a mead)
I had somebody ask me about my yeast procedures in the No Name Mead. It turned into a rather long soloquility on yeast in general.
I had somebody ask me about how to do a temperature controlled fermentation of a mead while living in Florida. Here's the original query and response to their concerns.
And here's a Flavor and Taste component guide to help judge beer taste and sensory perceptions.
Ever wanted to know how to precisely figure hop utilization? So did I!
And finally, here's a rather outdated guide to the Seattle Brewery Scene.
Other People's Stuff
I found this really great site for Coventree Grove Meadery, a mead and bee keeping site, physically located in Delaware, but accessible on the net. Excellent site for mead, bees, and wine...
For stuff that other people have written, here is Dave Polaschek's Mead Guide called Mead Made Easy. Pretty good info here...
The Riverwalk Brewery in Florida sent out this Guide to Beer Making. I cleaned it up and put it here...
I'm a proud member of The Brews Brothers tm Zymology club, and their on-line presence includes of a lot of my writting.
If you care to learn anything about beer judging, check out the Beer Judge Certification Program's home page.
Check out my other hobbies page, and be sure to look in often, as these pages will always be changing...
This page is authored and maintained by Rich Webb.You can send E-mail to me by following this link to the contact page. And feel free to contact me if you have any comments, criticisms, or suggestions. I remain, however, perfectly capable of ignoring your useless opinion...
This document was last modified on Oct 17, 1997, and has been viewed countless times.