Craftbeer.com Third Research Review

Craftbeer.com is a site that is all about craft beer and the culture of craft beer. The site has many features and subsets of itself.  It includes, home brewing, craft industry, beer and food, and beerology.  These are just some of the features of this site.  One of may favorite things on this site is the beer and food link.  Here you can pair your favorite beers with food recipes that work well with the beer.  It also has recipes based on different types of beer. All of the recipes the site features include some type of beer element in them.  This was a big draw to me because I love to cook and being able to incorporate beer into my cooking has really combined two of my hobbies.  The site also has a feature, which links it to social media devices.  When visiting this site you can click “stories” and then “why craft beer” and it brings you to a page where people post their stories about that topic.  Really cool to read and share with the craft beer community. Since in my opinion craft beer culture really is all about sharing and community this was a really in genius way to have this in their site.  Another really awesome feature is the beerology subsection of the site.  Here it delves into the history and traditions behind the beer.  It also gives resources on how and where to buy and store your beer. The site also gives you access to local places that are tapped into the craft beer scene and culture.  This was how I found a lot of my local bars and pubs.  They have places locally like Urge Gastropub in Rancho Bernardo, and Churchill’s Pub and Grille in San Marcos, two amazing establishments.

Home Brew Talk 2nd Response

Homebrewtalk.com is a forum based website for home brewers. It is a very valuable resource for anyone that is either new to home brewing or has been doing it for a while.  They have many different skill levels of people on the forum.  They specialize in home brewing although there are many other aspects of beer available for research on this site as well.  The forum consists of main talking points like, yeast, bottling/kegging, do it your self, and All-Grain brewing among many other different key points in brewing. I have used this site for a lot of different reasons. The people usually respond really quickly so if you have a problem with something you can always find an answer of get a quick response.  The sites also allows members to search the past forum posts, this is a good way for someone to search a topic and get an answer they may have otherwise not have found.  Along with help on brewing they also have commercial beer reviews and brewery reviews.  The members also lend a hand in finding rare beers and they have a trading forum set up.  The website also acts as a sort of community, they host many different events as well as letting other people know of beer events in their own communities.  The website also has hundreds of different recipes.  They are free to all members to copy and make on their own. Since it is a forum as well, you can feel free to ask the members who designed the recipe questions and they will answer you as well.  All of this makes a really invaluable resource for a home brewer. They also have sponsored vendors, which are basically vendors, which they trust, and members use.  They give you discounts and have really good promotions.

First Research Response

The site byo.com is Brew your own. It is a site with information regarding home brewing and the history of it.  The site has information of equipment and how to start up from scratch.  The site has many resources for both new and old home brewers.  It also supplies the reader with a list of blog sites.  They range from new to the home brewing craft to people who graduated from Davis with a degree in Brewing Science.  The site also supplies the reader with recipes for different types of beer. Along with recipes they also have a bunch of different types of calculators. They give you a way to calculate yeast, hops, grain, and water volume which is really handy for a home brewer, because most recipes have different finish amounts.  One of my favorite parts of this site besides the recipes is the store.  It is always handy for a home brewer to have many resources for buying supplies. This is because not all brewers have local access to a store that has or can sell them supplies.  Although this sites store really only provides resource guides and magazines, which can also be a brewer’s best friend. The site also offers many how to videos and guides to get started or even to perfect a certain aspect of the craft.  I have actually used this site since I have started to watch the videos.  It helped me learn how to use a yeast starter.  I also used it to learn how to use my hydrometer when I first started brewing. I found this site from Google searching how to use a hydrometer.  It came in handy then so I decided to use it for this project.  All in all I think this is a very good site for anyone who wants to home-brew or even learn more about the craft and art of home brewing. It is very easy to read and easy to understand with lots of good information.

Topic of Passion

VSAR302                                                                                                Corey Esoldi

Dorothy Chance

My topic of passion is about brewing and beer.  I have recently become a home brewer and have really gained an interest in the science and the culture behind the beer. I find it fascinating that such a wide flavor profile can come from such a few list of ingredients.  The main ingredients in beer are water, grain, yeast and hops.  Yet beer with those 4 ingredients can vary, you can get fruity flavor all the way to sour flavors, even smoky and chocolate flavors.  Learning how to home brew really peaked my interest in this process.  I am also going to look into the beer culture, more specifically the craft beer movement. 

Home brewing is the process of buying the ingredients and equipment and brewing beer at home.  It is a pretty simple process with pretty simple ingredients.  From the simple process can come really big and different results.  The equipment to start home brewing is very minimal but can get expensive and extensive as your skill level increases.  The basics of the process are to mash the grains, which is the process of steeping the grain at a certain temp for a extended period of time, then boiling the wort – the liquid produced from mashing-. Once the wort is boiling you add the hops and any other adjuncts.  Then you need to cool the wort once it has boiled for at least 60 minutes. Once it is cooled to around 80, transfer into the fermenter and add the yeast.   Then you wait for a set period of time depending on the yeast and on the style of beer that you are brewing.  The idea of home brewing always intrigued me.  I had a kit bought for me that’s what really got me started and I have really taken off with doing this hobby.

I am also intrigued about the craft beer movement.  The difference between craft brewing and big beer brewing in the world of beer drinkers is becoming further and further apart.  I want explore how each market and portray their beer to current markets.  With craft beer I want to see how the labels and bottles and imagery they use differs from big beers like Bud, Coors, and Miller.  The way a company like Stone Brewery uses Gargoyles or puts its self out their unabashed by what their beer is intrigues me.  Stone openly says that they aren’t for everyone and doesn’t produce a beer that is “commercial”.  I want to research into what is “commercial” and what is appealing and why it is appealing.  The craft beer movement is very prevalent in Southern California but isn’t in other places in America.  I want to look into why is that, why is it so prevalent in San Diego but not in other cities.  What makes San Diego different?  The idea of appealing to the public as a whole or appealing to a limited market also is a big thing that goes on in craft brewing.  The culture of craft brewing is also something that really excites me.  I feel like I am in the current craft culture that is growing in San Diego. The idea of culture is something I would not usually attach to an item like beer, but I think that craft beer has created a culture.  I want to explore what the culture is, what it looks like, what it feels like, how those inside and outside of it react and live with it, and the people who are moving the culture.  The way the culture exists in society both in San Diego and other places is something I will look into as well.

List of words

Fizzy Yellow Beer
Craft Beer
Culture
Rye IPA
Hops
Delicious
BMC
movement
Brewing
Home Brewer
Fermentation

List of Imagery

Bottles
Labels
Hops
Grain bills
Water
Beer
Gargolyes
Beer Glasses
Brewers
Fermenters
Wort

Topic of Passion Proposal Essay - quick entry

Beer and Brewing - I wanna explore the new Craft beer movement in Southern California.  I like the idea, being a home brewer, of the different ways breweries promote their product. The use of labels and bottles have always intrigued me. The way a craft brewery markets and the way major BMC breweries are much different. I want to explore this further.  The process of brewing and ingredients is another area I will explore further in this project.