High on Hops: Experimental Homebrewing

By Lee Heidel Published January 6, 2020

There’s a new bible for ambitious home brewers looking to push the boundaries of beer.

Experimental Homebrewing: Mad Science in the Pursuit of Great Beer by Drew Beechum and Denny Conn can be seen as spiritual successor to Dogfish Head Craft Brewery owner Sam Calagione’s Extreme Brewing. In the nearly ten years since Calagione’s epic treatise on challenging the home brew status quo, the commercial craft beer landscape has expanded and changed more rapidly than even he could have imagined. With more and more fantastical options available on store shelves, a home brewer who wants to stay ahead of the curve will have to go even farther into the science behind brewing and the possibilities of new flavor combinations and techniques.

Experimental Homebrewing contains some of the most inspirational recipes ever seen in a brewing book. Some of our favorites include:

The Curried Oat Mild, for example, is an ode to tikka masala, combining ginger, paprika, Indian coriander and (of course) masala powder into an aromatic, spicy feast of a beer.

The Mean Green Beer incorporates kale, spinach and cucumbers to create a green-tinged pale ale that would make St. Patrick proud. There’s also an entire section on brewing with meat. Bacon Helles, anyone?

The book isn’t just another off-beat recipe collection. It details innovative and inexpensive ways to control fermentation temperatures, “faking” a cask of real ale, creating canned super-starters for better yeast production and more MacGyver-esque ways to up your game. While the recipes do form touchstones to illustrate concepts from chapter to chapter, they are always accompanied by equations, measurement guidelines and the all-important why behind what makes that particular concoction so special.

It’s not the perfect “getting started” book for brand-new home brewers, but Experimental Homebrewing is inspirational and fun for novices or pros. The tone is conversational and humorous while at the same time conveying the knowledge that comes from years of real-world experimentation.

Experimental Homebrewing leaves the reader excited to take on a provided recipe or technique, but also empowers the reader to go off-book and bring their own imaginative concepts to the brew kettle.

Topics

Lee Heidel is the managing editor of Brew/Drink/Run, a website and podcast that promotes brewing your own beer, consuming the…

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Curious about the science of high-altitude drinking? Here's the breakdown

Man drinking at sunset.

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The science of high-altitude drinking
Frankly, there’s not a lot of good research out there on the topic. Back in the 1930s, freshly post-Prohibition America was thirsty again and at least a few people were asking the question. A Columbia University psychologist named R.A. McFarland looked into it, concluding roughly that at altitudes of 10,000 feet above sea level or higher, two to three drinks is more like having four to five drinks for low-altitude people.
But other studies suggest the body deals with alcohol the same, regardless of how high up one is. Researchers in alpine Europe looked into how beer was processed by the human body at sea level versus high up in the mountains at roughly 10,000 feet. The results? No difference, at least in terms of blood-alcohol content.
It’s a topic of some discussion within the aviation world. In fact, it’s easy to imagine pilots enjoying a Mai Tai pre-takeoff during the party-on-the-plane era of 1960s and 1970s. You know, the golden era of flying, when Pan-Am ran the show, people dressed to the nines (and wouldn’t even think about reaching for their Juicy-brand sweatpants) for flights, and smoked and drank excessively in the cabin. But studies in this regard, too, generally point to zero impact on the part of elevation.
Physiologically, it’s all about oxygen. Alcohol works its way through the bloodstream and tweaks hemoglobin’s ability to absorb oxygen. In the thinner air of higher locales, where there’s less oxygen present, it’s easier to feel something akin to tipsy (a little light-headed, dizzy, etc.). Alcohol’s effects aren’t magnified so much as that you’re simply imbibing in an environment with less of something you so vitally need — oxygen.
Which is to say altitude sickness exists and is thrown unfairly into the alcohol conversation. This condition is common enough that it’s estimated to affect some 200,000 Americans per year. Also called acute mountain sickness, it’s the physical distress some feel when higher, where oxygen levels are lower. Generally, symptoms include headache, nausea, and shortness of breath. Sound mostly like a hangover?
In the thinner air of higher locales, where there’s less oxygen present, it’s easier to feel something akin to tipsy.

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