Bare Hands Brewery Needs Your Support!

Over this past weekend Bare Hands Brewery owner, and master brewer, Chris Gerard suffered a significant head injury during a fall.  Chris is passionate about making people happy and making great beer.  He is expected to make a full recovery but the timeline is unknown.  As many small business owners who are starting up Chris did not have insurance for himself personally.  He is passionate about his craft and re-invested much of his profits into newer equipment and upgrades to the brewery.

As a result of this accident Chris is spending some time in hospital and his medical bills will be substantial. The family has setup a Crowdrise fundraiser site where people can make donations to help Chris and his family as they go through this tough time. You can find the link below to learn more how you can help lend your support.

https://www.crowdrise.com/raiseapint-helpchrisgerardandhisfamily/fundraiser/ryangerard

Help us "Raise A Pint" for the Gerard family and let's get Chris back to his family and his passion.  The craft beer community is just that...a community...let's prove it...

Dry Hopping 101

If you are a craft beer veteran or just beginning your journey you have probably heard the phrase "Dry Hopping".  But what is dry hopping?  What does it do?  Should you consider this as a homebrewer?

Before we discuss what dry hopping is and how it works let's first discuss how hops affect beer.  Hops serve as a bittering agent to wort to create beer that is flavorfull and not too sweet.  Without hops beer would just be fermented sugar water.  The earlier you add the hops to your boil the more bitterness is pulled from them increasing your IBU's.  Late boil additions of hops are used for flavor and more importantly aroma.  By adding hops at 5 minutes left in the boil and at flameout (0 minutes) you add more flavor and aroma versus bitterness.

So what is dry hopping?  Dry hopping is the addition of whole or pellet hops to the fermenting beer as it is in the process of fermenting or during secondary fermentation.  Hops are placed in a sterilized mesh bag to keep particulates from getting into the final product and are typically added 5-7 days before bottling
or kegging.  A major error that homebrewers make when dry hopping is not adding enough hops.  Often times homebrewers will add only an ounce of hops during dry hop.  That small amount of hops in a 5 gallon batch will hardly make a dent to your brew.  Most professional brewers recommend 3-5 ounces of hops for proper dry