Randy Mosher

2 months ago | beerandbrewing.com | Randy Mosher

For more on brewing with these flavorful fermentables, see Brewing with Sugars.

2 months ago | beerandbrewing.com | Randy Mosher

Back in the Dark Ages of homebrewing, it was a revolutionary idea to use 100 percent malt instead of the 50/50 mix of malt extract and corn sugar that had been the standard since Prohibition. That shift relegated sugar to pariah status. Eventually, however, a little history and experimentation revealed that sugar can be a fascinating and flexible partner in the brewhouse.

Oct 22, 2024 | beerandbrewing.com | Randy Mosher

Beer is driven by human imagination and produced by the chemistry of plant growth, post-harvest processing, brewing, and fermentation. At virtually every step, the transformations that produce beer and carry it to our lips involve manipulating temperatures to achieve specific outcomes. The field of chemistry that deals with chemical reaction rates is called kinetics. The main principle of kinetics is that the higher the temperature, the faster chemical reactions occur.

Sep 8, 2024 | beerandbrewing.com | Randy Mosher

Humans have known hops for millennia. Despite this long association—or romance, rather—they remain an enduring mystery, especially when trying to make sense of the complex sensations they evoke. Let’s start with the easy one: bitterness. This requires no special talent to perceive. We experience just a handful of tastes, each with its own mechanisms. Unlike aromas, these tastes don’t blend together to create novel sensations.

May 27, 2024 | beerandbrewing.com | Randy Mosher

Of all alcoholic drinks, beer alone can boast of a dense and lingering mousse topping its liquid depths. Beer’s lively texture and fluffy foam have been admired since ancient times. All the more amazing is the collection of chemical miracles that make that foam happen. Sure, many drinks have bubbles. In champagne and other sparkling wines, these can be enchanting—glittering, lazily drifting their way up to the surface—and then they simply self-destruct.