Dave's Beer Page.

On this page, you can examine some of my own contributions to net.beer.dom, or take off on links to some of the best beer sites on the web. Because the nature of the brew.net is such that most of the good information is agreed upon, there need not be a huge number of sites containing what is essentially identical information. So rather than consume my disk quota with copies of the various FAQ files etc, this page simply links you with the sites that have the information readily available.

However, I do provide a few additional files of interest to intermediate and advanced brewers, mostly to do with mashing. Finally, there are things I have compiled myself, which are more or less exclusive to this site. These include my yeast-culturing file, my list of water ion profiles for some of the great brewing cities, a program to calculate IBUs using Glenn Tinseth's latest utilization data, and a discussion of what I consider to be the most sensible way to figure priming rates for our beers.

The FAQs are listed immediately below. From here, you can jump directly to the list of brewsites, to the collection of additional items of interest, or have a look at my own files.

In late July 1997, I learned that one of my articles (on priming bottled beer) was reprinted in the Australian brewing publication Ausbeer without any attempt at obtaining my permission. Although I am happy to share my work with other brewers, this unfortunate occurrence forces me to request that anyone wishing to use information or writing from this site please contact me ahead of time to ask first. I will almost certainly say "Yes, gladly", but I do not think it too much to ask to be made aware of things I have written being incorporated into other publications before the fact. Thank you for your cooperation.

Brewing FAQ files

These files are of uniformly excellent quality and should be on every brewer's hard drive.

The Yeast FAQ. Patrick Weix's compilation of the whys and wherefors of our favorite form of fungal life.
The Hops FAQ. Norm Pyle's collection of info on using, evaluating, and even growing hops. This link takes you to the HTML-ized version on Glenn's Hop Page (see below).
All About Grains, Revision 101, primary author Jim Busch, gives a rundown on the characteristics of most US and European malts and specialty grains.
There is no Water FAQ as such at this time; however you can go directly to the Water chapter at The Brewery, or to the collected writings of AJ deLange on synthesizing various water profiles (note this link is not active as of Jan '98).

Additional Items of Interest

The following are also of use for the intermediate to advanced brewer.

SUDS for Windows Recipe Formulator. This is Michael Taylor's well-known shareware program, version 4.0a. It is the patched version that corrects a glitch with respect to mash-water infusion calculations when using real (that is, metric) units instead of screwed-up-british-engineering units. I am giving it space here because this patched version appears to be rather hard to find for some reason. Here's what you need to do:
1. Download the 306kb ZIPPED file sudw40.zip.
2. Run PKUnzip on this file to produce sudw40.exe, the usual self-extracting archive. Put this file in a suitable directory.
3. Run the self-extracting archive file either in DOS or with Windows file manager or whatever, and you are done.
Mike Taylor has released a new version of this program, Suds '97; and now has a website devoted to the various version of Suds at http://oldlib.com/suds/ TARGET="_top".
IBU Calculations. Some months back I wrote a DOS-based program to calculate hop bitterness levels using the new data from Glenn Tinseth. This core of this program (basically one or two lines of code!) was used by Pat Anderson to build a very nice Windows utility. Dave's Beer Page is proud to be the Official Home of TINIBUw. It is stored here as a PKZipped file, about 103 kb; you will need to unzip it prior to running it. The unzipped file is a little over 210kb and runs under Windows 3.xx and Windows 95.
The Fix Mashing Schedule. I have pasted together three HBD posts by Dr. George Fix on his now-famous 40-60-70 mashing schedule. Find out from the source the whys and wherefors of this scheme. I used the THREAD program from Spencer's Beer Page to assemble this; it also discusses the Meaning of Protein Modification. Required reading at the Academy IMHO.
Calculating Mashing Infusions. A couple of years ago Kelly Jones wrote up a good description of calculating amounts and temperatures of infusion water so that we can accurately hit our temperature targets in infusion mashing. This treatment is general enough to use for one or more infusions.
First Wort Hopping. In late 1995, Dr. George Fix reported on a subject that had been recently resurrected in the brewing literature known as First Wort Hopping. I have compiled a summary of the main article on this procedure for your perusal, including some subjective commentary from several net.brewers. The First Wort Hopping page will be updated fairly frequently over the coming months, with data reported by homebrewers from using this technique, so come back and have a look every so often.

Sites of BrewDom.

Spencer's Beer Page. What more is there to say? The preeminent beer page. Links to everything, beer labels, FAQs, access to the Sierra archive, and THREAD searches of the HBD, Lambic, or JudgeNet digests. But wait--there's more! He's a nice guy too!
The Brewery. Another classic beer web site. Technical articles, tasting notes, software library, and the one and only Cats Meow compilation of recipes; also an extensive archive of Homebrew Digests, including HTML-ized versions as they come out for easy, browsable reading. Maintained by Karl Lutzen and Mark Stevens, to whom we all owe quite a debt of gratitude for these stellar efforts.
Glenn Tinseth's Hop Page, the premier source of information on hops on the web, maintained by Hophead Extraordinaire Glenn Tinseth. The latest hop utilization data, characterized at state-of-the-art levels, are to be found here. Also, the link given above to Norm Pyle's outstanding Hops FAQ in HTML format for easy browsing.
Palmer House Brewery and Smithy, the Fort of John Palmer, mild-mannered metallurgist, eminent net.brewer, and author of the new book, How to Brew Your First Beer. This book evolved from a web document still to be found at this site--if you are relatively new to brewing, you can't beat it.
Brewing Techniques magazine's home page. The best publication for home and craft brewers goes online.
Bradley Collins has assembled The Great Aussie Beer Page which shows conclusively that Australian beer is not just Foster's laaaaaaagah. Check it out!
The Real Beer Page, which was once focused largely on brewery tours but has become a repository for lots of other good stuff too. It is now home to the well-known web pages of Spencer Thomas and Glenn Tinseth, to name two.
Attention Shoppers! Pat Babcock has put together the first-of-its-kind Virtual Homebrew Hardware Flea Market where you can pick up used homebrew gear from other net.brewers. How much would you pay?

My own contributions.

I have only a few things to offer here:

Yeast Culturing. My document on Culturing Yeast and Using Slants might help you become a yeast rancher, allowing you to maintain a lifetime supply of your favorite yeast strains.
Brewing Waters. I have compiled a list of the ppm ion concentrations in waters from several of the world's Great Brewing Cities so that you can adjust your own brewing water for the appropriate style. During July 1995, A.J. deLange compiled a very detailed set of formulations for adjusting nominally ion-free water to match these profiles; you can jump directly to the collection of his writings on doing this.
Priming Bottled Beer. I have a longish document on what I consider to be the best way to calculate priming rates for desired levels of carbonation, as measured in volumes of CO2. I advocate a system in which we measure priming sugar in weight per volume to be primed rather than the traditional 3/4 cup per 5 gallons. I have done a simple experiment to test whether volume or weight is a better way to measure sugar amounts. Full details are to be found in this document. An even more detailed treatment of this subject appeared in the July/August 1996 issue of Brewing Techniques.

Email me your questions and comments, praise and criticism--or just let me know you were here.

Last updated 25 March 2001.