Upcoming Changes...

As all my readers out there know, this blog and the corresponding Twitter and Tumblr pages have chronicled both my own homebrewing and recent movements regarding sustainability and brewing. That isn't changing, per se, but what is changing is the manner in which this information is conveyed. From now on, the blog will be dedicated to sustainability in the world of brewing and the Tumblr page (I know, this hasn't seen much action lately) will be dedicated to my own homebrewing adventures. The Twitter page will continue to provide quick, brief updates pertaining to both (as well as the witty remarks you all have come to love and hold dear). I'm also on the fence right now with whether or not I should purchase a custom domain name for the blog (www.wuweibrewing.com, for example), so this might be something else you all will see in the near future. The idea would be to make the URL much more simple, but the default one provided by Blogger really isn't all that long or complex, so we'll see (of course, it's also dirt cheap these days to buy a domain).

Another change, which many of you probably never really noticed anyway, is that I've now permitted the blog to be found through web searches. I've had this disabled in the past for a few reasons: the personal nature of this site (in that it's mostly been about what I'm doing...for friends of mine to read and follow), the fact that I really didn't want it to be all that public (as in, known outside my circle of friends), and that I worried about the use (theft) of my logo (which I now know really can't happen). Since the content of the blog is going to deal with matters beyond my own brewing (which it has already been increasingly doing), and very important ones for that matter, I think extending the reach of the site is a logical step.

But, just to mention a few things real quick before this change is officially implemented, I brewed a heather braggot this past Monday. It was a small, 3-gallon batch (just like the witbier braggot I brewed a few months ago). I crossed a traditional wildflower honey mead with heather ale (this was made with heather tips and was completely unhopped, thus making it, by today's standards, somewhat of a gruit beer). That previous parenthetical note (the "somewhat"), by the way, is in regard to the fact that traditional (medieval) gruit beer was typically made with the combination of these three herbs: marsh rosemary, sweet gale, and yarrow. However, today, any beer made without hops, but with the addition of other herbs/bittering agents, tends to get labeled as gruit. I envision myself making more small batches with ingredients other than hops in the near future as well. Growing my own hops isn't really feasible at this point, but if I can grow my own brewing herbs to use in these batches...well, that would just be wonderful, now wouldn't it? Especially if they turn out well!

Peace and Love!