Brian Stephens - Keepers of Craft

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Brian Stephens

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Keepers of Craft take Heavy Medal @ 2025 WMBO!

Keepers of Craft take Heavy Medal @ 2025 WMBO!

The 2025 O'Connor's West Michigan Brew Off is in the books, and what a great showing! 12th Annual O’Connor’s West Michigan Brew OffBrew Competition Online Entry & Management Congrats to the following Keepers for their achievements! Chris Baar with Harry Jachym Bronze for Strong

Kalamazoo Hot Sauce Enthusiasts Meetup - Great Success

Kalamazoo Hot Sauce Enthusiasts Meetup - Great Success

The Kalamazoo Hot Sauce Enthusits meeting in January was a great success! After a long break following the worst of COVID-19, KHSE met for the second ever time at the Distant Whistle brewery in Vicksburg. While not Keepers distinctly, we absolutely consider them a sister club! Many a sauce was

Let's Talk About Brewing With Intent

Let's Talk About Brewing With Intent

What do I mean by "Brewing with intent"? Instead of digging right into it, I'll start with a few personal examples. My very first solo batch of beer was supposed to be a chocolate banana stout, and one of my first batches of mead was supposed

Let's Talk About Carbonation as an Ingredient

Let's Talk About Carbonation as an Ingredient

The thought of first putting something like this together came to me when I was judging a competition some odd months back. As my judging partner and I were going through the beers, I mentally noted to myself just how often I was recommending increased carbonation in my overall impression

Keepers of Craft homebrew club recognized with Gambrinus Club Award!

Keepers of Craft homebrew club recognized with Gambrinus Club Award!

Pittsburgh, Pa. • June 25, 2022 The Keepers of Craft homebrew club of Kalamazoo, Mich., was presented the Gambrinus Club Award at the 2022 National Homebrew Competition, organized by the American Homebrewers Association® (AHA) – the national not-for profit organization dedicated to advancing the hobby of homebrewing. Winners of the world’s

Keepers of Craft takes home 2021 Homebrew Club of the Year!

Keepers of Craft takes home 2021 Homebrew Club of the Year!

Each year homebrew clubs from around the state of Michigan pool together entries for the Michigan Beer Cup homebrew competition. When medals are awarded, scores are also given and aggregated for each club. A gold is worth 3 points, a silver 2, a bronze 1. This year Keepers of Craft

November Meeting Recording Posted

November Meeting Recording Posted

For our November meeting we were honored to have Lance Shaner, owner of Omega Yeast, on to talk to us about some of the Kveik strains they propagate (and other cool yeast knowledge!) Check out the video!

Keepers Cup 2020

Keepers Cup 2020

Entries for the 2020 Keepers Cup are now being accepted! Competition season has been a little rough this year due to the pandemic, but that's not going to keep The Keepers of Craft down. All members through the 2020 calendar year are eligible to sign up for the

First brew with Philly Sour - Lachancea spp. lactic acid producing yeast

First brew with Philly Sour - Lachancea spp. lactic acid producing yeast

Cross posting a recent Reddit post I made in /r/homebrewing. So what is Philly Sour? Philly Sour is a Novel Lachancea spp. yeast that is capable of producing lactic acid while also producing ethanol. It basically does all of the cool fun things that we want a yeast to

Christmas Brew Day 2019

Christmas Brew Day 2019

It's the most maltiest time of the year! The Keepers of Craft were back at it again at One Well Brewing's production facility in December. One Well, being the fine, upstanding, and supportive brewery they are, have invited us to brew as a club (with their

2019 Beer Generator Competition

2019 Beer Generator Competition

The 2019 beer generator competition was a great success! For the uninitiated, this year Keepers of Craft held a competition in which all participants were asked to brew a beer that they chose from a list of randomly generated "recipies". Beers ranged from "irregularly colored" European

Brewing for Competitions

Brewing for Competitions

Who wouldn't want unbiased and valuable feedback on how to make better beer? And maybe a little bling. This was originally a Powerpoint presentation used for an in-person meeting. Instead of attaching the .pptx file I'm opting to go through each of the individual slides one

First Beer with Voss Kveik

First Beer with Voss Kveik

In preparation for the upcoming Goshen Homebrew Competition, I decided I'd give a strain of Kveik yeast a whirl and make some beer. My chosen strain for the competition was Voss Kveik which I was able to pick up at South County Homebrew Supply. Thanks Drew Doster for

Boss Tweed Clone Attempt #1

Boss Tweed Clone Attempt #1

Good morning all! I wanted to take some time and share my first attempt at a Boss Tweed clone in preparation for the upcoming release by Old Nation Brewing Co. First, I’d like to list off some considerations when I first decided to clone the beer. #1: Obviously I’

Black Currant Sherbet (Lactose) Sour

Black Currant Sherbet (Lactose) Sour

My first sour of many to come. There have been a lot of really flavorful beers coming out of the SW Michigan area lately. Specifically I've really enjoyed many of the Odd Side "Fruitsicle" series beers as well as the HOMES "Sherbert" series of