One Half Million

Today,  (Friday September 15th, 2017), at 4 AM Eastern Time, my blog recorded my 500,000th visitor! When I started this blog I had intended it as little more than a brewing log that I couldn't use; I never expected for it to evolve to what it is now, nor did I ever expect as much interest as I have received.

Thank you to all my readers (and watchers of my youtube channel - 154,695 views and counting) for making this endeavour the success it has been, and for your on-going support (and questions/feedback).

I know things have been slow here on my blog, and on my youtube channel, but that is because I am working fervorously behind the scenes to modernise and update my blogging platform. A few quick posts are in the work, and I am hoping to have the new site ready to launch in early October...so please stay tuned!

Please Excuse The Mess

Please excuse the lack of posts and videos lately...The SG Brewery (and my family) have recently moved to the country, and I will return to my regular brewing/blogging/vloging activities later in the summer.

And look out for some changes too - a new website, new video features, and maybe even a little bit of social media.

Apparently DMS is Still a Thing

DMS-Rich Vienna. Don't let
its yummy appearance
foold you!

I've been brewing since the bad ol' days of the mid-1990s. Back then malt quality is not what it is today, so we had to use a lot of tricks to get good beer. One of these was the 90 minute boil, a necessity when using Pilsner malt (and other minimally-modified malts), to drive off DMS. DMS, for those who do not know, is a sulphur-based compound present in malts which in high enough concentrations gives your beer a cooked-corn aroma and a green-vegetable-like flavour.

Obviously, something you don't want in your beer. But, luckily for us, boiling drives it off...hence the old method of boiling lagers (and other Pilsner-malt rich beers) for 90 minutes.

The good news is that malt quality has dramatically improved over the past 20 years, and the levels of DMS precursors in malt are pretty low compared to historical norms - so low that experiments by Brulosophy found it hard to detect, even after short boils. This improvement in malt quality has led homebrewers (including myself) to do things previously unthinkable - no-boil, 100% pilsner malt sours, 60 minute boils for most lagers, etc. Some of the best lagers I've brewed, like the Vienna & Pilsner I brewed last year, used 60 minute boils with great success.

So imagine my disappointment when I brewed a Vienna this year, using all the same methods and near-identical recipe to last years brew, only to find that the resulting beer had an intense DMS aroma and flavour - probably the worst DMS off-flavour I've had in a beer since the late 1990's. The beer is not undrinkable - in fact, I served it at a recent party and received good feedback - but it is flawed and not up to my normal standards. So what went wrong?

Vienna is prepared in a similar manner to Pilsner malt, meaning it has a similar risk of DMS precursors - but should also be subject to the malting improvements over the past two decades. I've brewed beers previously made of 100% Vienna, with 60 minute boils, without issue. But there is one difference - this was my first time using Weyermann Vienna; all previous batches used Vienna malt from Breiss. Although the character of the malt from each manufacturer is very similar, slight differences in their malting process may have led to different levels of DMS precursors in one malt versus the other - this conceivably could occur even on a batch-by-batch basis within the same manufacturer. That said, a google search failed to find any suggestion that Weyermann had higher levels of DMS in their Vienna than Breiss; although I did find a few reports of DMS in Vienna-heavy beers.

A second issue may have been batch size - I did a 40L batch this year, in place of a 20L batch last year. Because I use the same pot for both sizes of brews, the recent batch had half the surface area:volume ratio, which would slow the volatilization of DMS.

A third issue may have been boil vigour; while I have an over-powered burner on my brewing rig, the larger boil volume, brewing of the beer on a cold day, plus a lot of wind on this years brew day, meant that the boil vigour and rate of boil-off were not as good on the more recent batch.

At the end of the day, I think there are a few things to be learned from this batch. The first is that I probably should return to 90 minute boils for beers brewed using malts with high potential for DMS; especially if brewing larger volumes or on a day where boil vigour may be an issue. The second issue is that I should brew mission-critical beers - e.g. those intended for parties - with a bit more lead time, to allow for additional ageing (or a brewing of an alternative beer) should issues like this arise. And lastly, this beer allowed me to relive my youth, through recreation of flavours that were common in the early years of my brewing "career".

2016 In Review

Last night, somewhere around midnight, 2016 came to an end...meaning its time for my annual look back at the year that was.

The Good: Both my blog and youtube channel continue to grow in popularity; my blog reaching 394k views, and my youtube channel 103k views. Most of the beers this year came out either good or excellent, including what may have been my best Berliner Weisse to-date. My brewing output is up slightly over last year - 16 beers/ciders, plus a few batches of wine. I added a bunch of fun yeasts to the yeast bank, and found two new loves in the form of Kveik yeast and fast-lagering with W34/70.

Of course, this year was also my 20th brewversary, and the celebration of that went well...and is still continuing.

The Bad: Brewing output is still down compared to historical norms, and I ran dry a few times this year. My posting of both blog posts and youtube videos has also suffered this year, despite starting a new series of short videos intended to overcome last years rather meagre offerings.

The Ugly: Turns out I was growing my hops all wrong...I hope to fix that in 2017.

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Some Quick Stats

• Most popular post of 2016: Casting Agar Plates
• Most commented post of 2016: Fact or Fiction: Can Pathogens Survive in Beer (Mould Edition)
• Most popular video of 2016: Your Home Yeast Lab Made Easy - Making Agar Plates
• Top Viewing Countries of 2016: United States, United Kingdom, Russia, Barbados, Canada
• Top Traffic Sources of 2016: Google, Facebook, Milk the Funk Wiki

My Favourite Blogs of 2016

(in no particular order)

• Chop & Brew
• Larsblog
• Sour Beer Blog
• Brulosophy
• A PhD in Beer

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Upcoming in 2017

I cannot claim to have any big things planned for this year - more posts and videos, and ore brewdays, I hope. I also hope to electrify my brew setup...but those plans have been in the works for 3 years and have never advanced past the planning phase, so I'm not going to hold my breath on that one.

It's Back

A few of my past exchanges.

As many of my long-term readership knows I used to offer access to my extensive yeast bank on an exchange basis. Due to a mix of personal and professional reasons I lacked the time over the past year to engage in yeast exchanges, and took the bank off of the interwebs.

The drought is over.

Both my commercial and wild banks are back open for exchange (with some exceptions, where I've promised to not exchange certain yeasts). As in the past, all exchanges are trades - you give me something new and I'll send several your way.

The link to the exchange can be found at the top of the page, or by clicking here.

I use a system of mailers which makes exchanges cheap and easy. Details can be found on the exchange page, or at this link.

2015 - A Year in Review

2015 is coming to a close, so is time for the annual look back.

The Good...
The blog is still getting a reasonable number of hits (155K as of today), but the youtube channel is doing really well and, if trends remain the same, will have more hits than the blog in roughly 5 months. No infected batches this year, and instead, I've brewed two of the best beers I recall making - These Gose Christmas, and an unnamed IPA I haven't bothered blogging about yet (and whose keg is nearly empty).

I also brewed batch #300 this year; a pretty notable milestone. Granted, I did not know at the time that it was batch #300, so in place of brewing something good I instead brewed a rather bland pale ale that didn't even warrant a blog entry (and even being beer #300, still doesn't warrant a blog entry).

The Bad...
Brewing output is down - all in (wine + cider + beer) I managed a paltry 14 batches this year. In my defence I did a compete tear-down and rebuild of my basement, plus added a giant new deck on the house. But the brewery (and my back) suffered as a consequence.

The Ugly...
Unlike last year, I get to leave the ugly slot empty this year. And that, folks, counts as a victory.

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Some Quick Stats

• Most popular post of 2015: Choosing the correct probiotics for souring beer.
• Most commented post of 2015: Tie = Choosing the correct probiotics for souring beer & Easy Yeast Banking
• Most popular video of 2015: Your Home Yeast Lab Made Easy - Making Agar Plates
• Top Viewing Countries of 2015 (Ranked #1 to #5): USA, Russia, Canada, Israel, Brazil
• Top Traffic Sources of 2015: Milk the Funk, Google, Facebook, forum.beerfans.ru.

My Favourite Blogs of 2015

(in no particular order)

• |Brülosophy|
• Beer Flavored
• Sour Beer Blog
• Eureka Brewing
• Suregork Loves Beer

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Whats Coming Up in 2016?

December 9, 2016. And no, this isn't because its the 51st anniversary of 'A Charley Brown Christmas' (originally released Dec 9, 1965). Nor is it a celebration of the eradication of small pox (Dec 9, 1979). Nor is it a celebration of the birthday of actress Judi Dench (best 'M' of the Bond series, so far). Rather, it is the 20th anniversary of my first brew day! I've already brewed the beer to be consumed on that day...and I'm planning on the same day of re-brewing that first beer (although hopefully making a more palatable batch this time)...

Teaser - Révolte des Anges

Raisins
(blackened)

Normally, I like to provide all the details of a brewday - recipe, brew notes, etc - on my blog. But today is an exception, as among my blog readers are a number of people whom are also on my Christmas beer-list &/or in my brew clubs advent exchange. And, as you may have guessed, this means I'm brewing this years advent brew today.

True to this years theme (Murphy's law, or perhaps angry weather gods), the second I try a difficult beer nature works against me. My 20% beer brewed last winter took place - of course - on the coldest day of the year. It was so cold that I couldn't get the propane to flow, and ended up performing an ~6 hour boil on my electric stove top. Today's brew is going the other direction; today may be the hottest day of the year, with a humidex of ~40C. While that isn't going to stop me from brewing, it is causing me to lose a lot of sweat.

Blackened raisin puree, orange zest, rosemary
and some good hops.

Any way's, the purpose of today's post is more a teaser for those on my xmas/advent lists than a recipe/brew day. This years xmas/advent beer has some unique elements to it - blackened raisins, orange zest & rosemary to be exact. It's also a funky beer, being brewed with a mix of Bier de Guarde yeast and my house blend of Brettanomyces - a mix of 6 commercial and wild Bretts.

This should be a good beer, and if I recall I'll post the recipe & tasting notes around Christmas-time.

So this happened...

I'm sure that this will come as a surprise to no one, but I'm a bit of a nerd. Hell, I was a nerd before being a nerd was cool - WTF happened there? I grew up on a pretty much constant stream of SciFi & dystopia - Star Trek, Star Wars, Mad Max, Knight Rider, Alf, Dr. Who, Red Dwarf, the Jetsons, X-Files, Star Gate, Futurama...lets just say that list goes on for a while.

Anyway's, this guy:

Is now this guy:

And then this happened:

And apparently there will be a part 2...

(all of Wil Wheaton's blog posts on homebrewing can be found here)

May the Fourth Be With You

Image From Shirtigo, no affiliation

100,000 Views!

When I started this blog a few years ago I didn't expect it to amount to much - this was intended as more of an unlosable brew-log (which it has failed as; I'm horrible at recording my brewdays here), but has morphed into something completely different. As of right now I'm a few hits away from 100,000 views (not counting my own), and will probably cross that mark by the time I hit the "Publish" button.

I'd like to thank all my readers for your interest in what I've been writing here - the ongoing hits, comments emails - and more recently youtube views - are what motivate me to add new material.

So to all my readers/viewers, thank you. I'd also like to thank my major traffic sources (check them out - they're all great):

• Canadian Homebrewers
• Homebrew Talk
• Bootleg Biology Blog
• Milk the Funk Facebook Group (private group)
• Jeffrey Crane's Blog

A Year in Review

Its officially 2015, so happy brew-year everyone! I thought I'd use my first post in 2015 to look back at 2014...

The good...
Lots of good things happened this year. My wild yeast collection activities and yeast identification methods are up and running smoothly. I had a number of rather successful brews this year - most of which I posted here. Both my blog and youtube channel are getting a lot more hits - 75,000 and 10,000 hits respectively last year.

The bad..
2014 was not as busy a year for me as 2013. A rather pathetic 15 batches were brewed this year - 18 if you count the wine kits I did along the way, 16 (or 13 if you discount the wine) if you subtract the two infected brews I had this year. My blogging was also down - 11 fewer than 2013. Hopefully we can pick up both those numbers this year.

The ugly...
As mentioned in "the bad", I had my first (non-deliberately) infected beers this year in over a decade. That sucked...and it hurt even more as the infection was something I brought home from work with me. In addition, for the first year since 2008, I failed to hit the 400 liters of brewed goodness mark (roughly equivalent to 100 US gallons).

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Some quick stats:

• Most popular posts of 2014: 
• #1: This months post on how Brettanomyces trois (WLP644) is likely a Saccharomyces, not a Brettanomyces. 5900 hits in three weeks.
• #2: 2013's post on identifying yeast by  ribosomal sequencing.
• #3 & 4: 2013's posts on making Belgian candi sugar (Posts 1, 2).
• #5: 2013's post on making a sour-mashed Beliner weiss.
• Top Traffic Sources: Google (7%), Reddit (4%), Home Brew Talk (2%), Jeffrey Cranes Blog (1%), Bootleg Biology (1%) and Canadian Homebrewers (0.5%).
• Top Viewing Countries: #1: USA, #2: Canada, #3: Ukraine, #4: Germany, #5: UK
• Top Youtube Videos:
• #1: Growing Yeast from the Yeast Bank
• #2: Making Belgian Candi Sugar At Home
• #3: Budget Yeast Starter System
• #4: Your Home Yeast Lab Made Easy - Streak Plates
• #5: Your Home Yeast Lab Made Easy - DIY Alcohol Lamp

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My Favourite Beer Blogs of 2014:

         In no particular order...

• Shut Up About Barklay Perkins
• |Brülosophy|
• St. Johns Wort
• Life Fermented
• The Mad Fermentationist
• DC Yeast Lab
• The Mark of the Yeast
• Eureka Brewing

Most Ordered Yeast From My Yeast Bank:

• #1&2 (tied): Russian River Sanctification (#69 & 70, Commercial Bank)
• #3: Conan/Headdy Topper (#80, Commercial Bank)
• #4, 5, 6 (tied): DCYeast 01/02/03 (#6, 7 & 8, Wild Yeast Bank)
• #7: Brettanomyces claussenii (#109, Commercial Bank)
• #8: Bells Brewery Yeast (#19, Commercial Bank)
• #9: Berliner Weiss Blend (#132, Commercial Bank)
• #10: Thames Valley (#20, Commercial Bank)

Here's hoping that 2015 exceeds 2014 in every way - in my brewing & in yours.

Bryan

A small step...maybe

After a month of bad press the "owner" of our major alcohol distribution system - e.g. the government - finally appears to have noticed that there is a problem. Although whether they perceive the problem as being an unfair system that increases costs while decreasing selection, or merely one of bad press, is yet to be seen.

But at least our Premier, Kathleen Wynn, has said that the system is unfair and "will be changed".

Of course the big brewers are crying like babies, and making up stories about how competition is somehow going to lead to prices going up by ~15%...

The Conspiracy - Revealed

This is another of my Ontario-centric rants about beer distribution in my province - so my non-local readers may want to pass this post buy (unless you want to see just how crazy things here are). In Ontario beer is distributed via two government-maintained channels. A government owned/run LCBO chain of stores, and a foreign-owned beer monopoly (the beer store) whose monopoly is maintained via government fiat.

The system is flawed beyond belief; the beer has a secret agreement with the LCBO that gives it a near monopoly on beer sales; the LCBO is limited to some pretty strange rules when it comes to the selling of the beer. And the beer store takes advantage of their position - by using a series of extremely expensive "listing fees" the beer store ensures that small brewers cannot complete with the brewers who own the beers store (InBev, Saporro, Molson-Coors). It costs $77,000 to have the beer store carry a single product in a single format across all their stores. Meaning if a brewery wants to sell the same beer in a 6-pack and 12-pack format, it'll cost them $154,000. Obviously, those fees are deadly to small breweries, and all-but-prevents the distribution of 1-off and seasonal brews that are the lifeblood of most craft brewers. And even with this power, the owners still engage in underhanded marketing to further suppress the craft brewing industry.

The big mystery for beer consumers has been why the LCBO doesn't compete in any meaningful fashion with the beer store. There is no legal limitations that would prevent this, and yet the LCBO limits itself to selling singles and the odd six-pack of beer. In some ways the LCBO is more open to craft brewers - but in place of exhoberant listing fees, the LCBO instead has a series of asinine labelling rules and an excessively slow and convoluted listing process. That aside, the question remains why doesn't the LCBO complete.

The answer has finally been provided by The Star, thanks to a whistleblower. The leaked document shows that the LCBO and beer store have a secret non-competition agreement meant to keep the LCBO from competing with the beer store (with no apparent gain for the LCBO). Indeed, a former head of the LCBO has complained (without revealing details) about how this agreement was forced on the LCBO, apparently by government ministers.

Sounds fishy...if not outright corrupt.

At least now we know why the LCBO doesn't compete with the beer store and offer a meaningful second option to craft brewers. Whether this revelation will mean anything in terms of reform (or even better, outright privatization) is yet to be seen. But at least the agreement is now out there under public scrutiny.

Documentary - Straight-up: The Issue of Alcohol in Ontario

This video is probably not of much interest to many of my readers. But for those of you in Ontario, its worth the hour of your life needed to go through it.

This video, originally streamed on Mom & Hops, is the product of a kickstarter campaign by Peter Lenardon and A.J. Wykes, and explores the alcohol distribution system here in Ontario and how it is gamed to ensure that new market entrants - e.g. local craft brewers - have the smallest chance of success.

The video features interviews with a number of Ontario brewers, discussing how the existing system which limits their ability to distribute (while not imposing the same limits on the big brewers) negatively impacts their ability to grow, reach their customers, and compete with the big brewers.

Book Review: Brewing Engineering

A two years or so ago I began a series of review articles on the various books in my brewing library. I had meant that to be a continuing series, but somehow it all got away from me and I now find myself with over a years worth of accumulated books and not a single word written about any of them.

I've been nudged out of my reviewing funk by Steven Deeds, author of Brewing Engineering, asking I do a review of the new edition (2^nd edition) of his book. Free PDF in hand (yes, my services come cheap) I agreed to embark in my first review in over a year and a half...

Synopsis:
This book takes a very different approach to its audience than most brewing books. One complaint I've made about a number of brewing books is that they aim at a very large audience - often to the detriment of the book. For example, Jamil's book "Yeast" targeted both home & commercial brewers, leaving both with too few details in some places and extraneous details elsewhere. From the point of view of a publisher this approach makes sense - the larger the audience the better the commercial success - but often the reader is left wanting more in some places and less in others. One pleasure of this book is that it is targeted squarely at the experienced home brewer - space is not wasted on "common knowledge" items (terminology, brewing process, ingredient characters, etc), nor is space spent on issue only of interest to commercial brewers with hectolitre tanks.

The data-heads out there will appreciate the more systematic approach to the presentation of graphs & data - e.g. giving R² values for data fitting - and I really appreciated the mathematical approaches taken in some sections. Most of the time this approach works, but there are some cases where the author assumes a level of knowledge beyond what most experienced home brewers would have, leaving even the target audience (and admittedly, scientists such as myself) a little lost. There are also a few sections that are erroneous, or where the author repeats common misconceptions. But these sections are outweighed by the otherwise great information and unique information found between the pages of this book.

I'd also add that this is the first book to my knowledge which does a detailed analysis and description of brew-in-a-bag, which is an ever more popular way of brewing. Overall this is a good book - but one which you won't want to add to your shelf until you've moved past basic brewing and are moving onto a more advanced and technical approach to your hobby.

As always, more below the fold.

Where will you be November 1?

I know for most of my readers the asnwer will be "somewhere a long ways away from you", but for those in the London are (Ontario, not UK), you should by at Forked River Brewery for the annual "Learn To Brew" event. Myself and several other members of the London Homebrewers Guild will be at Forked River Brewing, where we will be brewing beer and showing the public how its done. Several methods of home brewing will be on display - BIAB, several different conventional mashing/lauter system, and so on. We'll be arriving early to set up our kit, with the doors to the brewery opening to the public at 11 AM - so come learn to brew, and take home some tasty craft beer when you are done!

A Post Worth Reading

I don't often promote other bloggers posts - which is something I need to fix - so to get that ball rolling I'd like to link everyone to this blog post over at Ben's Beer Blog: Labatt is planning an expensive, intentionally misleading ad campaign for Shock Top.

The blog post is essentially a break-down of Labatt's (a subsidiary of In-Bev, which also owns Budweiser) strategy to mislead customers into thinking some of Labatts products are craft beers. It highlights some of the underhanded methods used by "big beer" to squash their craft brewer competition (that's the bad news). The good news is that it also shows just how damaging craft brewing is becoming to the big guys.

If at first you don't succeed, throw everything out and try again!

Its been another bad day - beginning a few months ago with my first dumper in 7 years, due, I thought, to mis-management of the Brett used in that beer. This was followed by an apparently successful cranberry wit, and then my all-Brett Russian Imperial Stout. The stout started off well, but has since taken a turn for the worse - the same chemical/lemon aroma that appeared in my dumper also began to emerge from this beer, along with a horrid solvent/chemical flavour. At the same time the apparently successful wit began to develop a viscous mouth feel and some odd aromas. Despite all of this, the parti-gyled beer pulled off of the second runnings of the stout fermented fine and has turned into a surprisingly good beer. So what went wrong?

I took a sample of the RIS to work and inspected it under a microscope. I forgot to snap an image, but mixed in among the cute "mickey mouse" Bretts were filamentous rod-shaped bacteria - a lot of them. I am unsure of the exact species that the bacteria may be, but regardless, they are unwelcome guests.

The one common link between the contaminated beers, but lacking from the parti-gyle, was the use of the same plastic fermenter. This, despite repeated rounds of cleaning and sanitation is most likely the source of the contamination, meaning I am now the proud new owners of a large plastic bucket with no apparent use...and after a short trip to the LHBS, the owner of a brand-new bucket and siphon for brewing (I chucked the old siphon to be safe).

I hope this solves the issue - but in two weeks when I re-brew the Russian Imperil Stout, I'll be primarying it in glass...the new bucket is going to be broken in this weekend on a wet-hop ale!

The tartness of his face sours ripe grapes.

Instead of weeping when a tragedy 
occurs in a songbird's life, it sings 
away its grief. I believe we could 
well follow the pattern of our 
feathered friends.
    --Shakespeare

I'm quoting Shakespearean tragedies - clearly something has gone wrong. If the melancholy intro didn't give that away, the picture to the right should - that's a full keg of beer going down the drain. Specifically my Easy as 1-2-3-4: a Rye Berliner Weiss...

...clearly it wasn't as easy as I intended. So where did things go wrong?

The short answer is "I don't know", simply because I threw so many new things into this batch that its not possible to point the finger at a likely culprit. I'm 99% sure the problem was the ratio's of the yeast I threw in. Two of the three yeasts - both brett - were reputed to have a lemony character, and combined were half the yeast I pitched. Their lemony character was present in this beer - in spades. The lemon was so intense it was "chemical" in character; more in-place in a bottle of furniture polish than a beer. In addition there was a strong acetaldehyde/nail polish note - perhaps due to the use of a pure lacto culture, or perhaps again due to the yeast used. Moreover, the yeast wouldn't settle (even after a cold-crash), leaving the beer hazy and with a strong yeast character.

I shouldn't complain too much - this is the first dumper in over 7 years...& that ain't bad.

Welcome Visitors!

So without me noticing it the 1-year anniversary of my blog has come and gone (for the record, it was July 6th).  Over the past year my traffic has grown exponentially - from a few hits per month for the first four or five months (most of which were probably just me) to the past three months where I've averaged 1500-2500  per month (most of which may still just be me).

Hits aside, the sources of my traffic have been a surprise, and have identified a number of cool brewing resources that I had no idea existed.  I thought I'd do a bit of a shout-out; both as a way of thanking the people at these sites for their readership, and to share some cool resources that may be of interest:

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Blogs:

• Bootleg Biology: An attempt to create an "open-source"  wild yeast resource for home brewers.  While in the early stages, bootleg biology is seeking to create a "library" of local yeasts from across the USA (and perhaps beyond?).  Includes a mix of blog posts & information pages.  A project worth following, and to join.
• BKYeast: A blog by Dimitri - a man with a very similar background to my own (cell biologist, home brewer).  Lots of information on brew science, wild brewing, and a yeast collection I'd love to get my hands on!
• DC Yeast Lab: A great blog on brewing science & wild brewing.  This blogger and I have enjoyed a successful yeast exchange.
• Eureka Brewing: A blogger with similar goals to my own.  This was one of the blogs that motivated me to start my own.

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Sites:

• Homebrew Talk: To my knowledge this is the largest discussion forum on the 'net for homebrewing, and a site I am an active member of.  A fantastic resource.
• Canadian Home Brewers: Another web forum I participate in - and apparently in which I self-promote a little too much...
• Reddit: I get a lot of hits from reddit; and often from odd sections.  My #1 source is a reddit thread on. . .Why do we have different sized dogs but all the domestic cats are (roughly) the same size?  Yep, I don't get it either.
• http://hobbybrauer.de/: A German homebrew forum.  My German is quite rusty, but my limited Germanic capacity makes me believe that it is an active & interesting forum.
• BeerBorg: A beer-brewing forum with a Star Trek bent.  I'm not sure if this is a regional group or a more general board.