Author: Joseph Lavoie

Dortmunder

This lager is such a treat, especially if you love malty cereal flavours in your beer. Since first brewing this recipe, I’ve been coming back to it at least twice per year. It sports a gorgeous clear colour, a big head that lingers for quite some time and is a delicious exploration of malty/cereal flavours.…
Kölsch-Style Ale

If you’re looking to start brewing lagers, a Kölsch serves as a bridge between ales and lagers. The style is a lagered ale, so you don’t need to ferment at lager temperatures. But you need to store it at cold temperatures once your bottles are carbonated. The longer, the better. If you can try to…
Make an amazing New England IPA

Hazy, Juicy, New England IPAs have been the most popular beers on many a craft brewery’s taproom in the last three years. Other than one notable holdout, just about every microbrewery in my neck of the woods has at least once NEIPA on the menu. And that’s no surprise—the style is very approachable for longtime…
Fifty-Fifty New England IPA

The first NEIPA I brewed and shared on BeerCraftr is admittedly complicated. As I have experimented with this beer style, I have sought to make it easier to brew. Here I cut out the whirlpool step altogether and simplified the dry hop schedule. And to make things even simpler, I cut down the mash and…
American Pale Ale II

In the vein of simplifying an already tasty recipe, I tweaked my original APA recipe by reducing the grain bill to two grains, swapping out Amarillo for Perle, adjusting the hop schedule, and trying a different yeast strain. The changes were worth it—this version is superior to the original. It has become my new go-to…
San Diego Lager

If you take a second look at the Uncommon Lager recipe, you’ll notice it shares the same grain bill as this recipe. It also shares an identical fermentation profile, having fermented warm (for a lager) at 18ºC for two weeks. Here I’ve simplified the hops to a simple boil addition, and have swapped in a…
Dark Kveik

Kveik is becoming all the rage for its amazing fermentation properties. This Norwegian yeast can tolerate very warm fermentation temperatures (well into the high 30ºC range) and is awesome if you struggle to keep your fermentation temperatures lower. I wish I had discovered this yeast years ago when I only had room on my warm…
Uncommon Lager

This beer gets its name for taking inspiration from California Common, but with a grain bill you would expect to find in a Vienna lager. This was also the first recipe in which I experimented with fermenting a lager on the warmer side, maintaining a fermentation temperature of 18ºC (64ºF). It worked incredibly well. I…
Mojito Witbier

This was a fun experiment. My former colleagues and I wanted to create a beer that would represent each of us in one recipe. So, we chose a grain bill and a Belgian yeast to represent our resident Belgian; hops with mint and lime aromas to represent our resident Cuban and Peruvian, a wit style…
Tips for Bottle-Conditioning New England IPA

It would appear that time is our worst enemy when it comes to conditioning this beer. We need to drink it very quickly after bottling it if we want to avoid the purple/grey haze. If you’re going to brew this style, apply what I have learned through trial and error with these four simple tips.
Protected: Unlock the Master Brewer in You: Draft Course Outline

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Bog Myrtle Gruit

I have seen few breweries in Canada brew with these two herbs, but one brewery—Beau’s—does it so well. When I first had one of their bog myrtle gruits, I was enchanted. This was my first attempt at making my own, and I couldn’t be happier with the result. This beer is beautifully herbaceous, sweet, and…
Scottish Export 80

If you’re looking to showcase and enjoy a malt-forward beer, this is a user-friendly recipe. The grains really shine in this recipe, giving you the chance to explore the pronounced cereal and biscuit notes of this particular grain bill. With a low ABV, you can have a couple of these in a session and properly…
Breakfast Stout

This is by no means a clone of the famous Breakfast Stout made by Founder’s Brewing Company. But it it’s a similar beer in spirit. I love coffee stouts and when the original Breakfast Stout finally hilt the store shelves in Toronto, I couldn’t get enough of it. This is my own version of this…
Coconut Brown Ale

Two of my closest friends celebrated their wedding in summer 2017, and I wanted to toast them with a beer they could call their own. They had recently spent a week in Asheville, North Carolina and raved about the coconut brown ales (and porters) that brew mecca had on offer. So, I thought, why not…