The real Dave's Beer

I think most food blogs had their start in hard copy. This is an image of the original and still-used-today notebook where I keep my beer brewing activity. It's the only component of my fermenting empire that hasn't made it to the web.

And, it never will.

For some reason, I enjoy scratching down my beer recipes as I go and keeping notes in a bound notebook where no mistake will ever escape for good. It's a lab notebook in the truest sense of the concept. A place where pages are dated and numbered, mistakes are crossed out such that they can still be read and updated as close to the time the actions occur as possible. There's nothing pretty about a lab notebook, it's about data integrity.

Why not share? I make extract brews and there's a whole class of purists who believe it's a useless pursuit if you don't grow the grain and malt it yourself and I don't have the energy to try to convince them they're wrong nor can I tolerate the undue criticism. So I keep my brewing to myself. I will, however, share the brew. Stop by sometime and have a sip.