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Acid Is Your Friend!

  • Speaker: Martin Brungard
  • Track: Ingredients
  • Homebrew Con 2026
  • Asheville

Description Mashing is a chemically-complex process that performs better when the brewer knows how to adjust their water chemistry to better match the needs of the grist. Using acid is an important component in those adjustments. This session will illustrate why adjusting mashing and wort…

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Beyond the “Barley Monoculture” Lies a Frontier of Flavor

  • Speaker: Sebastian Wolfrum
  • Track: Ingredients
  • Homebrew Con 2026
  • Asheville

Description How to manage Protein levels in brewing with ingredient choices. How to encourage fermentation flavor expressions and biotransformation. About the Speaker Sebastian Wolfrum is the founder of Epiphany Craft Malt in Durham, NC, to provide an integrated regional…

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Big Sticky Stout

  • Speaker: Michael Tonsmeire
  • Track: Ingredients
  • Homebrew Con 2026
  • Asheville

Description Tips and advice on managing overfilled mash tuns, long boils, stressed yeast, and mounds of coconut, vanilla, nuts, cacao nibs, and more! About the Speaker Michael Tonsmeire, also known as “The Mad Fermentationist,” is the co-founder of Sapwood…

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How Great Lagers are Brewed around the World

  • Speaker: Chris White
  • Track: Ingredients
  • Homebrew Con 2026
  • Asheville

Description 1) We will focus on the key fermentation elements that define great lager brewing: ingredient selection, yeast management, and the meticulous control of fermentation and lagering. 2) We’ll compare regional techniques, highlight cultural influences, and examine how brewers balance tradition with…

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I Lawfully Homebrewed a Vaccine, and You Can Too 

  • Speaker: Christopher Buck
  • Track: Ingredients
  • Homebrew Con 2026
  • Asheville

Description Vaccine scientist presenting a documented DIY yeast-based experiment demonstrating engineered yeast production and measurable antibody responses. About the Speaker  I'm a vaccine scientist by day, but I've been homebrewing off and on for 30 years. It's…

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Innovation and Fermentation: Elevate Your Yeast Skills for Your Next Brew

  • Speaker: Hugo Picard
  • Track: Ingredients
  • Homebrew Con 2026
  • Asheville

Description Innovation has always been at the heart of homebrewing, it’s in our DNA. We’re constantly creating, exploring, “exbeerimenting.” To push boundaries, it’s key to understand every part of a recipe, especially the four core ingredients: water, malt, hops, and yeast. In this session, we’ll…

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Kettle Sour Brewing

  • Speaker: Jeffrey 'Puff' Irvin
  • Track: Ingredients
  • Homebrew Con 2026
  • Asheville

Description Kettle souring is a two-stage brewing method in which the wort is first mashed and lightly boiled for sanitation, then inoculated with Lactobacillus to develop acidity before undergoing a final full boil. Since the souring occurs entirely in the kettle, brewers can minimize the…

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Optimizing Your Brewing Process with Finings and Enzymes

  • Speaker: Eric Drost
  • Track: Ingredients
  • Homebrew Con 2026
  • Asheville

About the Speaker I began homebrewing in 2013 and quickly became obsessed with craft beer. In 2016, I left my career in property management and started working in sales at a regional brewery in Southern California called Hangar 24 Craft Brewing. Within 2 years, I…

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Quality Across the Brew: The Importance of Water Testing for Brewers

  • Speakers: Jordan Westengaard Ryan Dennhardt
  • Track: Ingredients
  • Homebrew Con 2026
  • Asheville

Description  Water plays a critical role in brewing exceptional beers. Water composes 90% of beer, its chemical makeup impacts, flavor, aroma, and overall quality. Through mineralogical testing, brewers can achieve consistency across batches, customize water profiles for specific beer styles (IPA, stouts, etc) and ensure…

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The Basics of Growing Hops and Using Whole Cone Hops in Your Recipes

  • Speakers: Joseph Krause Kelly Krause
  • Track: Ingredients
  • Homebrew Con 2026
  • Asheville

Description Growing hops is easier than you think and can be done even in the American Southeast. You will learn how to select your plants, where to grow them, when to harvest, how to brew with fresh hops and how to preserve them for future…

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Beer Soluble Hop Compounds: Translating Raw Hop Aroma to Finished Beer Aroma

  • Speakers: Ashleigh Hayden Josh Wurzbacher Steve Thompson
  • Track: Ingredients
  • Homebrew Con 2022
  • Pittsburgh

Methods for using beer soluble hop compound research to design efficient recipes; Targeted expression blends and how they manifest in beers; A description of the research conducted and its culmination into a graph of survivable (beer soluble) compounds by variety.


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Brewing with Ancient Grains

  • Speaker: Aaron Hyde
  • Track: Ingredients
  • Homebrew Con 2022
  • Pittsburgh

Take a closer look at ancient grains, especially those that are not being commonly used in commercial beer right now; Learn techniques for cereal mashing and toasting ancient grains for use in beer; Walk away with recipes, both ancient and modern, that could make use of ancient grains.


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Brewing with Cannabis: Using THC and CBD in Beer

  • Speaker: Dr. Keith Villa
  • Track: Ingredients
  • Homebrew Con 2022
  • Pittsburgh

The topic of cannabis becomes more popular every year as additional states legalize its medical or recreational use. Many homebrewers have wondered about the possibilities of using hemp or marijuana in a brew.


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Brewing with Hemp: The Essential Guide

  • Speaker: Ross Koenigs
  • Track: Ingredients
  • Homebrew Con 2022
  • Pittsburgh

Understand the many uses of cannabis that are relevant to homebrewers; Debunk some of the rampant myths and pseudo-science about cannabis; Explore the future opportunities in the cannabis beverage space


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Home Smoking Malt for Rauchbier

  • Speakers: John Holl John Putnam Michael Bury
  • Track: Ingredients
  • Homebrew Con 2022
  • Pittsburgh

Learn how to smoke malt at home and then formulate the perfect smoke beer recipe utilizing your home-smoked malts.


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Know Grain, No Pain: Understanding Milling and Mashing

  • Speakers: Jen Blair Rachael Hudson
  • Track: Ingredients
  • Homebrew Con 2022
  • Pittsburgh

Understand why milling is a critical step in the brewing process and how it impacts the finished beer; Explore how to adjust mash parameters depending on grains used and desired final flavor profile, such as altering mash temperature, adding rice hulls, different mash regimens, such as step mashing and infusion mashing.


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Yeast Nutrition in Non-Malt Fermentations

  • Speaker: Chris Bernardo
  • Track: Alternative Fermentation
  • Homebrew Con 2022
  • Pittsburgh

Gain a solid understanding of the nutrients that yeast need for non-malt fermentations; Learn how to optimize yeast pitch rate and nutrient dose for different ABV targets;


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Against the (traditional) grain: Gluten-Free Homebrewing

  • Speakers: Karen Hertz Twila Soles
  • Track: Ingredients
  • Homebrew Con 2021
  • Online

The desire to learn about and try homebrewing gluten-free beer is rapidly growing! This seminar dives into the world of gluten-free home brewing; including gluten-free homebrew ingredient options, malting techniques on gluten-free grains, gluten-free beer recipe development, required equipment, mashing techniques, fermentation, and the expectations for finished beers.…

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Control the Yeast Beast! How Fermentation Temperature, Pitching Rate, and Wort Gravity Influence Fermentation and Flavor Expression Differently in Each Yeast Strain

  • Speaker: Bryan Kreiter
  • Track: Ingredients
  • Homebrew Con 2021
  • Online

Every yeast strain is unique and will respond to changes in process parameters its own way. Discover how flavor expression and fermentation performance can be influenced by manipulating pitching rate, fermentation temperature, and wort gravity. In this session, we will explore how many different flavor outcomes can be achieved with…

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Farm to Kettle Lessons from Generations of Malting Quality: How a Malt of Reputation Will Take Your Homebrew From “Good” to Great” | Presented by BSG Handcraft

  • Speaker: Mike Brennan
  • Track: Ingredients
  • Homebrew Con 2021
  • Online

Every homebrewer who will have their name announced as a medal-winner at this year’s National Homebrew Competition Awards Ceremony shares one thing in common – they understand the need to use world-class malt in their homebrew. Excellent homebrew comes from excellent ingredients. The best homebrewers understand that the difference between “good”…

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Soluble Hop Compounds Tech Talk | Presented by Yakima Chief Hops & Brewers Best

  • Speakers: Evan Luxenburg Maggie Sessions Steve Thompson Tessa Schilaty
  • Track: Ingredients
  • Homebrew Con 2021
  • Online

How can I have more control over the aroma characteristics in my finished beer? Join the Yakima Chief Hops Central Region manager Steve Thompson and Tessa Schilaty, Sensory Research Coordinator, as they discusses recent research in beer soluble hop compounds, specifically flavors and aromas that survive into finished beer. In…

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White Koji: A unique ingredient for quick sour beers

  • Speaker: Todd Bellomy
  • Track: Alternative Fermentation
  • Homebrew Con 2021
  • Online

Koji mold is used to make a wide range of fermented products in Asia, including alcoholic beverages like sake. Koji produces amylase enzymes that break down starches in grains to produce fermentable sugars. White koji is a distinct variety that also produces acids; mainly citric acid but small amounts of…

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Hop Topic! Making Sense of Terpens, Thiols, and Biotransformation in the Quest for Unique Hop Expression

  • Speaker: Mike Brennan
  • Track: Ingredients
  • Homebrew Con 2020

Brewing modern, hop-forward beer styles requires us to look beyond alpha acids and focus on hop oils, their constituents, and how addition timing and fermentation processes affect hop aroma. Centered around the latest hops research, we will examine several families of hop compounds and their contributions to bitterness, flavor, and…

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Stewarding Quality in the Malt & Hop Supply Chain

  • Speaker: John Mallett
  • Track: Ingredients
  • Homebrew Con 2020
  • Online

The supply chains that successfully deliver malt and hops to brewers are long and complex. Managing great quality in agricultural raw materials involves aspects of breeding, commercialization, growing, processing, packaging, storage, and transportation. Join John Mallett as we journey along those paths with a particular focus on food safety, communication,…

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