CBA website

[David Edge]

Sorry if this is off-topic here, but I don't think it is off-topic enough for the chatroom and will be of greatest interest to mashers.

Somebody mentioned the 'CBA Archive site' some time ago. That was the 1990s site that had got stuck out of our reach. It was a bit of an embarrassment as it had sundry out of date stuff on it. Anyway, the ISP has been kind enough to remove it.

So, if you were a user of that site, everything that was there is on the current site http://www.craftbrewing.org.uk/ plus lots more. The back issues 1996-2006 are on the page 'Our journal' - judging by the web counter that snappy title isn't as effective as it might be.

The sit's been hacked about a bit this week; if you find any errors or broken links (or indeed want to suggest content I'd be chuffed if you'd pm me.

[Andy]

David - you can use the W3C link checker to find out if you have any broken links :-

http://validator.w3.org/checklink

I just ran the CBA site through and it complains about your supplies link from the front page main body which doesn't work.

[David Edge]

Thanks Andy; should be sorted... And thanks for the tip

[J_P]

I've got the link bookmarked so I'll report anything unusual that Andy and his techy skills don't.

As an aside I particularly like the prize winning beer recipe section, as a newbie AG brewer I find looking at the gravity / IBU ratios and the hop combos in all the different styles of beer a godsend, is there any chance you could publish some more? That'd be smashing. I particularly like viewing the brewing/tasting guidelines for the various styles too. I think Tubby_Shaw is from here is a published prizewinner!

[David Edge]

J_P observed:

As an aside I particularly like the prize winning beer recipe section, as a newbie AG brewer I find looking at the gravity / IBU ratios and the hop combos in all the different styles of beer a godsend, is there any chance you could publish some more?

Thanks for the feedback! We've set a principle of only publishing prizewinning recipes and even then we're dependent on brewers giving them to us.
Perhaps if anyone's ears are turning red they would care to send the missing recipes; in the meantime I'll remind the organisers of the 2007 and 2008 National Festivals that it would be terribly helpful if their winners were prepared to share recipes.
If you want information on grists, gravities and hops a very good source is Derek Walsh's 'Biertypengids'. A grasp of Dutch is of course helpful although I reckon a German-speaker could work it out too.
As a new brewer perhaps a copy of Ray Daniels 'Designing Great Beers' would be of more use to you though - or maybe scary. Maybe having fun with Randy Mosher's Radical Brewing would be a plan.
The best advice I can give is to get some base recipes for the beer styles you want and tweak them from there rather than trying different recipes for each brew.

[steve_flack]

I could also recommend brewing some of Jamil Zainasheff's recipes. They are available on his podcast, on a website

http://beerdujour.com/JamilsRecipes.htm

and he's also got a book coming out later in the autumn. I've brewed several of his recipes (sometimes modified, sometimes not) and they've all been great.

His podcasts concentrate on the BJCP style guides so cover a lot more than the British styles.

EDIT: The podcasts can be found here http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/jamil.php and on iTunes.