All things beer and beyond.
Hi, my name is Blake and I'm a small-scale homebrewer currently living in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
The idea for writing a blog about beer and brewing has been one that I've been wanting to do for a while. After brewing around a hundred batches of beer during the course of four years, many days and nights of standing around a burner with my brewing buddies, countless hours of reading books and articles about brewing and, of course, the many nights of sharing the finished product with friends (the quality being for better or for worse), I felt it was time to start documenting my progress.
During my time studying human geography at university, I became fascinated by the idea of reintroducing nature back into cities and, in doing so, increasingly into the awareness of the public. I was soon a part of a community garden on my campus and found every opportunity I could to meet people that felt the same way as I did about the environment and sustainability. This led me to UBC Farm. I had been homebrewing beer with my friend for around a year, and was getting increasingly interested in learning about, and appreciating all of the ingredients that went into beer. I later wrote my graduation thesis on organic hop production, and worked for a farmhouse brewery and hop farm called Crannog Ales and Left Field Farms in Canada. The beer I made during this period can be seen in 2015-2016 under Brewing Recipes.
During the summer of 2016, I traveled around the United States and Belgium sampling beer along the way and, at the end of it all, moved to Amsterdam for school in Landscape Architecture. I then joined Mediamatic's brewing team/ research facility in Amsterdam with the goal of establishing hops and to brew experimental beer for their restaurant. This was an important period for me with experimenting with brewing, and can be seen in the period of 2017 under Brewing Recipes. I now (2020-2021) brew from a space with some friends at NDSM in Amsterdam Noord called UNIT4 Collective and am continuing to experiment with recipes, particularly IPA and Saison/Wild Ales. Check out the space and recent happenings on instagram @unit4collective
The idea for writing a blog about beer and brewing has been one that I've been wanting to do for a while. After brewing around a hundred batches of beer during the course of four years, many days and nights of standing around a burner with my brewing buddies, countless hours of reading books and articles about brewing and, of course, the many nights of sharing the finished product with friends (the quality being for better or for worse), I felt it was time to start documenting my progress.
During my time studying human geography at university, I became fascinated by the idea of reintroducing nature back into cities and, in doing so, increasingly into the awareness of the public. I was soon a part of a community garden on my campus and found every opportunity I could to meet people that felt the same way as I did about the environment and sustainability. This led me to UBC Farm. I had been homebrewing beer with my friend for around a year, and was getting increasingly interested in learning about, and appreciating all of the ingredients that went into beer. I later wrote my graduation thesis on organic hop production, and worked for a farmhouse brewery and hop farm called Crannog Ales and Left Field Farms in Canada. The beer I made during this period can be seen in 2015-2016 under Brewing Recipes.
During the summer of 2016, I traveled around the United States and Belgium sampling beer along the way and, at the end of it all, moved to Amsterdam for school in Landscape Architecture. I then joined Mediamatic's brewing team/ research facility in Amsterdam with the goal of establishing hops and to brew experimental beer for their restaurant. This was an important period for me with experimenting with brewing, and can be seen in the period of 2017 under Brewing Recipes. I now (2020-2021) brew from a space with some friends at NDSM in Amsterdam Noord called UNIT4 Collective and am continuing to experiment with recipes, particularly IPA and Saison/Wild Ales. Check out the space and recent happenings on instagram @unit4collective
