Crazy Dog Brewing Company

"Shenanigans" is our latest brew in collaboration with the Cabarrus Homebrew club, and ! This is a 7% abv authentic Irish Red Ale. Deep in red color, with a beautiful complex taste that warms you with some subtle coffee and chocolate notes. This is a beer we are proud of!

If you're in the area, come visit and support the brewery and homebrew club!

Collaboration Alert!

is pairing up with our local homebrew club for our next beer! We will be doing an on site brew day at Buzzed Viking, and serving it up as a guest tap once ready! We are really excited about this opportunity to learn more about the professional brewing process and can't wait to share more details soon!

It's that time of year again! Our Imperial Pumpkin Ale is brewing! "This Pumpkin is Heavy" will be finishing up just in time for a Halloween release. This year extra biscuit malt and some honey were added to give even more graham cracker flavor, and will have a subtle vanilla finish. This will be pumpkin pie in a glass...ringing in at 9%

Merry Christmas - 🍻 Hoppy Holidays!

Santa came through this year with an additional .io keg scale, cereal killer grain mill, MKII High Temp Magnetic Drive Pump, and a 21" whirlpool arm for the 10.5 foundry!

Ringing in the new year with a festive beer. Next brew coming up - Cranberry Gose

We will be utilizing fresh cranberries, freshly milled grains, and the new brew equipment!

🍻🎄☃️

KEGGING DAY!

Oktoberfest Lager #2 has been in the fermenter for 40 days. It has fully attenuated and had time to clear up.

This beer will now "lager" for an additional month in the keg before tapping into it.

At 5.5% this is going to be a delicious and easy drinking beer! Lots of malty character and extremely clean profile make this a true Oktoberfest beer for the books!

Malts used:
Pale ale
Munich
Vienna
Carmel

Hops:
Hallertauer Mittelfrueh

Yeast:
Wyeast Labs 2633 Octoberfest Lager Blend

Absolutely delicious turnout - can't wait for the layering to finish up and to give it a true taste!

The yearly imperial pumpkin ale has finally started. 17lbs of grain + 5 lbs of DME to bump up the gravity.

4 cans of pumpkin to give great color and body. Lots of cinnamon, clove, ginger, and pumpkin pie spice makes this a winner every year.

OG: 1.090

Estimated 9.5% ABV

Can't to relax on a cool fall evening and enjoy one of these!

Our resident Crazydog was super helpful today. He even helped dispose of some of the spent grain.

Spent grains are some of his favorite treats. You can do so much with them, but sometimes, he just like to eat them fresh!

Breaking out the old fermenters today to kick off this APA "Crazy Dog Pale Ale"

We are going to have quite a few beers going in the next week, so I'll need all the fermentation space I can get!

Our Crazy Dog Pale Ale 🐕 is a classic APA heavily hopped with cascade hops. In a few days, an additional cascade dry hop will take place to give it that extra touch of something special 🍻

The US-05 should burn through this one pretty quickly. Estimating a final ABV of about 4.5% which should make this easily crushable! The low gravity will definitely provide some relief and compliment the upcoming higher gravity imperial pumpkin and Oktoberfest that we have in the works!

Mocktoberfest experiment brewing up tomorrow. Our traditional German Oktoberfest recipe, but using German kolsch yeast at a low temperature instead! Should be interesting!

I couldn't even fit all the grain in one picture. 60+ lbs of grain for my 4 upcoming brews! We are hoping to knock out 2 of those brews this weekend!

We have been pretty quiet lately as we were recovering from being sick and finishing some renovations..but we are back now and we have a TON of stuff coming up!

What's coming up?

Traditional Oktoberfest Märzen Lager
"Oktoberfest" w/ kolsch yeast (experiment)
Imperial pumpkin ale
American pale Ale

These 4 beers will be brewing away the next few weeks/months! Stand by for some great content and brewing tips!

I know we haven't posted much recently but it's for good reason - has been on vacation! We went mobile with a jockey box setup and 2 kegs!

Needless to say, this was a hit at the beach! A jockey box can be built to easily take your kegs anywhere. A cold plate in the bottom of the cooler chills the beer as it is poured ensuring a perfectly cold glass of beer every time.

Now that we are back from our trip, we have an exciting new project coming up! Stay tuned as we start setting up our stationary keezer as a bottling station as well! We will be using and reviewing the counter pressure bottle filler as a flexible and hassle free way to easily bottle straight from the keg!

Enjoying a relaxing afternoon brewing another "Damn hard seltzer" while smoking some pork shoulder and cherry pie.

This seltzer will be flavored with crystalized grapefruit, orange and lime added once fermented. It will be somewhere around 7.5% abv!

Homebrew Questions - Where we do the research so you don't have to!

Question #2 comes from - give them a follow if you get a chance!

Question: Do you filter your beer before kegging for clarity?

Our Answer:
personally we don't. I've found TIME and a highly flocculating yeast strain can work wonders on their own, but there are a few more tricks I use to get perfect clarity in my kegged brews almost every time!

When I first started getting into bottling and kegging I was obsessed with the clarity of my beers. While it's just an aesthetic thing, it was one more challenge to overcome to make my Homebrew look professional. I tried all sorts of clarifying products, but in the end, the process I found that works great for me is:

1) ferment in primary as long as necessary typically 2 weeks + (really give it time to ferment and let the yeast drop out.

2) once fermentation is complete and the yeast have had enough time to settle cold crash in primary to about 35-45°F

3) add gelatin finings per manufacturer instructions to chilled beer

4) wait 3 days for any remaining sediment to drop out and clarify

5) transfer to the keg!

This process changes depending on beer style and your recipe, but for the most part it generally works well. One thing I found is a transfer to secondary is almost never needed unless you're working with fruit or other additives. I've found keeping things simple is an easy way to turn out great beer.

And remember - time is your biggest friend. The longer you let it sit, the clearer it will become!

**** How do you all clarify your beers?

Comment below!

My brand new 6 gallon upgraded torpedo keg from arrived today right as I was finishing up brew day! Today was a great day indeed! This is the first giveaway I've ever won, and I can't wait to fill this thing up and use it. It is by far one of the nicest kegs I've managed to get my hands on yet! The handles on this bad boy are going to make lifting this in and out of the keezer so easy. Shipping was extremely quick from . If anyone is in the market for a keg that looks and functions as good as the keezer / kegerator it sits in, this is your keg! Even crazy dog himself was excited about it!

Cheers guys!

We are super excited for brew day this weekend! We this will be a re-brew of our Surf-Veza international pale lager. It was so delicious the first time around, we decided to brew it again, except this time, with a hint of lime. This will be kegged and shared on tap during a special week long beach trip in mid July.

Kveik Lutra by makes one heck of a psudo lager.

This will also be the first time using our new 8 gallon fermenter! Can't wait to break this in, and even more excited to see just how easy it is to clean!

Anyone interested in our recipe can send us a DM! We would love to share it and hear about your brew day experience, and how the recipe turns out!

NEW BEER DROP - Raspberry Witbier

After a few weeks in the keg, this beer is finally ready to enjoy! A classic Witbier grain bill with an added 4.4 lbs of raspberry puree from resulted in a delicious beer with a beautiful color.

Taste: at first sip it has the classic Witbier taste with some clove and fruit but on the back end the raspberry shines through and blends in beautifully. The tartness balances out the sweetness. This is definitely a beer to drink on a nice warm day while sitting on the patio.

About the beer:
ABV: 5.9%
IBU: 21
SRM: 5
Additions: 4.4 Lbs raspberry puree

We are starting a new homebrew question series where we answer some of your questions about homebrewing!

Our first question is:
"How would you recommend a home brewer move up from one gallon batches to five gallons ?" [All grain]

Scaling something every growing brewer is going to face at one point, and while it can be difficult, it doesn't always have to be. Modern brewing techniques such as "brew in a bag" allows brewers to brew larger batches with less and smaller equipment!

Scaling up from one gallon batches to 5 gallon batches will most likely require some investment. I would recommend (from experience) if you're enjoying the hobby, rather than taking several small steps, to go ahead and jump full in once - it will be a lot less expensive.

There is no right answer to how someone should upgrade (we all have our own opinion) so the reality is, go with what works best for you. We all have different budget and space requirements. I myself chose to go with an electric all in one (anvil foundry)

Assuming you're scaling from a kitchen stove 1 gallon, there are ways to keep your process mostly the same. If you're trying to minimize equipment and space, you could start by doing a partial mash method.

This method let's you use a 4-5 gallon boil kettle with a brew bag. For every LB of grain, use about 1 qt of water. Follow mash procedure, check pre boil gravity, do a quick boil to kill anything, and then dilute with sanitized water to achieve your 5gallon total. This is an excellent first step into the full 5 gallon recipe world!

As you continue to grow, you'll also need:
🍺 A fermenter with 6-8 gallon capacity
🍺A larger stainless boil kettle (8-10 gallons) for full volume mash and boil.
🍺A propane burner for the large kettle (turkey fryer or brew specific burner)

How has everyone else taken the leap from small batch to full 5-10 gallon batches? Comment below

Brewery equipment update! This weekend we were able to update some of our brewing equipment and are VERY excited to use this new 8 gallon fermenter from

It is built nice and strong, comes with a thermometer port, is capable of pressure transfers, has extendable legs, and has a "dump port" to make cleaning easy!

We will keep everyone updated on how fermentation goes with future posts.

HAPPY - today (May 7th) is National Homebrew Day in the USA. Looking back at the past year, homebrewing is a hobby I've grown to appreciate more and more each day and each beer I drink.

Here are some highlights of our crazy journey into homebrewing so far.

FYI - if you are wondering what our most important piece of equipment would be, we would have to say it would be the humble blow off tube 😂. Who knows what kind of messes I would have had to clean up without one of those!

Cheers 🍻 to all you home brewers, breweries, and anyone in between!

Spring and summer are the perfect time to experiment with adding fruit to your brews! Aseptic, fruit purees are an easy way to add fruit without the risk of infecting the beer you worked so hard to make. Most purees even contain an estimated gravity making it easier to calculate final abv.

We will be adding 4.4 Lbs of raspberry puree from to our upcoming witbier to give it a beautiful color and flavor that will be perfect to drink on a sunny day (can't wait to share the final outcome with you all).

specializes in 100% natural fruit purees. They contain no added sugars, syrups or preservatives. All purees are made from fresh fruit, and the aseptic packaging limits the chance for infection when adding to your fermenting beer. Check out their page and consider them the next time you need some fruit for your beer, seltzer, mead or whatever you're brewing!

Stay tuned - we will be adding the raspberry to our Witbier in about a week and you won't want to miss it!

Yesterday was a good day! Great weather, and a great day to brew. This soon to be beer will be a Belgian Witbier, but will rest on 4lbs of raspberry before it's ready to drink.

Cheers everyone!

It's kegging day!

Kegging 5 gallons of my test batch of "Surf-vesa" a Mexican style lager perfect for drinking by the ocean/pool! The Kveik Lutra worked like a champ (as expected). Sat at 45F for a few days to clear it up, and it's 🔮 clear going into the keg!

Due to a 92% mash efficiency Iway overshot my OG...but it still came out looking and tasting great!

5.6% ABV -- 4SRM -- 18 IBU

This one's going to be good!

Who thinks they know what the next brew is going to be??

As a side note - this is the 3rd recipe in a row that we have found ourselves using Kveik Lutra! It is super clean fermenting and has a huge temperature range - fermented at around 70⁰F it has a near perfect lager-like profile, but can finish in a matter of days rather than months!

Highly recommend giving this a try if you're wanting to brew a lager or cleaner style beer but are not set up for lagering/temp control.

We will be adding a small amount of crystalized lime during kegging for a nice crisp/clean taste

1) WOW - almost 800 followers - I'm so grateful for all of your support. I'm thinking I might do a giveaway once I hit 1,000! Stay tuned and you might get a chance to win some crazy dog merch, or even a brew!

2) Today is kegging day for our American Amber "Lager". We used kveik Lutra yeast along with a malt forward grain bill and 2 oz of select hops for a well balanced, easy drinking spring beer. Carbonating and clarifying now, hoping to have a nice clear pour by Friday!