Author Archives: mikey

5 May 2013
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Brew day, but where’s the beer?

Today being Sunday means it’s Brew Day!

But, in the spirit of self control and ‘oh we really do have a lot of beer already’, there is no brewing today. Chas bottled the Lager back on Monday and my new porter is still sitting in the fermenter.

Next Sunday is Mothers Day. So, not sure what we’re going to do. The porter could be bottled, but chance that it might be worth waiting another week. The IPA will be ready to drink, and I’m pretty excited about that.

Keeping it short. Have a good one, and have a good beer.

-Mikey

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4 May 2013
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Home brew kits

Oh my that’s hoppy, IPA gets brewed

Hoppy Heart IPA #1

Hoppy Heart IPA #1 fermenting away in the cupboard. Porter #2 bottles in the back.

After brewing my second porter it was time to try something different. Something with plenty of flavour. Something for any day of the year. Something with a lot of hops. Something I like a lot. An Indian Pale Ale (IPA).

Keeping things small I went with the Brew Smith kit. All the ingredients are there and a good instruction booklet. Plenty of hops in this one.

Hops gives beer the bitterness and most, if not all, of the fruit flavours. Typically IPA’s are at the top end of the hoppy scale. Thus is done by adding more hops, and adding it later to the wort brew.

There is also an amount of dry hopping. This is when hops is added to the brew after the wort is prepared, put in the fermenter, and yeast added.

This being another kit from Brew Smith, was a partial boil. Malt and hops in the main pot for the base of the wort. Side pot for the grains to sit in. Then all together in the fermenter and topped up with water. Then put the simple airlock in place.

Two days later… remove the simple airlock, add the hops for Dry Hopping, and wack the proper airlock on.

This brew bubbled away for a couple weeks before it got bottled last Sunday, the 29th.

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29 Apr 2013
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Home brew kits

Return to brewing, making the porter

In my last post I spoke about my first brew. Today I’ll be talking about my second brew, another porter.

The first brew I made was back in January. Then got busy with other things in life, like getting married and a honeymoon. After getting back I decided to get back to beer making.

The decision was to make the same porter from Brew Smith. It was nice, my wife likes the style, and it was going to be easy given I had done it before.

Brewing was done on 2 April 2013. Like the first time I made it, brewing was just me. Easy enough with the kit and took my time.

Chas came over to help with the bottling on the 14th. Great thing about these small brews is there’s not that many bottles to clean. Finally opened for tasting yesterday, the 28th.

I’ll leave the beer review for Chas. But what I will say is that the extra time, 12 days rather than 7, in the fermenter did it a world of good.

-Mikey

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25 Apr 2013
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Home brew kits

Starting small, but not dumbing it down.

Choc Paradise Porter #1

Chocolate Paradise Porter #1 in the carboy with airlock

I promised Chas that I’d put something up about my first few brews. And here we are. The whole home brewing thing has been a journey that started about two years ago. Won’t go into all that today, that’s another story.

Back in October 2012 I decided that it was time to try this brewing at home thing. I requested a brew kit for my birthday from my wife. But I couldn’t really decide on what type. Presents didn’t turn up until start of January 2013 because of my inability to chose. So I got both.

I could launch into the different kits, but again, that’s for another time.

My first brew was on 5 Jan 2013. It was a ‘Chocolate Paradise Porter’ from Brew Smith. The team at BrewSmith take a lot of complexity out of making beer, and still allow you to make some good quality beer. You use a 5 liter carboy. This is like a giant glass bottle. End result is 12+ stubbies (330ml-375ml) of beer. Due to the size of the carboy and amount of beer, this is sometimes referred to as apartment brewing.

Anyway, back to the beer. This Porter is made with a partial boil so it means making wort yourself with malt, hops and grain. The whole brew process on the stove takes an hour. Prep work is about 10 mins before. Then there’s about 30-40 mins of cool down and getting it into the carboy. All up you should be done under two hours.

Bottling was on the 12th. That was probably too early. Cracked open to drink on the 26th.

How did it turn out? Pretty good. Without telling my wife the beer was ready I gave her a taste test. She didn’t even pick that it was home brew. The beer did lack body and the chocolate flavor was a bit light, but everything else was there.

Overall this was really easy. Beer was really good and happy with the outcome.

-Mikey

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24 Apr 2013
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General tips

Brewing can be easy and fun, and a bit tedious

Thought a good first post would be one that covers one of the basics of home brewing.

As Chas mentioned yesterday, sanitising is king. The reason is that any bacteria that gets in can ruin your beer.

The beer making process is basically:

  1. Make a tasty sugary liquid.
  2. Add yeast which turns the sugar into alcohol.
  3. Make it bubbly.

Now there is obviously a lot more going on than that.

The tasty sugary liquid is called wort. And I’ll be using that name going forward, even though “tasty sugary liquid” does sound awesome.

Your wort is very vulnerable to all types of bacteria. Whatever gets there first will go crazy eating and growing. We only want the yeast to do that.

Hence making sure everything that touches the beer is:

First cleaned of any dirt, liquid, grime, dust, gung, bits, and whatnot.
Second sanitised to kill all bugs, bacteria, yeast, and tiny bad things.
Finally rinsed (if needed) and kept free of contamination.

This process can take a long time. Sometimes longer than all other steps combined! But if you get it right, which isn’t hard, then you’re well on your way to make tasty home brew beer.

-Mikey

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