Tag Archives: Mikey

20 Jun 2013
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Home brew kits

Blondes and Browns, big brew day

Sunday was another brew day at my place and it was big, in many ways.

Newcastle Brown Ale

Newcastle Brown Ale ingredient list and instructions

First up was a trip for supplies from Australian Home Brewing, aka Liquorcraft, aka Brewcraft, aka something-something. We have done a fair few porters lately. They are pretty awesome and good over the colder months, but time for something else for the cold. An English brown ale was what I wanted. Ended up with a Newcastle Brown Ale kit, plus a basic stout kit for another day.

Then back in the Mikey mobile (aka ‘car’) and back to brew headquarters (aka ‘home’) for brew day.

First order of business. Bottle the lager. Final gravity was 1.012 which means the beer will only be 3.8% alcohol, after bottle conditioning. That’s a fair bit lower than what I was going for. Rather than just a cup of dextrose we should if put in half a kilo. That aside, the sample we took was quite promising. Should be a good session beer.

We have been having some over carbonation in a couple of my beers. Nothing horrid, but the IPA and coffee porter (only a couple sample bottles) have overflowed when opened if shaken even slightly. I’ve been using caster sugar for priming and a few people have suggested this might be the reason. That said there’s not a lot of info on the internet about different types of cane sugar. To test this I primed some bottles of the lager with caster sugar and others with carbonation drops. Had a mix of different bottle sizes as well.

After bottling the lager it was time to start brewing. Cracked open one of the Summer Citrus Blonde Ales and got stuck into it. Chas is going to get a review up soon, so I’ll leave it to him.

The brown ale was a mixed kit. There was chocolate malt (200g), a can of light liquid malt, a can of Nut Brown Ale, some Fuggles Hops, and Safale S-04 yeast.
The malt was left to steep for about 45 mins rather than the 20-30 recommended. Mainly because we were trying to do to much at once.

Chas got the liquid light malt in a pot and brought it to the hot break. And I cleaned the fermenter. Hops were added with the steeped grains. The recipe said an optional 400 grams of brown sugar could be added. Only had 300, but it went in. I finally finished cleaning the fermenter just in time for the fresh wort to go in. Last was the can of Nut Brown Ale. Like the lager, we found the liquid a bit to hot. Was a lot more manageable this time round. Finally, yeast went on and airlock.

  • Black Rock Nut Brown Ale – 1.7kg
  • Black Rock Light Liquid Malt – 1.5kg
  • Crushed Chocolate Malt – 200g
  • Soft Brown Sugar – 300g
  • Fuggles Hops pellets – 15g
  • Safale S-04 yest – 11.5g

Have to say that this was a bit of a hectic brew day. Started late and had a huge amount to do. Tried to do too many things at once. Even spilt some of the strained hops back into the fermenter. Luckily it wasn’t much.

The wort smelt great. Gravity reading was only 1.045 which is a bit below what I would expect for the style. Hopefully this yeast brings the final reading right down. Anything less than 4.5% and I’m going to be disappointed. So, a final gravity from about 1.012 or lower will be good.

-Mikey

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13 Jun 2013
5 Comments
Home brew kits

Moving, from small to big

Back when I started looking into home brewing I didn’t know where to start. In my first post I talked about the two types of beer kits I got. I started with the smaller, and slightly more complex kit from Brew Smith. The beer was good, really good. So I stuck with it and made a few more.

Finally time came to do the other kit. The bigger kit. The simpler kit. And I’m worried about the quality. Chas picked up exactly the same kit and the lager turned out rougher than I would have liked.

To try and make sure my version turns out a bit better I decided to replace the dextrose with some liquid malt. Got some advice at Aussie Home Brewers and picked up some Light Pilsner Malt Extract.

The brew was done on Sunday the 2nd and went pretty smoothly. A little too much heat, which wasn’t a huge problem as I really wanted a good original gravity and had to play around a bit. The gravity reading wasn’t exactly where I wanted it, so a cup (75 grams) of dextrose was thrown in at the end.

First few days the beer has been fermenting away as expected. Has slowed down the last 4-5 days and plan to bottle this weekend.

-Mikey

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4 Jun 2013
7 Comments
Experiments

Apple and Rhubarb sour cider – Review

Apple and Rhubarb sour Cider

Apple and Rhubarb sour Cider in glasses

As you have read already, Chas is making cider. My views on this are pretty clear. Cider is not beer and therefore not as good. I’m prepared to change that view if there are ciders that can show their complexity and range.

This might just be the first cider to do that.

First, it’s not sickly sweet, or driven by sweetness, like a lot of commercial ciders.
Second, it’s for more than just one flavour. The majority of commercial ciders are apple flavour. There’s more range now but still it’s one flavour: pear, raspberry, strawberry, and any other berry you can think of.

Third, commercial cider has to be served very cold for it to be drinkable, but this one… no wait, it still needs that.

There is a lot of sourness here. And I do mean a lot. There’s just enough sweetness to prevent this becoming undrinkable. Keeping this cold helps a huge amount.

A quick note on the gravity. Original was 1.058, final was 0.994. That gives it an alcohol content of 8.9%. As a result there is a big body here that helps hold it all together and drives the big flavour.

My criticism is that:

  1. It’s not a beer.
  2. The sourness becomes a bit too much by the end of a glass.
  3. The alcohol level stops it from being a session drink.
  4. The flavours could be slightly better balanced.

Overall I’m pretty happy to drink this non-beer.

-Mikey

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23 May 2013
2 Comments
Home brew kits

Thomas Coopers Heritage Lager – Review

TCS Heritage Lager 1

Thomas Coopers Selection Heritage Lager 1

Just over a month ago we did Chas’s first brew. It was a full 23L batch of Thomas Coopers Selection Heritage Lager.

Fermentation was only eight days, a fair bit quicker than the ones in the carboys. That’s more to do with the ability to be able to take samples easy and do gravity readings. While the brew is in the carboys you just need to wait long enough to be sure.

Original gravity was 1.038 and final gravity was 1.006. So that should be 4.2% which is a bit on the lighter side for a lager. That said I don’t think it made much of a difference.

So how was this first lager? Okay is the short answer. Not necessarily a good lager as it was just the hop malt can and a heap of dextrose.

There’s some alright aroma. But overall it’s a bit rough and ordinary. Some good flavours but no real body. Gets dry at the middle that keeps getting stronger, which isn’t great. Bitterness builds but it’s nothing special. A pretty basic but drinkable beer.

BUT, then we allowed the beer to condition for another week. That made a noticeable improvement. The whole lot started working better. Hop flavour wasn’t as harsh, malt felt more a part of the beer than on the side, and some of that roughness dropped away.

By no means did this go from okay to great, but more from okay to nice. And that’s really all we wanted from the first big batch beer.

Updated 29 May 2013: Added in the photo and the gravity readings.

-Mikey

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13 May 2013
5 Comments
Home brew kits

Summer Citrus, first attempt

Summer Citrus in fermenter

Summer Citrus Blond Ale #1 in fermenter. Just before yeast added.

Didn’t look like we were going to be able to do a brew last weekend. But shuffled a few things around and did a brew on Saturday. Another Brew Smith kit, this time the Summer Citrus Blonde Ale.

Was expecting another partial boil with grain, needing two pots. Not the case. This was a simple one with malt, hops and extras added straight into the wort. Two lots of malt, three hop additions, coriander seeds and lemon rind. Yeah, I was thinking the last two were a bit odd. But hey, it is a citrus blond.

Did add in a bit more water than meant to at a couple of stages. For example washing out the malt bags to get all the powder out, and into the wort. For this one had to grate lemon rind in. We did it directly over the pot and used some boiled water to rinse the bits off the grater. Anyway, as a result we didn’t need to do any extra top up of water into the glass carboy fermenter. A side effect was that the wort was about 29 degrees Celsius. Plastic wrap went over the top of the carboy until the temperature could be dropped. The photo above was taken at this point. Extra cooling was done, but after another 20 minutes we could only get it down to 27 C. Not ideal, but needed to get the yeast in. Airlock went on and stored away to brew.

This is the second time we got a proper gravity reading on these small batches. Came out at 1.054 which is more or less in the range I was expecting. Means the beer will be around 5% to 5.5% alcohol, if all goes well.

We’ve done a few of these Brew Smith kits now and this was the easiest by far. Bottling will be in about two weeks, just after good beer week (www.goodbeerweek.com.au). Then another two weeks in the bottle before tasting and review.

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5 May 2013
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Uncategorized

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
2 Comments
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
5 Comments
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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