Take 2 Teaspoons of Cement

The Aussie Lager brew from last month was definitely good enough to drink, even after only 3 weeks. We thought it could be crap because it didn’t taste too good to start with but it has matured very well!

We polished off about 10 bottles on Saturday for our friend’s engagement party which was great. After we spent the night drinking in the park with a small fire, huge sound system and good company. At some point the cops came around to check on us but since no complaint had been received they left us alone!

It’s now Monday, and I still feel pretty ordinary. Probably because of the range and quantity of different beers drunken throughout the evening.

This site occasionally pops up on my radar, but I’m starting to take a little more notice now we have laid down a few batches of the ready mixed extracts and getting better at the beer making process.

It seems many other people around the world love the idea of home brew, beer and software, just like us. The Free Beer site has produced a few different beers (they’re up to v3.3 now) and published their recipes on the Internets under an open source license. Way to go guys!

When we get around to making our own wort/extract for a brew, we will definitely be following the same premise, since this Beer Log (blog) is to record our own processes in detail to fine tune and show the mistakes made along the way to a good brew.

Cheers!

After Jake’s birthday we stumbled into Dave’s Homebrew shop in Nth Sydney for supplies as we have plenty of empty bottles to fill. Our collective hangover did not help the large selection but Dave was understanding and helped us make sure we used the right lager yeast that works better at lower temperatures.

Loaded up with raw materials, we decided our next brew should be an Asahi type dry Japanese beer. This mix came from Brewcraft and had more ingredients than the previous brews we have done:

• can of Beermakers Lager extract
• Gemdex #10 (dextrose mix)
• 500g Japanese Blonde malt jar
• 12g Saaz & 12g Hallertau hop pellets (in a ‘teabag’)
• Saflager Yeast S-23

We followed the instructions precisely - dissolving the can and Gemdex in 2L hot water, letting the hops sit in 300mL boiled water for 15min (the teabags fell apart when we strained so a bit of hops got in the brew). Filled to 22L and the temperature was 25C to start. We added the yeast and dry enzyme and left it downstairs in the cool basement, with a blanket around it.

Today Mark took the blanket off as the temperature was still over 21C and apparently this “Saflager yeast produces its best flavours under 18 degrees”.

Initial SG was 1046. We took a little sip of the brew from the SG reading yard glass we use, and… oh my it was sweet as. I’m hoping this could be our best one yet.

Since it’s a lower temperature, we will let this ferment for 1.5-2weeks instead of the usual one week to make sure primary fermentation finishes.

This brew will be a little suspect since we had problems controlling the temperature, but time will tell (about a month) if it will be any good. 26 longnecks out of this one. Final SG was 1012 which seems a little high.

After a day, Mark moved the brew close to the water heater on Monday. Last night he moved it upstairs to the living quarters, since the temperature had dropped to 20C very close to when the yeast stops doing its thing!

Hopefully it will all be okay, but we have some ideas for the cold months of brewing.

• Choose the brew and yeast that works better in colder climates
• Get to work on a brew warming cupboard.

We will be looking at the first option this coming weekend when we start another batch. For this, we will need Dave’s expertise at Dave’s Home Brew.

The second option will take a few weeks to put together, but I have already started the design. Essentially This will be a wooden box lined with an insulator or air gap. I’ve decided not to make this part, and concentrate on the electronics. Inside the box will be a couple of 40-100W lamps and a temperature sensor controlled by a microcontroller. Keep an eye on the main Scriptforge site, as I will post design and construction details there. The box idea came from an old family friend who made his own brew that I remember when I was a wee lad. I have added a controller to it.

Chief brewer Mark, another mate Josh and myself met up for pasta and beer. Mark showed his new skill of pasta making, cooking up some great spinach and ricotta thingys, very enjoyable along with the now mature Extra Dry and Cascade Spicy Ghost Draught brews. After dinner it was time to prepare a new batch.

This time we used the Morgan’s Australian Lager extract to make a Fosters Lager type brew (hopefully). Since it was the ANZAC day long weekend, we are calling this batch Gallipoli Grog.

After sanitising the equipment, we mixed 2L boiled water with the extract and a 1kg Ultra pack (250g Maltodextrose, 250g Dextrose, 550g Pale Malt), and added another 250g Dextrose/sucrose mix.

Filled to 24L mark with cold filtered water, added the yeast mix, and stirred for 30sec (rather than letting it sit on top of the mix like previous brews. Final temperature was 28C.

Since it is getting close to winter and we’re in a cold snap at the moment, we wrapped the fermenter in a blanket and left it downstairs.

Initial SG 1040

I was so grateful for a beer when I got off the boat today. We were racing, and doing well when suddenly (ok not that fast but we were a little unprepared) a storm came in looking all nasty but really cool. Then the race with 10-15 knot winds became a white-out and 40 knots and we were being pelted by ice cold hail that hurts upon multiple application!

We opened the 2nd batch which was a Cascade ‘Spicy Ghost’ Draught brew, and when poured into a skinny glass was mostly head. It was still immature to taste but some more time in the fridge will fix that. Fortunately the Chief Brewer is busy with exams for a few weeks so we will let our brews mature in his fridge.

We went back to the Extra Dry brew from the first batch, and this has turned into a fine drinking beer. So fine, we drank some more! And then we found that these new Curios’s (wild berry flavour, that is supposedly for people who skip breakfast when really they are sweet sugary chips rather than salty ones) go with our beer, and both taste SO fine.

Well yesterday was the day we got to experience the fruits of our labours.

The Extra Dry brew opened with a nice sound (POST AUDIO!)

We downed a few bottles from the start and middle of the bottles, and well, it tasted like BEER.

Tasted good. OK it tasted a little immature, but if we let it go in the fridge for a week or two, I reckon it may be a GOOD beer.

Lists the mistakes and triumphs of the brew.

OK I have a hangover not gonna type much just set this shit up.

• Final SG 1008 (4.6% alcohol calculated)
• Bottle wash and sanitised.
• Let bottles dry while we ate a fine roast dinner.
• 25 longnecks and 4 stubbies
• Beer was frothy when filling suspect some bottles may explode due to primary fermentation not finished (but it could just be the recipe)