Brew No.7 – ESB Aussie Draught

RATING: 3/5 Stars

Due to the cold weather I figured it was time to start brewing lagers. I have heard nothing but good things about the ESB 3kg kits so when I was ordering some ingredients from Grain and Grape (www.grainandgrape.com.au) in Melbourne I threw one of these in as well. Figured this would be a good beer for Nichole to drink and my (soft) mates who don’t like the ales.

As you can see from the recipe below there isn’t much to add as the 3kg kit already has the fermentables added and are apparently hopped pretty well. I just altered the yeast to a lager yeast as they supply a safale with this one…

• ESB Australian Draught 3kg kit
• Saflager s23 yeast

Made up to 22 litres and fermented for about 12 days with FG of about 1.008. Bottled into PET using carb drops on 10 July 2008.

Tasting Notes
19 July 2008 – Couldn’t resist having a little taste, and was very surprised that it was actually pretty good after only 9 days in the bottle. I’m confident that this brew will turn out well.

23 July 2008 – I am getting desperate now, as my Pale Ales are now all gone! Cracked another one & noticed that this beer is quite dark. Reckon this needs another couple of weeks to be great, but going to struggle as this is all I have now, unless I front up to the bottle shop and buy a tailored brew.

26 July 2008 – After buying a six pack off Coopers Sparkling from the bottle shop and necking them in no time, I chucked one of these in the freezer hoping for a miracle. Nuh, still way too green and going to have to more patient.

10 August 2008 – Had a number of these while watching the mighty Parramatta Eels finally notch up a win against the Roosters. Tasting quite nice now after a little conditioning. I reckon with some simple dry hopping with POR Hops this would be quite a drop. Going to give 3 stars