What better way to spend an evening than making some positive changes to the brewery?

First up was to make some major changes to the way I have been sparging in the mash tun. I currently batch sparge and have been using a stainless braid for this quite successfully. I have however had a few stuck sparges and this was only ever meant to be a temporary solution whilst I came up with something else.

I have now installed a ‘manifold’ which has been built using high density pvc piping, which is a little more common in the united states. Here is a pic…

Busting to give it a go, and will do so this weekend at the WSB brew day

Second update to the brewery is installing the second Perlick tap on the keg fridge. This also involved splitting the gas line using a T piece which ended up being nice and easy, with no leaks (so far!)

Currently celebrating with a couple of pints of the amber ale (which is tasting great by the way )

Sitting at work today dreaming of brewing beer (as one does) and thought I would take a step back and brew a SMaSH beer. This involves brewing a beer using only one malt and one hop…as this is an APA I have gone with ale malt and cascade, nice and simple…

I will play with the recipe in Beersmith tonight, with a view to brewing something light and sessionable (is that a word?).

25 November 2009 – OK, recipe is as follows:

• 4.5kg Ale Malt
• 20g Cascade hops @ 45 min
• 20g Cascade hops @ 10 min
• Whirfloc @ 10 min
• 20g Cascade hops @ 0 min
• US05 yeast – rehydrated
• 15g Cascade dry hopped after 3 days

Mashed in at 67 deg C left for an hour then batch sparged into the kettle. This was the first time I have used my new marga mill, and clearly I need to work on the settings. My efficiency was only about 65%!!! anyway ended up with an OG of about 1.052, no chilled and will pitch in a day or so.

1st December 2009 – Pitched into the old school plastic fermenter with a glad wrap cover!

Need to start stocking up for Christmas and New Year, so will brew one of the crowd favourites again, the Aussie Ale. This is going to be pretty much the same as v3.0 so check it out for the recipe….Aussie Pale Ale v3.0 I’ll actually be brewing this three times over the coming weeks, 2 for consumption and 1 for the swap day Thought I’d keep them under the one blog entry as it may get a little repetitive….

17th November 2009 – Sneaked in a quick brew session. All went well, just missed the temp by one degree at 65 deg C which will be fine. Also used 35g or POR instead of 30g in the FWH. Did find the wort to be a tad pale but otherwise a nice clear wort into the cube. Will most likely pitch next week when I keg/bottle the amber.

26th November 2009 – pitched the Aussie PA into the glass carboy tonight, along with the starter I created from two Coopers Sparkling tallies on Monday night (hey, I was looking for an excuse for a drink on Monday anyway ) starter was looking very healthy and the wort was clear as going into the fermenter. Feel good about this one.

The Western Sydney Brewers Xmas bash is coming up in a little over 3 weeks and I am yet to brew the case swap beer! I have decided on a highly hopped (surprise, surprise) American Amber Ale and lifted the recipe from Jamil once again.

My s__t house mill is still not operational (grrr…) so have put an order in for ingredients in preparation for brewing this Saturday afternoon.

As I only need 12 bottles for the case swap, I have decided to brew 30 Litres of beer with the remainder just shy of filling an empty keg Recipe as follows:

• 7.5 kg Floor malted Maris Otter
• 0.5kg Bairds Pale Crystal
• 0.2kg Bairds Dark Crystal
• 0.5kg Munich I
• 0.3kg Amber
• 0.1kg Bairds Pale Choc Malt
• 50g Horizon @ 60 min
• 30g Cascade, 30g Centennial @ 10 min
• 30g Cascade, 30g Centennial @ 0 min
• 1 Whirfloc tablet @ 10 min
• ProCulture Pro10 Yeast – Sierra Navada Ale (2nd gen from last brew)

14th November 2009 – Fantastic brew day and hit all my numbers. Pretty good for a large batch. 90 min mash at 66 deg C, hop additions as above and  ended up filling two 15L cubes with an OG of 1.067.  Should be tasty!

15th November 2009 – pitched into two fermenters using slurry from the fat yak clone…

25th November 2009 – Kegged one of the fermenters this afternoon, and bottled the other for the case swap. Reminds me why I switched to kegs Had a swig from the fermenter and wow this is a big beer. Very malty and can taste plenty of alcohol, so may need some time in the bottle to smooth out a little.

29th November 2009 – Finished my evening with a couple of these from the keg. Quite pleased with this beer and hope the boys from the brew club will enjoy as part of our case swap this weekend.

2 November 2009 – Brewed another APA in the style of fat yak (see version 1), but dialled back the hops a little as they were a bit over the top last time I brewed this beer. Will also be using one of the new Proculture yeasts I picked up this week. recipe this time looked something like this:

• 4.0 kg Joe White Ale Malt
• 0.5kg Joe White Wheat Mallt
• 0.2kg Crystal 40
• 10g Nelson Sauvin, 10g Cascade Hops @ 45 min
• 10g Nelson Sauvin, 10g Cascade Hops @ 10 min
• 10g Nelson Sauvin, 10g Cascade Hops @ 0 min
• 15g Cascade Hops to be dry hopped after primary ferment
• 1 Whirfloc tablet @ 10 min
• ProCulture Pro10 Yeast – Sierra Navada Ale

Pretty much hit all my numbers on this brew which was great. OG pre-boil of 1.040 and post-boil of 1.049.

No-chilled as usual and will pitch in a couple of days once I rack the Mirror Pond into the keg.

3 November 2009 – Pitched a 1L starter of the Proculture Pro-10 Sierra Nevada Ale yeast. Took off like a rocket and should be finished well under 48 hours. Going to split into 4 and build up another 1L starter to pitch in this brew.

4th November 2009 – Got impatient and pitched the whole starter in the wort. I wanted to start using further generations of the yeast anyway and will use the trub for an amber next.

5th November 2009 – Nice healthy krausen by the morning…smells great!

7th November 2009 – Off to New Zealand in the morning, so dry hopped this afternoon. Ferment was starting to drop off anyway.

14th November 2009 – transferred to keg. See how it tastes in a few days…

15th November 2009 – Sneaked a taste this evening and quite impressed. The toned down hop schedule along with quality yeast has done wonders for this beer. Extremely close to the original

24th November 2009 – Sneaked a couple after work and this is getting better with a couple of weeks under it’s belt. At first I detected a harshness coming from the Nelson hops but this is starting to dissipate and becoming much easier to drink…mmm…think I’ll have another to be sure

29th November 2009 – After having a few real Fat Yak’s today, I think the bitterness on my version is a tad high. Next time I might go with the same hop additions but the first going in at around 30 minutes. Something like this…

• 10g Nelson Sauvin, 10g Cascade Hops @ 30 min
• 10g Nelson Sauvin, 10g Cascade Hops @ 5 min
• 10g Nelson Sauvin, 10g Cascade Hops @ 0 min
• 15g Cascade Hops to be dry hopped after primary ferment

Received in the post today 2 beautiful 525SS taps from Perlick. These babies are totally stainless steel including the shank, tail etc. By importing these from the US directly I paid less than half price and that includes postage!

Only ordered them about 10 days ago, so very happy. Already been down to the shed and installed one on the beer fridge, ready to pour the mirror pond pale ale next week

After listening to the Jamil Show podcast on this beer from Deschutes Brewing, my mouth was watering and I had to give it a shot. I haven’t had the pleasure of tasting this beer but I understand it is the perfect example of a well balanced tasty American Pale Ale. The brewery describes this beer as…

The quintessential American pale ale, Mirror Pond elegantly blends the sweetness of malted barley with the bite of hops (which add bitterness and aroma). It’s refreshing, loaded with strong hop flavors, and perfectly balanced.

Recipe as follows:

• 4.4 kg Joe White Ale Malt
• 0.3kg Bairds Pale Crystal Malt (110EBC)
• 0.1kg Weyermann Carapils
• 20g Cascade Hops – 60 min
• 20g Cascade Hops – 30 min
• 20g Cascade Hops – 5 min
• 20g Cascade Hops – 0 min
• 20g Cascade Hops – dry hop after 4 days
• 1 Whirfloc tablet @ 10 min
• S04 English Ale Yeast

20th October 2009 – mmmm…not a hugely successful brew day (well night in this case). Had some terrible stuck sparge issues which seem to be because of a large amount of flour in the grist from the HBS…grrrr….anyway ended up having to do one big sparge (no sparge?) to lighten it up a bit and bring the temp up as well. Efficiency went down from my usual 75% to 67%, so added in 300g dextrose to get OG back where it should be – 1.054.

Target mash temp was off a bit as well. Was shooting for 66 deg C but only got to 64. Shouldn’t make too much of a difference, perhaps just a slightly higher attenuation and hence drier finish. Mashed for 90 minutes.

Boiled for 60 min with additions as above. Nice clear whirlpool into the cube for no chill.

24th October 2009 – Pitched with a re-hydrated s04 (English ale) at approx 18 deg and will ferment low to keep the esters at bay.

4th November 2009 – Forgot to bloody dry hop this one until 3 days ago so threw them in well after ferment was finished. 2 days later (yesterday) I kegged it and there was still sh!t loads of hops and rubbish floating around.

Very cloudy brew with little bits of hops floating around. Tastes OK, but pretty bland on the malt front. Hops are also a bit grassy due to the very late addition.

6th November 2009 – After pouring a few, the beer has cleared up finally and tastes so much better than 2 days ago. I really like this beer, and perhaps a little munich or amber malt would make it that little bit better.

The last batch (a double) of Aussie Pale Ale was good but I thought could do with some improvement. I have done some research and will make the following changes to my recipe:

1) Use one addition as a first wort hop.
2) Use a small amount of carared – about 200g

Recipe as follows:

• 4.0 kg Joe White Pilsner Malt
• 0.5kg Joe White Wheat Mallt
• 0.2kg Weyermann Carared
• 30g POR Hops – first wort hop
• 1 Whirfloc tablet @ 10 min
• Recultured Coopers Sparkling Yeast

Hit my numbers perfectly on this one.  1.043 pre boil and 1.052 post boil gravities. Beautiful clear wort was transferred to a no chill cube, which was lucky as the yeast took a couple of days to fire up!

29 September 2009 – dumped the cube (careful to leave cold break behind) into the fermentor and added the active Coopers starter (about 1L)…so far so good!

4 October 2009 - As per usual, once the Coopers yeast gets going, it doesn’t take long to ferment out. Krausen has almost dies off completely but will leave in the fermenter for another week to clean itself up.

18 October 2009 – Yep, this is spot on. By far the best Coopers clone I’ve brewed thus far. transferred to keg yesterday and forced carbed to almost 3 volumes, I believe the first wort hop has made all the difference to this beer. A good bitterness level but without the harshness you can sometimes get from POR. Yum, I’m going to get another one (or two)!!!

I have finally taken the plunge into growing my own hops at home. On the weekend I planted two Pride of Ringwood rhizomes in pots and can’t wait to see them grow! To be honest, it is more for the novelty value at the moment but who knows….will post some pictures later when they start to take off.

20 September 2009 – Woo hoo rhizomes have sprouted and we’re away! Here is a picture of the largest shoot.

13 October 2009 – Ok were are starting to see some growth now! I have built three wires up to the roof of the house, and one of the bines has taken off up one of them. I have been watering every few days and fertilised a couple of days ago as well.

Happy Fathers Day to all the Dad’s out there. I was lucky enough to get a brand new refractometer to replace the dodgy hydrometer’s I seem to break every 2 brews on average Nice little piece of kit, that I ordered from Hong Kong on ebay for only $25! A fraction of the cost of the ones you can buy from the home brew stores and exactly the same model. Delivered in less than 2 weeks. Can’t wait to try it out next brew day. Here is a link to the one I bought for those interested…

http://tinyurl.com/n2f82l