My Mate Beer.

[Tandum]

After a recent visit to no tax on beer Vietnam where a 600ml Tiger had a local price of $1 or $2 in a tourist spot, I couldn't cope with $60 for a case of beer at home or even $18 for 3 Tallies. I thought I'd have another go at home brewing.

It's been 30 years since my last encounter and hasn't it all changed. Now we have computers and the Internet for some direction and expert brew shops everywhere. I have 5 brew shops within 15 minutes of here.

You can buy everything from milled barley to hops and exotic yeast strains. Cooking up a mash is not easy and requires exact temperature control. Not to worry, you can buy fresh worts. One of those shops near me specialises in making craft beer worts. Dump that in a sterile fermenter add yeast and go. Maybe throw in some dried hops a few days before fermentation stops for that hoppy aroma. Amazing.

I got a brew kit off Gummy with everything for $40 but I remembered bottling from the old days, what a pain. Admittedly, you can get PET plastic bottles and screw caps now and you drop carbonation drops into the bottles instead of sugar but the thought of cleaning and sterilising and filling and capping and storing 30 bottles, not again. I found a 2nd hand kegging kit at a reasonable price so away we go bottle free.

Just got the 7Kg CO2 bottle filled, not cheap, cleaned and refurbed the 3 kegs and the filter setup and tested everything for leaks. My first brew which is a 150 lashes clone should be ready next Tuesday odd. It goes into the donor keg and it is then low pressure fed through the 1 micron filter into the maturing keg and sealed. That keg goes into the fridge with the gas and should be carbonated in 5 days.

I've already got the next 2 brews planned. The down side, the fridge in the garage is too small. But there are plenty of free, big, pickup fridges on Gummy. I'll get it sorted.

Sorry crappy phone photo but you get the idea.

[Ausrock]

Robin,

Google "Brew by U".......they've got a couple of facilities in Brisbane.

ChrisO ;)

[Tandum]

$8 odd in tolls to get to the closest and back Chris.
If I get a job over there I'll look in.

Look at this ripoff at Dan Murphy's: Stone & Wood Pacific Ale is $73 for 24 stubbies. Under 8 litres.
That's outrageous. Brew it from a brewery wort at $50 for 23 Litres. An ale fermented with a lager yeast.
God Damn Government. It's all about the cash. Blood suckers.

[pgc hunter]

Here here. Wowser hypcritical cretins :mad2:

I still hate Kruddy boy for increasing taxes on premix drinks, look at the prices of those, bloody $20 and up for 4 cans. $6-8 for individual can/bottles. :screwy:

It's ludicrous how they preach the reasons for these poxy taxes on beer and premixes as a method of "protecting ourselves from ourselves", yet at the same time, a 4 litre goon sack can be had for practically half the price of a 6 pack these days. How does that work?

And ofcourse thanks to indexation, prices just keep going up and up. Slabs will probably avg $100 by the time I'm middle-aged :rolleyes:

I miss the cheaper stuff in Aldi, it was funny seeing things like Magners cost literally half of what it does in Dan's. We got an Aldi here recently, but the worthless defective wowser SA gubbermunt doesn't allow Aldi and other such places to sell booze :mad2: Even the Coles next door doesn't have a liquorland, must be the only one in the country seriously :doh:

[csb]

Drink water :D

[leon]

Yep Graig nailed it ;)

Leon :thumbsup:

[Tandum]

Hey I put 22 litres of water in the fermenter ...

And I'll be drinking it ... does that count

[brian nordstrom]

:thumbsup: I have a mate over here thats been keg brewing for a few years now and he has it down pat , some of his brews are as good as the stuff you buy on tap in pubs , and hangovers dont seen as bad ;) .

Keep at it its a fun hobby .

Brian.

[Tandum]

Cheers Brian. So long as you keep containers clean and sterile it's pretty straight forward. Fermenting really requires temperature control. Lagers need to ferment at around 10C and Ales around 20C depending on the yeast so you need to ferment in a fridge.

I just got hold of a working $25 fridge that'll cool 4 kegs and the fermenter fits perfectly into the tiny old fridge. Got a temp controller on the old fridge, it just turns it on/off to keep it around the right temp and spent the last day and a half working on the $25 special.

It's now clean, rust free and red. Looking a bit like a coke machine but killrust epoxy is $10/litre at supercheap so it's red. Needs a couple more coats and we are done.

First brew has finished and will go in the first keg in a couple of days. Not expecting a lot as I brewed 23ltr which is the amount you make for bottling but I bought kegs inbetween and kegging wants a 20ltr brew. So it will probably be a bit watery and weak. Sure smells like beer :)

The $25 special has the fridge on top and came with an ants nest under the seals on both doors for free ....

[Tandum]

It's Alive ...

[PCH]

Hey robin,

How's the clarity? And more importantly, the taste?

Back in pommie-land decades ago, Boots the Chemist sold a kit where, during secondary fermentation, the sediment on the bottom of the bottle set solid. So you didn't have to be careful pouring as you wouldn't disturb the sediment.

It was a good drop too!

[Tandum]

Hi Paul,
It's a bit hoppy for my tastes and it has a chill haze but it's the first I've made in about 30 years so I'm drinking it :)

Proteins in the beer left over from the boil can clump together when cold and you get a milky haze. No taste to them.
In these pics, beer 1 is at 2C and beer 2 has been sitting in the sun to warm up.
I filtered it again after these pics but that didn't make a lot of difference.
Second brew went into a keg yesterday.

[AndrewJ]

What caused the loss of focus between 1 and 2 ??????
:drink:

Andrew

[Tandum]

Not me. Samsung S5 decided to focus on the background instead of what was right in front of it. I just can't get used to a non cooled camera.
This swamp water is only 3.6%. The second batch is cold crashing now at 2C and gets filtered into the final keg tomorrow arvo.
It measures 5.6% :2thumbs:

I got a third brew started. It's an traditional IPA and is so active it was foaming the steriliser out of the airlock within 24 hours. I had to replace the steriliser with boiled water. This one will be strong. I'm expecting over 6%.

[AndrewJ]

Gday Robin


I'll believe you :-)

When i was brewing "rocket fuel" brews, i never bothered with an "airlock", i used to cover the carboy with gladwrap ( with a small hole in it ). Once it settled down from the initial fermentation, i replaced it with a clean one and actually watched the wort till it stopped bubbling, vs look at what came though an airlock )
Much simpler

Andrew

[Tandum]

Bubbling is not necessarily fermenting. Yes that shocked me too. Way back when, we'd bottle after the bubbles stopped. You should use a hydrometer or a Refractometer and if it's stable over 3 days it is finished even if it's still bubbling. But leaving it longer doesn't hurt it, just lets the yeast settle. I've been putting gelatin in the kegs to drag the yeast to the bottom.

[Tandum]

My first all grain beer. No cans or extracts at all.
Smash beer, Single malt and Single Hop.
Vienna malt and galaxy hops.
Clarity is absolutely flawless.
And that's near freezing.

Miles away from coopers cans 30 years ago.
Yes it's flat, give it 10 days on the gas.

[PCH]

Nice! That looks really good Robin. You'll be looking forward to sitting down with a few of those I imagine ;)

[Tandum]

End of the month would be best for it.
Kegged an IPA today and it's just as clear.
Looks like I got the process right.
An Irish Red is fermenting in the tub now.

Move to a keg and cool the brew. I can get it to 2-3C which seems to work. Toss in some gelatin to drag the yeast down. 1-2 days later squirt out the crap at the bottom with a pluto gun then run the rest through a filter to the serving keg. Filtering removes any CO2 so it's flat, gas it.

[Tandum]

Had an event here last weekend. Put out 2 kegs and they all loved the beer. They drank the lot. Full grain beer is great. No hangovers.

Moving on. Got an RO water filter. This filter gives me near distilled water. I have to add chemicals to this water for it to be healthy brew water. But all the crap has been removed. No more chloramine.

They don't add chlorine to the water here. They add Choromine. It's a compound of chlorine and ammonia and can't be boiled out. Campden tablets will kill it or you use an RO filter and start from zero.

I just wanted cheap beer, now I'm a chemist ....

[leon]

Anyway is this what you mean.:shrug:

We are doing another house sit in Emu Park QLD, the man of the house
showed me through his shed and said help your self. :thumbsup: I don't think he dose to much work in there ;)

Not a good thing to say to an alcoholic.:lol: :lol:

Leon :thumbsup:

[Tandum]

I can guarantee that won't happen here.
I'm far more interested in how to make a good brew than setting up a bar.

Got a gummy contact selling off a pile of all grain stuff near me.
Large Stainless Pots are not cheap. You want a 50L pot to make a 20L wort.
Add the heaters, SS valves connectors, sight glasses etc etc.
A new 50L pot all set up by you is close to $400 easy.
You would need 3 of them plus 2 pumps. Hot liquid food grade.

[multiweb]

:eyepop: :lol: love that fridge!

[Tandum]

So I got the 30 year old coleman esky out of the shed. Built up a mash maifold, put in a ball valve and we have a mash tun. Not initially realising I had the tools to solder copper tube I built a fly sparge arm for the esky.

My mate Gumtree showed me the way to a 48 litre urn to supply hot water and a used keg which I have cut the top out, installed a heater, taps and gauges and turned it into a wort boiler ( full of cleaner in pic ) and I also got a pump to move boiling liquids around. Add hoses and connectors and we got a Brew House. It seems you treat it as food once it's in the boiler. Kegs are stainless steel as are all the fittings.

I recon about 2 weeks and we'll be cooking beer.

[Tandum]

Found out over that last few days that the 30year old cooler is 30 years old. It drops about 0.3 degrees every 10 minutes or 3 degrees an hour. That's way too much. Mash temp needs to be stable or the mash starts to transform different sugars strings and the beer tastes like arse.

I got a coil of copper here and put it in the hot water tank. pump the mash through that and you get a stable temp. This isn't going to be as easy as I thought.

[edit]
Or maybe it is that easy. Suspended the 8Kg 15meter copper coil in the Urn with a pair of SS turnbuckles and lowered it as far as I could without sitting on the element. Dumped 12L of 74C water into the cooler which quickly dropped to 68C. Started pumping cooler water though the coil with the Urn at 70.7C, back to to cooler and got 69C in the cooler. It drifted from 68.9 to 69,3 over an hour and a half. WooHoo, fixed. The mash temperature dictates what the beer feels like in the mouth. A full body beer is maltier and is mashed at a higher temp, a light body beer is stronger alcohol and tastes lighter with less after taste. They are mashed at a lower temp. The mash temp dictates which sugar strings are converted for fermentation. Not far to go now. Cooling it after the boil and keeping it sanitised is the next.

[Tandum]

Done, got all the bugs out, done 2 test runs for brewing and one for cleanup. All the connectors are there, got a pair of heat proof gloves to manage the connectors when it gets to temp. Moved the vessels around to better suit the setup. Got the beersmith software setup with the right numbers for the gear and have designed my first 3 brews. It's all go now,

Just need an empty fermenter to put the wort into. That'll be next tuesday or wednesday I think.

I can't believe the plate chiller in the bottom right of the pic. Put boiling water in one port, counterflow tap water into another port. The boiling water comes out cool to the touch and the tap water comes out hot. Amazing.

[tonez]

ah nice, i did a quick post on imgur a while back using the braumeister
https://imgur.com/a/t3zos

i have a 3v RIMS setup as well that i still use for bigger beers and double batches.
beersmith is the way to go.
if you get stuck with anything shoot me a pm

[Tandum]

Cheers mate, I'm pretty sure I got all bases covered. Just need the fermentor free to do a cook and I put the current brew on cold crash tonight so it should be in a keg on Monday.

Eventual plan is to do 40L batches concentrated to 30L. That's probably the biggest boil I can get going with this gear. 15L into the fermentor, add 5L water plus yeast with the other 15L into a cube for the next batch.

I need a fermenting fridge that fits a 60L bucket.

I had to buy beer for a party last weekend. The stuff I'm brewing is 150% better than that rubbish. I've recently found out they brew commercial beer with rice and corn which adds fermentable sugars but adds no flavour. It's just to reduce cost.

[Tandum]

So first all grain brew day was last Monday. Got strike water in the esky up to temp and circulating, switched off the pump and added 5Kg of grain and stirred it in. Waited a while for it to settle and flicked the pump back on to recirculate the mash. Bugger, all the valves where wide open so got no flow as the pump sucked grain through everything.

Took almost an hour to clear that and the mash temp dropped a lot but eventually got back on track. drained it, boiled it and cooled it and got it in the bucket with yeast. It's still fermenting. Lesson learned. Got some stainless 100 mesh coming to cover the esky manifold in an attempt to keep it clear.

Gearing up for the next brew now , a 150 lashes clone, and I've used this yeast before. It needs a double dose or a starter else it stalls. I opted for the starter and didn't that work well. Made 800ml of starter and dosed it with a packet of yeast. I made a plate stirrer from an old pc fan, a couple of magnets and a voltage regulator. I dropped a stirrer stick in the starter and it was bubbling in an hour.

Drained off the spent starter liquid after 12 hours and poured 3/4 of the yeast residue into a sterile jar. Kicked off another 800ml dose and harvested that as well. Got lots of yeast for this brew.

It went so well I decided to upscale X3 for the next brew. It uses a German Kolsch liquid yeast which must have a starter. It's not cheap to buy so I'll keep some in the fridge.