Recent content by lpa

Hey man, my best beers have been the ones I splashed out for ingredients on. You can get cheapo tins and avoid pricy stuff like spraymalt and skip adding hops altogether, but is it worth all that time and manly brew-love, what with the sanitizing and bottling and rinsing and peeking and testing...

And the beast fermenting away within minutes of pouring the wort in is a real bonus too. I've just dumped a cheap Cooper's bitter with 50/50 blonde LM and Dex onto a pile of very nice looking Safale lees just to see what would happen and it's all been pretty exciting. Winter's a bit colder here...

Kia Ora, I've just blown my own loaf-of-bread-shaped head off with a English style real ale which tasted and smelt so similar to the real deal it was truly uplifting in a Life of Brian kind of way. Anywhow, it was a Brewcraft (apparantly Muntons repackaged) English Bitter 1.8 kilo tin brewed...

hey ho, The Radler's certainly a refreshing beer in summer, but as as German Beer Avocado, I'd like to get all pedantic and remind viewers that a Radler is two things: a cycling enthusiast and a Shandy (for cycling enthusiasts who wanna stay wobble-free or whatever). Good old Monteiths got...

Kia Ora. AFter a prolonged spell in the chiller, say a month, will enough yeast remain to carbonate or do you normally need to stir in a small portion?

Thank you gentlemen. Well this morning there's no Krausen of the foaming wall of chunder variety, but a very thin, sad-looking bubblyish layer of activity which is producing a CO2 fart every couple of minutes at best. The multi-denominational prayer and 6 hour handstand might yet have worked...

You're right. I'm a massive stress-head au moment. Chill pills presently being necked like there's no tomorrow. It's tough being a kiwi, y'know...

Cheers Shunty, Gravity's 1048, there's no surface activity and no CO2. But, y'know, some scribes say give them 24 hours. It's just I put a lot of love into this wort and I don't want to compromise it by waiting too long.

Hi. I'm going through a month of fermentation hell. Nothing has changed but suddenly every brew is requiring ugly remedial action and it's killing me. Today I pitched 11g of room temp Safale yeast (expiry '07) directly (sprinkled as per packet instructions) onto the 24deg wort (can Muntons...

G'day, Hey, just read an English brewing book which insists you remove the lid, scoop off the mushroom cloud and give the fermenting wort a good stir for the first three or four days , before racking for a spell of airlocked secondary. It sounds like madness, if you believe all the hygeine...

Hey dude, Welcome to the never-ending challenge. Re: is one sachet of sprinkled enough; well, sometimes/usually is the answer. It certainly doesn't hurt to bang two in there and recently I used a massive bread yeast sachet which did a remarkable job eating up all the sugars without tasting bad...

G'day. I've been using an 11.5l fermenter for six months now and for me it's kinda convenient size-wise cos you can stick it in the fridge withouth upsetting your wife, keep it cool easily in a big bucket thing (massive ice-cubes are the key) during fermentation, and carry it on your head for...

Kia Ora, I put a month-old bottle of Cooper's Real Ale (standard method) in the fridge for a week or so and unlike all it's mates, this one tasted almost exactly like VB. Now, many will say that's a pity, but for an amateur such as myself I thought that was an encouraging result. I've always...

G'day. Finally tasted said Baker's Yeast Prison Ale last night after two weeks in the bottle and, y'know, it's not an instant classic. But it's, as far as I can tell after an esoteric chomp and swallow, the same as the control batch I made previously except: it's a bit drier cos the bread yeast...

G'day. Thought an update on my Lock-up Baker's Yeast Real Ale would be polite. Anyway, pitched 8g of Elfin Instant Dry Yeast for Breadmaker's direct from sachet into a half can of Lion Real Ale with 500g Dex in 11.5l at 22deg and have kept it at 20-22deg for the last 3 days. It was fermenting...