Recent content by lukemarsh

Cracked it just the other night... bloody hell! I remember making a few decent batches toward the end of my brewing rampage, but I still ended up forgetting about them after I went traveling. This one was an attempted copy of a James Squire Golden Ale type thing... smells and tastes excellent! I...

Some of the brews I did were shit to begin with... but I was advised to resist from chucking them all out, as ageing can 'improve' them (so I was told by my local homebrew specialist). I dunno how long that would take to make them good/better, or if he thought my definition of "shit to begin...

I've been working at SA's Marion Dan Murphy's for about a year now... some of the guys there are absolute experts on everything, wine beer and spirits. There are a few who specialise in one area. My own knowledge was just what I'd learnt myself over time, but in the past few months all Dan...

Yeah I've got a couple in the fridge chilling... I think it could be that some of them were lying down on their side, or I rolled them around too much getting them out of the boxes, so the yeast has just risen to the top. It can't really go off in the bottle can it I'm hoping to put down a few...

I homebrewed like crazy from around 2009 to 2011 then stopped for a while when I went traveling... I dug around in my cellar to see what I had in the stockpile and found that a lot of my really old homebrew (from around 2010 and 2011) had some strange light tint to the top surface of the liquid...

I've been brewing beer for over a year now and I really love it and feel I've just about got the whole process down... I am starting university this year doing Viticulture and Oenology (Adelaide Uni) and thought I might give homebrew wine making a go. I drink mostly red wine, and would like to...

Yeah I never even touch the fermenter... ever. Only if there's some hardcore Coopers stains than need a good ol wipe with a regular cloth (all Coopers brews make a right mess in your fermenter... dirty bastards). I use a regular cloth for wiping off hard stains cos I sterilise the shit out of it...

My Guinness! You are 100% correct! Everything you mentioned is spot on, man... The white grease you got two brews in a row that eventually developed in the tallie, exactly what's happenin here with me. Two brews in a row. Also, I do take the tap and sediment reducer out and open the tap and...

Well, he only used it once and gave up... made a Tooheys brew (I think) and left it for about a month, found it smelt rank and poured it out. He then rinsed it and gave it to me. It smelt pretty disgusting at that time, but a few pink stains soon fixed that. I've only made a couple of beers in...

I clean both fermenters the same... hot water rinse out, then hose to clean off stuck scum, then hot rinse, pink stain and leave for a couple hours, hot rinse a couple of times until pink stain sliminess is gone then sanitise and rinse. I try to clean them as best as I can and generally put the...

I got this 25L Tooheys Home Brew Fermenter from a mate who never used it and it's doing weird shit to my beers. Every beer I have made in it has somehow developed weird white flakey stuff on the surface of the beer when bottled. I use another 30L Brewcraft fermenter and have never had this issue...

I have recently discovered a strange white flakiness that is appearing on top of the liquid in my more recent bottles of homebrew... A couple of my last brews have had this happen and I can't work out what it is or how it happens. The first time I noticed it was when I made a Heineken style...

Cheers guys! My cellar (which I was fortunate enough to have been able to claim ownership from my parents ;)) sits at about 16 - 18deg in winter and 20 - 22deg in summer... so the brew has been getting down to around 16 at night and almost 18 during the day. I put it on heatpad when it appeared...

I have some kind of brewer's curse that only allows all of my beers to ferment down to a gravity of 1.020... 1.015 at best, depending on the style of beer and ingredients. This one has to be by far the most annoying yet. I put down a Choc Orange porter using Cascade Choc Mahogany Porter kit +...

Cheers for the help! I ended up using orange zest from two fairly large oranges. I used only the coloured part, not the pith (as best I could) and boiled for 15 mins in about a litre or two of water, then strained into fermenter. It smelt pretty nice, but it may not be enough to bring out in...