Recent content by Pirate Pete

Thanks Trev My sister is in Castlemaine and I will be dropping into the Railway now and then for a beer. Great beer there. Peter

All good advice so far, really appreciated. I have a pretty good water supply . 5 megalitres a year. Also have a shade or greenhouse tunnel so could experiment with that - its about 20 metres long and 5 metres wide.. There is also a reasonable sized dam so could try the hops. The guy next...

Hi First time contributor to the serious part of this forum. Have been brewing kits for a couple of years and have done some research but treat me as a first former. Anyway, just bought a small property in Harcourt Victoria of around 7 acres. Now I want to start with about 1/2 acre of...

Thanks for all the advice gents. This forum is very helpful. After reading, I decided to drink it uncarbonated and it was very nice. Very strong though. As an experience wine drinker I would say around 12%. I also tried it with a bit of soda water but that made the taste a bit too weak...

Thanks for all the comments, very informative. While I only have a small batch I will try several of the suggestions. Drink out of fermenter and try a few non fermentable sugars. Lactose would be interesting as I am a smoker and this looks like being a 15-16% brew. Better be careful lighting...

G'Day I have just made a small brew of cider with mixed berries. Last time I made this it was too dry. I want to make it sweeter. Last brew had a final specific gravity of 1005 after fermentation stopped and it was really dry. How can and make it sweeter. If I stop fermentation at a...

I missed that on the Coopers instructions. Good point though and I will try that. Bottles have started to harden up over the past week. Will try one tomorrow and give feedback Thanks for all the above suggestions. Peter

Thanks for the advice. I will let nature take its course

Hi all Have done two Coopers kits thus far (just started home brewing). Carbonation did not really work on the first. The second has been bottled now fr 4 weeks or so in Pet bottles. I used two drops per 750ml bottle. Opened a bottle last night. It has a good head and taste was okay...

I made an experimental cider last week It consisted of: 6 litres of woolies apple juice ! kilo bag of frozen berries 0.5 kg of brown sugar I sachet of brewers yeast (5gm) It fermented out in about 5 days. FG was 1002. I did not take an OG as there was a lot of better mash in the container...

This afternoon I put down a cider . a small batch. Used a 10 litre maxipale from Bunnings ($6) after adding an airlock. Bought 6 litres of woolies apple juice ($6) and added one kg of mixed berries ($9). Also added around 500 grams of brown sugar and used a 5 gm Brigalow yeast sachet (the...

jongylary That is a monster of a ginger beer.

Made up a similar recipe except 1 kg of ginger and a bit less sugar. Also added around 8 cardomon pods and 4 nutmeg nuts. I did not add citrus (usually do this but did not have lemons on hand at the time), although thinking of doing that pre bottling. It has been fermenting for 8 days now...

I tried one and it was pretty good. A little under carbonated but this should improve. My son and I are going to brew our second batch tomorrow. Might try the Coopers IPA.

I think this will turn out nice. Drank the left overs from the bottling exercise and it was pretty good. Thanks for all of your advice Peter