AHB Articles: Vic X-mas In July 2010 Case Swap

[fcmcg]

Haysie...was my best score to date and your right...i should have shut up...i got far to excited...
I do hope you guys like my case swap beer....
Proof will be in the tasting...
Cheers
Ferg

 

[Fourstar]

Some are trying, others either arnt brewing or dont want to talk about it.
8 weeks to go.
Come on brewers,besides the 6-8 that have posted, how is yours developing,fermenting,bottling,tasting?

Well my small beer, despite my angst upon kegging has aged up ok since then although its not a fine example of my brewing skills. Instead of planning and scheming something special im just going to go all out with my 'hidden beer' that ive decided on.

Some more hints of what it is:

68IBU
2 malts & a little sugaz (my twist)
and a whole lot of 1272!

Oh you cant forget a threesome of C hops! :icon_chickcheers:

Assuming i leave work early on friday and get my ass down to Greensy home brewing, i'll be picking up some hops and brewing up a storm come saturday morning. Yest will hit the stirplate on wednesday before the MB meeting (fingers crossed) ready to fire on her along with my two other cubes patiently waiting. :icon_chickcheers:

 

[chris.taylor.98]

Westagte had our club meet yesterday , and that also included a little mini club stout comp...now i put a bottle of my oatmeal stout in , which is my case swap beer , and scored 119/150...The BJCP hanging judge even went so far as to say " vey well made beer..very balanced"
I hope that all 28 bottles are just as good ! You blokes are in for a treat !
Cheers
Ferg

Hmmmmm ... Oatmeal stout ... Arrrrgggggghhhh :icon_drool2:

 

[mxd]

mines been in the bottle 1 month (post Easter -pre-ANZAC), I only managed to get 29 bottles (long story but batch 2 was infected), so when I tasted my only sample bottle I was happy, I just hope the others are OK (my sample was in Glass and my swaps are all in plastic (is new/unused plastic).

I think the only thing I would change (now) would be same dry hopping, I'm not petrified of dry hops now

 

[chris.taylor.98]

Some are trying, others either arnt brewing or dont want to talk about it. h34r:
8 weeks to go.
Come on brewers,besides the 6-8 that have posted, how is yours developing,fermenting,bottling,tasting?

:icon_offtopic: Ferg, big call pre posting (119), brave man, good luck! Sounds better than my oat that the slugs had a feast on out on the back lawn. edit> Congrats on the club meet comp.

Rumor has it Bigger and Browner took out a 3rd in the British Ale comp, so hopefully the bottle conditioned batch is as good as the keg I have been fast consuming.

 

[wakkatoo]

Haven't brewed mine yet. Having trouble sourcing some Magnum hops.
The way its going, it will be a good one to save to the end of the case.

That's if it tastes any good <_<

edit - Craftbrewer have it back up on their website!

I do have a schwarzbier as a potential backup currently gurgling away.

 

[zebba]

Bottled 28 longnecks on the weekend. They may be swapped, still not sure. It's nice, but it's not what I was trying to brew (and have successfully brewed before).

I'll try and get another batch down this weekend. Then, come swap day, I'll decide which batch is more swapworthy.

Wish my brewery was ready so I could get some consistency. The current setup is not designed for more then 10 or so litres at a time and workarounds to get bigger volumes have resulted in either brilliance or mediocrity...

 

[haysie]

Good to see heaps of activity with people having a genuine concern of what gets turned out.

My pils will have lagered for 4+ months, 2+ being in the CounterPressure bottles, I reckon i will lose a bit of csaaz hopping but i hopefully allowed for this with a neutral malt bill and bittering to the high side of style with not to heavy attentuation and extended dry hopping in the keg. At last post it was a good beer.I brewed 80 litres in 4 batches.

forgot why i was editing

 

[zebba]

After some discussions with a fellow brewer yesterday and some heavy reading, I think the issue with the lager is that the vienna malt was not vienna malt. I recall thinking it looked paler then vienna should, but alas I shrugged off my concerns. I think it was pale (cause the kernals did taste different to the pilsener that also went in).

Bugger. These things happen when you order 10+ small sized bags of various malts. We have time to brew something else though

 

[WarmBeer]

Got my American Porter into the fermenter last night, so we have kickoff. Sample was just under the anticipated gravity, but not as "sweet" as I had anticipated. Wonder if this was due to the use of polenta in the mash.

I have started a recipe thread over here, so we can easily reference the recipe for any swap beers we want to try to recreate ourselves.

Please try to keep the recipe thread on topic (i.e. recipes only) so we don't have to wade through 7 pages of jibber-jabber to find what you're after.

 

[Fourstar]

After some discussions with a fellow brewer yesterday and some heavy reading, I think the issue with the lager is that the vienna malt was not vienna malt. I recall thinking it looked paler then vienna should, but alas I shrugged off my concerns. I think it was pale (cause the kernals did taste different to the pilsener that also went in).

Bugger. These things happen when you order 10+ small sized bags of various malts. We have time to brew something else though

So what is exactly wrong with it then Zeb?!

 

[zebba]

I don't think I got full conversion. It's quite cloudy, and whilst polyclar made a big difference, after 2 weeks @ 2 degrees it's still quite hazy. It's also quite watery, due to poor efficiency, which I think is cause of the poor conversion.

The process I used was exactly the same as for the last vienna lager I did. It came out nice and malty, with a gorgeous colour. This is pale straw (not bad, but not when you want ruby), thin (considering I mashed 2 degrees HIGHER!)...

It's not a bad beer. But I was after a malty vienna lager. This is more of an Austrlian Premium Lager. With faults.

So I'll go back to the originally planned "am-brown ******* ale" - a mix of english brown and american amber styles, which will be far more forgiving beacuse A) the malts cannot be confused (is this chocolate or pale? ummm...), and B) It's a partial recipe, so adding LDME to compensate for poor efficiency is all part of the plan

But then, carbonation has been known to have a positive effect on a beer also, so I guess we'll just have to see what actually gets swapped!

 

[andycostin]

Sorry to not have posted up here for ages - work has been a nightmare, let alone the "soap opera" like life that has been my living situation in the past 2 months.....

BUT - I have sorted it all out, and I will be putting a beer down in the next week (well, more likely 3)- but the main one will be the kolsch that I've been making on and off for the past 6 months.

 

[[email protected]]

All ready to brew in the morning. Hopefully it turns out as good or similar to the APA I brewed just over a month ago.

Less than two months to go now. Can almost start counting down the weeks...

Mal

 

[Wonderwoman]

My second batch has been in the fermenter one week. I'll confess I haven't had a taste since the yeast was pitched, so I'm hoping it's going well - especially since I wont have time for any more brewing in the next 3 weeks.

 

[Fourstar]

Well starting this evening a chain of events will unfold. I'll be pitching my yeast starter of 1272 (assuming the cell count looks about right) onto my home grown POR ale. This will be top cropped (if cropping really well) onto my case swap beer. If temps keep the krausen low, it will goto the lower gravity Melbourne Brewers Annual dinner Choc-hazelnut Brown Ale and the slurry of the POR ale will be used for my 6.8% monster! :beerbang:

I just hope i can get em done before my trip to HKG. 18 days and counting! h34r:

Meh, at least they will have enough time to clean themslves up on the cake during the chill of Melbournes winter!

 

[shimple]

So i have brewed my case swap ale and left it in primary for 3 weeks. It fermented out in 7 days, however i was slack and left it in there.

The Beer has an IBU of roughly 45, so i can say its not as bitter as some.

On the palate it smacks you in the mouth with biterness. It doesnt taste bad, kind of tastes like an old english ale. I have made this beer 3 or 4 times previoulsy with exact recipe apart from this time substituting the 15minute addition from Cascade to Simoce, same quantity. Taste is same, except for bitterness as advised.

Does anyone think the 3 week in primary, is adding to the biterness flavour, or maybe it may be slightly oxodised? Any help would be appreciated.

Also this is bottled for the case swap, and i have a keg full as well that i am baseing my taste on.

I am brewing another batch this weeknd and going back to the original recipe as the biterness may turn some off. Not to mention i need to put a good show in fro my first case swap.

Any Idea's?

 

[Fourstar]

Does anyone think the 3 week in primary, is adding to the biterness flavour, or maybe it may be slightly oxodised? Any help would be appreciated.

Oxidation would not heighten bitterness, it would add a papery or heightened toffee note to your beer. If anything, its yeast in suspension is keeping the IBU count up. Once the yeast floccs out, it will mellow and round out the beers palate.

Cheers! :icon_cheers:

 

[seemax]

My case swap is brewed and sitting in a cube ... waiting for the 2112 starter to fire up.

It looks as though I'll even be in the country to attend this time... hooray.

 

[notung]

:excl: Tonight I saw the greatest disaster of my brewing career and it happened to my swap saison. The glass shelf in my fermentation fridge shattered, allowing 27L of fermenting beer to bash open the fridge door and splash all over the floor. My brew is completely gone! I'm thinking about pulling out of the swap since I'm pretty unable to brew over the next few weeks. I feel terrible.