Any Know Of A Vb Recipe?

[Tony]

give this a try:




Bulls Tail Pale Ale

A ProMash Recipe Report

Recipe Specifics
----------------

Batch Size (L): 23.00 Wort Size (L): 23.00
Total Grain (kg): 4.20
Anticipated OG: 1.045 Plato: 11.21
Anticipated EBC: 7.8
Anticipated IBU: 28.5
Brewhouse Efficiency: 80 %
Wort Boil Time: 90 Minutes


Grain/Extract/Sugar

% Amount Name Origin Potential EBC
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
85.7 3.60 kg. JWM Export Pilsner Australia 1.037 3
9.5 0.40 kg. JWM Wheat Malt Australia 1.037 4
4.8 0.20 kg. JWM Caramalt Australia 1.036 50

Potential represented as SG per pound per gallon.


Hops

Amount Name Form Alpha IBU Boil Time
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
8.00 g. Pride of Ringwood (whole) Whole 10.20 10.6 First WH
14.00 g. Pride of Ringwood (whole) Whole 10.20 15.1 45 min.
12.00 g. Pride of Ringwood (whole) Whole 10.20 2.8 5 min.


Yeast
-----

US-05


you wont look back!

If your system wont handle whole flowers use pellets

cheers

 

[michaelcocks]

After reading some threads from ThirstyBoy who actually is a brewer, my understanding is that Australian Lagers taste the way they do (or at least partially because of):
-lager yeast started out low then ramped up to more ale-like temperatures
-beer fermented high-gravity then diluted with 30% oxygen-free water AFTER fermentation
-up to 20-30% cane sugar as this is the cheapest sugar in Australia (probably as some kind of syrup?)

And that this is why Australian Lagers have that easy-drinking, ice-cold not-very-malty kind of thing going that makes them easy to drink while the Swans are getting slaughtered yet again


I have made a couple of versions of "aussie lager" but understand I won't be able to make them taste like the normal pub lagers as I probably use too much malt, not the "right" temperature, don't ferment high-gravity, etc.

thanks
Bjorn

I recall doing a tour of the fosters brewer a few years back . The girl conducting the tour was just a marketing skirt and had obviously no concept of brewing

(no change there I have yet to do a public tour that was conducted by anyone who new anything about brewing... My favourite classic was when I asked the speights (Dunedin NZ) brewery tour girl what variety of hops they used she said "these green ones here" pointing to a sample she had in her tour guide set of props...

Anyway back on point during the tour of the fosters brewery the tour girl proudly says beer is madefrom this ... Malt she holds up a few grains, hops (again the demo prop) and liquid sugar, (she proudly holds up a small container of transluscent brown goo...
She obviously wasn't told about the water and yeast..
Perhaps thirsty boy can enlighten us as to the quantity of sugar ( I have seenfigures anywhere between 10 and 30 %)

 

[Benniee]

V.B. is no easier to duplicate then any other beer. If you don't agree just try to do a clone with a side by side tasting and tell me if yours is the same.

I would agree that attempting to clone a commercial beer is a difficult task for most amatuer brewers - just take a look at a lot of people's favourite American brewer's latest round of podcasts - Can You Brew It.

I haven't ever set out to duplicate a commercial beer, but I have attempted to brew to style. In fact I now try to brew all of my beers to a defined BJCP style.

One thing to be aware of when brewing a light lager such as this is any slight flaws with your brewing process can show up in the final product. There isn't a lot of hops or malt to hide behind in the finished beer. I don't mean to discourage you in any way. If I were having a crack at this I'd take as many notes as I could about each brew/recipe - and hopefully over a couple of batches of beer you'll get close enough.

Good luck with it - and have fun brewing. I'm sure you're Dad will enjoy drinking your attempts

Benniee

 

[thelastspud]

Unless you can pasteurise the beer @ 60 degress you aren't going to get close to VB - apparently it tastes quite Ok pre-pasteurised !

you could put the keg or bottles in your hlt for a hour at 60 degress that would pasteurise it. A mate of mine does something similar with his home made tomato sauce.

 

[kelbygreen]

wouldnt heating it to 60deg kill the yeast off?? might be ok if kegging but doubt you would get carbonation in bottled unless it was force carbed

 

[Bribie G]

Yes that pasteurisation would be a bugger to replicate. Here in Bris you can still get XXXX off the wood served on gravity, unpasteurised, and it's on a totally different plane to the nuked gassed 'normal' version. I suppose you could pasteurise a couple of dozen bottles then open them and drop a few granules of yeast into each, and recap. If you did it with already gassed bottles I reckon you might get an ugly scene in the kitchen. Just out of interest I may try it with a PET of beer next time I have the urn on full of strike water, but I'll cover it with a blast proof doonah - don't fancy the effect on the white and cream decor in the garage if things go pear shaped :unsure:

Edit: I know some breweries do it with their bottle conditioned beers, so you don't steal their yeast. Don't LCPA do that? There are more threads than you can poke a stick at re culturing Coopers Sparkling yeast but you never hear about LCPA being used similarly.

 

[thelastspud]

Edit: I know some breweries do it with their bottle conditioned beers, so you don't steal their yeast. Don't LCPA do that? There are more threads than you can poke a stick at re culturing Coopers Sparkling yeast but you never hear about LCPA being used similarly.

I think I read on here that LCPA is filtered and then dosed with the pilsner yeast.

edit
http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum//ind...40301&st=20
yeah here is a post from the LC chief brewer

 

[Bribie G]

Wow, Alex T (Alex Troncoso) "Our yeast is stored in Copenhagen"...................." and Wyeast Danish pops up again and again when discussing the brewing of Aussie Lagers. All roads lead to Copenhagen it seems. As it happens I'm going to do a lager today, might head for the pub and get a few LCPAs.

 

[Nick JD]

I have no idea how they make VB taste worse than their other offerings, but a great "Carlton Clone" is easy - and is one of my three quaffers.

18L
3kg BB Ale
300g Dextrose
16g PoR for 60 min
34/70 Yeast @ 11C with 20C diacetyl rest at FG

Tasted back to back with Carlton Draft it's very, very similar but with a tad more PoR flavour. I woudn't be surprised if a 90 minute boil would remove more of the hop flavour - but I don't because I think that remnant PoR flavour in an Aussie Lager is delicious.

VB's "sewer" aroma makes me think mercaptan, and I have a suspicion that DMS and sulphur compounds might be reacting to produce this stuff in VB when they warm it to 67C for a few minutes - but that's a complete guess and doesn't explain why only VB has it.

Is the "salt" thing for real?

 

[MHB]

Not one of my favourite beers; however like most successful commercial brewers they are "Technically" excellently made.

There are some features of the production process that are unique and in some cases fairly difficult to emulate on a small scale, one of them is the sheer size of the fermenters. If you work out the pressure on the yeast at the bottom of a fermenter that is say 50 meters high (not sure of the exact height of the fermenters at CUB but they are HUGE). Remember that the

Beer is brewed at a high over gravity probably 1.070-1.080, from P=Density X Height X g we get 1.075 x 50 x 9.81= 526.75 kPa or over 5 bar, I'm pretty sure both the high gravity and high pressure are going to change the way the yeast behaves.

CUB makes their own hop extract and according to the flow diagram at the brewery the "Bitterness" is added after lagering, again yeast acting on unhoped wort acts differently.

As a percentage of extract I suspect the sugar content is around 40% and the mash will be very hot and very intensive to provide an appropriate amount of unfermentable dextrin's in the diluted, lagered finished beer.

From what I have heard the brewhouse efficiency is very high approaching 100%, so very fine grist, extremely high efficiency multi step programmed infusion and extremely slow lautering.

Love it or hate it the brewers are very good at what they do. And it's possibly the hardest style of beer to make at home

MHB

 

[Dazza_devil]

I 'm just pleased I go to much much less trouble to make much much better beer.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

The main two tings you wont be able to emulate is the Yeast - CUB beers are brewed with a proprietary yeast. IMO the yeast that comes closest to CUB's main strain is WY2124 (saflager 34/70) fermented at a higher temperature.. low ale temps - and the hop extract. Even other non-Abbotsford made iso extracts don't taste right. But as far as I am aware CUB sells its extract... so for all I know the isohop you buy in the LHBS might be ours anyway.

MHB - close enough on most counts. Considerably less sugar than that, try 15-20% of your extract and you would be closer. Not high mash temps... short sach rests instead (Its much more practical for a big brewery to control fermentability with time than temperature). Medium lauter and the grist is processed in a 6 roller mill, so its not course or fine.. its tailored for our lauter tuns to give specific percentages of husk, course grits, fine grits and flour. I'm sure CUB would love it if the efficiency was approaching 100%... but its less than that. Its still pretty damn high by homebrewer standards.... but nothing you wouldn't expect from a well run lauter tun.

Thirsty

 

[MHB]

Thanks TB, Nothing like working there to get the right answers, most of my guestimates were based on gossip and fairly widely available information.

Those 6 roll mills are a work of art, from memory they looked like Stiners with the vibrating separators very precisely controlled grist.

Just out of curiosity is the balance of the grist all barley, (fully understand if that's not something you can talk about) just that quite a few books talk about the high rice content of Australian commercial lagers, frankly I can't find anyone who uses much if any.

MHB

 

[keleidoscope]

My favourite classic was when I asked the speights (Dunedin NZ) brewery tour girl what variety of hops they used she said "these green ones here" pointing to a sample she had in her tour guide set of props...

That's a shame, my tour there was done by one of the brewers, and he knew his shit. Though I was the only one on the tour who had heard of hops and had any idea about how beer was made, so I guess they can get away with it in most cases. The guys asks, who knows what other plant hops are related to? I answer marijuana and everyone looked at me like I was nuts. I'm there thinking, god I hope I'm right or I'll look like a crazy stoner.


On topic, if you can't be bothered with going to the effort of a mash for this project, Brew Craft make a VB imitation bundle. I've never peeked inside the box to see what exactly they have got in there though. It might be close enough.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Thanks TB, Nothing like working there to get the right answers, most of my guestimates were based on gossip and fairly widely available information.

Those 6 roll mills are a work of art, from memory they looked like Stiners with the vibrating separators very precisely controlled grist.

Just out of curiosity is the balance of the grist all barley, (fully understand if that's not something you can talk about) just that quite a few books talk about the high rice content of Australian commercial lagers, frankly I can't find anyone who uses much if any.

MHB

They are ancient looking things, but like you said, works of industrial art.. to be honest I cant re-call the brand (Bizarrely I don't know that I have ever actually looked) but apart from chucking the occasional belt, I can't believe that things that are so old and have so many moving, rolling vibrating bits in them, can work so well and so reliably. Beautiful grist they pump out. They do have the vibrating separators.. so you are probably right.

I'm pretty sure I am on safe grounds discussing this stuff... I don't think I have said (and I try not to say) anything that you aren't going to be able to get on the tours they run through the plant every day. No rice, just a few different sorts of Barret Burston malt (and roast barley) and syrups.

 

[Nick JD]

Where does one buy an accurate PoR isohop extract? I can still taste lovely hops in my Aussie Lagers even at 90 minute boils!

 

[Bribie G]

Where does one buy an accurate PoR isohop extract? I can still taste lovely hops in my Aussie Lagers even at 90 minute boils!

Give Ross a ring. He said they had isohop in stock but not yet on the site.

 

[Nick JD]

Give Ross a ring. He said they had isohop in stock but not yet on the site.

Thanks, mate - am popping up to Bris in the next few days, so will add it to the list. I wonder if it's the CUB stuff?