Hey Guys, old brewer but new member.

[Zarathustra]

Read some of your posts, awakened an old interest. But wonder if I am too old to start brewing again, 80 next Feb. But dug out some old records....ahh, them was the days!!

And being solo then, did all my bottling in stubbies; bugger of a job washing/sterilising/rinsing 72 stubbies for a bottling. Priming with a measure simplified that part and never over-primed; filler with valve made filling easy - until the fermenter had to be tilted to get the last 5 or 6 stubbies out.

Later went to 2nd stage racking which reduced the yeast carry-over, gave me clear beer with a film of yeast on the bottom of each stubby, so could pour whole stubby out to drink, no cloudy beer or wastage. But it took about 4 weeks for full carbonation.

Talk again some time. Cheers.

 

[manticle]

There's many a retiree/old bloke on here. Don't worry about that.

More time to brew.

 

[lukiferj]

Welcome mate! I'm sure plenty has changed since then, but much would still be the same.

 

[wide eyed and legless]

G'day me old cobber, never to old to brew, you do realise we use Hops now not Mugwort. You should post some of your old records and let us see what you were doing.

 

[verysupple]

You should post some of your old records and let us see what you were doing.

Yeah, I've only been brewing for a few years and I'd love to read what is was like homebrewing before it was so popular and easy. I've read things suggesting the quality of ingredients available to homebrewers even 10 years ago wasn't so crash hot. I'd be interested to find out what was necessary back then that isn't now. Also I'm just interested in the general history of homebrewing in Australia.

 

[Bribie G]

Man up dude, you're only 15 years older than me and that's a gnat's blink at our age.

If I'm still not brewing at 80, shoot me.

For your information, I ran a local home brew shop in Maryborough QLD in 1978 and in those days it was mostly Wander malt extract by the kilo, Pride of Ringwood manky leaf hops and pellets kept on the shelf without refrigeration, and dry yeasts likewise. Nevertheless if you brewed at the right time of year (Winter, which of course was too cold to brew as the beer took more than four days to bottling) you could actually make a drinkable drop indeed.

Kits had just started off, mostly Brigalow and imports like Unican from the UK. The majority of old school brewers used a tin of Saunders Malt Extract, Tandaco bread yeast and a kilo of sugar to brew something that would kill a brown dog.

What ingredients are you looking at using, kits or the old school malt extracts?

 

[pist]

Welcome mate, enjoy your stay here. Never too old to brew, Bribie G's description sounds alot like how most people start out haha, I guess today ingredients have gotten alot better (well depending on how the store keeps their stock too of course), I started out on kits, though the huge improver for me was moving to all grain brewing.