I Just Want To Make Good Beer

[abyss]

Gday Beer People . I am getting back into brewing Beer after about 20 years. And I am after a recipie to make an Aussie type of bitter beer similar but better than Melborne Bitter. I reckon that commercial beer like MB,VB ect, has gone down hill in the past few years due to reducing the alchol percentage in an effort to cut Taxes. Anyway, I just hope to make a quality aussie bitter beer for a reasonable price so as I can still afford to go fishing with a couple of cold ones.

 

[beerbrewer76543]

Click here for the 20L Stovetop All Grain Aussie Lager thread

Get a 19L stockpot from Big W, some Swiss Voile fabric, and some grain pre-crushed at you local homebrew shop and you're away :beer:

 

[bullfrog]

Or if jumping to AG brewing is too much of a step for you, to begin with, maybe try just getting your hands on a decent kit (as this is the kits & extract brewing section of the forum, after all.)

Most homebrew shops have their own brand kits, which are generally a cut above most other tins out there. That being said, great results are almost always had from the Coopers range of tins which can be found in your local supermarket, Big W, K-Mart, etc. A tin with a brew enhancer pack / LHBS brew sugar mix will make a very decent product.

Another thing to seriously consider, especially when going for that Australian Bitter style, is to keep the temps nice and low. Aussie Bitters are generally lagers, but you can replicate the yeast profile with a decent neutral ale yeast (like US-05) held at a low temperature (16-18 degrees.)

 

[ekul]

the two biggest things to making good beer in my opinion are cleanliness and ferment temp. Without those two you will never make good beer.

When i first found this site i went and bought a bottle of iodophor and a digital thermostat (STC1000). These two items made my beer turn from cheap terrible swill to drinkable beerish tasting fluid. When i went to all grain i was making good beer.

With all the info on this site about brew in a bag (BIAB) i don't think the 'jump' to all grain is much of a jump anymore, more a little reading and the bit extra money to aquire the minimal equipment needed. I made my setup on a students income, so its doable on the cheap. I now have the capacity to push out 100L a brewday if i want, but usually i do 46L batches.

I've been making a pretty good aussie lager with
3.8kg ale malt
.5kg rice
.22 wheat
.03 dark crystal

25g pride of ringwood flowers 9.7%AA @ 60
ferment with swiss lager yeast @ 10-12C

Cheap and easy, just like beer should be.

Good luck with it mate, you'll be making the beer you want in no time.

 

[Braumoasta]

A Coopers Australian Ale kit with 1kg Brew Enhancer 2 (or 500g Light Dried malt and 500g Brew Enhancer 2) using the kit yeast (an ale/lager blend) and fermented at about 18C will give an inoffensive, delicious lager like beer... IMO.

 

[timryan]

+1 and if you want something a little extra dry hop 26grams of cascade.. Tasty and very drinkable..

A Coopers Australian Ale kit with 1kg Brew Enhancer 2 (or 500g Light Dried malt and 500g Brew Enhancer 2) using the kit yeast (an ale/lager blend) and fermented at about 18C will give an inoffensive, delicious lager like beer... IMO.

 

[abyss]

Thanks for your replies Beer People. Im writing this all down. My other querie is, why does every brewer tell you to use lower temps whilst fermenting ?

 

[ekul]

Thanks for your replies Beer People. Im writing this all down. My other querie is, why does every brewer tell you to use lower temps whilst fermenting ?

Because if you ferment at the temperature that the kits recommend (ie around 25C), the yeast will make fusel alcohols which don't taste very nice and give you a sore head in the morning. For ales most people ferment around 18C.

To make an aussie lager you'll need to ferment @ 10-12C, although there is a thread around here that says you can ferment swiss lager yeast @ 19C, but i've never tried it. I've only done a few lagers, but i find the swiss lager yeast to be pretty good and easy to use, not that i have anything to compare it to...

 

[abyss]

Gday again punters, I am suprised to get so many replies so quickly. It seems that makinb geer is easier than using the pomcuter.

 

[colonel]

Gday again punters, I am suprised to get so many replies so quickly. It seems that makinb geer is easier than using the pomcuter.

Ha ha!

 

[mwd]

If you want to make exceptional beer dead easy then look at Fresh Wort Kits only temperature control to worry about.

 

[kelbygreen]

yeah FWK be the go but doubt he will find them locally? and postage on a 20lt cube of wort surely wouldnt be to cheap. prob id look into using a low bittered kit, using 500g dex 500g LDME and doing a 20 and a 0 min addition of some hops (flavour and aroma kind) and prob add 200g of steeped crystal you will make a decent beer. id stick to the same kit/recipe and just use different hops each time. Use none kit yeast try use a yeast to the style, but US05 or s04 it a good alrounder

For me it wont be like any mega swill but a nice drop, id go

200g medium crystal steeped for 30-45mins as close to 67c as you can get
500g LDME
700g Dex
coopers lager tin
10g of pride of ringwood @ 20mins

or use same recipe - the hops and lager tin and use the coopers bitter.

so
200g med crystal
500g LDME
700g Dex
coopers bitter

Both will give use around 4.9% bottled and most aussie mega swill is light body so thats why there is so much dex in there. I usually go all extract with 250-500g dex some time none but I like the malt you do need the crystal in there to make it pop though lol

 

[yum beer]

drinkin today a brew I made 6 weeks ago, very similar to a VB but I believe with a bit more depth and flavour.



Tooheys Special Lager

1kg Coopers Brew Enhancer 1
Kit yeast

Brew around 20c...which shouldnt be a problem this time of year.



Drinks quite nice and probably pretty much what you are after. :icon_cheers:
:icon_cheers:

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

Nottingham yeast is highly attenuative, and will give a very thin body when it's fermented out. You may consider this as a means to lower the dex (and therefore its alleged undesirable taste), yet keep the body light. I've used it in a 100% weyermann's pale pilsner based SMaSH Ale, and it certainly does the job well, when used well.

However it will punish poor temp control, particularly if fermented above its temp range. I've had it work really well as a lager-like yeast at 14 degrees (in the above SMaSH - all-but imperceptible yeast-based fruitiness), and had it produce the nastiest headache-from-hell-hangover sink-fodder metho-beer at above its temp range in summer (don't trust an aircon to do an STC-1000's job).

As all have said above, temp control is priority.

Goomba (sober on Saturday waiting for beer to condition)

 

[Bribie G]

Melbourne Bitter is my favourite Australian mainstream beer and in my kits n bits days I got fairly close doing a "partial mash" and using a tin of very bland goo (For example Coopers Canadian Blonde).

Basic method is: a kilo and a half of base malt such as Barrett Burston ale malt, mashed with around 6L of hot water in a big tupperware placed in a water bath in an esky - maintain at 67 degrees for an hour
Drain into stockpot through a big kitchen strainer and rinse the grains (sparge) a couple of times to achieve around 8 litres
Boil this for an hour on the stovetop with 20g Pride of Ringwood hop pellets
Allow to settle and cool (covered) in laundry tup, then pour into the fermenter with the can of goo and half a kilo of dextrose, trying to leave the sediment "trub" still in the stockpot.

Ferment with a yeast such as US-05 at 17 degrees.
I recently did it again, but went more for a Corona Style with some maize and American hops, but the above recipe will get you quite close to MB as you do need that grainy flavour and the POR hops.

 

[bignath]

View attachment 45783

That's classic!

The quintessential "lawnmower lager"..