In-between Brews

[RobH]

Yes, I am at that awkward stage where there is very little homebrew left and ready to drink. I do have about 50 just bottled and conditioning in time for Christmas / New Year, and another two fermenters bubbling away under the house for the next couple of weeks, but not much left in the way of ready-to-drink.

So I decided that I needed to be sure that I had enough bottles for my next couple of brews, so I dropped into the local bottlo and picked up a case of Coopers Sparkling Ale 750ml.

Now I am sitting here on a stinker of an afternoon .... well a nice breeze has actually just started to come over .... but anyway, I am drinking some of this Coopers Ale, and thinking to myself .... hmmm my rather amateur bog standard extract brews taste just as good as this, and are a third of the price!

Well y'know I friggen woke up this morning dreaming that I had built a "you-beaut" three tier AG system (little wonder as I fell asleep at the keyboard reading these forums till 2am this morning!) and I have not done an AG brew yet (just did a kit partial ... shall see how that turns out), and I am not saying I wasn't convinced that homebrewing was a much better way to go, but now I am really inspired to get into AG and build a beaut little brewing rig (like everyone says ... there is plenty of info here to help me with that).

So anyway, I am excited at the prospect of brewing my own ales that will blow this Coopers Sparkling right out of the playing field!

hmmmm reading about some Christmas ales is making me want to brew a nice strong red bitter with hints of honey for next July!

 

[kabooby]

That was a problem when I was bottling. I haven't had that problem since moving to kegs.

Nice to hear from someone with such enthusiasm, keep it up.

Kabooby

 

[Fourstar]

Ah the joys of kegging. I cleaned 3 kegs ready to sanitise and fill in the 1/2 the time of doing enough bottles for a 23L batch today.

The only positive of having a beer on the way and no free bottles ready for bottling it gives you the excuse of: "well, i guess ill just have to drink this current batch a little faster!"

 

[Bribie G]

A month ago my company took applications for trainers to go to Manila to train staff at a call centre we run there. I was convinced that I had the job and with the November / December time frame realised that I could not brew until I heard the results. I don't have a fridge mate and use a dead fridge / frozen PETs which is fine but no way I could leave beer for a month.

At the same time I had 'burnout' from the State and Nats competitions and the only brews I had done in a month were for the QLD Xmas case swap: the swap beer and the quaffing keg.

Today I got word that I DIDN'T get the Philippines position. (cue Industrial sounds of mighty brewery cranking up into full production). However I'm down to about 20 bottles and 3 kegs between 1/4 and 1/3 full in the kegerator


BWS have Oettinger cans 500ml x 24 for $40, which is just over $3 a litre for reinheitsgebod beer. That's about a third of the price of buying VB over the bar. Keeping me going for a while :icon_chickcheers: