Started brewing 3 months ago

[technobabble66]

Hey y'all

My name's Stu. I started brewing in December 2012. I tried to convince a friend he should be homebrewing, & wound up convincing myself instead & haven't looked back!
I'm only looking to attempt extract brewing ATM, but we'll see where I end up over the next few years. (I'm under the impression extract can be a dirty word on some forums...).


Part of the aim for the brewing is to provide drinks for a 1 week Boys Trip (aka a 7 day Drinking Session) that occurs with 4-5 of us on Boxing Day. So i basically have 11 months to experiment & build up the supply. A few beverages might go missing during those 11 months, though...

I started with a Fat Yak clone (FY#1 from liquorcraft) - another friend & myself were quite fond of commercial FY as a sessional beer. It worked out amazingly well & we were all stunned at how good my first attempt at homebrewing was. Great fruity malt flavour with a decent hop kick to it in both bitterness and flavour.

The second brew was a Ginger beer, from a liquorcraft kit again. This was a mixed success. I doubled the amount of fresh ginger instructed, & it turned out to be very fiery, namely because all the sugar had been fermented out. Once a sugar syrup was added, it also was fantastic. I also added an additional 1kg of malt, so it had a slight body to it. Room for improvement, but it was encouraging!

I've just started tasting a Little Creatures Pale Ale clone (again from liquorcraft) that i heavily modified - basically doubled the hops, added 25g of Galaxy (i love the flavour of it), added/steeped Crystal grain for more body (found the FY was slightly "thin"), swapped the Brewblend#15 to #20 for more malty goodness, and changed the yeast to Danstar (on advice).
The result is awesome. "Proper" full body to it is a noticeable difference, plus less general fruity flavour & much more hoppy/passionfruit aroma & flavour than the FY clone i made - i assume its the Crystal grain used, different yeast used, plus the addition of Galaxy bringing all this out.

Eager to do much more experimenting!!

Keen to try a stout/porter soonish. Plus do a few lagers in the colder months to try for other sessional beers. I'm enjoying learning with the kits, but are keen to start experimenting more.

But really its all about replicating the flavour i experienced with Hop Thief Ale in 2006 (by James Squire). I totally fell in love with the intense "hoppiness" of this, & are totally focused on achieving a similar overall flavour. The 2009 was also very good, but slightly lacked the impact of the '06.

I'll be posting soon on the appropriate forum section about designing the recipe for this ultimate goal B)

Oh, one last thing. I don't have much space, but i might see if i can squeeze in growing my own hops as well - another challenge for 2013!

 

[carniebrew]

Welcome aboard mate, sounds like you've got the basics down pat and are reaping the rewards pretty quickly.

If you're happy brewing with malt extract for now, but are looking to step things up a bit, you can try full extract brewing with steeping grain, 60 minute boils on your stove and your own hop additions as a next step at some stage. Puts you in full control of the end result in terms of final gravity, colour, hoppiness etc. Bloody good fun too. Let us know if you're interested down the track.

 

[technobabble66]

Hey

Thanks!

What do you mean "full extract brewing"? I've steeped some grain in the LCPA clone & done some hops additions w both beers. Do you mean you just buy the cracked Crystal grain, etc & steep to extract then boil for 60 min, & don't use any DME or LME?? If thats it - sounds great to me! I'd never even thought of steeping the entire grains bill. The LCPA clone was much better from steeping 150g Crystal grain (before the boil).

I should also warn everyone: none of my friends have gotten into homebrewing (yet); and so i've got lots of things to discuss & no-one to discuss them with...
I'll try to keep the text walls to a minimum!

 

[seamad]

Steeping the entire grain bill is doing a mash
Slippery slope, just think if 150g of crystal improved the beer how much doing an all grain would improve things!
Full extract is not using a pre bittered kit, eg coopers pale ale tin, but just dme or lme and doing a boil with bittering flavouring aroma hops etc. IMO it is not much of a jump from that to biab [ see nickjd method]

 

[carniebrew]

Hey

Thanks!

What do you mean "full extract brewing"? I've steeped some grain in the LCPA clone & done some hops additions w both beers. Do you mean you just buy the cracked Crystal grain, etc & steep to extract then boil for 60 min, & don't use any DME or LME?? If thats it - sounds great to me! I'd never even thought of steeping the entire grains bill. The LCPA clone was much better from steeping 150g Crystal grain (before the boil).

I should also warn everyone: none of my friends have gotten into homebrewing (yet); and so i've got lots of things to discuss & no-one to discuss them with...
I'll try to keep the text walls to a minimum!

I thought you'd never ask This is what I mean: http://aussiehomebrewer.com/topic/70529-a-guide-to-brewing-with-extract/

Seamad is spot on, using unhopped extract with small amounts of specialty grain that only needs steeping, not mashing. Then using LME or DME for the main part of the grain bill.

And moving to brew in a bag (biab) from there, when you're ready, makes a lot of sense.

 

[bum]

What else makes sense is to continue doing what you're doing and keep learning along the way. Converting people seems to be more popular around here than actually brewing these days...

Welcome to the board and the hobby, technobabble66.

 

[mattdean4130]

Steeping the entire grain bill is doing a mash
Slippery slope, just think if 150g of crystal improved the beer how much doing an all grain would improve things!
Full extract is not using a pre bittered kit, eg coopers pale ale tin, but just dme or lme and doing a boil with bittering flavouring aroma hops etc. IMO it is not much of a jump from that to biab [ see nickjd method]

So what you're telling me, is i can do exactly what i'm doing (boiling hops, and LDM/LME etc, without a kit can??? In other words the pale ale i just did, with 1hr of POR boil, 1kg LDM and a coopers lager can & Coopers Pale Ale cultures could have been done without the lager can? What would i have had to do, just use LME instead of the dry stuff? How much for a 23ltr fermemt?
Cheers !

 

[djar007]

So what you're telling me, is i can do exactly what i'm doing (boiling hops, and LDM/LME etc, without a kit can??? In other words the pale ale i just did, with 1hr of POR boil, 1kg LDM and a coopers lager can & Coopers Pale Ale cultures could have been done without the lager can? What would i have had to do, just use LME instead of the dry stuff? How much for a 23ltr fermemt?
Cheers !

Thats the lightbulb I had.Have a look at the all grain thread. Just look at the recipes. Not that different to what you do now.But you would need a bit more equipment. As for cost, the first batch I ever did cost me a lot less than what I was cloning.From that day until now. I have made a loss. Except for a real appreciation of beer and what it takes to make a good one.

 

[jakethesnake559]

Hey

Thanks!

What do you mean "full extract brewing"? I've steeped some grain in the LCPA clone & done some hops additions w both beers. Do you mean you just buy the cracked Crystal grain, etc & steep to extract then boil for 60 min, & don't use any DME or LME?? If thats it - sounds great to me! I'd never even thought of steeping the entire grains bill. The LCPA clone was much better from steeping 150g Crystal grain (before the boil).

I should also warn everyone: none of my friends have gotten into homebrewing (yet); and so i've got lots of things to discuss & no-one to discuss them with...
I'll try to keep the text walls to a minimum!

Friends of brewers often prefer to drink the fruits of their friend's labour!!
Especially when you find yourself installing taps on old fridges....it's only a matter of time :kooi: .