What Would You Like Our Retailers Or Hbs To Sell?

[delboy]

i wonder what sort of licence you would need ?

del

 

[Murcluf]

You lucky bugger, unfortunately mines a bit newer and I think the computer in it needs to be reprogrammed. It doesn't seem to go well at all off road especially along any brewing tracks....

Sounds like your still running her in, they start to settle down after a couple of kids and 15 years of marriage

 

[SpillsMostOfIt]

All the hairdressers in my part of the world offer you a stubby of beer or glass of wine as they cut your hair. None of them hold licenses nor, as I understand it, strictly require one as they are not selling you the alcohol. It may be a fine line, but one the ACCC seems to be comfortable with.

If you felt that you absolutely had to have one, a Renewable Temporary License would probably see you through. These cost only $50 a year in Victoria, but the required education costs a (little) bit more. It's easy to find out, as the ACCC will answer queries made via e-mail or telephone and are fairly easy to deal with.

Please note: I cut my own hair and drink my own beer.

 

[lucas]

All the hairdressers in my part of the world offer you a stubby of beer or glass of wine as they cut your hair. None of them hold licenses nor, as I understand it, strictly require one as they are not selling you the alcohol. It may be a fine line, but one the ACCC seems to be comfortable with.

I was about to say "I'm certain that you need a licence because I was speaking to the brewers at the northern rivers brewing co, near byron bar, and they were telling me they couldn't even use the tasting area they had set up until they got their licence approved." but then I remembered that they were also complaining because it's a just NSW thing and they claimed it would be easier to set up a microbrewery in basically any other state, so I guess it varies from state to state quite considerably and at least in Victoria we seem to have it pretty good

 

[Wortgames]

I never went thirsty in a NSW homebrew shop (not a decent one anyway) :beer:

 

[domonsura]

If you had to have a licence, you may as well just put taps in and sell pints !

 

[oldbugman]

But your not selling beer. Like I was once told, your merely demonstrating how to operate the taps.

 

[SpillsMostOfIt]

But your not selling beer. Like I was once told, your merely demonstrating how to operate the taps.

... or teaching people how to make beer, or selling them the ingredients and standing around while they do stuff with them, or...

Depends on how much you want to toe the line and your assessment of your local statutory enforcement agency, etc. etc.

 

[Brewtus]

I'd like cans of goo that taste like I did an AG........

 

[ant]

What I'd like our retailers/HBS to sell
11-12L kegs that don't require second mortgages (I know this is a supply/demand thing, but it's what I'd like).


What I'd like our retailers/HBS to do
(Note - this is not "selling") Brew comparitive batches for tasting purposes using new hop varieties, ie brew the same base beer (aka same malt, yeast and fermentation conditions), but with different bittering/aroma/flavour hops. For example, have 3 or 4 APA's available, one using something traditional like Cascade, others using Simcoe, Amarillo, Northern Brewer, etc. That way I can gain an understanding of what each variety will add to a recipe. I find that it's kinda hard to get your palate educated when available commercial examples typically blend several of these varieties - I find it hard to differentiate what each contributes. I guess you could take the same approach with yeast (ie spilt batches to show differences the yeast makes on profile). Would be a hell of a lot of work for the retailers/HBS, but it would encourage me to go in on a monthly basis if I knew I could learn something and discuss my thoughts with the (knowledgable) retailer/HBS owner and/or other customers. I guess some ways to make it more attractive to the retailers/HBS would include "selling" the brewing time as one-on-one lessons for new brewers, or enlist the help of customers for a 10-25% discount for purchases that day - I know if I spent 3-4 hours in a brewshop, there is no way I would walk away without new equipment/ingredients (I'm saying 3-4 hours rather than 5-6 because the retailer/HBS owner could have the HLT up to temp and ready to mash by the time you arrive).


What I'd like
The arse to fall out of the steeel market, so s/s becomes dirt cheap.

 

[bugwan]

Hot chicks*






*May be posting under the influence...

 

[Wortgames]

Ant, that sounds like an awful lot of work for the poor shopkeeper to keep all those varieties available! No doubt your shops are bigger and busier than ours, but most of ours are 1-man operations that make small profits and barely have room for a single beer fridge let alone several.

Sounds like you need to find a homebrewing club - I bet they aren't too hard to find around your way, and they are perfect for doing comparison brews - everyone brews a slightly different version of a chosen beer, then gets together to compare the results.

:beer:

 

[ant]

Ant, that sounds like an awful lot of work for the poor shopkeeper to keep all those varieties available! No doubt your shops are bigger and busier than ours, but most of ours are 1-man operations that make small profits and barely have room for a single beer fridge let alone several.

Sounds like you need to find a homebrewing club - I bet they aren't too hard to find around your way, and they are perfect for doing comparison brews - everyone brews a slightly different version of a chosen beer, then gets together to compare the results.

:beer:

WG,

I was talking from an Australian perspective - I only moved here about 7-8 weeks back, and yep, it does sound like an awful lot of work, but most of the (good) HBS I frequented in Perth had 3-4 "samples" available, so it shouldn't be too much of a stretch to have 4 beers available. I sorta see it being themed, ie

April - APA's. 4 brew comparison. Same malt, wort for all 4 mashed in one MLT, 4 different hops used in boil to same IBU (ie Cascade, Northern Brewer, Simcoe, Amarillo), same yeast used, same fermentation conditions, results in 4 12L kegs.

May - Porters. 4 brew comparison. Same base malt, different types/amounts of specialty malts, same hops, yeasts...

June - German Wheat yeasts. 4 brew comparison. Same malt bill, same hops, different yeasts... would be a good theme to introduce VSS yeasts?

July - Temperature effects. Take a style where the yeast has different profiles at different temps (hefe?), same malt, hop, yeast, just fermented at bottom of recommended range, mid range, high end of range, started low and finished high...

Aug - What is the effect of high AA% hops in bittering profile? 4 brews hopped to same IBU using low through superhigh AA% hops...

I guess my thoughts were that the HBS tend to run brewdays anyway, but with a bit of input from customers (ie what style do you want to explore? what ingredients are you interested in knowing more about/effects of?), and with a bit of help on the day from customers, the education side of beer could be furthered. You could call it Mythbuster brewing...

I've already joined 2 brewclubs here, but my preference for this HBS approach over brewclub tastings/exchanges was to try and keep it more in line with the scientific method and minimise the amount of variables that can influence the final result. Using the same equipment and ingredients from the same stock and level of freshness, mashed at the same temp, boiled same length of time, yeast pitched at same temp and concentrations, fermented under same conditions, same kegging techniques/conditions etc.

I agree with you that for a great variety and cross-section, do it with a brewclub. For consistency, a more formal approach might give you better data, and an avenue for the HBS to share knowledge, get people into the shop, and when it comes to the tastings, a potential avenue for running BJCP courses (ducks for cover here at the risk of starting the BJCP debate up again h34r: )


Edit - amending some fairly ordinary spelling

 

[PistolPatch]

While I think of it...

Thanks Firstly thanks to all the guys who helped with advice on how to turn my manifold into a quick-release set-up. Pics here Am totally wrapped with this so :beer:

Another things I'd like to see from our retailers...

'AHB Standard' Thermometer The only thing I have ever been tempted to retail on AHB is this!!! It's one of my pet frustrations but I'll never get around to it - too much stuff to write I'm not sure about more expensive thermometers but certainly cheap thermometers never show the same reading. Sometimes they are 5 degrees apart or more! When you are trying to duplicate someone else's beer, a few degrees difference in mash temp can mean a hell of a lot. I'd LOVE to see a retailer buy a heap of the SS brewer's thermometers that retail for less than $15 (these are great little thermometers) and calibrate them so they all matched at fermentation and mash temperatures. I'd pay at least an extra $15 for this.

I'm sure a lot of people would love to have such a thermometer that they could calibrate all their others from and use to swap recipes more accurately. Maybe there is someone with some spare time that could do the calibration for one of the retailers?

What do you guys reckon?

 

[InCider]

Outsourcing of Bottling, Brewing and Stock Rotation for those hectic periods during the year. That'd help the constant flow of good beer. And an archiving service for maybe 2 tallies of each batch (leftovers after the keg is full) for delivery at pre-arranged dates 6 and 12 months from brew date.

And "lady brewers' who volunteer to wear Bikinis on your brewday.

InCider.

 

[Wortgames]

I agree Pat, but we're dealing with Goldberg's law unfortunately!

Namely: "the man with a watch knows what time it is. The man with 2 watches is never sure". It's the same with thermometers!

I have a couple of suggestions though. You can use a digital 'fever' thermometer to check the accuracy of your other thermometers - they aren't that expensive, and they are pretty accurate over their narrow range.

Once you've found a brewing thermometer that you are happy with, chuck out all the rest

Alternatively, find a supermarket/hardware shop/catering suppliers/LHBS with a few thermometers on the hook, and compare them with each other to see what the consensus is - and then grab a couple that agree with it.

I picked up a digital thermometer on eBay a couple of years ago, looks like a multimeter but all it does is temperature. It seems pretty accurate so I call it 'God' and just trust it to be right. If I was really keen I could get it recalibrated periodically but I reckon it's close enough for my purposes.

 

[frogman]

"lady brewers' who volunteer to wear Bikinis on your brewday.

InCider.

Unfortunatly Mrs FROGMAN will be unable to assist as she is currently with TADPOLE.

FROGMAN.

 

[Brewtus]

While I think of it...

Thanks Firstly thanks to all the guys who helped with advice on how to turn my manifold into a quick-release set-up. Pics here Am totally wrapped with this so :beer:

Another things I'd like to see from our retailers...

'AHB Standard' Thermometer The only thing I have ever been tempted to retail on AHB is this!!! It's one of my pet frustrations but I'll never get around to it - too much stuff to write I'm not sure about more expensive thermometers but certainly cheap thermometers never show the same reading. Sometimes they are 5 degrees apart or more! When you are trying to duplicate someone else's beer, a few degrees difference in mash temp can mean a hell of a lot. I'd LOVE to see a retailer buy a heap of the SS brewer's thermometers that retail for less than $15 (these are great little thermometers) and calibrate them so they all matched at fermentation and mash temperatures. I'd pay at least an extra $15 for this.

I'm sure a lot of people would love to have such a thermometer that they could calibrate all their others from and use to swap recipes more accurately. Maybe there is someone with some spare time that could do the calibration for one of the retailers?

What do you guys reckon?

When I was a little tacker we would calibrate thermometers in ice water. Lots of ice and water in a cup was always 0 deg C. If you also are in the same city (altitude) then you can check with boiling water, 100 deg c at standard sea level pressure.

Hope this helps.

 

[PistolPatch]

How goes it Brewtus!

The problem with the thermometers is that they often have slight imperfections in the glass stem. This means that even if they are accurate at freezing and boiling, they are often out of whack in the brewers' critical temperature ranges (say 8-18 degrees and 62-70 degrees.) So unfortunately you really have to calibrate them specifically in these temperature ranges.

Mate you have been doing a truly great job in the Wiki. We all owe you a beer or three.

:beer:
Pat

WG: I also have one thermometer like yours that I will now call God

 

[JCG]

For what its worth I picked up a digital thermometer from an electrical store for $30 its pretty close to the stick on fermenter thermometer.

JCG