Greetings fellow brewsters,
The purpose of this post is two-fold
...to introduce myself & share with a community I have lurked in, and learned from, for some months.
...to let newbies know they are not pioneers, they don't have to do things the hard or expensive way.
Some months ago I joined and wrote a first-post on my experiences in beginning home brewing on another similar oz forum. Â I was immediately accused of being a spammer by an imbecile of a moderaor who didnt like his derogatory letter to me made public. Â This will be my second and final attempt at joining a homebrew forum.
After some lengthy badgering by SWMBO's father to get me brewing my own, I finally relented and bought a kit from a national franchise along with some PET bottles. Â The garden shed where I set up my humble beginnings has no power, no water, no sink, though there is adequate bench-space and storage and a fair degree of enthusiasm.
Guided by my European he-thinks-he's-a-beer-god of a mentor who started brewing in the 1960's using bakers yeast in garbage bins, I began to play around with off-the-shelf kits; typically labelled pale ales, pilsners, lagers, various kinds including alcoholic ginger beer. Â No two brews were done the same but everything was recorded, the good the bad and the ugly, to assist me on this path of continuous improvement. Â In the cooler months I bought and used lager yeasts instead of the kit yeasts supplied, purchased specialty kits from various outlets, added different styles of hops, made the initial mix of wort, water & other ingredients in different ways, used crushed eggshells, used different cleaning and sanitising solutions and methods and now have enough bottles to let each brew lager for a couple of months before the first opening. Â I will continue this trial & error as it is in my nature.
I bought a 2nd used fermenter from a charity shop and have been syphoning off the initial fermentation and letting it sit for another 3 or 4 weeks prior to bottling. Â More recently, a friend returned a favour and has given me another 24 pet bottles, 2 more fermenters, 2 hydrometers and an immersion heater he found at a garage sale.
Temperature. Â It's been about 6 months now and, although potentially satisfying, I still find things a bit frustrating. Â Â I see my biggest problem being temperature stability; Â in winter, I've tried wrapping an electric blanket around the first fermenter and other times tried the blanket underneath. Â In warmer weather I place each fermenter on a 450mm diameter pot plant tray, wrap a towel around making sure it sits inside the tray at the bottom. Â Then I wet each towel with approx 750ml of water and let the coolgardie effect take over. Â I've noticed with this in place the fermenter is significantly cooler than shed temp, cooler still if a fan is blowing on it. Â Today, the OAT is in the high 30's, Â fermenter temps are 22-23C. Â Getting power to the shed is a problem, leads have to be brought out, not convenient but I'm working on it. Â Prior to me using the coolgardie-effect, two of my beers got warm. Â One, a pilsner, was so fruity as to be undrinkable early on but has settled down after a couple of months.
Hydrometers. Â When fermenting the first ginger beer I had erratic readings from my hydrometer yet airlock activity continued for over 3 weeks. Â Monitoring, I had no clue what to do and this was when I first attempted to join a forum. Â No luck there so I read, watched and waited; nearly a month in the initial fermenter and I bottled. Â Tasty & alcoholic but flat-as, no carbonation at all. Â I later discovered my hydrometer had an undiscovered fine crack around a fold in it's base. Â Someone wrote in an old post CO2 escaping from solution can cause ongoing bubbling; one lives and learns.
SWMBO said she wanted me to do a Corona-style for her and on the ingredients advice of a well known independant outlet I did so. Â It was ok and I chose to make another for her this time using can instructions. Â Big mistake, onto the garden it goes and won't be doing that again; the only batch I've discarded to date.
Bottles. Â An interesting learning curve here and bottling stalwarts should look away now. Â Early on I chose to use whatever bottles were at hand so long as I had the same kind throughout each batch. Â For my various but mainstream beers, I used Coopers PET; same caps over and over. Â For SWMBOs corona styles I used green Storm stubbies, an allegedly lightweight non-refillable bottle from Aldi; same caps over and over. Â For each of the alcoholic Ginger Beers, I used Lambrusco screw-top wine bottles; same caps over and over. Â See a pattern forming here? Â Each of these three bottle types & caps have been repeatedly used; over and over again for purposes they were never designed. Â There may be some who scoff at such habits, but it's what I've done and have had only 6 glass breakages in God-knows-how-many refills to date. Â Those breakages were from my hamfisted crimping techniques early on. Â Not one single cap has leaked after capping. Â As an adjunct, SWMBO has recently started making a Rhubarb bubbly; she's onto her fifth small batch now; and wants the Coopers PETs to bottle it in. Â There is some serious carbonation in this champagne-esque stuff. Â After a few weeks the caps and PET bottle bottoms bulge out so much the bottle is unable to stand up. Â Yet nothing has ever leaked or burst. Â When I reclaim these PET bottles from her, I warm them up a bit then push the bottom of the bottle back up. Â Simples.
Clean/Sanitise. Â I have moved all over the place on this one and am still far from settled. Â If anyone can be specific (very specific) about what they use and why and can quantify, it would be welcome. It seems every second post on homebrew sites is about cleaning and sanitising yet not many are clear and specific enough to enact upon; the one exception is the use of Starsan. Â Retail outlets have only small expensive solutions. Â Â Two of my fermented batches had poor head retention and I blamed it on the dishwashing powder I used. Â Right or wrong, I am currently using unscented cheap household bleach as my washing agent but I am buggered if I know what dilution to use. Â As each bottle is emptied, it is rinsed, drained and stored with cap off. Â At bottling time, it is washed in a solution of rainwater and bleach, drained, rinsed in fresh water and drained again; I seem to be reducing that water:bleach solution each time. Â A bottling tree and rinse pump/bowl helps me. Â If anyone has an alternative to hand washing bottles, feel free to share. Â
Where I currently live has hot summers and cold winters. Â I am ready for my next move up, but unless someone can shed some light, I won't be experimenting with yeasts until I get better temperature control. Â What I think I can do is start boiling up some grains to supplement the kits. Â The John Palmer tutorials are worthy reading but are the ingredients he mentions valid here in oz? Â Particularly to those of us without a plethora of quality HB supplies nearby. Â I want to keep this whole thing relatively simple; using minimum equipment, ingredients & resources. Â As far as consumables are concerned, I'm considering buying online once I know what I want; for, with one or two exceptions, the retail outlets don't cut the mustard for me.
In order to achieve greater clarity, I sometimes decant into a second fermenter & sprinkle crushed eggshells over the surface as a finings agent. Â The thought of filtering has also crossed my mind but I've seen nothing viable yet. Â Does anyone have experience with filtering; I'm thinking something on the inlet side of the tap?
When I was last in the European-beer-God's shed I noticed a strange horizontal line of white mould halfway up the inside of some of his lagered clear-glass swing-top stubbies. Â Not all were effected but those that were were identical. Â He disregards this, the beers still good but I feel this anomoly shouldn't be there.
That's probably enough for a first (& perhaps final) post.
Fritz.