Brew day -- Pale Ale Day

I love brew day. Get up on a Sunday and think some thoughts. Good thoughts. Cheery thoughts. Regretful thoughts. Just thoughts. 

"What am I doing today? Where the flick am I? How can I shake off this hangover that's been lingering around since Friday" KFC? No way. Tried that last time. Didn't work out too well. 

Shake out some of that tar from all those Friday-night ciggies. Jig it out. Chuck on a tune. Check the score. 4 for ... yeah, that's okay. Pour us a beer, eh? 11am ... yeah no worries. Not driving. Not 'till later. Yep. Where we at? Okay. So let's get a brew going.

Pale Ale might be one of the greatest beers of all time. 

Might be. 

Probably isn't. 

Don't care. 

Made it anyways.

Here's how we did it.

Step one is to get the pot boiling. So when Michael says he'll see us at 11am, we know he's put the pot on to boil early. He put it on at 10am. It reached the right temperature at 11:20am. It hit 69 degrees. That doona is keeping all the heat inside the pot. Keep the lid on and wait for everyone to turn up.

Make sure the temperature is right

Make sure the hat looks right for the photo

Meanwhile, get the hops ready for the boil. A good range of hops today. Horizon, Cascade, Centennial. Tasty!

And these are our immersion heaters. Hanging off the back of a trolley. It's a good system. 

Time to drop the voile in.

Good luck with that 

Boo! 

And now it's time to tip in the grain.

It's a big bag ...

Squeeze it all out. 

Fill up the pot

And stir it through ...

Bit of a handful

Frothy!

Meanwhile, it's a good time to clean the gear. 

Michael finally had the chance to hold a long and powerful water jet in his hands

Hi Lucy!

This water cannon might be one of the greatest inventions of all time.

The best bit is getting to aim it each other.

So, back to the brewery. 

And time to check the temperature

Probably should have a beer first. A big Heretic beer, thanks to Ben. 

Luke brought me over a Breaking Bad suit. #squinching.

Now, this is a great tool

You put it to your eye ...

And it tells you the sugar level of the wort. Clever!

But, we've got to get the hops ready

And it's time to lift out the mash.

Josh came over to help us. 

Tie a knot ...

Tie it tight.

Tighter ...

Tight enough.

and that's lunch, gentlemen.

Okinama -fucking-yami!

Can you smell the hops?? 

Mash out!!!! 

and get the boil going.

Good time to have a break and a snack. Ben made us some cheese, salami and NZ pickles. 

But Michael had his mind on the job.

Luke had his mind on the coffee machine. Nice little flair there on the crema. 

But time for you to get back in the brewery, 

Stir the pot,  boyo!

The boil is finished and it's time to move it into the cubes. 

Gently, gently ...

gennnnnnnntttttttllllllllyyyyyyyy ....

The cake left over at the end.

Filled the cubes.

Cubes.

3 . 0000000011 cubes filled

beer

and the leftover grain. Feed the chooks!

10 November -- Bottling the 2IPA -- The Hopstical Course.

We've been very excited about this beer ever since we moved the car into the shed to drag the mash out of the pot. You might remember our exploits with making the wort for this beer. Loads of grain, loads of hops, loads of effort. And loads of expectations.

This is gonna be the beer that makes it for us. 

This is our moment. 

This is it, this time we know it's the real thing.

This is the beer we christened "The Hopstical Course" (we're still not sure how to spell that).

So onto the details.

We started the day by opening another 70/- and it's still a major disappointment. What's even more frustrating is that the flavours have really come out, but there is no carbonation at all. What a shame! But, life's too short to worry about such things. Grab a moment, learn from your mistakes, and look at the positives. We drank it anyways!

We also moved the Oatmeal Stout out of the priming fridge and into our homes! Yay! This means that I can drink a few of these over the summer. But I'd really like to try and save them for the winter. Mulesy, one of these is yours as thanks for the paddle.

What you don't know is that with this Double IPA, we dry-hopped it. Yep, we are now tea-baggers!! I grabbed one of Monica's stockings when she wasn't looking. We filled the stocking with all of the left-over hops we had in the freezer, dumped that sock into the fermented brew, and hoped for the best. One week later, we were ready to bottle. That day was today. 

We keep thinking whether we should start to move into kegging the beer. The argument for it is that it would cut down on the time we spend bottling. Today, we started at 1pm and were finished by 5:30pm. That's a bit of time. 

But for me, that's the whole point. To spend some time doing this. To have a few hours to not just bottle beers, but to slow things down and get into a rhythm that allows for contemplation, appreciation and reflection. Today proved to be such a day. Today Michael and I talked about everything. We discussed the merits of an honest job, the possibilities of travelling across America, the evolution of disco into house music, the need for true political leadership, the beauty of a well-rounded woman, the yearning for an explanation, the excitement of having a young family, the shock of losing a loved one, the truth that can be found in a single moment, when all else seems lost, and everything makes little sense, and all you have is your fears, and your nightmares, and maybe, just maybe, a little light at the end of all the darkness.

Life is short. 

Friends are special. 

Beer is for sharing. 

This will always be a special beer. Come and have one with us when the brew is ready. 

We use "Beersmith" to help us with all our calculations. It's a piece of software that tells us exactly what to do. 

Hey, what's that folder on your desktop labelled "Pr0n"??

This is the printout that "Beersmith" gives us. Can you read it? It's got everything to make the perfect brew. 

Michael has been busy. He made this little frame to hold the pot

We used to use a 70s TV trolley held down by sandbags. Yeah, we used to have a boiling pot with 60 litres of water held together with chewing gum and string. So safe!!

Here's the Oatmeal Stout split three ways,

Count the bottles and guess which pile Chris took.

So, onto the measuring the gravity.

This is an important step.

We want to know this to work out how much sugar to add.

Screw it up and everything goes 70 shilling on us.

We were right on target (according to 'beer smith', and he should know, he's a computer)

Did I tell you about the dry-hopping. That's where you put a whole lot of hops into the beer after it has fermented. We used everything we could find in the freezer. There's a bit there. 

We needed some music to help us along today. This helped.

And here's a glass of the 2IPA to drink as we bottle it. Yep, it's not carbonated and it's 20 degrees. It was delicious. 

Then, we need to work out how much liquid we have to work with, before we add the sugar. What do you think? 40 litres was my guess. There's a big cake at the bottom to take into consideration.

The next step is to move it out of the fermenting keg, into a nice, clean, sterilised keg. This takes some time.

It's a slow process.

And not much fun.

Give us a smile, Chris 

I can't, serious business!

At this point, we are smelling some great aromas. Lots of whiskey smells, but a great deal of hops. 

Good shot, eh?

Last time we didn't stir in the sugar. That meant flat beer. This time we stirred it. And Michael got to lick the spoon.

I don't know what this is.

Okay, I know what this is.

It's the sock full of hops

It swelled up a fair bit.

And here's the 2IPA ready to bottle

Hi Lucy!

It took a while to bottle. And we didn't want to lose a single drop. Here's Michael getting the last stubbie.

Plenty of beer there.

So much IPA

And into the priming fridge until December 12.

Come and join us then for a beer.

-- A weekend of home-brew --

Things have been looking dire of late. I was quite depressed this week as it looked like we had royally fucked up the 70/-. The first three bottles opened were like Mount Vesuvius, erupting all over the ceiling and the bench tops. Way too much sugar, way too much carbonation.

What had we done wrong? One theory was that a failure to stir the sugar syrup into the second keg had resulted in a lack of priming sugar evenly spread throughout all bottles. Two explosions in the priming fridge was enough evidence for this theory to be validated.

But then as we started to open more bottles and they started to look like Lime-Spiders, our paddle-maker Michael Mules suggested that maybe we didn't let the fermentation finish properly. Maybe the beer was continuing to ferment in the bottles and was creating a Tour-De-France Champagne explosion waiting to happen.

But ... but ... but ...

We had measured the gravity ...
We had measured the priming sugar ...
We had all the levels correct ...

And then ...

I opened four bottles of 70/- this weekend and all of them were flat. No bubbles, no head, nothing.
These bottles had not seen any priming sugar at all.

This was making me even more sad.
So I opened some Oatmeal Stout ... and as I did, one of these bottles exploded in my hands.

And then the next one was flat. And so was the next one.

There was a pattern developing, and it wasn't pretty.

So off I trudged to Carwyn Cellars to purchase a Saturday afternoon six-pack of IPAs. I spoke with Ben, a bit of a home-brew enthusiast, and explained the situation. He put us straight. We weren't stirring the beer enough before bottling. His word was enough for me.

So what to do? Open all the bottles and tip them down the sink? I had three more Oatmeal Stouts left. These were the last three home-brew beers I had.

Fuck it, I'll put them in the fridge.

The first one -- flat
The second one -- way too flat.

And then, a rainbow appeared through the dark clouds.

The final one. The last Home-brew beer in my house. I poured it, while downstairs in the cellar, contemplating the new Liberal Government.

And it was perfect! A deep, rich colour. A head about 2cm deep, that carried all the way down the glass. Delicious, deep, dark flavours.

There is hope.