Cooperian Dark Ale - The Results

As a preamble, kindly read the earlier post.

The results:

a) Pours a fairly haze-free, chocolaty/ruby brown. Garnet highlights. Head is a soft beige, holds well and leaves a decent lace (thankyou maltodextrin).
s) Peach and soft yeast fleshiness. Touch gluey.
t) Strong stonefruit, but tempered with an acetone-like heat. Keep the naked flames away.....
Has a strange seedy/vegetable note. Maybe celery (?)
m) Light to medium. Touch hollow in the middle.
d) Seems to have the awkwardness of Casacadians/Indian Blacks etc..... but not the quality..... Needs an addition of steeped dark malts to give more chocolate & mocha notes, and the hop additions may be better post-primary.
I'll save it for when Darren comes around :-)

Serving: On-tap

Well, I think this experiment was part success, part failure. A tin of Coopers Pale, a tin of Coopers Dark, and a kilo of Brewbooster.  My recent success with a Pale clone (using the Pale tin and the Brewbooster) could be put down to the use of full boil techniques (including wort chilling), and a stable, cool fermentation.

I didn't give this beer the same attention. It was a quick empty of the contents onto the yeast cake of the Pale, and topped up with tap water. The hop additions were thrown in at the end, but most of the aroma seems to have blown off during fermentation.

It's probably worth another go, but with the additional attention of the full boil. It is drinkable (just), and cheap to make. Not sure if Amarillo is the way to go with Coopers tins. Maybe some spare Pride of Ringwood might have aligned better....

Incidentally, an interesting variation has presented itself. My friend Glenn has given me an old port barrel, so I've filled it with this beer. My ambition is to have, in 12-18 months, a Rodenbach clone. 

You can stop laughing now...

Cooperian Dark Ale

One of the many hybrid styles going round these days is Cascadian Dark Ale. Invented by the late Greg Noonan in the 90s', it's a variant of the IPA, adding some darker malts to the grain bill, but maintaining the hop profile of (American) IPAs.
Cascadia is in fact a region of the Pacific Northwest, taking in parts of Canada and the US, and home to the ubiquitous Cascade hop.

This got me thinking.... is there a quick and easy way of brewing a hoppy, dark beer from kit ?  I had a yeast cake left over from a (failed) all-grain batch, which was then reused for a Coopers pale ale kit (successful). So on it's third outing, the yeast should be raring to go, and up to the challenge of something a little unusual.

A quick trip to the supermarket, and I landed a tin of Coopers Pale Ale malt, a tin of Coopers Dark Ale malt, and a kilogram of brewbooster (a blend of dextrose, malt, and maltodextrin). Normally you only need one tin plus sugars to get to a 4.5-5% ale, but two tins plus the brewbooster should see me in at 7-8%. (Incidentally, I smashed my hydrometer doing a recent brew, so the original & final gravities, and ensuing ABV%, are anyone's guess.....)

Since I was pitching two tins of malt extract, I was also doubling the hop bitterness. Tins are not renowned for their late-hop aroma, so any additional hops will come in handy to give some of the aromatics associated with IPAs.

Back at home, I scrounged some leftover Amarillo hop pellets, tipped it all together, and had a good fermentation underway within the hour. It's still been quite cool in the cellar, so hopefully a lot of the warmer-ferment, yeasty characteristics will take a back seat to the malt & hops.

After three weeks in the fermenter, I kegged the result today. First tastings are not too bad, with some interesting spicy notes, and a hint of alcohol warmth. And it's dark. It'll spend the next fortnight cold conditioning, and then get the carbonation treatment.

As for the name, well I thought "Cooperian" was appropriate, although the play on words relies on the coincidental naming of the Cascade hop variety and another Australian brewery.

My hopes are high; I'll get back to you in a fortnight.

Hefeweizen - the results

I finally have my two hefes on tap.

A quick recap: One was brewed purely with pale ale and wheat malts, with an ounce of Perle, aiming for a more refreshing summer wheat beer.

The other beer was brewed with less hops (half an ounce), but 500g of the grain (barley & wheat) were home-roasted.

How do they stack up ? I won't review them formally as that would be a little self-indulgent. However, it's fair to say that the aims have been attained (this is in spite of my earlier post where I was a bit discouraged.... always give the beer time in keg/bottle to settle and smooth out).

Hefe 1 (summer style - on the right): light and crisp. Touch tangy, with a nice bitterness at the back. More an American Wheat style than a hefe, but the clove is evident.

Hefe 2 (traditional hefe style - on the left): more rounded body, nice bread & biscuit nose and taste. More prominent clove character. (Note I reused the yeast from Hefe 1 for Hefe 2). Notice the darker colour.... and that was only a tenth of the grain, 60 minutes in the oven at 175C.

I think I'm hooked on home-roasting. It wasn't perfect by any means; I'd like to get more caramel than I did, but it was my first go and it will only improve.

Brew Day: hefeweizen with homemade toasted malt

The results of the my recent hefeweizen were mixed.

(see http://aussiebeerblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/hefe-brew-day.html).

The brew day went fairly well, and the plate chiller work superbly. However I think the resulting beer is too light in body, probably due to some oversparging and not enough boil time.

And an ounce of Perle seemed to create quite a bitter presence in the finished product, so will cut back on that in future.

So for today, I've got the remaining 2.5kg of Pale Malt and 2.5kg of Wheat Malt. But I've taken a tenth of each, mixed together, split into two, and toasted in a 175C oven.  The first went for an hour, and has come out nutty and darker than when it went in. The second got a soaking in hot water, then went in for a similar time. This produced some caramel, which seemed inclined to stick to the tray. Baking paper next time, I think.

Needed some quick repair on my mash tun (esky). The pipe through the outlet hole seems to not be sitting in the grommet as nicely as it used to, so as I was adding hot water pre-dough-in, I reckon most of it leaked out onto the ground. Quick trip to the hardware shop, and I picked up a long brass nipple, a couple of cistern outlet washers, and two brass nuts (all 15mm).  That settled it.

Mashed at lower temperature this time, doughing-in at 73.5, (opposed to 75.5).  Incremental batch sparging (8 litres hot water into the wort, lauter, then a 6 litre batch, and another). Brought the pre-boil volume to about 25 litres. Half ounce of hops, and an hour boil.

So, it's now in the fermenter, with yeast from the last batch. Should start up strongly, and with the current temperature in the low-mid 20's (C), should also kick off some good hefe aromatics.

I snuck in a quick taste, and there are distinct toasty, nutty flavours, over and above the wheat characteristics. This is reassuring, and possibly opens a new dimension in DIY brewing..... homemade crystal & toasted malts.

Hefe Brew Day

A lovely still-ish day in northern Sydney, so a good time to kick off a brew. I haven't yet tried my plate chiller, so plenty of interest today.

I'm brewing a hefeweiss, as it's my wife's favourite (mine also). This is arguably the simplest recipe I've brewed to date:

2.5 kg Pale Malt
2.5 kg Wheat Malt
28g Perle (60 minutes)
Safbrew WB-06 wheat ale yeast

One thing I like about hefe is the mouthfeel and slight semblance of sweetness. Most recipes call for a touch of Munich for colour & biscuity/bready notes, or a little crystal/cara for some caramel sweetness. But this recipe will produce a pale beer, with some mechanical adjustments needed to get more mouthfeel and sweetness.

I normally mash my grains at 65-67C, which generates a higher proportion of fermentable wort than higher temperatures. Since I want some more body and sweetness (provided by more complex carbohydrates), I'll mash at 69C, which requires a strike temperature (today) of 75.5C. This results in a "thicker" beer, and not as much alcohol post-ferment.

So, I'm at that stage. 15 litres of hot water has been put into the mash tun, stirred to cool to strike temp, and the grain stirred in. I'm now sitting back, catching up on some blogging, and gaining inspiration by having a taste of the benchmark: Weihenstephaner.

The New Kegerator

As Libby and I surveyed the bar area, we considered what we should do with a couple of bar fridges and empty space. After some deliberation, she advised that I "should" buy a kegerator.

Well, not one for arguing with my wife, I decided to do as I was told. For about $600 including freight (from Ballarat), found the following on the interweb-thingy:

http://www.pinnaclewholesalers.com.au/product/274/TWIN_TAP_BEER_KEGERATOR

After quick delivery and installation, here it is:

Dual-tap font, drip tray and railing. The column is not cooled; I think there are instances of people getting some sort of glycol circulation, but for the moment I'm happy to leave it as is. The temperature range is 2-8C, which also makes it a good fridge for lagering if needed.

The tap handles are screw-on, which allows changing. I have read about tap handles made out of blackboard; this is handy for any bar that changes what's on tap.

I've used paper wine bottle tags to identify the contents.

The fridge has room for a 50L brewery keg, which requires CO2 cylinder to sit outside the unit, feeding the gas through an inlet at the back. However, for the corny keg user, there is room for two 19L kegs plus a D-sized CO2 cylinder.

It's fairly easy to install, however it should be noted that one cannot easily find line clamps and crimping tools. My local Bunnigs doesn't have it; I think gas fitting supply outlets are needed. I made do with a few old clamps and an electrical wire stripper.

I currently have Dave's IPA and Double Coopers Ale on tap. It's just way too easy to get a beer these days.

Double Coopers - The Result

Thanks to Hampers for reminding me to comment on this. And sorry for taking so long to read the comments.

As inferred in another recent post, I had a little secret I wanted to keep from my mates until a party last Sunday... I recently acquired a dual-font kegerator.

I have hooked up the Dave's IPA and the Double Coopers, and am particularly enjoying the latter. Some slight over-carbonation issues, but that's where a drip-tray comes in handy (included with the kegerator thankfully).

Dave's IPA has some nice malt backbone and bitterness. There is also a slight paperiness that I am worried might be oxidation at my end, but then again could be a hop character expressing itself. Not 100% sure.

As for the double Coopers, it has turned out very well. Definite Coopers Pale profile, maybe a touch more dextrinous body, and certainly a hint of alcohol. I recommend giving it a go.... 2 x tins of Coopers Pale Ale tins, 500g dry malt extract, and some healthy yeast. Cooler ferment, some time to settle, and onto the keg.

Back into All-Grain

Having just kegged & chilled my two extract beers (more on that in a week's time), my interest in all-grain brewing has rekindled.

I paid a quick visit to Dave's Home Brew, picking up some pale malt, some wheat, and some Munich. Uhmed and aahed about the hops, but settled on some Amarillo for an American influence. Also got some Corny keg disconnects... but more on that in a week.... I'm trying to keep a secret until next Sunday.

Anyway, played around with different recipes, hoping to scratch out two brews from my total grain & hop supply.

The first brew will be an American Pale Ale:

Grain
3.00kg Pale Malt (base grain)
1.00kg Munich Malt (for some colour and bready/biscuity flavours)
0.50kg Wheat Malt (mainly for head retention when serving)
0.45kg Cara Malt 30L (for some more colour, and caramel/toffee flavours)

Hops
28g Perle (8.2 IBU - 60 minutes)
14g Amarillo (8.6 IBU - 10 minutes..... not after too much hop flavour... looking for hoppy nose, malt palate upfront, and bitterness at the back)
28g Amarillo (flameout)

Yeast
Safale US-05

Copper Manifold

I use an esky for mash tun, with a copper pipe grid as the manifold for lautering the wort from the grain bed.

Sadly, I don't as yet have a devoted "hot liquor tank" aka boiler. I need to generate 15 litres of hot water using a 2 litre kettle. Painfully slow......

Mashing of the grains takes an hour (plus 25 minutes or so to add the water, and another 10 to cool it to "strike" temperature: 74C). Then it's the opening of a tap on the other side of the esky wall, and out pours, maybe, 5 litres of hot wort. The rest is still retained in the grain bed.

Mash to Boil Setup

So, need to sparge. There are many different approaches; I choose to simply boil another 8 litres of water and add to the grains, then drain off. And repeat this until I have 25 litres in the boiler.

It seems my destiny to brew on windy days.... I needed to hook up a protective shield with a couple of plastic tables. Even still, I don't think I got the heat up that was needed.

At the end of the boil (60 minutes) I had 23 litres (should have lost more water than that), but an Original Gravity of 1052. This means I had a brewhouse effiiciency of 81%, which is, on the face of it, outstanding. I think there might be something wrong with my calculations. Efficiency is a measure of how much fermentable wort was successfully extracted from the grains. The higher the better, of course.

Then in with the immersion chiller (the copper coil in the photo).  This is really awkward; I am seriously considering a counterflow chiller instead of having to use this cumbersome, messy, and unreliable method.

From the boiler I then syphon the cooled wort into the sanitised fermentor. Again, another risky inefficiency which I have subsequently improved by installing a ball-valve tap into the side of the boiler. Then in with the yeast, and she's off !

Now to plan the second recipe.... I plan to reuse the yeast cake in the fermentor, hence obtain a strong, vigorous ferment. So I will need to do another mash on the day I rack the beer from primary to secondary.

Grain
2.00kg Pale Malt
0.50kg Wheat Malt
0.27kg Special B Malt
0.19kg Chocolate Malt
1.50kg some specialty dark sugar.... I need this to bump up the volume of the fermentale's bill... I have barely 3kg to begin with..... I could in theory do a small batch...... don't know yet.....

Hops
28g home-grown Tettnang...... (60 minutes) IBUs unknown....Used these as dry-hops in another brew some time back. Hop to eek out any bitterness that remains.
14g home-grown Tettnang.......(10 minutes)
14g home-grown Tettnang.......(dry-hop)
My grain bill suggests a dark, malty beer. I think holding back the hops a bit may be a good plan.

We'll see anyway.......

Double Coopers in the keg

The vigorous home brew has settled down now, enough for me to run it into the keg for some secondary. It was truly the most violent home brew I've made due to, as mentioned previously, throwing a lot of fermentables onto an active yeast cake.

In trying to slow it down, I had the fermenter out in the cold night air. I think it dropped to about 8C the other night, but the beer just kept going.... amazing.

I'm trying some secondary fermetation in the keg; threw in 25 carbonation pellets. This is the same principle as priming bottles before capping. The target pressure will be for a lightly sparkling beer.... not too fizzy.

A quick taste of the beer was taken, of course. A distinct maltiness not unlike a Scottish ale, but backed up by the somewhat angular hops (Pride of Ringwood, no doubt).  I could taste alcohol too, so we definitely have a strong'un.  I'll give it a fortnight to prime & settle, by then it will hopefully be self-pressured enough for at least a couple of Real Ale pints.

Using yeast cake from previous brew

As mentioned a couple of days ago, I had the bright idea of pitching a couple of Coopers tins and DME into the remains of Dave's IPA.

After kegging the IPA, I thought it'd be good to reuse the yeast, and eke out whatever hop aroma remained in the pellet residue and hop bag. So, just tip in some more fermentables and off we go...

All good.... in theory.  What I didn't count on was the explosive activity of the yeast.  After a fermentation, the yeast count has increased exponentially.... and they're still very much active and raring to go.

So, coupling this with more malt than I probably should have used, it all frothed up and out the airlock. Messy.
The scary bit, however, was the airlock regularly becoming blocked with hop residue. This resulted in increased pressure in the fermenter.
A quick word of advice..... if the airlock has stopped bubbling, but fermentation is visibly underway, be very, very careful when taking the bung out. It's difficult cleaning green and brown gunk off the ceiling....

Dave's IPA - in the keg

10 days after starting, I have put Dave's IPA in the keg.  The kegs I use are the 19L "corny" kegs, popular with home brewers. 

Cleaned them up with keg & line cleaner, then sanitised with iodophor.  It's good to do two kegs at once, if you can concoct a fluid-out-to-fluid-out tube, using two black keg connectors, and a short length of tubing.  This allows one to easily transfer cleaning and sanitising fluid from one keg to the other, under gentle CO2 pressure.  Two kegs cleaned for the price of one.... And I've kept the sanitising fluid in the second keg. Will need this keg in another week or two for a second batch I now have underway. More on that in a minute.

Glass carboys have their advantages for brewers, primarily ease of sanitation, and visibility. However, initial cleaning is often difficult, requiring a bent carboy brush and lots of elbow grease. Worse still is the post-primary transfer of beer from the carboy. The only realistic way is to use a syphon, which demands santised hands, a sanitised transfer hose (inside and out), and some good coordination in getting one end of the syphon hose into the beer, and the other to the bottom of the receiving vessel (in my case the corny keg).

As a precaution, I flush my keg with some CO2 before starting the transfer. CO2 is heavier than normal air, so ideally forms a raft at the bottom of the keg. So once the hose end drops down to the keg bottom, and beer starts gushing out, the hope is that most oxygen is sitting above the splash zone, so little oxidation will occur.

Once the beer is in the keg, the headspace is flushed three or so times also, hopefully banishing any O2 for good.

I snuck a little taste of the beer from the syphon tube once done.  A strong toffee note initially, and some papery/flowery hop notes. These need to settle and integrate.

As for the yeast and hop cake at the bottom of the carboy, I decided to take the easy option and reuse it. Bought two tins of Coopers Pale Ale, and 500g of dry malt. Whacked it straight in, and topped up with water. Aiming for a strong Aussie Ale, hopefully taking up any remaining hop characters from the residue and the hop bag (still in the carboy).  May toss in some additional pellets at secondary time, if aroma is needed.

What I forgot (from an earlier post) was the difficulty in getting cold liquid malt extract into a glass carboy. A big tip: always, always immerse the malt tins in hot water for at least 30 minutes before opening.

Dave's IPA - One week on

Well, the krausen has sunk, and the airlock is bubbling at a rate of once every 15 seconds or so.  I'll move the beer to a secondary fermentation vessel soon. To save myself some cleaning, this usually means going straight to the keg, and letting it condition for a few days at room temperature, then for a fortnight or so in the fridge, prior to carbonation from CO2 cylinder. The only drawback here is the yeast sediment in the keg. If I use a true secondary vessel, then most yeast will be left behind when the beer is transfered to the keg. In saving on the cleaning, I lose a glass or two of beer to extreme cloudiness.....

I suppose if I get my timing spot on, the secondary fermentation could carbonate the keg directly aka Real Ale. So, I think I'll hold off on the cylinder carbonation and firstly test the pressue of the keg, to see what the secondary ferment generated.

I threw the dry hop bag into the glass carboy yesterday. I should have thought about this beforehand. The weave of the bag is so tight that it floats quite high on the beer. So how's the hop aroma going to get into the liquid, I wonder ? Hmmmm.... I should have punctured a hole in the bag before throwing it in.

So, I did a bit of undignified jabbing of the bag with the (sanitised) handle of my plastic spoon. This seems to have dented it somewhat, and it's sitting lower in the liquid now. There was a little bit of splashing, which is undesirable at this stage of the process, but hopefully the headspace of the carboy is mostly CO2, so I doubt much oxidation damage is likely to occur.  Not good, nonetheless.

Another thought.... the bag contains hop pellets, not flowers. The carboy already has pellet residue sitting at the bottom, so I could also have just ripped it open and tossed the pellets in as is. Plus (now I think about it) I have to somehow extricate the used bag from the carboy when done, which will be no simple task considering the thin neck of the carboy (and it's weight).

Live and learn......

Article: Using Hops in Home Brewing

At this risk of writing about the bleeding obvious, I decided to pen my next Suite 101 article on hops. My latest brewing endeavours got me thinking about the different ways of late & dry hopping, so I did a bit of reading up on different methods, and wrote a quick 600 words.

http://beer-brewing.suite101.com/article.cfm/using-hops-in-home-brewing

I just love the "Randall"; locally, I think the Wig & Pen in Canberra has rigged one up on occasion. Perhaps others around the country too.  It's not a particularly good option for the home brewer. Firstly you need a lot of hop flowers to make it viable, and some space, and all the connectors from serving tank to the tap. And it needs to be big enough for the beer to hang around long enough to pick up the volatile oils.  But then the beer needs to be rechilled before serving.

Oh well, I like the concept; I won't be building one in the near future, however.

Dave's IPA - brew progress

The beer has been "in utero" now for two days. Yesterday, a thin, white slick appeared on the surface, indicating the yeast was waking up and getting into the growth phase.

Today, I have a beer with three extra inches of grungy, rocky krausen, and the airlock is bubbling at a rate of every 2 seconds. The temperature in my cellar is about 15C, so it's not what you'd call vigorous; it is, however, steady.

I should point out that I failed to record an original gravity, which of course means that tha ABV will remain a mystery.  And as I topped the fermenter up with water, I judged by sight when I stop. So, two uncontrolled variables that will prevent an accurate OG and ABV measurement.

Brew Day - continued....

13:04.  45 minutes of boil is done. Just threw in the Goldings flavouring hops, which will boil for another 14 minutes.  The fermenter is ready; I just bleach the bugger and scrub it if there're any spots, but that's the joy of glass... easy to clean.

13:20  Late hops into the boil, then flameout. Time to get the ice blocks into the brew; not made easier by the fact that I'm supposed to be cooking lunch on the same stovetop as well.

13:56  All done.  Funny thing about beer brewing - there are great swathes of inactivity, followed by intense moments of focus & energy. Getting the ice bricks into the boiler was no simple task; I needed to enlist my wife's assistance to prevent the majority of the wort splashing out all over the stove.

But the ice-in-wort approach has merits. I still got the boiler into the sink and ran cold water up the side, but a couple of stirs of the iceblocks was all it took to drop the wort temperature quickly.  A quick lunch, and then into the fermenter. Topped up with tap-water, and I pitched the yeast immediately.

The Safale S-04 has a fermentation range of 15-24C; our bar area is probably around the 16-17C mark at the moment, which means a slower fermentation, but a cleaner fermentation. With IPAs, you want to focus on the interplay of extra hops, extra bitterness, extra malt and extra body.  Yeast esters would just make a mess of this. So a cooler ferment the better.

I now wait three days, and throw a bag of Goldings flowers into the fermenter as a dry-hop. I think Dave has the right idea here..... dry-hopping is great to add the fresh hop characteristics to the beer, but the fermentation activity can drive the aromas out the air-lock. Waiting three days (or once the krausen has started to settle) is a good idea, I reckon.

Now for the clean-up......

Brew Day - Dave's IPA

Saturday 19th June, 2010

11:00 am. I planned to have an outdoor boil. I have a three-ring burner and, so I thought, a full gas cylinder. Set up the brick pile, the burner, the ingredients..... no cylinder.  It seems that my full cylinder, plus my regulator and adaptor hoses, have all disappeared.... Not happy, so it's up to the kitchen...

11:15 am.  Anyway.... got the boiler pot into the kitchen and onto the stove.  Heated three litres of water to 70 C, and dropped in the kilo of mixed grain (in a pantihose leg, tied off..... makes removal and rinsing so much easier.....).  Just waiting 'til 11:40 for the rinse (aka "sparge").   Contemplating getting some inspiration for the style being brewed..... Ekim Viking IPA perhaps ?

12:07 pm. Grains are rinsed, the dry malt & bittering hops are in the brew pot, and I have also put the two Morgans tins of liquid malt extract in also. I know I said I wasn't going to, but it seems a lot easier to empty the tins now into the pot, rather than via a funnel into the glass fermenter.  Now waiting for the lot to boil, then another 45 minutes before adding the flavouring hops.

Time for a beer review.....

Dave's IPA homebrew kit

A while back I dropped into Dave's Homebrew to see what was new.  Dave has been very helpful in the past, particularly when I started doing all-grain batches.  But these days I don't seem to have the time to commit to the 6+ hours or so I seem to need to do a full mash. So, customised extract kits are the go. 

Having a good look around the shop, I noticed these sealed boxes simply with the name of a beer style on a Dave's Homebrew label.  He told me he put them together by demand, as lots of punters wanted to do the steeped grain and DIY hopping routine, but not want to get caught up in recipe formulation. I think it's a great initiative, although quite labour-intensive for Dave.

Anyway, I bought an IPA kit. It will be for an English IPA style (East Kent Goldings are the hops). It's got two tins of Morgan's unhopped lager extract, a bag of mixed grain (which looks like some crystal and a touch of wheat), a bag of dried malt extract with hops, two bags of hop pellets, a satchel of finising hops, and a packet of Safale ale yeast.

There is a comprehensive instruction sheet, including the wise words of not putting a lid on the boil pot.

So, I'll give this a go soon.  I'll probably fiddle with the procedure a bit.... for one I don't think I need to boil the Morgan's LME as the syrup is already "kettled for excess protein removal"; I'll warm the tins up and pour straight into the fermenter.  So I'll only boil the DME, the hops, and the extract from the steeped grains. This gives me more room in the boiler for the following adjusted step.......

I'm also going to give his recommended 15 minute ice-bath step a miss, and use several litres of frozen pre-boiled water instead as the wort-cooling technique.  I don't think ice baths cool quick enough (and, being a bit tight at the moment, I don't want to have to buy several bags of ice at $6 a throw).  So, throw the ice straight into the boiler at the end, and hopefully have enough to bring the wort temperature down into the 30's asap.

I reckon, judging by the amount of fermentable being used, we're looking at an OG of around 1.060. I plan to ferment in my glass carboy..... a pain to syphon from, but so much easier to clean, and to observe whilst fermenting.  I'll then keg it (hate bottle washing), cold-condition it, carbonate it, and drink it.

Mother's day beers

Had the extended family over on Sunday for a lazy BBQ and a few tasters.

John Boston lager. A reasonable drop available through the Wine Society, and competes on price & style with other "premium" lagers such as Cascade & James Boag.

Brewdog Bashah. From Northmead cellars. A so-called Black Belgian-style Double Indian Pale Ale. What ?? Tasted like a hopped porter to me. I'm not so sure about all this "extreme" brewing & style cross-overs. The style boundaries are being challenged, which is OK I guess. But why then try to categorise the beer using the standard category definitions ? It comes across as a bit, um, contrived.

BrewDog case study: creating a high growth beer brand within a falling beer market

Duvel. I scored these for $2.30 a bottle from Dan Murphy. Someone mistakenly printed off the price tag as $47.95 per case, rather than per six-pack. I cleared them out of the stock and took the tag to the checkout, knowing full well there was a mistake. :-) If it had been a small privately owned bottle shop, I wouldn't have..... but, Woolies ? Come in spinner....

Trappist Westvleteren 8. Unavailable in Australia, but sent over via the "grey market" in the US. Me and a couple of other beeradvocates banded together and paid, from memory, $30 a bottle for the 8 and the 12. The beer is outstanding. An earlier review can be found here: http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/313/857/?ba=vancurly

My own concoction, a kind of imperial schwartz beer (lol), was on tap. Coopers European lager tin, augmented with Special B, pale Cara, and chocolate malts, plus some Perle for additional bittering and my home-grown Tettnang for dry-hopping. Fermented around 18C, and kegged/conditioned for a couple of weeks.

Had some wine, too.....