Home Brew

[philw]

ok guys   here is my next batch  I am thinking of trying   

( going to be pushing a few through the Fermenter soon as I am picking up 120 Glass longneck bottles to add to the 30 PET bottles I have so far )

Coopers Extra Strong Vintage Ale Recipe

STEP 1: The Background
We introduced Coopers drinkers to the Strong Ale style (BJCP Style 19.A) with the first release of Coopers Extra Strong Vintage Ale (ESVA) back in 1998. ESVA is a high alcohol, high bitterness, flavoursome beer, which may be consumed young whilst holding excellent prospects for developing with bottle age. When young, it displays a blend of esters and hop aromatics with some alcohol heat and a firm bitter finish.
Aging should see the ester, hop and alcohol meld together, the bitterness soften and toffee/sherry like characters develop. You may like to add a small amount of specialty grain and dry hop with your favourite variety (fuggles, saaz, hallertau, hersbrucker, cascade, perle and magnum were used in previous vintages). Look in our Talk Brewing area for a guide on growing our commercial ale yeast.

STEP 2: Ingredients
1.7kg Australian Pale Ale beer kit
1.7kg Real Ale beer kit
1kg Dextrose
30g Nelson Sauvin pellets
Commercial Coopers Ale yeast (or both sachets of kit yeast)

STEP 3: Method
Dissolve the kits and dextrose in 4 litres of hot water. Fill with cool water to the 21litre mark and stir vigorously. Stir in the wet yeast or sprinkle on the dry yeast. Enclose the hops in a mesh bag and place on top of the brew. Seal and try to ferment at 18C.
Bottle once the SG readings are stable over a couple of days and prime at the normal rate.

STEP 4: Enjoy !
The final alcohol content should be approximately 7.5% ABV.

[McGyver]

I always used pelletized hallertau hops, boiled in at different times with the wort. Never made any by putting hops in a mesh bag during fermentation. What hop type are you using? Are they natural or ground pelletized (look like rabbit food)? If they are natural and you plan on doing what the recipe calls for, you may wanna crush them with a mortar and pestal type device before you put them in a mesh bag with the wort, but just a suggestion.

Nevermind, I saw the Nelson Pellets. Should make a nice hoppy brew!

[McGyver]

For the 8yrs. that I ran a microbrewery in Ohio, this was my bible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Papazian

He encourages you to alter recipes and find your own tastes. Good book to find alternatives to the worlds commercial beers.

[philw]

For the 8yrs. that I ran a microbrewery in Ohio, this was my bible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Papazian

He encourages you to alter recipes and find your own tastes. Good book to find alternatives to the worlds commercial beers.

thanks mate  I will look out for that one

 

Joy of Brewing, Copyright 1976, Log Boom Brewing, Boulder Colorado

hmmm   wonder if that is a coincident



I have also just joined up to an Aussie brewing forum  they love all grain brewing and all other kind of stuff  soooo much info on there

[McGyver]

Yep, that was his third book. Many years worth of trial and error in that book!

Happy brewing(and drinking)!

[Sponsor]

[philw]

here is one I am about to try

I got this off an Aussie Brewing forum 

GG's GB Recipe 11/1/2009

1 x Morgans Ginger Beer Kit
1 x 500g Fresh ginger
1 x 250g DARK Brown Sugar
1 x 1kg dextrose
1 x 750ml Buderum Ginger Refresher Cordial
1 x fresh chilli (sliced thinly with the seeds in)
~600ml Sweet Vermouth
~600ml Sweet Sherry
~30ml Lochan Ora
Grated the ginger and soaked in a bowl with equal parts of Sweet Sherry, Sweet Vermouth & Lochan Ora for 24 hours. Combined the GB kit, brown sugar, dex and refresher cordial in 3L boiling water in the fermenter and stirred, then added the grated ginger soak (alcohol & all), added the sliced chilli and topped up to 23L. SG 1.048. Let the fermenter stand overnight while the yeast starter worked its treat, and pitched the following morning. FG 22/1/2008 – 0.996 Alc/Vol : 7.0%


I like this because it is overloaded with ginger bite. It had a real fortified complexity when I tried the first bottle of this brew two weeks after bottling, which has since faded into the background more progressively as the brew has aged. It still has a real kick to it though. I drank 2 1/2 longnecks of this GB with Vietnamese on Thursday night, and while it started to get heavy going towards the end it was a good accompaniment to the noodle soups we had. It would also go a treat with a sweet chilli stirfry IMHO.

I used the following recipe as the basis for my GB. It was posted in another thread, and I didn't make a note of who put this on AHB, but it also seems like a tops recipe...

My Ginger Beer recipe has taken me a while to get good and i love gingery bite!!
Its a K&K tho so i hope its ok to post it here...

1 x Coopers Ginger Beer (or morgans but i cant taste the difference just the price)
1 x 500g Fresh ginger
1 x 250g DARK Brown Sugar
1 x 800g Raw Sugar (or dex or brewing sugar)
1 x 250g Buderum Ginger Honey
1 x 50g powdered ginger
2 x Whole cloves
4 x birds eye chillies (sliced thinly, i personally keep the seeds in)

Boil up around 3litres of water
Add in the honey, chillies
boil for 15minutes
then add the fresh and powdered ginger
boil for 15minutes
about now its smelling really tastey
add the brown sugar and the cloves
boil for 15minutes
remove from heat (i usally cover the pot with clingwrap to prevent anything unwanted getting in) let cool while preparing the fermenter
I guess the order i add things in is abit random... but it seems to work

Make the kit up as normal from here
usually ferment for around 2 weeks, bottle for around 6 weeks, but do taste one bottle at 3 weeks the ginger kick is sooooo strong! it mellows out to a nice hit at 6 weeks, by 3 months its lost most its taste imho.

[philw]

there was a Brew Comp on over the weekend and a couple of weeks ago I decided to enter one of my brews to see how it went with people that know about all things beer judging it


I entered the Extra Strong Vintage Ale that I did a while ago

 
I ended up 2nd in the class  ( .25 points off winning )  and I won best extract brew out of over 100 entries  

I am stoked over how I went

for the win I got a couple of extract kits and specialty grains and hops  to add in to the brew

think I might have to try a few more comps down the track

[Solus]

Very good job, Phil!!!

Second place is not bad at all for your first go at it...and only a small bit behind First too.

Were you able to find out what areas the First place beer did better than yours?  And do you have ways to improve your process in those areas? 

Of course you might not want to be crafting your beers to the taste of experts rather than yourself.

I been threatening to get into home brewing for a while now.  CRs statement that one of  his beers resembles Newcastle, one of my favorite beers, tells me I really need to get into this.

[Hazcat]

Congrats!  I personally like the Muntons Irish Stout (with added molasses).

[MikeBjerum]

Congrats philw!

I'll be over later for a sampling