Topic: Anyone else out there doing some home brewing?

[Terry in Australia]

Thanks Spotty, I'd love the recipe! I went to a brewing place in Greensborough the other day, but it looks like its closed down? Yep, going to the one in Reservoir, nice people and close to my place.

[Old Moe Toe]

G'Day Brian, no not this trip, just Darwin (where I hope to catch up with Mick again) and Hobart, but my new unit is located in Canberra, so when I eventually go there we should catch up? Although the Classic might be sooner?

Hobart eh?.
Let me know if you are at a loose end for a while. Specially if it's a nice day, got a couple of spare registered bikes, spare helmets etc.. Otherwise happy to show you the sights from the hilux if it's a blizzard.
I'll pm ya me mobile phone No.

[Terry in Australia]

G'Day Brian, no not this trip, just Darwin (where I hope to catch up with Mick again) and Hobart, but my new unit is located in Canberra, so when I eventually go there we should catch up? Although the Classic might be sooner?

Hobart eh?.
Let me know if you are at a loose end for a while. Specially if it's a nice day, got a couple of spare registered bikes, spare helmets etc.. Otherwise happy to show you the sights from the hilux if it's a blizzard.
I'll pm ya me mobile phone No.

Hey thanks mate, I can't think of anything I'd rather do! Only problem is I fly into Hobart at 9pm on Friday, I'm being picked up early Saturday morning and driven to Stony Head rifle range on Saturday (don't know where that is, but apparently it's a four hour drive) then back to my hotel (Travelodge) around dinner time, then getting picked up again Sunday morning for a trip to Bucklands (about an hours drive) rifle range, then back to the airport for my flight home. If you'd like to meet on Saturday night, I'm probably not doing much? Cheers, Terry.

[bear]

Last time I was in Hobart they flew me back to Melbourne in a bucket.

[Terry in Australia]

Last time I was in Hobart they flew me back to Melbourne in a bucket.

I remember it well Brian, you were a mess when I met you, but what impressed me was how sociable you were, with tubes and wires coming out of your every orifice, and everything from your neck down was busted, cracked, or crushed, you were chatting away as if we were all at a BBQ at your place, and not gathered around your bed in the spinal unit of the Austin Hospital! I enjoyed talking to your mate Pete too, he was a lovely bloke, and it's a shame he went so young. We'll have to get together again soon, it's been too long.    

[bear]

Sounds like a plan... look forward to it.
Yep I miss Pete he was a good mate. That's life I guess,  none of us are getting out alive.

[PeWe]

Hopefully soon possible to copy your mind over to a new body! Or at least copy the mind waiting for the tech later on.

Delete the bad memories that are no good experience anyway.

Save the bikes on a safe place with plenty of fuel must be mandatory together with some adult juice.

[Don R]

 I'm into some home drinking. A friend of mine was a brewmaster. He spent several years shoveling grain. Not as glamorous as expected.

[bear]

Hopefully soon possible to copy your mind over to a new body! Or at least copy the mind waiting for the tech later on.

Delete the bad memories that are no good experience anyway.

Save the bikes on a safe place with plenty of fuel must be mandatory together with some adult juice.

An interesting concept Per, not my cuppa tea though.
Once around the block will do me.

Cheers,
Brian

[PeWe]

Hopefully soon possible to copy your mind over to a new body! Or at least copy the mind waiting for the tech later on.

Delete the bad memories that are no good experience anyway.

Save the bikes on a safe place with plenty of fuel must be mandatory together with some adult juice.

An interesting concept Per, not my cuppa tea though.
Once around the block will do me.

Cheers,
Brian

I plan to have at least 25 healthy years left,  hopefully 10 of them on bikes.

[Terry in Australia]

Hopefully soon possible to copy your mind over to a new body! Or at least copy the mind waiting for the tech later on.

Delete the bad memories that are no good experience anyway.

Save the bikes on a safe place with plenty of fuel must be mandatory together with some adult juice.

An interesting concept Per, not my cuppa tea though.
Once around the block will do me.

Cheers,
Brian

I plan to have at least 25 healthy years left,  hopefully 10 of them on bikes.

At least 10 years Per, I was chatting to three guys riding "Cruisers" (pretend Harleys) last year on a ride, two were in their 70's, and the oldest was 83! I thought that if I can stay alive until I'm 83, I hope I'm still riding bikes?

I mean, apart from my recent love of home brewing, I don't really have any other hobbies, so I want to be able to ride my bikes until they find me dead on the side of the road from a heart attack that took me out as I was red lining whatever it was that I'm riding. Hopefully it won't be a pink scooter or a pretend Harley!;D

[PeWe]

Maybe change to a Honda Cub at 73! It's a bike too

[Terry in Australia]

Good idea Per, but I'd much rather it was on my Rocket III or RC51. OK, back to the booze. So tonight I decided to bottle the first batch, my logic being that as I'll be away from Sunday, I can watch it for a couple of days and hopefully assure myself that nothing's gonna go BANG! While I'm away. First job was to sterilise or at least, sanitise, the bottles. I love my bottle sanitiser/bottle drainer, all the way from Italy!

Thursday Brew Bottling 12 Sep 2019 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

I used this auto-filler, great piece of kit and worth the 4 bucks I paid for it. You can leave the drum tap on and just keep filling bottles super quick. If you're doing some brewing and you don't have one, get one.

Thursday Brew Bottling 12 Sep 2019 3 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

So as not to confuse my tiny mind, I filled and capped 6 bottles at a time, to make sure I didn't forget to drop a carbonation drop (sugar lolly) into each bottle. I still almost forgot the last 4 bottles and had to pop the tops so I could drop a lump into each bottle.   

Thursday Brew Bottling 12 Sep 2019 2 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

I only had one minor disaster when the float assembly of the auto filler fell into a bottle and I wasted about half a mouthful of ginger toe on the floor. Luckily the floor was pretty clean, so I licked it all up before the wife caught me. Waste not, want not.......... I didn't have enough empty Ginger joe bottles, so I used a box of 15 PET bottles that are designed specifically for brewing. Good stuff.

Thursday Brew Bottling 12 Sep 2019 1 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

So by the end of all my labours, I had 44.25 litres of delicious all natural, home brewed Ginger Beer. I did a quick measure with my hydrometer and this stuff is kicking out 5% alkyhole, so I'll confer with the Brew Meister (Spotty) to see if the ABV ("Alcohol By Volume" ) increases after the carbonation stage? 10% would be great...........

Thursday Brew Bottling 12 Sep 2019 4 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

I decided not to risk leaving it inside the house, so I took it all out to the garage, and to confine it in case it does explode, I loaded it all into my industrial oven. Being in the garage, the carbonation/fermentation process will slow compared to keeping it inside where it's nice and warm, but even though we are just coming into Spring, it's not too cold at the moment, and it'll be warming up over the next few weeks. I think I'll take a peek daily, but otherwise leave it alone until I come home in a week's time, thirsty from all my travelling. Hopefully........

Thursday Brew Bottling 12 Sep 2019 5 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr 

[PeWe]

10% is close to 12.5 that Champagne often has.
You might rename your product Terry?
Champagne give a real happiness too

[Terry in Australia]

Thanks Per, I'm hoping that it gets up to at least 8% so it's got the same kick in the pants as Ginger Joes, but really, as long as it tastes good, I'll be happy. It tasted pretty good last night straight out of the fermenter, so I'm confident that it'll be magnificent!

[spotty]

bottle carbonation/fermentation adds about 1/2%

the trick to getting stupid strong brews is using shedloads of your preferred sugar ( maltose/liquid malt etc), and time - the more sugars they yeast has to eat the more alcohol it produces but also takes longer until it settles on a constant hydrometer reading. also using the liquid malts etc will affect the 'mouth' feeling of the drink, granular sugars will give a lighter or thinner feel whereas liquids will give a thicker/smoother 'mouth', that's what i use in my 'toucan' stouts/ blackntans to give a richness not even apparent in commercial stouts . toucan refers to using two cans of the premade cans of brew with the amount of water used normally for one can, this gives the yeast twice as much sugar to work on  - then i put in the malt liquid as well.......thats how you get a 10% brew

there are various forms of the liquid malt, lighter and darker as you wish, lighter gives more lager like flavour, darker obviously gives better stout like properties

yeast also likes its ideal temperature ( diff yeasts like diff temps - ask at the brew shop) so will 'cook' quicker at that temp, that being said you can sometimes push it along a bit with a heat blanket or in tank heater which is sort of like a fishtank heater. also to complicate things a bit more, different yeasts will give different flavours, thats basically how there are so many different tasting beers out there even though they all use pretty much the same ingredients

[ken65]

That white tap should pull apart if its the same as the black ones.
Just put it in a vice and pull the handle a bit with pliers and twist.
Even soaking it in sanitiser  doesnt clean them proper.
Years ago some home brew fellas noticed their beer going down hill after awhile but a new tap fixed it.
They pulled a tap apart and it was gunked up inside.
Another tip they gave me was during bottle fermentation keep them in the dark. 
Who's to say if their right,  but between the 5 of them they drank 6000 tallies a year they reckoned.

[spotty]

must give my taps a going over, they were all secondhand when i got them so it can't hurt

and a definite yes on the dark thing, thats why most bee comes in brown or green bottles, to keep the light out, the stuff that comes in clear bottles ( yes, corona and various CUB products, i'm looking at you) is in clear bottles because it tastes like sh1t anyway and letting it be exposed to light can't make it any worse

and while i'm at it, yes sterilisation is very important but so is rinsing everything afterwards ( see comments on my cherry beer above), antiseptic flavoured beer is unlikely to become a thing in the near future

[Terry in Australia]

Thanks guys, excellent advice, and I'm happy to say that I'm with you on all that, I'll probably chuck the taps out after another brew or two, and buy some newies. I did wash mine out thoroughly last night though, with "no rinse" sanitiser, so I'm pretty sure it'll be fine for at least the next brew. All my bottles of "Doctor Terry's medicinal ginger tonic" are stored in total darkness inside my industrial oven, and I did even think about setting the oven to 20 deg C, but using my laser temp gauge @ 4pm today I discovered that it was 18 deg C inside the bottles anyway so figured that was probably warm enough, and left it off.

The plastic screw top bottles are great because I was able to see if they were fizzing OK. I cracked every one to let the pressure off, and was happy that they were all fizzing nicely. I'd mentioned to Spotty that I was a bit concerned with this batch because my bubbler (air lock) wasn't bubbling from the get go like my other one is, but I discovered last night when washing the fermenter out that it had a leak because the lid isn't sealing against the top of the drum, so obviously air has been escaping past that lid, and not bothering to travel up thru my bubbler. Oh well, the three packets of yeast and extra 6 pounds of sugar I put in it can't have hurt, it tasted pretty darn good last night.

Wow that's a pretty good effort Ken, 5 guys each averaging 4 x 750 ml bottles of beer every day, 365 days per year! Sadly I won't be able to compete, now that I've only got a tiny tummy my biggest problem is leg cramps from dehydration. I just had an attack of severe leg cramps a minute ago, and it fcuking kills me, I have to get up real fast and walk around, and try to drink some water, but of course I  can only get down a couple hundred mils per go, then I have to wait for it to go thru my tum and out the other side. Oh well, at least I'm a cheap date nowadays.  

[spotty]

Well, I left the chocolate beer for two weeks and........hmmmm, no fizz, quite bitter so I shall leave it another week and see how it is
A bit disappointing really, thought I might have been onto a good thing
Time will tell

[ken65]

Sadly enough Terrance . I drink more beer than them now.
 But its ok cause I don't swill bourbon, scotch or rum or vodka anymore. Just a lot of beer.
I tend to scoff my beer.

[Terry in Australia]

Well I can only imagine Ken, to be honest I've never been a real beer drinker. I do drink it on a hot day, but I've always preferred spirits, and of course now, ginger beer is my new favourite. Sorry to hear about the chocolate beer Spotty, but I'm sure it'll be fine with time. Time cures all ales.....

[spotty]

You've been waiting to use that one haven't you ?

[dave500]

few years ago Terry my wife got some frozen food delivered packed in dry ice,being the mischievous but harmless little #$%* I am I took a load of the dry ice to work and we loaded a 1.25 litre green sprite lemonade bottle with it topped off with water,i got the cap on ok as its fizzed up and tossed it into the middle of the yard saying watch this fellas,well,nothing happened as it rolled along back toward us growing a bit bigger,so we stood around it waiting for it to "pop"for a minute,so I booted it hoping to stir it up and as soon as my boot touched it went #$%*ING BOOM!no #$%* the guy next to me got airborne and I nearly fell over as all this plastic shrapnel hit my face and we got wet aswell,the bottle didn't just split it shattered like a wind blown jigsaw puzzle we were amazed!there was pieces all over and just the screw neck and most of the base intact the rest was little bitty pieces?and it was #$%*ing LOUD!great party prank im available for weddings and bar vitzmahs.

[ken65]

ha ha. Good one fellas. Enjoy the night. Another special type of moon to night. Have a look.
Peace.