Mark Staples

It’s been a cool summer in Sydney this year, and recently we’ve had a few particularly cool days , which I’ve taken to be the first stirrings of Autumn. This prompted me to get a batch of beer ready for Winter - a Cooper’s Dark Ale, with their Brew Enhancer Type 2. I’ve used this kit before, but this time I’m not doing anything fancy - just making plain ol’ beer.

A lime cordial last night - back to basics. It was based on the generic cordial recipe - 2kg sugar, 1.7L water, 18g citric acid, and 0.3L of juice and pared rinds from 8 limes. This batch had the most intense lime flavour. My working hypothesis is that this is due to the quality of the fruit - the limes were perhaps more fresh than I normally use, and very dark green.

Another cordial this weekend, this time using bulk white nectarines from the grocer. They were too hard to be eaten, but made good cordial. I used a nectarine instantiation of my father’s generic cordial recipe. He created this recipe based on Matt’s recipe for orange cordial, but tweaked it after various trials, and made it parametric on fruit.

The recipe e.g. for strawberries or whole fruit, creates a very thick syrupy cordial - thick enough to use as a topping for icrecream. Add water if you want a thinner cordial more similar to a shop-bought one.

Somewhat surprisingly to me, microwaving dry white sugar (below) does work. But, be careful. Your microwave may have a different power, the bowl will become super-hot, and you need to periodically stir the sugar, or it will melt around the edges. Also, when you add super-hot sugar to the fruit puree, be ready for the puree to instantly boil. Personally, I don’t microwave the sugar - I just chuck it into the puree cold, then boil the lot of it…

Generic Cordial Recipe

• To make 7x litres of cordial, use:
  5x litres of fruit puree (see below)
  5x kg of white sugar
  63x grams of citric acid (i.e. 9 grams/litre)

• Heat puree to boil and remove from heat
  Heat sugar in microwave (5 mins/kg)
• Combine all ingredients, stir until dissolved
• Bring to boil, boil until satisfied with sterilization (5 mins?)
• Cool until cold enough to pour into sterilized bottles

Fruit Purees

Ginger: use 100g ginger root per litre of finished cordial (i.e. per 5/7 lire of puree). Grate ginger root, boil with some water until soft (pressure-cook for 40 mins)?, puree in blender (two 30-sec bursts?), then make up planned quantity with water.
Strawberry: Use hulled strawberries and no added water. Don’t boil, mash before blending.
Passionfruit: Use pulp of 1 large passionfruit per 100ml of puree. Boil with some water (or pressure cook) for say 20 minutes to release pulp from seeds. Sieve to remove seeds, puree in blender, add water to achieve planned quantity.
Pineapple, mandarin, …: (boil, add water only as needed)

Cordials with Ginger
Make ginger cordial from ginger puree as above and blend with other cordial to taste (40% ginger cordial?)

All good things come to an end, and so it is with my Dark Chocolate Ale. My stores are generally getting low - now I’m left with only a couple of bottles of Spicy Ghost and a crate of Chilli Lager. Time for another brew.

Next week I’m off to Europe for a couple of weeks, presenting a paper at ME and another at NFP-SLA. I thought I should get some beer on so it can ferment while I’m away. (Exploit the parallelism inherent in the system!)

The Spicy Ghost was particularly nice, and my plan was to repeat that, but this time also adding some coriander seeds and orange rind to the wort, to approximate Hoegaarden blanche. Sadly they were out of Spicy Ghost at the shops, so instead I’ve used another Cascade Premium kit, this time the Pale Ale. I don’t know if the result will be anything like what I was originally hoping for, but I’m sure it’ll be quite drinkable.

Someone at work asked me for some bottles of chilli and lime lager to put in their sons’ Christmas stockings, and when I went rummaging around in the cellar, I reaslied that I was down to my last three bottles. With two now gone as Christmas presents, I’m left with one tallie, to drink some time in the future.

But, this Christmas holiday provides a perfect opportunity to get another brew on. Chilli beer seems to be ever in demand, so I put on a Chilli Lager yesterday. I used Cooper’s Lager and Cooper’s brew enhancer type 1. When I went shopping for chillis, I didn’t know exactly how hot they were, so I’ve bought and added to the wort one long chilli, and two smaller bullet chillis. We’ll see how hot it develops over time. Right now it’s making warm brewing smells in the laundry.

As well as making the occasional home-brew beer (since the early 90s), I’ve also been making “home-brew” cordials (since the late 90s). Last night I whipped up a quick lemon cordial. Lemons were cheap at Norton St Grocer, and I’d run so low on cordial that I’d had to buy some commercial stuff.

My cordials are based on a recipe given to me by Matt Davey, when we were sharing college housing in Cambridge. The original recipe as communicated to me is Matt’s Marvelous Orange Juice:

4 oranges or 3 oranges, 1 lemon

3 lbs sugar

3 pints water

1 1/2 oz citric acid

• Grate rind and squeeze juice (or pare the rinds and liquidise in a little water then strain into a saucepan)
• Boil sugar and water
• When boiling, add citric acid and juice
• Bring back to boil and remove from heat
• Bottle when cool

I can buy citric acid at the supermarket, near the baking powder. I usually grate the rind, and leave it in the bottles, at least while it’s aging.

I often make lime variants, but for the lemon cordial I did yesterday, I used maybe 6 lemons (and no oranges!). Like homebrew beer, the cordials are only worth drinking after a couple of months in the bottle.

My supplies of the chilli-and-lime lager are getting lower now, and it’s also about time to lay something down for Spring. I was hoping to do a wheat beer, but my local supermarkets weren’t stocking those. Instead I’ve just put on a “wheat inspired” draught beer - Cascade’s Spicy Ghost. I added Coopers Brew Enhancer Type 2 again - I’m not sure if it really makes things better, but it certainly doesn’t make it worse! There’s no sense messing with something that’s not broken.

Today (4th Dec), I put on a new brew, intended for next Winter. It’s a Cooper’s Dark Ale, with Cooper’s Brew Enhancer Type 2, and most of a block of Lindt 85% dark chocolate melted in. (Jill thought this was a bit of a waste, and that I should have just thrown in some cocoa powder instead.) “Chocolate” beer (especially chocolate stout) is usually made with “chocolate malt” (dark brown malted barley), not real chocolate, but chocolate in beer is a common home-brew recipe, and I see a few commercial chocolate beers are available now.

I tasted a second bottle of the Chilli and Lime Lager too. It’s smoother now after a few months in the bottle, but the taste of the chillis (not the heat) is pretty overwhelming. (I’m not sure if I can taste the Lime flavour at all.) So, I think next time back to my original recipe of just one hot chilli. But it’s still fit to drink.

Yesterday I bottled my Chilli and Lime Lager. Bottling is always a laborious and lengthy process of washing, sterilizing, filling, capping, and then cleaning up. But there’s a feeling of satisfaction when it’s over and you’ve created a few cases of beer. In a few months they might be drinkable.

I tasted the brew before bottling it, and I think it’ll be fairly different to my earlier Chilli Draft. Firstly it’s a lot less hot. This time I used mild chillis, but even though I used a dozen they didn’t stack up to the heat of the one hot chilli I used last time. Secondly there’s the Kaffir lime taste, which seems to have made the beer somewhat sour. You might expect sourness in a Porter, but it’s a bit of a surprise in a Lager. Well, only time will tell how these and other characteristics develop in the bottle.

I’ve finally collected enough empty bottles to let me do a batch of homebrew. So last weekend I put one on - my first since I moved to Sydney. It’s a Cascade Lager kit, with a Coopers Brew Enhancer Type 2 instead of my usual cane sugar.

I’m aiming to repeat an earlier successful brew (Chilli Draft - ho ho), except that instead of just adding chillis, I’m also adding some Kaffir lime leaves. So with any luck I’ll end up with a drinkable chilli and lime lager. My earlier chilli beer had a vaguely Mexican inspiration, but that’s now been twised by a strange mix of two other ideas: classic Thai tastes and classic English Lager and Lime.