Mark Staples

The day after Christmas is Bottling Day!  Laying down the Dark Ale for Autumn and Winter.  I had racked it 4-5 days beforehand.  Final gravity was 1.01, so it will be just under 5.5% ABV.

It’s been a madly busy year, with barely enough time to drink beer, let alone make any.  But on the weekend I managed to find an hour to put on a new batch.  Hopefully when the Christmas holidays come around in a couple of week I’ll find time to bottle it!

I’ve gone with a Cooper’s Dark Ale again – an old favorite, and nice in the winter when it will be ready.  I added cooper’s Brew Enhancer Type 2, and the original gravity was 1.038.

I said I’d report back on an experiment I started last November.  For the Chilli Lager I made with a 3kg malt kit, I primed half the batch in the normal way, and didn’t prime the remaining bottles.  The theory is that when using a full malt kit, after primary fermentation and bottling, there should be enough residual dextrins left to be slowly enzymatically converted into simple sugars and then be digested by the remaining yeast.  I’ve had a request to report on the outcome of the experiment.  So here is a status report.

A month ago I would have said that the unprimed bottles were basically flat.  My problem is that I don’t how long I should wait for these enzymes to act!  I had basically given up on the unprimed bottles, but last night I tried another sample, and there was some definite fizz going on.  It wasn’t nearly as active as the primed batch, but it certainly had more sparkle than some English beers I’ve had.  So, I’ll wait and see.   In the past I’ve had home brew improve over the course of a year in the bottle.  Perhaps that improvement was due to a similar process.

Nonetheless, my plan for future batches is to keep adding priming sugar before bottling.

A new brew on the last weekend of my short summer holidays – trying a Cooper’s Mexican Cerveza, with their Brew Enhancer Type 1. OG surprisingly high at 1.054! Sweet, light wort.

Last weekend was bottling day for the full malt chilli lager.  Normally when bottling, you add some “priming sugar” to each bottle.  This is a small amount of extra food that the residual yeast will consume.  Yeast produces two important by-products in fermentation – alcohol and carbon dioxide.  The former is the goal during primary fermentation, but the latter is the goal when adding priming sugar to the bottle. That’s what makes homebrew fizzy!

However, I have a fantastic homebrew book from CAMRA which contains an intriguing suggestion. It says (p142) that “the priming of beers made from the 3kg kits is optional”, because there will be more residual dextrins than a brew made with cane sugar. It notes that there is a tradeoff – “the best beers, particularly bottled beers, are usually not primed”, but that to bring the beer “into drinkale condition in the shortest possible time” priming sugar is required.

I am using a 3kg kit this time, so it’s an interesting idea not to add priming sugar.  But if I tried it and didn’t pan out, I’d be left with 20 litres of flat lager!  So I’ve tried an experiment – some bottles with priming sugar, and some without.  I’ll let you know how it goes…

Now I’ve settled in a little to my new place, I’ve had time to put on a new brew. On the train every day I pass a homebrew shop at Thornleigh, and recently I managed to visit.  A homebrew shop is a different experience to buying homebrew kits at the supermarket. There’s all sorts of specialist paraphernalia and ingredients. For example I finally managed to buy a test tube for my hydrometer, and a bottle filler.

I also bought a “full malt” kit – a 3kg tin, to which you just add water (and yeast) The result is supposed to be a richer more rounded taste than the more common 1.5kg kits which require the addition of sugar and/or “brew enhancers”.

It’s a lager kit from a local company called X-tract Brewing which I’d never heard of before. I threw in a half dozen small hot chillis, split lengthwise. Original Gravity was 1.041 to 1.043 on 2nd November. (Adjusted for temperature.) It was transferred to a secondary container (“racked”) a week later, with the specific gravity 1.011. I also removed the chillis then. Tasting showed a nice heat – noticeably tingly, but not overwhelming.

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.