On His Master's Voice

I plunged my nose deep into the glass and sucked in a long, slow breath, savouring the rich smells that swirled out of the glass.

"Mmmmmmm, you can really smell the dark fruits and winter spices."

Bec glanced over at me, as she walked out of the kitchen leading our two-year-old by the hand, "C'mon Audrey, let's go to the bathroom, Dad is being a beer wanker."

Well, that didn't take long, did it!

I was tasting Little Creatures' latest single batch, Day of the Long Shadow. I still haven't drunk one, it was Bec's glass that I was sticking my nose into. I think I'm a little scared of the 8.9% alcohol, and 4 standard drinks in a single bottle. But it is waiting in my fridge, crammed in and standing shoulder to shoudler with the eggs and the soy sauce and the milk. Our fridge is full almost to bursting point. The reason being that it's currently hoarding our normal foodie contents plus all the contents of our drinks fridge. I'll get to why in a minute.

My first batch of beer has been nervously put together; the washing and sanitizing of old fermenters that had been sleeping under a blanket of dust in the back shed, the trip to the homebrew store to pick up a basic extract kit and a few other essentials while firing questions at the staff member there, being a little deflated by the unenthusiastic answers that came back from said staff member, grinning at the smell of the hops before adding them to the boiling wort, looking up the word wort in the dictionary, checking the temperature of the fermenter every few hours to see how she was travelling. And that's where I've kind of come undone. Temperature control.

From all reports, you want to keep that fermenter at a pretty constant 18-20 degrees during the 1-2 weeks of fermentation. Well, my first problem here came when the stick-on thermometer on the outside of the fermenter didn't work. The fermenter has been bubbling away, so it's not a complete disaster, but trying to keep the temperature of the back room in my shed constant has been nigh on impossible.

My solution to this, for my second batch, is to tranform our 1950s His Masters Voice fridge from drinks fridge to fermenting fridge. The fridge is a classic, and was the first ever fridge that my wife's grand parents bought. It still works amazingly well, to the point that if you have the thermostat control set to normal, it will freeze everything. It took me a full 24 hours to defrost all the ice that had formed around the freezer chest. But it now stands proudly in the shed, ready and waiting to give that fermenter a great big warm hug.

The first batch is now resting up, with fermentation almost complete and bottling scheduled for next weekend. I've had a taste. I didn't vomit. I'll take that as a win.

On brewing freedom

When my wife and I first got together, I thought all red wine tasted the same. I had no idea. Merlot, shiraz, cabernet, I couldn't tell the difference. It wasn't until she dragged me to a few wineries where I could taste a whole bunch of different varieties side-by-side that I really began to appreciate the here-I-am punch of a big shiraz and dismiss the blandness of another is-that-it merlot.

Well, it's gotta be the same with beers right? The difference between a lager, a pale ale, a pilsner, a wheat beer, I've got that. But it's the differences within these varieties that I'm interested in. Whilst one of the reasons I'm home brewing is to understand how different ingredients impact on a beer, I'm also keen to develop my palate and begin to appreciate the subtle differences between beers that, on first tasting, may appear to be the same. It's not about becoming a beer snob. Man, that's the last thing I want to happen, and if you ever sense I'm heading down that path feel free to buy me a can of VB and force me to drink it. It's more about a curiosity to understand the how's and why's of things.

It was with this in mind that I popped into Uncle Dan's on the way home from work on Friday to pick up a couple of beers. I'd been hearing some good things about McLaren Vale's new IPA, and was keen to give it a try alongside whatever other IPA's they had on the shelves. Drink a few side by side and see how they differed.

I'd actually headed to my old stomping ground at Carwyn Cellars in Thornbury before hitting up Dan Murphy's, only to find the store opposite Flinders St had closed. I was pretty disappointed to see this, given it was one of the best local bottle shops around, stocking an amazing selection of local and imported beers.

When I mentioned this to my wife later that night, she set me straight:

"No, it hasn't closed, it has just moved up the road a bit."

"Really? That's good. Whereabouts exactly?"

"You don't remember? Dave, we drove past it together about three weeks ago."

"You sure?"

"We talked about it in the car for like five minutes!"

"Really?"

"You're an idiot."

Back at Dan's, I grabbed a four pack of the Vale IPA before noticing a guy doing beer tastings in one of the aisles. It was the owner and head brewer at Grand Ridge brewery in Mirboo North, Eric Walters. We got chatting while he continuously topped up my shot glass with each of their beers. Looking at the IPA in my basket, he made some not-so-subtle comments on the disappointing flavour and its contract brewing origins, and I shamefully returned it to the shelf.

I've always been a fan of Grand Ridge, particularly of their wheat beer, and I picked his brain about various brews, the state of the industry, the ideological compromise of shopping at and supplying to Dan Murphys, and the potency of their wonderful Moonshine Scotch Ale. I was curious how they settled on the recipe for the Moonshine, and he regaled me with the story of them buying out the Strzlecki Brewery when they were starting out. The brewers there had developed a Scotch Ale called 1080, with the name coming from the specific gravity of the beer. Turns out 1080 was also a rabbit poison, and the beer with those labels was banned and the owners of the brewery poised to pour the beer down the sink.

Enter Eric, who after buying the brewery and their stock, put a sticker over the labels saying "banned beer", and promptly sold it all in three days. The revenue paid for nearly half the brewery he bought. With a few minor alterations to the recipe, Grand Ridge had their Scotch Ale, and Moonshine was a logical choice for a beer that had once been banned, right?

After half an hour or so of chatting, I loaded up a slab of Grand Ridge and headed home. Sure, I'd gone in there to buy no more than a handful of beers, and walked out with 24. But he was generous with his time, and answered all my no-doubt inane questions.

The next day I headed to the pub for the first time in months and months and months, and to my pleasant surprise they had the Vale IPA on tap. Hello boys. I ordered a pint, and can report here that it was indeed absolutely lovely, contract brewed or not. I drank two more, just to be sure. Yep, it really was fantastic. I can't tell you why, because, you know, undeveloped palate and all that.

But it was great. And it struck me that, when it comes to beers, you can be the most awarded brewery in the world, like Grand Ridge, and produce universally acclaimed beers, or you can be a guy in the back shed brewing your own, and it doesn't matter. What matters is, do I like how it tastes? What someone else thinks of a beer is irrelevant. If I like it, then it's a winner.

It's like my wife often says; if you want to put ice in your red wine, because that's how you like it, then go right ahead. Enjoy it. I'd like to keep this in the back of my mind when I'm brewing and tasting, to help prevent me wandering down the beer snob path.

There are no rules on how things must taste. And being able to brew a beer at home that tastes exactly how I like, yeah, that's got me a little bit excited.