On living North Northside

Six months since my last post?! For reals?! Damn.

Well, there's a reason I haven't written for six months, and I mean a reason other than my enviable ability to procrastinate like a bored 16 year old standing at an open fridge moaning "I'm bored".

Me and my beautiful ladies have moved further Northside, to let's say North Northside. Or, as some people call it, Bendigo. A new job, a new house (comes with free kangaroos in the yard!), new everything. So the brewing kinda got put on hold there for a while.

But where was I before all that went down - ah, I'd just bottled the Land of Chocolate Porter and the Splash Brothers Steam Ale. The Steam Ale was a fine brew, nowhere near the same league as its inspiration; Mountain Goat Steam Ale, but a drinkable beer no doubt, with hints of straw that I loved.

The Land of Chocolate Porter was a smashing success; a little lighter on the chocolate than I'd probably hoped, but given we used a 70% dark chocolate rather than the called for pure cocoa that was no surprise. What was the surprise was the beer was still nicely balanced, with a dark roasted coffee backbone and just a hint of sweetness. Watching the Tour de France late at night with a pint of this in the hand, and a block of dark chocolate on the couch next to me was heaven.

I also managed to get one last brew out before we moved, an extract pale ale built on lashings of Tasmanian Galaxy hops, mingled with a handful of Cascade hops. PAFT Pale Ale. What a Banger!

Here up north, the brewing set-up at the new house is still being sorted out. But the exciting thing is - kegs. Keeeegggsss! I bought a couple of kegs off a mate, and have been going about the wonderful job of converting a chest freezer into a keg fridge. Or keezer, as they're known, but I hate that name. Yet to come up with anything better though.

So, bought an old chest freezer on gumtree for $50. Bought an old piece of oregon timber from a reclaimed timber place. Enlisted the help of a mate with DIY skills, as the extent of my DIY knowledge is limited to changing the channel on the TV, and my only DIY tool is a roll of electrical tape, and you're lucky I've even got that.

Got to sanding back the timber....

Cut it to size (with some sweet mitre cuts thanks to Nath and his manly drop-saw), another light sanding and screwed it together...

Then drilled some holes through the front for the taps...

Took the lid off the freezer, and made sure my kids could fit in there....

Then put a varnish on the timber.....

Siliconed up the inside, and glued the lid on the timber. The timber is hinged to the freezer body, so when the freezer is opened the timber collar goes with it. Helps get the taps out of the way when lifting kegs in and out, and means my puny arms don't have to lift full kegs quite so high to get 'em in. Score!

Then got to painting. Chalkboard paint on the lid....

And duck egg blue for the body. Doing my best to make this not look like a chest freezer. I'm keen for this thing to live in our lounge room, so it's gotta look the part.

Then pack up the house and move the whole shebang up North...

It's set up in the new house, but is currently a few days away from having the first keg put in there, so still a bit of work to do on the inside....

But I'm pretty damn stoked with how it's turned out so far. All things going to plan, I'll have a batch of PAFT Pale Ale (What a Banger!^TM) on tap for New Year's Eve.

Happy days!

Old Ladies Brewing

Luke and I had previously thrown around a few names for this home brewing caper, trying to come up with something that linked to our little girls given they were the reason we'd met in the first place. Our wives were in the same mother's group after having our first kids just a few weeks apart. Since then, we've both had another girl each.

Each of the four girls has a kinda old fashioned name; Evie (Luke's), Audrey (mine), Mabel (mine) and Esme (Luke's). Old Ladies Brewing. Has a nice ring to it I reckon.

Since doing another 23L of the original pale ale last month, we've knocked out a couple of half batches, one of a chocolate porter and another based upon Mountain Goat's Steam Ale. Given the smaller batches (about 10-11L each, or roughly a slab), we're likely to have a few different beers that are drinkable at any one time, and I've grown tired of looking at the cap to see the bottling date, then trying to remember what the hell we bottled that day (I have the memory of a confused Abe Simpson) before having to go back through my notes to find out exactly what beer is in the bottle.

So I had a quick mess around on ye olde photoshop to whip up a temporary label. Simple, easy to print at home, with a few different colours to quickly identify each beer in the fridge. Print 'em on plain paper, and stick 'em on with milk. I've got something a little more detailed in the works, but these will do until then. I'll still be sticking the labels on with milk, because the effectiveness of it kinda blows my mind. No wonder scrubbing old weet bix out of a bowl is harder than convincing a three-year-old to wear pants. That shit is like super glue.

I've cracked open the Ping Pong Pale. It's good without being great. Not as nice as the original version, but still good enough to give away to friends, which is pretty cool. The Splash Brothers Steam Ale, named after the Golden State Warriors backcourt duo of Klay Thompson and Steph Curry (I was brewing/bottling around the time the Warriors were carving up the Spurs early in the Western Conference semi-finals) and The Land of Chocolate Porter will be opened for tasting in another two weeks, just in time for late night Tour de France watching.

Viva le homebrew!

On overcoming frustration

As I stood watching and waiting for the beer to swirl down the drain in the shed, I was proud of the deep caramel colour. It damn near glowed in the sink, illuminated by the light that shone through the window. Holding the bottle upside down, and seeing the final few drips cling to the lip in helpless desperation, a little pang of sadness crept up on me. Actually, not really sadness, maybe more frustration. Because whilst the colour was gorgeous, what I wasn’t proud of was the taste.

This was Evie’s Special Bitter, the ESB that, when bottled, gave off that unmistakable green apple smell. After ten weeks in the bottle I wrote the following notes:

Evie’s Special Bitter remains somewhat of an enigma. After 10 weeks in the bottle it remains flat and lifeless, a limp excuse for a bitter, and is far too fruity. I maintain the faintest glimmer of hope that it will resurrect itself, like a homebrew version of John Travolta in Pulp Fiction, showing life where previously there has been little more than a flat-line, mocking with its unflinching blandness. But truth be told, I think I’m just fooling myself.

And fooling myself I was. Now, after six months in the bottle, it’s still no good. Barely drinkable. I tipped out most of the batch a few weeks ago, frustrated. But the frustration didn’t end there. I also tipped out the last few bottles of The Doc Wheat Beer that was brewed just before Christmas. It came out ok initially; it was a wheat beer, unmistakably. But the finish, that homebrew tang that lingered in your mouth, just could not be shaken. And after persevering with most of the batch, I’d simply had enough, and the last few bottles followed the ESB down the sink.

I went back through my notes, to see if I could pinpoint what went wrong, and, to my relief, found that these were the two brews that were fermented inside the house as opposed to in the temperature controlled fermentation fridge in the shed. Surely it was the fluctuating temperature in the house that led to these off flavours. Because the other brews, the Pale Ale, Bec’s Amber Ale, and the Ninja Tongue Lager that had fermented under careful temperature control, were all great successes.

Upon first opening though, Bec’s Amber Ale was a disappointment. After three weeks in the bottle it was like drinking a liquid version of one of those formulaic buddy-cop TV shows. You know the ones; The Mentalist or Bones or Castle or NCIS. All shiny and enjoyable on the surface, but with no depth, no subtlety, nothing to keep you coming back wanting more. Sure, all the elements were there; the deep amber colour, slight malt aroma, right amount of bubbles, but there was just no substance. I took a sip, and as I went to comment to Steve about what I thought (not bad, not great), it was already gone, as though it’d never even been in my mouth. It was too thin, with no depth of flavour.

But that all changed a few weeks later, when it suddenly grew another set of legs. It became wonderfully smooth, and where it was once a repeat episode of CSI, it now became an on-demand screening of Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock, a cracking winter’s tale that you could curl up on the couch with mid-week. Looking forward to the next series!

The reason the ESB and the Doc were brewed inside is because we did a lager, which sat in the fermenting fridge at 3 degrees for 10 weeks. Not sure I’d do another one, given the time it takes, but damn man it was a refreshing brew through the summer. It was ready just in time for Christmas, and didn’t last too long after.

Since then, it’s been quiet. My brewing buddy Luke had another baby, so everything kinda went on hold. And the disappointment of the ESB and the Doc meant my motivation was low. But no more my good friends, another round of the Pale Ale is being bottled tonight, and a Choc Porter is to be brewed tomorrow night.

Game on!