Casey's Beer

The pale beer split batch from November 3 is kegged, gassed, and now on tap at St Marys. Recapping, I brewed a wort, divided it in two, and fermented each half with a different strain of ale yeast. There is a distinct difference between the two beers. They are still quite young and it will be interesting to see how they mature and what happens to the differences between them. I will welcome any comments.

A fortnight ago we went up to Maitland for the Bitter and Twisted beer festival. Drove up on the Sunday morning in the pouring rain. We found where we were staying, a motel on the highway and then drove over to find where the gaol was. The old Maitland gaol is the venue for the festival. Took the car back to the motel and then strolled back to the festival. By this time the weather had eased back to intermittent rain.

I was disappointed by the beer. There were a couple of nice beers from Murrays and Hunter Brewing, and the bottled Brit beers were good as well. But overall, I thought there would have been more small breweries. Unfortunately I missed the Four Pines from Manly – it was wet and getting on. I’m probably doing them an injustice, but Bitch Brewing from Victoria with a 6 or so per cent pale lager and cheesey slogans like “Life’s a bitch” put me right off even trying the beer.

However, the food was good although a bit pricey – but what do you expect at something like this.

I found the gaol depressing, there’s one part where you can wander through some of the old cells. I originally trained as a psychiatric nurse, so I have been in the incarceration business. The layouts, and the precautions found in the layouts, are much the same regardless of the institution. But this is Australia, we have always been big on incarceration.

My main purpose in going was to see if it would be worthwhile taking a stand there next year. I am not sure. I need more information. I was disappointed that most of the brewery stalls did not have any real back up marketing. If you go to an event like this you are pretty much giving the beer away, there are the costs of the stand, any equipment hire costs, wages and insurance to consider. To make that expenditure worthwhile you have to generate extra sales from it. Otherwise what’s the point?

On Wednesday evening I went into town to meet with Andrew Larsen, the brewing consultant. Earlier in the year there were a few possible breweries available. One in particular just seemed to get better all the time. “But wait there’s more.” Buy this week and you will get a free yeast propogator etc. Unfortunately I did not have money in place.

Since having the money for equipment in place, supply seemed to dry up. It has been partly seasonal. If you were expanding your brewery you would wait until the quietest time of year for the shut down. You would brew like mad over the summer peak and then continue to brew like mad to build up stock to cover the shut down period, which of course would be winter. We are now coming into the northern winter and a few breweries are becoming available.

Two are definitely available. One is a very nice looking 15 US barrel system, we are still waiting for the full inventory of equipment – filter, hoses, fittings etc. The other is also a 15 barrel system. it includes a small bottling line with a 4 head Meheen filler. I want a 6 head filler so that rules out that bottling line. I would also prefer new packaging plant because second hand plant with lots of moving parts can just be grief. Anyway two valuations have been done on this second set of plant, and both put the owner’s asking price at 30% too much. So would the owner split the brewing and packaging plant, and would he accept a more realistic price? More information should be available over the next week or so.

There is a cheap bitzer available, but it’s probably not what I am looking for. There are also a couple of other possibilities in the pipeline. Again, things should become clearer over the next week or so.

For Andrew to go to the US to inspect equipment, and haggle, there needs to be 3 or 4 sets of equipment available. The next week or so should prove interesting.

On Monday I did my first day with Matt Donelan down at the St Peters Brewery. I will be working there every second Monday.

Matt brewed a pilsner, a new beer to add to his range. It’s available on tap at The Hive Bar in Erskineville and down at the Pump House at Darling Harbour. Very tasty it was. It should also be available in bottles early next year.

I also learnt a lot, directly and indirectly, covering topics such as mash tun cleaning, Stokes law (or why a whirlpool works), brewery bookkeeping and the golden rule of pumping liquids. Always check to see the liquid you are pumping is going where it’s supposed to be going. It’s a great piece of practical advice, rather like my first day of psychiatric nursing, back in January 1978, when an old charge nurse drew me aside and said, “Son, in this job you always wash your hands before you go to the toilet.”

On Sunday I brewed the pale beer. It is mostly pilsner malt with about 5% of a caramel malt and a touch of “salt and pepper”. The hops are Perle and Saaz to about 28 International Bitterness Units.

I brewed about 26 litres and divided the wort into two halves, pitching each half with a different strain of yeast.

Having a taste last night, about 28 hours after pitching there is already an obvious taste difference between the two gyles. They will be on tap at the shop here at St Marys for a side by side comparison.

As far as recipes go, grain bills and hopping schedules are less than half of the equation. It’s yeast and fermentation which are the critical elements. Over half the flavour compounds in beer are produced by yeast. Fermentation by-products are also important contributors to the mouthfeel of any particular beer – ales and lagers have different mouthfeels.

For a well balanced beer you need to match the flocculation characteristics with mash temperature. Generally a more flocculent yeast will leave a slightly sweeter wort so mash a little cooler. For a less flocculent yeast you can mash a bit warmer. The proportion of caramel malts should also be decided in reference to yeast flocculation and mash temperature.

Small breweries tend to prefer more flocculent yeasts as the beer will clear more readily. This lightens the filtering load. In this case mash temperatures should be a bit lower, but I find that a lot of domestic micro-brewed beers tend to be overly sweet. There is a pernicious homebrew furphy that warmer mash temperatures equate to a maltier beer. It is wrong, but I do wonder about the influence of this furphy on small breweries.

Thd black beer of Sunday October 25 has been kegged and is being hastily gassed. Stocks at home are nil. The grain bill was somewhat different to the previous black beer – a lot more chocolate malt. I’ll find out this evening how it compares to the previous black beer.