Beach Brew

I bottled the IPA that will be named Glitter. I am trying to have a American glam rock theme with my American style beers and glitter rhymes with bitter so I figured it would do. I have not been able to come up with a name for the brown ale though.

Unfortunately I only had about 21l of this at bottling. I had been lazy and lost a bot when transferring to secondary. I also dry hopped the beer in secondary so lost a bit of beer to that too. The US56 yeast certainly attenuates very well. This beer has dropped down to 1.008. It is very bitter and has a lovely aroma and flavour from the Amarillo. Out of secondary it was probably a little harsh and grassy but I am sure it will mellow a little with time. I would expect it to be a little harsh having just come of a dry hopping. Can’t wait for two weeks to pass so I can taste it.

I have had a couple of disappointing beers recently so I am really looking forward to this one.

Slashdot | Is Piracy In the Consumers’ Best Interests?

I wish they would do this here. Most of the time all I want is the movie. The “Special Features” are normally complete rubbish. And who needs all that packaging anyway? Lets hope this idea gets a good run outside of China too.

As the temperature descends and we start drinking all the ales and stouts brewed over summer that are now maturing nicely the mind turns to brewing lagers. Lagers require a much cooler ferment so winter is the best time of year to brew them. With my setup I could brew them in the middle of summer if I wanted to but that would require a lot more cooling and a much higher power consumption.

After having a couple of Koestritzer at a local German pub and a taste of a friends Schwarzbier I have decided I need to make one. It is a style I really enjoy and one you don’t see much of here in Australia. I am still working out a recipe for this but I have just purchased a bag of German Pilsner malt so that will be the base. I will probably add some Chocolate wheat or carraffa to this to give the beer the nice dark colour and flavour whilst avoiding the harsh roasty flavours you can get from chocolate or black malt. I may put a little Munich malt in there too as it is a favourite of mine. I need to spend some time on this recipe and do a bit of reading though. I have Hallertau and Tettnang hops so they should fit well into this style.

I usually have two brews going at once as that is what the fridge I can temperature control has room for. So it makes sense to do two lagers at a time. I am thinking a Bohemian or German style Pilsner for the second brew. I’m not a big fan of lagers but this is one style I do enjoy with the right food and in the right conditions. I am hopefully getting some nice fresh NZ SaazB hops very soon which I would use in it. It won’t be perfectly to style as the SaazB are different. However, I like the beers I have had with the SaazB in them and would like to brew with them myself. I won’t be going through the Urquell triple decoction process either. That is something that would be quite difficult with my set up. For me the added effort would not be worth the result. That is not to say it won’t make a difference. I can’t comment on that, having not done a triple decoction, just that it is not something I would not be willing to do.

Then again I may just go for something off the wall and experimental. Though I don’t get too out of control with that kind of thing. I am not one to put fruit or other odd adjuncts in my beer. Those kind of things just don’t do it for me. If you want fruity flavours in beer you can select the right yeast and hops and control the fermentation to get them. I just stray well off style guides whilst still using traditional ingredients. I am thinking about this as I have not made many lagers and have not had great success with them. A pilsner is a very delicate style and doesn’t leave much room to hide faults so not really the best style to make.

news @ nature.com – Let there be light – Organic LEDs use fluorescence to pump up efficiency.

I saw this article and couldn’t resist blogging it when I thought of the title for the post. It is pretty cool though. In simple terms it uses OLEDs to produce the nice white light like we get from incandescent bulbs but with really high efficiency like fluorescent bulbs. It also allows the dimming control etc that we expect from incandescent bulbs. It is really quite an interesting technique. Worth a read.

Articulate: Cory Doctorow: No better price than free. April 14, 2006. ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corp)

This somebody that actually gets it. Corey writes some really interesting stuff and he understands that most people don’t want to read a whole book online. It just doesn’t work for most of us. From all reports he does quite well too.

Until recently he headed up the EFF in Europe too. He has moved on to something else now. I think he still blogs at Boing Boing though.

I have not named this beer yet, Best Bitter is the style. Some call it premium but it won’t break the 5% barrier so doesn’t really count as premium. This was a very simple recipe and I imagine close to it’s origins. Recipe is in a previous post but basically it was 95% ale malt and 5% crystal and used just EKG hops. Almost as simple a recipe as you can get. I used my favourite yeast which is the Wyeast 1318 London III Ale yeast. It gives nice fruity flavour and doesn’t attenuate too much so the beer retains some body.

The brew day went fairly well, mostly. Just as my kettle got to the boil I ran out of gas. So a trip to the service station for a refill. It was just after my first hop addition so I guess I got an extended first wort hopping. Other than that it was a very smooth brew day. It was a long one but I took everything pretty easy and didn’t get started til about ten, which is late for me.

The beer tasted great going into the fermenter and I am looking forward to drinking it.