Our first daytime brew day in quite some time, and this time we're making our second version of the Juice Boost Hazy IPA (formerly NEIPA). A slightly tweaked grain bill from the original and some new hop varieties, and our first beer using Lallemand's new Pomona yeast. Can't wait to see how this one turns out!
This was our second attempt at an amber ale, following on from our reasonably successful Headspace Amber Ale that we made last year. We changed the recipe slightly this time around, firstly as our local brew shop was out of the Gladfield Shepherd's Delight malt that we think really made the difference in our first attempt, but we also like to try out different hop varieties and malt combinations - and we feel we definitely learnt a few things after making this beer. A late change a couple of weeks after kegging actually seemed to turn this beer around, as to be honest, we weren't all that pleased with how it initially turned out, but in the end it turned out great!
Here's a quick run down from our latest brew day - our Cerveza Piñata Mexican Lager. We had a friend join us for this one, so we didn't capture as many photos as we normally would.
Third time's a charm, or so the saying goes, and it certainly was for us in this case. Our 3rd attempt at creating this iconic beer, and we feel like we've really nailed it this time. Although we can't take all the credit (refer to the original Recipe post for more detail on how the recipe we used came to be), we're certainly very pleased with how it turned out, and think this is the closest we're going to be able to get to replicating the original Stone & Wood Pacific Ale.
For homebrewing enthusiasts, having a personal kegging setup is often considered the ultimate goal. The advantages of kegging over bottling are well-established, with significant reductions in cleaning time and oxidation risk being the most notable. Additionally, the sheer enjoyment and ‘cool’ factor of serving your own beer from a tap at home is an experience that shouldn’t be underestimated.
Our second attempt at a Mexican lager and we're going for a slightly different approach and recipe. Although we're including the crucial ingredient in a Mexican lager - some kind of corn derivative like maize, we're going for a slightly darker beer than the usual pilsner malt base like we did in our first mexican lager (which turned out great).
This is our third attempt at trying to replicate this iconic beer, and we're hoping this attempt will be the closest and best one yet. Check out our previous post with the full recipe details that were apparently shared by an ex-Stone and Wood brewer.
It's actually been a little while since we blew through the keg of this one, however we had a couple of bottles from this batch sitting in our kegerator that we decided to enter along with our Mr Rice Guy Japanese Rice Lager into the 2024 NSW Homebrewing Competition.
We were pretty pleased with how this one turned out, and we actually decided to enter it into the 2024 NSW Homebrewing Competition where it claimed 3rd place in the pale lager category, which we're incredibly proud of, with a combined score of 73/100.
Another (brew) day under our belt - here's how it went.
We actually brewed this beer several months ago but negated to post it at the time (for a couple of reasons), but after recently entering this beer into the NSW Homebrewing Competition where it claimed second place in the pale lager category, we figured it's definitely worth sharing.
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We first looked at KegLand's Hop Bong just prior to it's release way back in 2022. It may have taken us a while, but we finally got our hands on one, so here's our hands on review based on our experience with it so far.
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Thinking of designing a dedicated space for your homebrewing adventures, and looking for some inspiration or ideas? This was us a couple of years ago when we were designing a new house. We were able to include a few brewing related additions to our design, in particular in the garage where at least part of it was going to be used for brewing. These inclusions have been paying dividends for us since we moved in, so we thought we'd share our experience on this.
Here's the run down from our latest brew day - our Flying Horses American Amber Ale. You can check out the link to the recipe at the bottom of this page.
Although it's the end of winter and spring just sprung, we're definitely in the mood for something hoppy and malty whilst the nights are still quite cool, so an amber ale seems to be in order. Our first attempt at an amber ale, dubbed Headspace, turned out great, so our next iteration of an American Amber Ale is quite similar but with a slightly adjusted grain bill and hop schedule, since we like to continuously change things up and keep it interesting.
In a previous blog post, we shared our anecdotal experience with excessive sulfate levels in beer, particularly in hop forward styles like IPA's. You view the article here, but in summary, we found that a number of our beers, all of which featured loads of hops added late in the boil and at dry hop, were completely lacking in hop aroma and flavour. On top of this, they had a harsh, astringent bitterness that overpowered everything else, and a strong malty sweetness. In short, these beers just weren't any good, and we ended up dumping a couple of them.
This would have to be one of the best pale ales we’ve ever made. There’s a few things we’d adjust slightly if we were to make it again, but overall we’re very pleased with how it turned out. A slight tweak in our water profile, namely moving away from the Brewfather hoppy profile and trying a reduced level of sulfate appears to have netted us some real improvements in hop aroma and flavour.
Back in August 2022, we got our hands on Keg King’s Apollo Titan fermenter, and it’s been our go-to fermenter ever since! The stainless steel construction is top-notch, and the small opening at the top gives us a reliable seal every time.
Our latest brew day was for our Mr Rice Guy - Japanese Rice Lager recipe. Here's how it went
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We're on a mission to try out all the different types of lagers, and next up is a Japanese rice lager. We're big fans of Japanese lagers, especially Asahi, so if we can whip up something even close to that, we'll be pretty happy.
Let's face it, brewing beer is a delightful blend of art and science, but nobody wants to spend eons stirring like a medieval alchemist. Enter the KegLand Premium Stainless Steel Drill Powered Mash Stirrer & Mixer (KL32247) - a bit like the superhero of your brewing toolkit.
Our inaugural attempt at crafting a sour beer has yielded delightful results that exceed our expectations. Utilizing Philly Sour yeast proved to be a winning choice, aligning closely with the experiences of others who have explored its capabilities.
Here’s a quick update to wrap things up – unfortunately, this brew didn’t make the cut (i.e., we ended up pouring it down the drain). It’s only the second time we’ve had to do this, but life’s too short to settle for subpar beer.
There's no disputing the importance of water when brewing your own beer - being the single biggest ingredient, it's critical you're using quality and good tasting water when making your beer. Unsurprisingly, if you're water quality and taste is poor, then this will likely have a detrimental impact on your beer.
We've had a couple of attempts at brewing the Stone & Wood Pacific Ale, and whilst our attempts have been OK, we're still not quite there in terms of accurately replicating this awesome beer.
Here's the rundown from our latest BrewZilla Brew Day for our Pacific Pale Ale
We've produced a couple of beers that haven't turned out recently - more specifically, they are way too bitter and really lacking any hop punch or aroma. We're thinking the culprit here may be excessive sulfate levels in our water profile (using the Brewfather Hoppy water profile), so for our next batch we're going to make a fairly simple "Pacific Ale" recipe - aptly named as a nod to the original Stone & Wood Pacific Ale that features galaxy hops and wheat malt.
The RAPT Pill from KegLand is an incredibly popular piece of homebrewing equipment, providing an affordable and easy to use way for brewers to monitor the progress of their fermentations. (If you're after more detail on exactly what the RAPT Pill does, check out our RAPT Pill Review).
We're big fans of Brulosophy, and every year they conduct a survey amongst the homebrewing community to gain various data points, and then share the results publicly via their website. It's pretty neat and a great way to gain some insights into trends in hombrewing.
This one has been on our to-brew list for some time now, so it's finally time we had a go at our first sour beer.
This article is going to be a bit of a brain dump, and perhaps a way to research and compile our own thoughts and evidence around this. As per the title, our latest challenge in our homebrewing journey has been a lack of hop flavour, but high bitterness in our West Coast IPA's.
This will be an ongoing post that we're hoping to continuously update with hop combinations we come across in our beer travels. They won't be in any particular order, so a "find" on the page might be the best way to locate a particular hop you're looking for, to see what other hops it has been paired with by commercial breweries.
Lagers are by far the most popular beer style in the world, so it makes sense that most brewers want to have a go at making one for themselves at some point. But when people begin diving into the world of homebrewing and researching how to make one themselves, they'll inevitably come across advice suggesting to steer clear as they can be more difficult to make than ales.
We've had this one kegged for some time now, and wanted to share our thoughts on how it turned out.
Our second attempt at a West Coast IPA, and finally a brew day that has gone largely to plan, with next to no problems or set backs! In some ways we've gone back to basics and what we know works well. More specifically, we've done away with our pump-operated sparging setup and gone back to good old manual batch sparging, as well as our trusty immersion chiller after repeated ongoing issues with our counter flow chiller not "flowing".
If you're serious about your homebrewing, you really have to be using some kind of software application to help manage the many aspects of brewing. From recipe design, to calculations, conversions and inventory management, a good piece of homebrewing software can make all these tasks so much simpler, and really are a must-have in your brewing line up.
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Our Mexican Lager has now been in the keg for several weeks, and although a lagering period isn't typically required when using NovaLager yeast, it has certainly benefited from a bit of maturing time to clear up visually, and to round out some of the flavours.
This will be our second attempt at a West Coast IPA. Our first version was pretty decent, but we overdid it with the malt and ended up with something a little too sweet for our liking. In this version we've dialed back the crystal/specialty malts, and put in some munich malt instead for a bit of complexity without being too overwhelming or distracting from the hops which should be taking centre stage. We're also going with a different hop combination to our previous version, just to keep things fresh and mix it up a bit.
These beers are big, with loads of hops as well as malt - and with a relatively high starting gravity they really need 2 packs of dry yeast to ensure a good fermentation and clean result. This tends to make them more expensive to brew so we don't do them all that often, but in any case it's still going to be significantly cheaper than buying around 19L of West Coast IPA!
We purchase hops in 100g packs, so for this recipe we're going with 4 different varieties and hence the name, "Awesome 4Some". The hop schedule has been calculated to utilise the full 400g of hops in total, starting with the calculations to hit the required IBU's for the 30 minute, 5 minute and whirlpool hop additions. Whatever is left over after this is what has been included in the dry hop which is why the numbers vary here. What we have done intentionally though is used Citra as the primary 30 minute addition to reduce it's dosage later on as we find it can really dominate in terms of flavour when dry hopping.
Batch Volume: 23L
Boil Time: 30 minutes
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75%
Original Gravity: 1.064
Final Gravity: 1.012
IBU (Tinseth): 64
BU/GU: 1.00
Colour: 11.8 EBC
Expected ABV: 6.8%
Temperature: 65°C - 60 minutes
Mash Out: 75°C - 10 minutes
5.7kg - Gladfield Ale Malt
0.7kg - Gladfield Munich Malt
0.1kg - Gladfield Toffee Malt
30 mins - Ekuanot - 27 IBU
5 mins - Ekuanot - 5 IBU
5 mins - Centennial - 6 IBU
5 mins - Idaho #7 - 6 IBU
15 mins - Whirlpool/Hopstand @ 80°C - Amarillo - 5 IBU
15 mins - Whirlpool/Hopstand @ 80°C - Centennial - 5 IBU
15 mins - Whirlpool/Hopstand @ 80°C - Ekuanot - 5 IBU
15 mins - Whirlpool/Hopstand @ 80°C - Idaho #7 - 5 IBU
Dry Hop - Amarillo - 41g - 3 days
Dry Hop - Centennial - 13g - 3 days
Dry Hop - Ekuanot - 54g - 3 days
Dry Hop - Idaho #7 - 50g - 3 days
Fermentis SafAle US-05 (2 packets - dry)
18°C - 12 days
2.4 CO2-vol
Ca2+ (Calcium): 110
Mg2+ (Magnesium): 18
Na+ (Sodium): 17
Cl- (Chloride): 49
SO42- (Sulfate): 267
HCO3- (Bicarbonate): 48
Check out our link below to the Brew Day for this recipe!
It seems that lately we've been having at least some kind of problem our set back every time we brew a batch of beer. Well, this one was no exception, and whilst the problem we encountered ultimately wasn't a huge deal, it certainly could have been a bit worse, and gave us a timely reminder that making beer can sometimes be dangerous. Read on to find out more about what happened.
Starting out with our grain which we got from 41 Pints of Beer - it's a simple grist consisting of pilsner malt, and some chit barley malt. Check out our recipe post for all the details.
Mexican Lager's typically feature some type of corn product in addition to the base malt, which would typically be flaked maize, however we opted to use polenta (cornmeal) for this one (more info on this in the recipe post)
We also added some rice hulls to the grist as we weren't sure exactly how thick it would get with the polenta being added
And good thing we did, with the second sample giving us a reading of 5.48 - comfortably within the optimal range we were aiming for.
Next we began our batch sparging - we opted to revert for our old 'manual' sparging process using a simple jug to pour the water from our Digiboil sparge water heater, over the top of the grain bed.
And this is where things went wrong. Whilst we were stirring, we managed to move the grain basket enough so it slipped off the steel ring that supports it, and it landed back into the BrewZilla with the full force and weight of all the grain inside, which displaced a fair amount of wort (probably around 80°C-90°C) all over the floor, and our feet!
We were wearing socks at the time which no doubt helped prevent our feet from getting scolded (though it still certainly hurt!), and our epoxy covered floor sure came into it's own with everything being wiped/mopped up fairly easily - though we suspect some did make it's way under things in the garage which can't easily be moved. This was certainly a reminder to us that when dealing with hot liquids like this, some extra care is definitely warranted, so we'll definitely be more careful when stirring a grain bed whilst sparging in the future!
Needless to say, we didn't capture any photos of this period, so moving on!
As a result of the lost wort, we ended up with a couple of litres less volume than expected, with only a touch over 25L of pre-boil volume.
We did however exceed our estimated pre-boil gravity, with a reading of 1.040 (expected 1.037) - this is potentially directly related to the lost wort and some of the sparge water, but we'll take it as the silver lining for this 'cloud'.
After an uneventful boil, we began chilling our wort using our immersion chiller. We gave the counter flow chiller one last try with this batch but we couldn't get the wort pumping through it again so we're going to retire that particular piece of equipment for now and stick with what we know works for us every time. We may even look at upgrading to a copper immersion chiller in the near future.
And finally, we transferred to our Apollo Titan fermenter and left it overnight in our fermentation fridge to reach pitching temperature
This is our second batch with NovaLager yeast so we're looking forward to seeing how this one turns out
Fermentation completed in only a few days with a final gravity of 1.006 - 1 point lower than expected
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