Irish Red - Sneak Peek

Well the Irish Red beer I did as an All Grain brew came out last week. I snappied a photo of the newly created brew and compared with Kilkenny (Like Smithwick's in America)

I grabbed two glasses that are identical and poured a Kilkenny into the one on the left and my newly fermented brew on the right :D

The Irish Red ale is now bottle fermenting to add carbonation so you get head and bubbles. Complete post about this beer once its done with the two months of bottle fermentation.

Grab an Irish Red Ale this weekend and try them!

Honey - Is there a difference?

Following on from my Farmers Market - Potato post I am going to show how honey can be so much more then the common bought honey.

Most honey, especially in heavily developed countries or mass production countries (ie America :P ) produce honey by feeding bees on sugar water! (Here is your corn sugar at work again). It produces a sub-lime honey that is put into all sorts of things. This is done because the bees can be contained and feed in a systematic way to produce a consistent product. This is also leading to problems with diseases in bees etc (You mean intense farming is bad?)

Anyhow! I am an up and coming brewer of drinks that make people happy and invite discussions on such topics as this and help to add to the population through unintended sexual relations.

One of those drinks is Mead. Honey, water, yeast, and some acid. Easy right? Sounds boring. I mean... Beer has tons of varieties! Pale Ale, Wheat Beer, Porters, Red Ales, and so on! Mead is just honey, can't be much in the way of things to do there? Sure you can add crap to the honey but its all based on Honey.

Well sorry to say but Honey can be so varied it surprises me still. The smell and the flavor are completely different based on what the bees have been collecting from.

Each of these honey's is collected from hives working on different kind of environments. Macadamia trees, Garden Flowers, Bush Honey (Rain forest trees), etc. And as I said before each of these is so different from the next it is quite amazing.

So next time you are looking at honey in the supermarket have a closer look - it should say what kind of flower the honey primarily comes from. If it does not, corn sugar honey - YAWN.

Farmers Market - Potatoes

This might offend some people but this is my experience and if you are offended you should be looking to your own surroundings and asking why are things how they are?

It wasn't until I came to Australia that I found what a massive difference there is from the super market food to the farmers market and what kind of quality and variety there is different out there!

Solid example: We have a "Potato Man" who we go to, to buy potatoes! But they are all the same right? Right? WRONG. Potatoes are so much more then the common white varieties sold in supper markets and vary in color, texture, and flavor.

 Dutch Cream: Yellow flesh, one of the best potatoes ever!

Kipfler potatoes: Hard and waxy these long potatoes work great for long cooking and taste great! Great for things like salads

Pink Eye:

Royal Blue:

Kind Edward: (His favorite potato and one of my favorites!)

Nicola:

All of these are available at one area and range from $4.99 to $2.99 per kg that equates to $2.26 to $1.35 per pound.

These all taste and have different properties and are all useful in different ways! Once you have a dutch cream and a kind Edward side by side you'll never be wanting anything other then to have bags and bags of all these varieties instead of the common watery chat potatoes.

Trust me, give it a go!

Wheat Beer - Kit style

Well its the weekend so time to brew up a storm!

I was going to do an all grain wheat beer brew (and still plan to) but I have run out of time, so I went down and grabbed the following


WB-06 Wheat Yeast
Imported Bavarian Wheat (Brew Craft)
Wheat Malt Extract (Coopers)
Hop Bag - Hallertau

This will sit in the brewing fridge for 3+ weeks which is longer then I normally let things go but I have been reading some interesting things about letting the first fermentation go for longer.

After this Kit Wheat I plan on doing an all grain wheat with 90% wheat where this style here is only 50% wheat.

If your reading this via reader then you won't see the side panel on the blog so since I am out of interesting shit to say I'll spew out the sideboard here.

Currently Drinking:
Store bought :(

Currently Aging:
Sparkling mead (18%) (April 12th)
Indian Pale Ale (Kit with added grains) (April 28th)
Irish Red Ale (all grain) (June 12th)

Currently Brewing:
Wheat Beer (kit) (April 17th)
Mead (10%) (May 1st done)
Braggot Mead (15%) (May 18th done)

Next to Brew:
Wheat Beer (All Grain)

Braggot Mead

Greetings all! The wife has the camera with her so no photos on this post.

Last week I started planning a Braggot Mead which is malt and honey, so think beer and honey with wine yeast.

So on with the recipe first!

500g Bush Honey
500g Rose Garden Honey
800g Pale Malt Grain
200g Light Crystal Grain
8 Cloves
2 Tea Bags
6 Liters filtered water
1 Demijohn
2 Pots
1 tea spoon Wine yeast
1 tea spoon Yeast Nutrient

So! I thought, I have all this left over grain and all this left over honey why not do a Braggot! It sounds cool Braggot. Go ahead give it a roll off the tong. BraaaaGOT!

So! I diverted from the normal school of thought that you boil the honey! Most mead recipes seem to come from beer makers and the boil is essential for killing off all bacteria and the work it does with the proteins. However! Like my other posts about mead I prescribe to the 68 degrees for 22 minutes for the honey to kill of the organisms that live in honey, but this deviates from beer making; So I combined the procedures into one limbo dance of justice and peace.

1. Poor your 5L of water into the first pot and bring to 75C.

2. Dump your grains in - I use a Brew Bag (google it)

3. Check the temp is about 65, insulate the pot if you can with towles etc. Check ever 15 minutes until 90 minutes have passed.

4. Heat the remaining 1L of water in the 2nd pot and sparge with the last 1L of water (Poor the water over the grains)into the first pot.

5. Bring to a rolling boil

6. Add cloves

7. 60 minutes later remove from heat and measure the temperature carefully! When it reaches 68C add the honey

8. Insulate and check every 3-5 minutes for 22 minutes.

9. While you are checking the Braggot wort - make up a tea cup of yeast, yeast nutrient and filtered water and let warm near pot. This gets the yeast party started early!

10. After 22 minutes aerate the wort. I don't own a aerator yet so I did the trick of pouring the wort between the two pots back and forth over and over and over and over till my arms fell off.

11. Add to demijohn and cool the wort down to 24-25C

12. Add your yeast party and top with an air lock!

13. Mark your calendar for 8 weeks, put it in the brew fridge and forget about it

This mead should be a spicy and full body wine. It might not fit the Australian climate but until it's brewed and aged we will never know!