Sick. Cheers mate.
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Toast Beer / Homebrew Thread
- Thread starter SpaceClef
- Start date
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Went to Wild Hop and Skigh yesterday. Tasting flight at Wild Hop was more generous than expected as was the tasting at Skigh. Had to tip out a bit of wine as I was driving. Good drops all round though - bought a couple of bottles of vino. Found the Wild Hop beers all very approachable but maybe a bit generic, and all of them were very dry/light bodied. The amber especially I wanted more malt and body but it had the same dry easy-drinking finish. I guess it’s to try and be as accessible as possible so no real surprises there. Good place though, and the food was ridiculous
Wild Hop is pretty highly rated for their food. For pub grub you won't find much better down there.
That red ale might have been done on purpose so it wasn't a thick, chewy Autumn beer. Something you can delete a few of on a hot day without feeling blergh.
Did you get into their NEIPAs? They do a good job of them, mind you there's plenty of breweries in Vic nailing the style so not something that might blow you away.
I was driving so I stuck to the lighter stuff + the WCIPA. Had a few sips of the session neipa though which was quite good while it was cold.
They definitely know what they’re doing with hops. Agree the food was top notch
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I go through phases in my lupulin threshold where I need a smack in the mouth of hops or something polar opposite.
I'm most of the way through my Carwyn box and the hippy beers have been my favourites with a couple of sour or farmhouse styles I wasn't expecting to enjoy. There's been a couple of misses amongst it, though.
I'm most of the way through my Carwyn box and the hippy beers have been my favourites with a couple of sour or farmhouse styles I wasn't expecting to enjoy. There's been a couple of misses amongst it, though.
Yeah we have only had the hoppy beers out of our box so far (plus the doppelbock) because we missed two weeks due to covid taste-loss. So figured the non hoppy beers will last until I get back in melb in mid-January, but the plethora of TIPAs and DIPAs might not last the journey.
Saying that though some of them have seemed like they’d benefit from another few weeks of conditioning regardless. So I think we only drank like 6 from the box so far - got a few to catch up on.
Agree a hop blast is good sometimes. Often though I find the aroma is super potent but the flavour doesn’t live up to it. Awesome when they both align though
I too have had an infected pale ale in the fermenter.
Lol, this one was deliberate tho, I promise
Bender_
X
Taking a bit of time off from brewing, but the ideas still flow and thinking I might make a few with the intention of storing.
Considerations so far; Baltic porter, Belgian dark strong and a Helles in spring to lager until summer. Toying with the notion of doing a real sour, but seems like a whole bunch of *ery.
Considerations so far; Baltic porter, Belgian dark strong and a Helles in spring to lager until summer. Toying with the notion of doing a real sour, but seems like a whole bunch of *ery.
Nah real sours are easy. The people who talk about it just like to make it sound more complicated than it is
Flanders red
Bender_
X
Made a 17L batch on the weekend and split it between two small fermenters. I scrounged all the random yeast dregs that I had in the fridge to make two different beers with the same wort.
One fermenter got three strains of English yeast (two which were blended in saved slurry from a previous batch, and one dry yeast sachet)
The other fermenter got an array of bottle dregs that I had saved from various funky saisons, some mixed ferment slurry from an old sour I made, and a sprinkling of another half used dry yeast sachet with an expiry date of July 2022. Dropped in a few hop pellets to try and stave off the lacto bacteria
Safe to say I won’t be able to replicate these two beers again if they turn out alright!
One fermenter got three strains of English yeast (two which were blended in saved slurry from a previous batch, and one dry yeast sachet)
The other fermenter got an array of bottle dregs that I had saved from various funky saisons, some mixed ferment slurry from an old sour I made, and a sprinkling of another half used dry yeast sachet with an expiry date of July 2022. Dropped in a few hop pellets to try and stave off the lacto bacteria
Safe to say I won’t be able to replicate these two beers again if they turn out alright!
Bender_
X
Decided on (in the coming months):
Schwarzbier
Aussie lager
El Dorado IPA
Vanilla oatmeal stout
The first 3 kegged, the stout bottled.
Schwarzbier
Aussie lager
El Dorado IPA
Vanilla oatmeal stout
The first 3 kegged, the stout bottled.
Bender_
X
These sound great, can't wait to see and hear about them.
Couldn't you pitch onto the dregs once these are done if they're worth replicating? Hopefully you end up with something pretty complex!
I figured I was more about quantity of styles over quality at the moment. I only have one beer in a keg, one cider, and a bunch of old sour stuff in bottles so I wanted a couple of different styles to add to the rotation.
Hoping the saison batch doesn’t get sour as I want to keg it and drink it early.
Both are only around 1.043 so that they’d ferment and condition fairly quickly. And be easy to drink
Yeah I thought about that after I hit send and flushed the toilet tbh
Bender_
X
So how'd this go?
Was 37 degrees but good fun picking 100kg of grapes near Heathcote, Vic. I sold split 40kg with another member of my homebrew club and shared the use of the crusher/destemmer, which squashes and destems whole boxes of grapes in seconds
After 5-6 hours I separated 3L of juice to ferment that as a full bodied rose/light red. I added some mixed culture from a brett saison in with the red wine yeast I bought. That will be finished first and I’ll carbonate in champagne bottles.
The rest of the 50L of grape must is sitting refrigerated in buckets, doing a ‘cold soak’ as that apparently helps with colour absorption and other things, but also because I’m waiting on my friend to be ready to pitch the yeast etc with me. It’ll be 3 buckets with about 16L in each bucket. I’ll use two different yeasts and the one will have skins in the fermenter for longer. I also have French and American oak chips so I’ll mix that up a bit. Should end up with 3 different batches that I can blend as appropriate once it’s time to bottle. I’ll age in my surplus kegs.
After 5-6 hours I separated 3L of juice to ferment that as a full bodied rose/light red. I added some mixed culture from a brett saison in with the red wine yeast I bought. That will be finished first and I’ll carbonate in champagne bottles.
The rest of the 50L of grape must is sitting refrigerated in buckets, doing a ‘cold soak’ as that apparently helps with colour absorption and other things, but also because I’m waiting on my friend to be ready to pitch the yeast etc with me. It’ll be 3 buckets with about 16L in each bucket. I’ll use two different yeasts and the one will have skins in the fermenter for longer. I also have French and American oak chips so I’ll mix that up a bit. Should end up with 3 different batches that I can blend as appropriate once it’s time to bottle. I’ll age in my surplus kegs.
Main problem I’m having is working out the ph. I’m pretty sure they are not very acidic which is a problem with wine. But my ph meter is acting up and haven’t been able to get the calibration liquid. So my ph meter is saying 4.4 which is way way way more alkaline than you want - normally grape must is around 3.4. So I’m hesitant to adjust the acid content of the must until I get an accurate reading (you use 1 gram of tartaric acid per litre of must to adjust it 0.1 pH)
