Aidan

Aug
23

Freedom Of Information Act Invoked For Obama’s Beer Recipe

General

by Aidan

Did you know that they brew their own beer at the White House? The beers include White House Honey Ale, White House Honey Porter and White House Honey Blonde Ale. All three use honey from Michelle Obama’s White House garden.

A home brewer has formally requested recipes for the beers made by White House staff under the Freedom Of Information Act. Here’s a copy of the request: Read the rest of this entry »

This post has no tag

Aug
13

First All Grain

Home Brewing

by Aidan

I just finished my first attempt at an all-grain brew tonight. The process was similar to my partial mash process except no malt extract was used. Due to the restrictions of brewing on top of my stove and available pots, I went for a smaller batch volume of 13 litres. I think it all went fine but the proof will be in the drinking. It will be very interesting to compare this with my previous partial mash batch which was a similarly hopped pale ale.

I mashed 3kg of grain, which I crushed in my converted pasta maker grain mill, in a bag in my 20L pot with 9 litres of water. I was shooting for a mash temp of 68C but the temp had actually crept up into the low 70s by the end of the mash due to me leaving the inner ring on at the lowest setting. Next time I’ll leave it off and see how well the pot holds the temp wrapped in a towel and ski jacket.

I batch sparged in my 12L pot with 7 litres of water poured over the top of the grain in the bag. Then I mixed the runnings in the 20L pot and got about 14 litres. I split these between 2 pots for the boil. My SG was 1.049, giving me a brewhouse efficiency of around 73% which I believe is quite decent for this type of mashing process.

I had a little bit of trouble getting a good rolling boil in my 20L pot as the bottom of the pot has a concave center which I think makes it much less efficient on the ceramic electric stovetop. Later on in the boil, when the volumes had reduced, I ended up ditching it altogether and putting the extra wort into another 5L pot.

I cooled in ice water. It took 30 minutes to get it down to 16.5C, so I overshot a bit (22C would have been fine) and didn’t actually need to spend quite as long cooling.

I ended up with about 11L in the fermentor after evaporation loss so I topped it up with cold water to my 13L target. After giving it a good shaking to aerate, I pitched the US05 yeast that I had harvested from the previous batch.

Fermentation got off to a quick start – the airlock was bubbling and krausen had formed as soon as I checked it in the morning.

See the recipe and specs here.

Tags: ale, all grain, american pale ale, brewing process, grain mill

1 comment

Jun
16

Plum Wine Bottled

Wine Making

by Aidan

I’ve just bottled the plum wine that I started making back in January. If you think the waiting in beer making is bad, try making wine! Five months until it’s even bottled, then a minimum recommended aging of at least six months. But as I do when bottling beer, I took the opportunity at bottling time to sample the product. And, well, I’ve got to say I’m pretty impressed at this point. Ok, it’s not the smoothest, finest wine but it’s more than drinkable in it’s current state. And if aging brings significant improvements, it’s going to be bloody good. The problem though is that it’s so drinkable right now that I reckon a lot of it’s going to be gone before the recommended aging period. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: bottling, plum wine, wine making

May
22

Homebrew Competition

Home Brewing

by Aidan

I entered my first homebrew competition on Sunday 20th May. The event, organisesd by SOBA Nelson and held at the Sprig & Fern in Nelson, was relaxed and informal. There were 30 different beers, entered by around 15 home brewers. The beers were judged by the entrants so we each had a chance to try 30 different beers. The overall standard was very good, there were a lot of top notch beers. My personal favorites (apart from my own of course) were Jason Bathgate’s Manuka Black Cofee Porter, Stink Hammer IPA, Smoked Moose Knuckle Brown Ale and Adam Tristram’s American Pale Ale. I was actually more impressed with the standard of beer at this event than what was on offer from the pros at this year’s Marchfest. Also it was a great chance to meet and socialise with other local home brewers.

(Still from Matt’s video)

My beers didn’t place but they seem to have been quite well recieved by most people. I entered two recent batches, batch 13, Double Cascade Pale Ale and batch 15, Digital(ish) IPA. I actually thought the heavily hopped IPA had the best chance of placing but it was the milder Pale Ale that got the more favourible reviews.

The results of the competition are posted here. My entries were nos. 3 and 4. Here’s are the scores and comments I got (as best I could make out from the scrawl on the judging sheets): Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Homebrew competition

Apr
23

The pasta maker grain mill

DIY,
Home Brewing

by Aidan

Proper grain mills can be expensive, especially here in New Zealand so when I found out that some home brewers were having success with converting cheap pasta makers into grain mills it seemed like something worth trying and I picked up one on TradeMe for $22. The rollers on a pasta maker are smooth and won’t pull in the grains so the first task is to roughen up the rollers. Reading through online forum discussions on this topic I learned that some people have disassembled the pasta maker, removed the rollers and got them knurled. But I also read about a much quicker and easier approach that also seems to work well and this is what I did. No need to disassemble, simply run a drill back and forth across the rollers and the drill bit will roughen up the surface of the rollers enough to allow them to bite on the grains and pull them through.

The next thing is to construct a hopper to feed the grains into the rollers. I’ve seen some examples online of fancy woodworking or metalworking skills being used to construct hoppers for the pasta grain mill, but again I opted for the path of least resistance – cardboard and duct tape!

And that’s pretty much it. The only other addition was a flat piece of cardboard to direct the crushed grains into a collection container. Here she is in action:

It can be powered with the hand crank that came with it, or by an electric drill.

I milled a few kilos of grain for my latest brew this weekend and I was pretty pleased with the results. I think I got a pretty good crush. The operation started off well but did start to go a bit slow after awhile. I came to the conclusion that my rollers were not quite rough enough so I wasn’t getting a strong bite on the grains and they were coming through quite slowly. I gave up on using the drill after awhile and went back to the hand crank as I found I was just spinning my wheels with the drill bit when I wasn’t getting enough traction and the slower speed of the hand crank was more effective. I got through all the grain that I needed for the recipe but planned on doing some further roughening on the rollers at another time. Here’s an example of the crush: Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: grain mill, home brewing, pasta maker

8 comments

Apr
16

Getting ready to do All Grain on the cheap

DIY,
Home Brewing

by Aidan

I’ll admit it, I’m a frugal home brewer. One of the original attractions to home-brewing for me was the cost savings aspect. But I notice a lot of home brewers get carried away by the hobby and spend a small fortune on all sorts of fancy gear. The home brewing experience for these gear obsessed home brewers turns into another avenue for excessive consumerism and materialism. If you worked out the total costs of some of these elaborate setups, I reckon some homebrewer’s beer ends up costing way more than the best craft beer you could buy. That would be a major ‘off-flavour’ for me. The fact that my beer costs a fraction of what I would have to buy it for is a great incentive for me and perhaps even does more for the perceived flavour of my beer than any fancy equipment could.

To date I’ve been brewing with a bare minimum of equipment: mostly just a 12L pot and and the original plastic fermenter + accessories kit that I first purchased to get into the hobby. With this minimum of equipment I’ve been able to make some pretty decent beer using extract and partial mash brewing methods, beer that I really enjoy making and drinking. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: all grain, brewing process, home brewing

Mar
06

Brewing Software Review – BrewMate

Home Brewing

by Aidan

Hey there, this post is a collaboration post with some other home brewing bloggers to review all the different brewing software applications that we use. Links to the other reviews are at the bottom of this post.

I came across BrewMate when I was looking for a free recipe calculator application. In the past I had played with the BeerSmith free trial version and then settled down on an Excel spreadsheet application called Kit & Extract Beer Designer which served my needs well until I started doing partial mashes. At that point I was considering buying a copy of the popular BeerSmith but first decided to have a look at some of the free brewing software apps available. Two of the apps that I looked at were QBrew and BrewMate. I found that either of those apps would have met my needs but I settled on BrewMate as it had more features, a nicer interface and has been updated more recently. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: brewing software, home brewing

Feb
22

Working my way through a 28kg bucket of malt extract!

Home Brewing

by Aidan

I found a local guy in Nelson that sells home brewing ingredients, Bill Fennell (website – ThatBeerPlace.com). I had a look through is his lists of supplies and the bulk malt extract caught my attention because it cost a fraction of what I usually pay for malt. The only snag was that it came in such large quantities, 28kg of malt extract is a lot of homebrewing! And liquid malt extract needs to be used up while it’s fresh so it’s not ideal to leave it hanging about for many months. Too much malt for me to handle in a short timeframe I thought.

Then some friends of mine decided to get into home brewing after tasting some of my beer. So I figured if we split a bucket between us it would be doable to use it up while it’s still fresh. Four batches each would see it all used up. So we ordered a bucket of Maltexo All Malt Light. I have 2 new batches in the fermentors now so I’m half way through my half. Here’s what I have brewing: Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: ale, american pale ale, ESB, extract brewing, home brewing

1 comment

Jan
20

Plum Wine

Wine Making

by Aidan

In addition to brewing beer I’ve also made a feijoa wine and distilled some spirits last April and now I’ve just started a batch of plum wine. I made a small batch of feijoa wine as we have a feijoa tree that produces lots of fruit. It turned out fairly good, a bit like a white wine with distinct feijoa flavour, but to be honest I would prefer a good Chardonnay, although I have to say it went particularly well with Thai food. We drunk it after about 3-4 months and now that I’ve done some more reading up on wine making, I’m thinking it would probably have benefited from significantly more aging. Maybe I’ll try some more this year when the feijoas are ripe. Also in April last year I distilled some spirits. I got the loan of a small air still from a friend and fermented up a batch of sugar wash and distilled it out. This resulted in a neutral spirit with which I made into gin, rum and feijoa liquor and I’m also currently making some limoncello with the last of the alcohol from that batch. The rum was simply made by adding Still Spirits rum essence. It was OK but tasted a bit artificial to me. The gin was made by infusion of juniper berries and various other spices and was really good, better than standard commercial gin in my opinion. The feijoa liquor was really good too and I’m looking forward to seeing how the limoncello turns out.

Now on to the Plum wine. Our plum tree was loaded with plums this year and after asking myself what am I going to do with all these plums the obvious answer came quickly. After looking at some plum wine recipes online this is what I came up with: Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: plum wine, wine making

Jan
17

Time for a Toucan

Home Brewing

by Aidan

A toucan brew is simply one done with 2 cans of pre-hopped extract. The Coopers Stout that I brewed last year tasted nice but I felt it lacked head and body. It was a bit on the light side and I reckoned it could benefit from more concentration. So it seemed an ideal candidate for a toucan. I did the toucan with a can of Coopers Stout and a can of Coopers Dark Ale and 500g of brown sugar as it seems like a popular toucan recipe on the AussieHomeBrewer.com forum, and it’s very simple – no steeping grains, no boiling hops. I was a wee bit concerned about the amount of bitterness which I calculated to be around 70 IBUs using the Kit & Extract Beer Designer, but was reassured on the forum that it doesn’t taste overly bitter especially when aged for awhile.

A Cunning Plan To Prevent A Messy Blow-over Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Blow out, Coopers Stout, home brewing, stout, toucan

Jan
14

Getting All Fancy!

Home Brewing

by Aidan

For some reason or other I’ve resisted putting labels on my home-brew beer bottles until now as frankly I thought it was just getting a bit silly. Instead I just marked each bottle with the batch number written on a piece of masking tape so that I could tell what’s in each bottle. But after 7 or 8 batches I started forgetting which beer matched each batch number, so finally I’ve come to see the usefulness of properly labeling the bottles. Last night I bottled batch no. 11, my second go at Slutty Red, and I added some fancy labels, well not overly fancy (and just black and white because my printer is out of colour cartridge), didn’t let myself get too carried away! Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: bottling, labels

8 comments

Dec
04

Time to ramp up production!

Home Brewing

by Aidan

I slacked off on the brewing during the winter, it seemed like I had an endless supply built up, but that ‘endless supply’ dwindled and was gone and I was spurred back into brewing action in October, brewing Batch #8. Then I brewed up Batch #9 last weekend, my first partial mash. But the thirsty days of summer are upon us already and so I had to do something about the pace of production. So time came to recommission my old extra fermenter, which I picked up earlier in the year to brew a sugar wash for distilling and a feijoa wine. And now for the first time I’ve got 2 fermenters going at the same time. Here’s what I’ve got brewing: Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: ale, american pale ale, extract brewing, home brewing, partial mash

Nov
25

My Partial Mash Brewing Process

by Aidan

The next step in home brewing that I’m going to take is to do a partial mash. I’ve discovered a partial mash is actually quite similar to doing an extract brew with steeping grains. It just involves more grains soaked for longer time with a bit more attention to temperature and ratio of water to grain. And I don’t need any additional equipment, so really it doesn’t seem like a major step to make, but I’m writing up the process anyway in order to highlight the differences. Since it’s quite similar to extract brewing and I’m using the same equipment I’ll use my extract brewing process as a basis for this. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: brewing process, home brewing, partial mash

Oct
18

A review of my first 7 brews

Home Brewing

by Aidan

I’ve documented the process of making my beers here but haven’t yet reported on how they all turned out so it’s high time for a bit of a review.

Batch 1 – Kit Brew – Mangrove Jacks Munich Lager

A special one because it was my first, but actually I think it was one of the best, if not the best, of the 4 kit brews that I’ve done. As with most kit lagers this is a ‘pseudo-lager’ as it’s brewed with an ale yeast, so, although not true to style, it is still a good beer and got very good reviews from friends who tasted it. Being a kit brew it is lightly hopped but none-the-less very tasty.

Batch 2 – Kit Brew – Blackrock East India Pale Ale

This kit would disappoint anyone looking for an IPA because it is most definitely not an IPA in style. It is more like a lightly hopped kit pseudo-lager than an IPA. I brewed it with beer enhancer and made it up to 18 litres instead of the usual 23 litres to make it more concentrated. I would describe it as more malty than hoppy and none of the bitterness you would expect from an IPA. That said, it still was a good tasty beer, just a bit daft that they call it an IPA.

Batch 3 – Extract Brew with Speciality Grains – All Cascade APA

My first attempt at extract brewing was a real winner. It tasted like a good beer that you would get from a micro-brewery. I think this might just be my favorite one to-date.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: ale, amber ale, american pale ale, beer review, Coopers Stout, extract brewing, home brewing, ipa, lager, stout, taste test

Oct
17

Batch No. 8 – Cascade & Amarillo American Pale Ale

Home Brewing

by Aidan

Despite being over 6 months since I brewed an extract batch, brew night went more smoothly and efficiently than any of the previous extract brews that I’ve done (I must be getting the hang of this home brewing thing!).

This time I used the blender to grind up my steeping grain (Crystal 60) – not totally ideal as it gives an uneven grind (pulverises some of the grains and leaves others almost untouched), but I reckon good enough for steeping grains and a lot faster than pounding with a pestle.

The other interesting thing this time is that I uesd yeast that I harvested 6 months ago. It’s stretching it a bit in terms of how long yeast stored in the fridge is good for. I prepared a starter Friday night with the intention of brewing Saturday night but come Saturday there was no signs of any action out of the yeast. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: ale, american pale ale, extract brewing, harvested yeast, home brewing

Oct
16

No The Homebrew Didn’t Kill Me!

Home Brewing

by Aidan

It’s been a while since I posted here and a logical thinker may surmise that I might have succumbed to the effects of drinking my home brew. I’m happy to report that is not the case. I’ve had a bit of a break from the homebrewing over the winter. But now I’m just about to get stuck in to a new batch, batch #8. In case you’re wondering, batch #7 was a Cooper’s European Lager which turned out nicely.

Tonight I’m going to brew my favorite style, American Pale Ale. But I still haven’t quite decided what hops I’m going to go with. I have some Simcoe, Cascade and Amarillo in the freezer, so might go with either an all Simcoe or a Cascade + Amarillo combo. I have to get stuck in to the Kit And Extract Beer Designer spreadsheet now and figure out my hops additions.

I have some harvested yeast that I’ve revived and are rearing to go to work. They were sitting in the fridge for the last 6 months, so they were a bit slow to get going in my starter that I made 2 nights ago and I was about to give up on them yestrerday but found them in action today so they should be good to go.

Well I better get down to it and do some multitasking home brewing while watching the Rugby World Cup semi-final between the All Blacks and the Wallabies.

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Apr
07

Batch No. 6 – Aidan’s Slutty Red

Home Brewing

by Aidan

Roll over Mac's Sassy Red, here comes Aidan's Slutty Red

One of my favorite commercial beers here in New Zealand is Mac’s Sassy Red so I decided to have a go at making something similar. I found a recipe for an approximation called ‘Slutty Red‘ and I converted it for extract brewing and made a few mods based on ingredients available and getting some good advice on the home brewing forums.

The main hops flavour in Sassy Red comes from Motueka hops. These used to be known as ‘B Saaz’ hops (as they were bred by crossing Saaz with New Zealand breeding selection), and hence the name ‘Sassy Red’ for a Saazy beer.

One new experimental thing I did in this batch was using a pre-hopped kit as part of the fermentables. Why? Cost – the unhopped malt extract in either dry or liquid format costs significantly more than a corresponding amount of pre-hopped kit. I reckon it’s a supply and demand thing – more people are buying the kits than malt extract. So I used a can of Coopers Lager as it is one of the lighter ones available. Since it is already hopped I factored this into my bitterness calculations using the handy Kit & Extract Beer Designer. With most of the bittering coming from the Coopers can, I went with a 30 min boil instead of the usual 60 min as I was primarily just doing flavour & aroma hop additions after steeping the specialty grains.

So here’s the recipe and beer profile: Read the rest of this entry »

This post has no tag

8 comments

Feb
22

Batch No. 5 – Nelson Amber Ale

Home Brewing

by Aidan

I’m calling this one ‘Nelson Amber Ale‘ because it features Nelson Sauvin hops and I’m brewing it in Nelson. I used the handy Kit & Extract Beer Designer spreadsheet to work out the recipe quantities. It’s basically in the style of an American Pale Ale or an American Amber Ale, but more towards amber than pale since I used all amber malt plus a little medium crystal steeped grains. I used US-05 yeast harvested from batch no. 3. Fermentation started very quickly, within a few hours, and is still amazingly active – it’s been bubbling like crazy for 3 days.

Here’s the recipe: Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: ale, amber ale, american pale ale, Blow out, extract brewing, home brewing

Feb
21

Updated Extract Brewing Process

by Aidan

The second extract batch went smoother and quicker than my first one and the brewing process was much more relaxed and enjoyable. The biggest improvement in the process was changing my sanitiser from sodium metabisulphite to iodophor. The sodium metabisulphite requires 1 hour of air drying to work, iodophor just requires 1-2 minutes of contact time, so it’s a hell of a lot more convenient to work with as you can sanitise on the fly instead of having to carefully plan your sanitisation in advance.

A significant difference in the process this time was the yeast preparation. Last time I rehydrated dried yeast, this time I had some yeast harvested from the last batch so I had to make a starter for it the day before. By the way, I found some helpful videos on a website called billybrew.com for how to harvest yeast and how to make a yeast starter.

So here’s the new improved process:
Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: brewing process, cold crash, extract brewing, home brewing

Feb
04

Thar She Blows!

Home Brewing

by Aidan

The Coopers Stout kicks out one hell of a big foamy krausen:

To deal with this mess, I pulled out the airlock cleaned and sanitised it, cleaned off the mess off the lid and stuck the airlock back in. It’s still foaming out of the airlock a little bit but under control.
Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Blow out, Coopers Stout, home brewing, stout

Jan
14

Third Batch Fermenting – first foray into hops and grains

Home Brewing

by Aidan

This one is going to be interesting, I’ve got my fingers crossed and hoping for the best. That’s because when I tasted the wort, it was a bit, well, scary. I totally realise this may not mean anything but the wort from my previous two batches actually tasted good but this time I tossed out my OG samples after a little taste. But the first two batches were pre-hopped kits so it might not be a good comparison. This time the wort was very bitter and had a very concentrated hops taste. So I’m hoping this is normal and that the fermentation process will turn it into a nice tasty American Pale Ale. Otherwise I’ll probably be more inclined to stick with the pre-hopped kits, they are a lot less work and I have already got great results – my first batch is a very nice drop and it hasn’t even fully aged yet. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: ale, american pale ale, brewing process, extract brewing, home brewing

Read the rest of this entry »

Jan
11

Extract Brewing Process

Home Brewing

by Aidan

To make sure that I don’t miss anything important for my first extract batch and end up running around like a chicken with it’s head chopped off, I have written up my process in advance. This process is my version of the extract brewing process based on best practices that I gathered from various sources and tailored to suit the ingredients and equipment that I have available. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: brewing process, extract brewing, home brewing

1 comment

Jan
10

Froze my beer in the fermentor!

Home Brewing

by Aidan

I had read about it happening to others (John Palmer relays his experience freezing his lager in How To Brew), so I didn’t cry when I discovered my frozen ale as I was about to bottle it this evening. But I surely did have to abandon hope of bottling it tonight. I had all my bottles sanitised and my priming sugar boiled when I went in to the fridge to lift out the fermentor of beer that I had been cold crashing for 5 days. I didn’t like the solid look that I saw from the outside and sure enough when I opened the lid, here is what I saw:

Arrgh! It's FROZEN!!!

Tags: cold crash, frozen beer, home brewing

Jan
06

My very first bottle of my own beer!

Home Brewing

by Aidan

This evening I cracked open my first bottle from my first batch (Mangrove Jacks Munich Lager). All I can say is WOW, I’m impressed. This hobby is going to be with me for a long time. I’ve had some previews of what it might taste like – all those SG samples, and my mate Andy’s batch of the same beer. And it was nothing like any of them. The gravity samples were interesting and I actually enjoyed them but they were heavy from all that yeast (not to mention flat and warm). I found Andy’s batch kinda like a good malty lager – I compared it to a Macs Gold. But my was nothing like a Macs Gold, it was much more crisp and bitter, more along the lines of a Steinlager Classic only much more dry and bitter. I think if there was any complaint it would be that it is overly bitter, but I like bitter and I think that will mellow a bit with age. Interestingly my wife commented that she liked it but it seemed a bit one-dimensional to her and I think I know what she means – I reckon it’s because it’s so crisp, dry and bitter. (In all honesty I think the fact that I brewed it myself adds a bit to my enjoyment of it.) But it is also much more of a lager type beer than I thought it would be, having brewed it with the kit standard ale yeast and considering that it’s looking a bit darker/redder than typical lager. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: ale, home brewing, lager, taste test

Jan
06

Recipe for first extract brew, a lot learned

Home Brewing

by Aidan

As I wrote in my previous post, I have decided on brewing an American Pale Ale and had picked out my ingredients but I hadn’t a recipe to follow. So I turned to the forums to get help coming up with the recipe. After a lot of discussions back and forth on the forums (especially this thread), I came up with a recipe that I have confidence in and I had learned a heck of a lot about home brewing. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: american pale ale, extract brewing, home brewing

5 comments

Jan
03

Planning my first extract batch

Home Brewing

by Aidan

I am now planning my 3rd batch with batch 1 bottled and batch 2 still in the fermentor. I have yet to taste any finished beer but it is time to get prepared to brew my next batch. (As I mentioned in the previous post, brewing beer is a bit like growing a garden). And my next batch will be another step in the learning process as I take on an extract batch. The difference between extract brewing and kit brewing is that you use unhopped malt extract and do a boil to add in bittering and finishing hops at different times during the boil. I will also use some speciality grains to add an additional dimension and fresh flavour to the beer. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: ale, american pale ale, extract brewing, home brewing

Dec
27

A new batch brewing

Home Brewing

by Aidan

Brewing beer is a bit like growing a garden – it takes time, so you need to plan ahead and then wait patiently for the fruits of your labour. So even though I’ve just bottled 20 litres of beer, it will be weeks before it’s ready for drinking and months before it reaches it’s prime, so in the meantime I’ve got to sow the seeds for next batch. While my first batch was fermenting I had already purchased supplies for my second batch. I went to Bin Inn (the only place in Nelson that sells home brewing supplies) to pick out something to brew next and got a can of Blackrock East India Pale Ale and some BrewCraft beer enhancer (English Bitter No. 70).

The night after bottling batch 1, I got to work on getting my IPA kit brewing. Despite having absorbed a lot more information and tips about brewing since the first time around, it did not exactly go as smooth as I’d hoped. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: ale, home brewing, ipa, leak

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Dec
23

First batch of home brewed beer – from can to bottles

Home Brewing

by Aidan

I just bottled my first batch of home brew the other night, a lager made from a kit – Mangroves Jacks Munich Lager. Actually technically it is probably an ale as it was brewed with ale yeast but as long as it tastes good who cares what it’s called. And I have tasted it, and I can tell you that even at this premature stage it actually tastes quite nice. I even had a glass of it while I was bottling and I’ve also tasted all my hydrometer samples – yum! Definitely an incentive to take lots of readings. After the bottles have carbonated and conditioned for a few weeks, I’ll get to taste the final product. If it tastes this good already, I reckon it should be pretty damn good by then!

Brewing from a kit is very easy but there are so many different ways of doing things that it can get confusing, especially for a beginner with a perfectionist streak who wants to get the best results. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: ale, bottling, cold crash, craigtube, home brewing, lager

7 comments

Dec
21

Home Brewing – start of the adventure

Home Brewing

by Aidan

I’ve just got started on a new hobby that I’m very excited about – making beer! There is some kind of revelation that happens when a man discovers how to make his own beer – it’s almost up there with discovering how to print your own money. And the cool thing is that it’s even easier than I imagined it to be.

Tags: craigtube, home brewing

Dec
20

First day of BeerAndGarden.com!

General

by Aidan

Welcome to the new site! I had previouslystarted a gardening blog hosted on WordPress.com – http://aidansgarden.wordpress.com. I recently got into home brewing and decided I would like to blog about my experiences in that area as well so today I set up this new website, Beer And Garden, to blog about both of these interests. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: open-source, web design, websites, WordPress

Nov
26

Getting rid of ants in the garden

Pests

by Aidan

I noticed recently that there are ants all over one of my raised beds – they are all over the lettuce and other greens. On closer inspection I see that the leaves are also covered in aphids. The little blighters are running an aphid dairy farm in my garden! That can’t be good for the crops so I have to get rid of them. After a quick look on the internet I found one of the most widely suggested ideas for getting rid of ants is with borax, which is a white powdered acid (boric acid) that kills the ants by dehydrating them and drying them out. Here in New Zealand I was able to find borax for sale at my local Binn Inn. Generally it appears you need to mix it with something that makes it more attractive as a food to the ants.

Ants feasting on powdered sugar mixed with borax

So I started with an easy recipe – just mix it with some powdered sugar (has a similar consistency as the borax powder). I set some out for them in a beer bottle cap and dusted a little bit directly on their trail. They seemed to be avoiding it at first but when I checked this morning, they had cleaned up all the loose stuff from the trail and they were all over the bottle cap. So this morning I laid out some more second helpings for them. My plan of attack is to get rid of the ants first and then tackle the aphids.

Tags: ants, aphids, borax, pests

Nov
25

Latest worm farm update

Composting

by Aidan

The worm farm is going strong for over 4 months now. It produces about 1.5 litres of worm juice per week. I’ve been putting this on my veggie garden and look forward to seeing some good results this year. My tomato plants are looking strong but probably still a month away from producing fruit. I’ve applied some worm juice to everything I’m growing – tomatoes, zucchini, cabbage, lettuce, broccoli, spinach, bok choy, silver beet, herbs, carrots, turnips, potatoes, pumpkins and even to new apple and citrus trees. I reckon it can’t hurt. Maybe next year it would be interesting to experiment by applying to some plants and not to others to see if it makes much difference.

The worm juice is collected in a one litre container placed under the drain home of the bath tub. Some worms do make their way out into the container (as noted by Rodney of justaddworms.com) but I just strain them out and throw them back into the worm farm. I then add the litre or so of worm juice to a watering can and dilute by filling up the rest of the can with water and put it on a part of the garden.

Tags: tiger worms, worm bin, worm composting, worm farm

Sep
07

Brief update on worm farm

Composting

by Aidan

My worm farm has been going for about 2 months now and seems to be working well, producing a decent amount of worm juice. However some rain seems to be getting in as a lot of liquid is coming out after heavy rain and it looks diluted. The duct tape I used to hold the weed mat in place is coming loose but the contents are holding it in place so it’s not a problem at this point. There seems to have been an explosion in the worm population which is a good sign – they’re all over the place now when I open up the lid – on top of the cardboard layer, on the sides, on the lid, everywhere. And as Rodney commented, there are a few of them getting into the worm juice but it’s just a few so it doesn’t seem to be a problem at this point.

Tags: tiger worms, worm bin, worm composting, worm farm

Jul
03

My no cost bathtub worm farm

Composting,
DIY

by Aidan

There was an old bathtub lying at my place, I thought maybe I could get someone to haul it away but a friend of mine suggested turning it into a worm farm and he told me about worm juice and how great it is for fertilising the garden crops. Sounded like a good idea but the tub sat there for almost another year until today I finally did turn it into a worm farm.
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Tags: tiger worms, worm bin, worm composting, worm farm