And Slaters Go Plop

Over the last year or two I’ve been using a couple of 30L plastic fermenters while brewing. One of them, the second one I bought, has developed odd white ‘scratch’ lines and I’m not sure what’s caused them. I’ve never used anything harsher than a nylon scrubbing brush to clean it and I’m tempted to think that these are actually artefacts of a kind of blistering of the plastic rather than actual scratches. Perhaps something to do with a fault in the manufacturing process as my other fermenter shows no signs of these.

Difficult to see, but here are the odd chalky-looking scratches.

Any form of surface damage worries me because I can’t be as sure I’ve been able to remove any embedded bacteria or other unwanted organisms and so I decided to splash out and pay twice the amount for a 23L glass carboy.

I’ve never used glass before and am aware that there is a danger involved when lifting and that transferring liquids can be tricky due to the lack of a tap at the bottom. I am, however, looking forward to being able to watch vigorous fermentations through the glass!

***UPDATE***

I’ve just taken a much closer look and it appears that these aren’t scratches at all. Some kind of crystallisation or chemical build-up which came away when I used my fingernail. Any ideas? (Oh well, still looking forward to using the glass carboy even if it was money unnecessarily spent).

q = (b*r)/100

The quality of your brew (out of 100) is equal to the number of batches (to a maximum of 100) you have brewed multiplied by how highly you rate it (out of 100) and divided by 100.

(Or, in plain English: “The beer you make yourself doesn’t taste nearly as good as you think it does, especially when you first start out”)

Tomorrow morning is Brew Day. It’s been three weeks and I’m probably going to have restless dreams in anticipation.

For me, Brew Day usually starts at around 6am and finishes four or five hours later by which time I have over 20 litres of beer settled in my fermenter for the next week or two where it will magically turn sugary, malty water into delicious beer.

Above is a photo of all you really need to make beer; crushed malted barley, hops and yeast (at a trifling cost of only NZ$27 — that’s around 35c per standard 330ml bottle). All I have to do is let the malted barley sit in nice warm water for an hour or so where enzymes will convert the starches into sweet fermentable sugars, then I boil this sugary water up with some hops for an hour or so, cool it down and add the yeast which will do all the rest for me by eating the sugars and producing alcohol and carbon dioxide as waste products.

This week I’m making an English Ordinary Bitter which is a low alcohol beer (~3.5%ABV) with low carbonation, a malty/caramel flavour and aroma with hints of fruitiness and a light hop aroma. It’s a session beer which means that you can drink a truckload of it without feeling bloated from too much fizz and you won’t end up legless. But it’s a hard beer to get right; this is my third attempt and I’ve got high hopes for this one as it’s my first using all grain (instead of liquid malt extract).

Here is my recipe (for 21L):

Grain bill
3kg Maris Otter
200g Dark Crystal
100g Munich Malt
Mashed at 67 degrees C for 60 minutes
Mashout at 75 degrees C for 10 minutes

Hop additions
30g East Kent Goldings for 60 minutes
12g East Kent Goldings for 30 minutes
(1tsp Irish Moss for 10 minutes to clear out the protein)
10g East Kent Goldings for 1 minute
Boil for 90 minutes total to get rid of DMS

1 sachet rehydrated Safale s-04 English ale yeast
(yes, liquid yeast would be preferable but it’s really hard to come by here in NZ)

Sweet dreams!

I’ve been looking at getting a couple of brewing books and have just been through the tedious exercise of comparing prices. Not sure whether the results would be similar if I was looking for popular novels instead.

Here are the prices in NZ dollars and including shipping:

Amazon — $61.24
Morebeer — $109.26
Whitcoulls — $59.00
Mighty Ape — $73.98
Fishpond — $84.96
The Nile — $66.48
Seek Books — (Didn’t have both books)
Goodbooks — $69.98

Whitcoulls wins but is closely followed by Amazon which puts the other NZ book stores to shame. If you know of a good alternative please feel free to share.

[**edit**]
David, in the comments, informs me of The Book Depository over in the UK who beat the rest at ~$54.00 including delivery.

According to experienced homebrewers, temperature control during the fermentation is second only to sanitation (and perhaps healthy yeast). It’s been hot here over the last few months and I’ve been struggling to keep my fermentation temperatures down to a reasonable level by way of a laundry sink full of water with regular additions of slicker pads from the freezer. So, I went ahead and scored myself a full-sized fridge for just $30 on TradeMe (broken thermostat which I removed and hard-wired to permanently on) as well as a $100 TempMate from CraftBrewer in Australia.

The TempMate allows me to keep a constant 18 degrees (you can set the temperature to anything you like) for my ales by turning the fridge on when it gets too warm and by turning on a heading pad (not needed yet as it’s still too warm) when the temperature drops below that. The TempMate ships with very few instructions as to how to wire it up, and, given that the penalty for getting it wrong is possibly death by electrocution and also keeping in mind that if you are a home brewer you are likely going to wire it up yourself instead of consulting an electrician (undoubtedly with a belly full of beer like I did), I’ve decided to share my setup.

A caution: this is 240V mains stuff and cocking it up really can result in an untimely death so if you are going to do it yourself be very careful.

The best guide I could find was on the Melbourne Homebrewers website and I basically copied their setup so check them out.

From Ideal Electrical I shelled out a whopping $50 (I could buy almost two fridges for that!) for a fully sealed enclosure along with two unswitched sockets ($20) — one for the fridge and one for the heat pad — and cable glands ($7) to hold my power and temperature probe cables firmly in place at the back. All of the cabling came from an old computer monitor power cable which I shortened and divided up to make all of the cross connections as well as the main power-in lead. I used a drill, a hacksaw blade and a craft knife to create all the cut-outs and holes. It’s a thing of beauty and it works a treat. Now, to brew a batch of Ordinary Bitter on Saturday morning and keep the bugger at 18 degrees throughout fermentation!

(Here is an unobstructed close-up of the wiring)