Women and Homebrewing

I was recently interviewed for an article on homebrewing for the Domion Post . One of the questions put to me was whether I thought homebrewing was an inherently male preoccupation or if I thought the rising numbers of Female beer drinkers, and female professional brewers would result in the more female homebrewers. The question got me thinking, I had already been mulling over some similar concepts after reading Claire Monk’s blog about the sexism she faces in the UK being a female brewer (I hope things are different here in our more enlightened corner of the south pacific for our female pro brewers) . I said I thought the numbers of female homebrewers would increase even though I currently know of less female homebrewers than I have fingers. The reporter said how another local beer personality had described homebrewing as baking for blokes implying that it’s a male past time. There certainly is an element of blokes pottering in sheds about homebrewing. I would love to hear opinions from any female homebrewers out there.

CT Column 30/03/2011: Give a man a beer

‘Give a man a beer and he will waste an hour, teach him to brew and he will waste a lifetime’ or so the saying goes.
However for some of us learning to brew beer at home, it has been anything but a waste with many of the craft brewing industries key players having started out as amateurs. Luke Nicholas of Epic originally started homebrewing while at University in 1989.Invercargill Brewing’s Steve Nally gave homebrewing a go after reading about it in the Listener. Richard Emerson still counts a homebrewed batch of beer, the majority of which he tipped down the drain before it had matured, as his best batch ever. More recently, contract brewers like Yeastie Boys and 8 Wired have blurred the lines between amateurs and pros.
The one thing that all of these brewers, and incidentally myself, have in common is that we all started out our brewing careers using canned homebrew kits of the sort that you see on the shelves in supermarkets and homebrew stores around the country.
These cans of hopped malt extract present a very simple way for a homebrewer to create beer of moderate quality. One of the downsides to these kits is that the evaporation process that allows 20 litres of beer to fit in a small can ends up knocking out many of the volatile flavour and aroma elements resulting in a dull but convenient product.
Last year Jim Matranga of Mapua’s Golden Bear Brewing came up with an idea that could help his small brewpub use its brewing capacity and help entry and intermediate level homebrewers to brew better beer. The result has been coined “wort in a bag” and consists of a box and bladder much like a cardboard wine cask that holds unfermented beer, or wort as brewers call it, from the Golden Bear brew house. The homebrewer then pours the wort into a fermenting bucket and adds yeast to ferment the beer at home. More experienced brewers can add extra hops, spices and select particular yeast strains to ‘make the brew their own’. Because the wort is not evaporated it retains much more flavour and complexity than traditional homebrew from a can.
I recently tried out the wort in a bag system and the results were fantastic with the resulting keg of fruity pale ale disappearing rather quickly. Time will only tell how many of tomorrow’s professional brewers will start out using Jim’s invention.
Golden Bear Fresh Wort Kits are available from online retailer Liberty Brewing and from the Golden Bear brewpub itself at Port Mapua, Tasman Bay. Cheers.

SOBA NHC 2010

This weekend the judging of the 2010 SOBA National Homebrew Competition takes place. I will be flying to Hamilton to help judge over 300 beers in two days. This is a pretty staggering task, at the pro brewing competitions I have judged at we would usually do 60-80 beers a day , even with three tables working independently we will have to be knocking off far more than that a day.
I always look forward to judging the NHC (even if I didn’t really want to this year as I wanted to enter!) as the range of beers on offer is always far more interesting than in pro comps. The overall standard might be lower but the standard rises each year. Several years ago the most common fault was bacterial infection with some absolutely intense infections still featuring in some judges nightmares, however more recently it has been the more subtle faults of the sort you find at commercial competition. The best beers are always absolutely fantastic and a tribute to the standard of homebrewing culture that is developing in this country.

Good luck to all who have entered and wish us judges luck in the task ahead!

The New Kit

As payment for catering the SOBA Winter Ales Festival I received a sexy new 80 litre stainless steel kettle. Dion formerly brewer at Tuatara and currently full time dad and casual welder fitted a ball lock tap and suddenly my brew set up is a dam sight more professional.

This morning I christened the new kettle with a 40 litre batch of Somerset, my golden ale recipe. It went better than I could have hoped for, usually new bits of kit cause all sorts of unexpected problems but today went smoothly with the brew being completed in record time.

I used the kettle as a hot liquor tank for the strike. It was a luxury being able to mash in with hosed in boiling water rather than the usual ladling. The kettle was set up on my electric hot plate that was connected to a timer so the strike liquor was boiling away when I woke at 5am.

For the boil the kettle was set above 2 gas burners. This worked so well that I had a rolling boil 20mins after the end of the run off. I whirl pooled for the first time and it worked just like it did at Emerson’s which I must admit surprised me.
I used to cool my old small kettles by giving them a water bath, the new kettle posed the problem of finding a new form of wort cooling. In the end I decided to carefully run the wort off hot into corny kegs and place them in barrels of circulating cold water. I had the wort down to 18c in 60min. I then used co2 to pump the wort out of the cornys through a hose into the fermentor cornys making sure to aerate the cooled wort as I went.

With a forty litre batch under my belt next I will have a crack at a 60 litre batch of something. There is also this year’s batch of Merchant and Alfred’s Audit to brew.

R.S.B. Homebrewed vs Probrewed

The last rigger of Regional Special Bitter is about to go to a good home so I thought it was about time to talk about how the home brewed version and the probrewed versions differed.

Probrewed R.S.B.
Aroma : light fruit esters, a slight berry fruit hop aroma, some citrus (David Wood described it as grapfruity) and a hint of nutty slightly mocha malt.
Palate: A rich malt body, caramel flavours and moderate orangy hop flavour, before a great big assertive bitter finish.

Homebrewed R.S.B. (aka Brooklyn Bulldog ESB)
Aroma: Red apple esters, light citrus and berry fruit , warm caramel malt. More integrated, hoppy and fruity than the probrewed version.
Palate: Rich malt with hints of toffee and caramel, red apple fruitiness, tangy earthy lightly citrus hop flavour and a long moderately bitter finish. Rounded, rich and integrated .

The two beers are identifiably similar, the biggest difference being that the English yeast culture in the home brewed one gives a much fruitier rounded character and the Belgian Special B crystal malt gives slightly chocolaty lightly roasty notes to the probrewed version. Also the bitterness in the probrewed version is significantly higher than the homebrewed one.

Always the Bridesmaid never the Bride...

It’s early July and Greig from SOBA contacts me asking if I would be interested in judging the National Homebrew comp. I have been looking forward to the competition being held in Hamilton this year as I was sure this would mean that unlike the past two years I would be excused from the judging table and able to enter my own beers. I have been brewing away furiously and unusually I have been going through the rigours of bottling so that I have beers to enter. I say ‘put me on the back up list I want to compete.’ A month later and the ominous email comes , a judge has stepped down and I’m off the bench. Always the bridesmaid and never the bride...at least I will be able to check out the two beer bars of Hamilton.

Weekend Warrior

Every homebrewer has that moment when they nail their first successful ferment or their first smooth mash and run off where they fantasise about doing it for real running a real commercial brewery. Most small commercial brewers warn the fool hardy amateur off, saying it’s a hell of a lot of hard work and a good way to make a small fortune out of a large one. Then there are the well meaning yet totally clueless bystanders who taste your beer, like it and ask when you are going to go pro like it’s as simple as converting another stockpot or ten and buying in few more sacks of malt. Others like Stu McKinlay have used the contract brewing model to launch a pro career while still holding down the day job. For me I have found my own way into the beer industry through retailing, judging and writing, it’s a pretty good place to be and I only have to clean stainless when I feel like it. One day in a perfect world (and sometimes the real world can provide a little perfection) I would like to run an outfit like the Wassail Brauhaus where I could brew what I wanted and share it with people for a modest financial return towards the brewing costs, time will tell. Anyway I digress, every homebrewer dreams of doing it for real and next month I will get to play at being a real brewer. I will be flying to Dunedin and with Richard Emerson I will brew a version of my Brooklyn Bulldog E.S.B recipe on the 200 litre pilot plant at Emerson’s Brewery. To say I’m excited is to say the Popes a papist. The beer will be a strong English style bitter brewed with New Zealand Pale Malt, English Crystal and Belgian Crystal Malt, New Zealand Goldings and New Zealand Styrian Goldings hops and the Fullers yeast. It’s the sort of beer I want to see more of through the Autumn and Winter months, its also the sort of beer I love!

Harvest Ale 2010

Homebrewers are a charitable lot. Today I got a call from Brendon asking if I wanted 100gs of green hops. What could I say but yes?
Without anytime to brew up a beer and no yeast in stock to ferment one anyway I decided to add them as dry hops in a batch of O.S.B. I had conditioning. So that makes it dry wet hops just to show how oxymoronical our brewers lexicon can be!
So this years Harvest Ale unlike the slightly aborted 5 and a ½ % abv strong ale attempt last year is a 3.8%abv wet hopped Ordinary Bitter.
After 3 hours in contact with the hops there is already a pronounced NZ hop character showing through, I suspect it won’t be to long before I rack it off into a keg.

Golden Ale Challenge 09

It’s taken me awhile but here is the Golden Ale Challenge round up. Last months Autumn Ales Festival included the Golden Ale Challenge where different brewers brewed a golden ale at the same strength with the same ingredients. We ended up having 3 entry’s One from Brendan, one from Ed and one from me. Ed and myself both brewed English style Golden Ales with the character of the NZ hops shinning through. Brendan on the other hand chose to brew a Kolsh. Ed’s Sugerloaf Gold was definitely the best beer, it was bursting with hop aroma , brilliantly clear with a nice malty backbone. My Golden Challenge was a touch on the young side with a bit of diacetyl and raw grain flavour coming through. Brendan’s Kolsh was pretty good, alittle hazy and estery with a subdued hop character that the style dictates. Half way through the evening both Brendan and Ed admitted they had broken the rules and used Golden Promise instead of Maris Otter (Brendan even tried to make out it was some kind of act of solidarity with his Scottish heritage!) so I won by default. I was drinking Ed’s however. I will come up with a porter challenge for winter.

Berhampore Best Bitter

Maris Otter Pale, Dark Crystal, and Medium Crystal malts, Fuggels, Goldings, and NZ Styrian hops, Brooklyn water, cane sugar, S-04 yeast, agar cask finings, 1.044, 4.4%abv. The first batch of beer of 2009 and it’s a cracker.

The Golden Ale Challenge

Through the years the topic of house characters has often come up for conversation around the bar. Each homebrewer who provides beer for the taps here has a unique profile that most of their beers conform to, we often said it would be interesting to brew the same beer in each brewery and see what happened.
The Golden Ale Challenge is my attempt at a highly unscientific experiment into the differences between each brewer. With a mind to serving the beers at next February’s Valley Summer Ales Festival I have contacted a range of homebrewers who will each brew a 1045 golden ale with Maris Otter Pale Malt and New Zealand Styrian Goldings and Nelson Sauvin hops.

The rules are as follows:

- Each brewer will formulate a 100% Maris Otter Grist that would normally result in a 1045 beer.

- They will then mash in what ever way they normally mash.

- Each brewer will be provided with 80g of Nelson Sauvin and 80g of NZ Styrians be added in what ever quantity and regime they want

- The brewer will ferment the beer with their house yeast (or if they don’t have a house yeast what ever they feel is right)

It should be a bit of fun.

Three Pints of Bitter

There is nothing like a freshly tapped bitter shared with those that count. Brooklyn Water, Maris Otter, Crystal , Sugar, Fuggels, Goldings, Styrians, a touch of yeast and a whole lot of contentment.

Brewing Blind

I woke this morning with the worst sinus occupying head cold. Today was marked down as a brew day, even though I didn’t feel like it I persevered. In addition to brewing a batch of best bitter I was intending to rack a batch of O.S.B. into a corny, it has struck me that carrying out this task with absolutely no sense of smell and little sense of taste is an extremely hard thing to do. Is the O.S.B. ready? I have no idea , diacetyl? Not sure, acetal aldehyde? God I hope not, I can tell it’s got a decent mouthfeel! How about the Berhampore Best I’m brewing today? astringency from the sparge? not sure, conversion? Well the hydrometer says so but I usually like to check with my palate. It all reinforces to me how important the human is in brewing at this end of the scale. I’m off for a port and brandy.

Valley Summer Ales Fest 08

What a fantastic night. Good beer, good food, good people. Thanks to all who brewed and to all came to drink and to Dave Batt who designed the Menus and then was to ill to attend. Cheers.

Beerlist

O-Street Festive Gold 4.6%abv (dry hopped Golden Ale)

O-street Somerset 5%abv (Golden Ale)

O-Street Chilka IPA 5.8%abv (Hoppy IPA)

Brendan’s Kitchen Sink Lager 5.3%abv (fruity lager)

Front Porch APA 6.7%abv (strong New World hopped pale ale)

Front Porch 60 4.2%abv (Scottish style session beer)

Emerson’s Bookbinder (NZ hopped New World Ordinary Bitter, pro brewer)

Plus various bottles from Ed.

The Merciful Merchant

Sometimes it is very easy to be exceptionally critical of the beers that one brews. I have an idealised beer in my head when I construct a recipe, I don’t set out to brew any old pint, I want my Ordinary bitter to be the most refreshing complex sessionable bitter I have ever tasted, I want my Best to give me sustenance after a long day at work, I want to drink my Mild all night and never get bored, I want my Winter Warmer to fortify me against the cold like a fine glass of port, I want my IPA to be stunningly hoppy and yet eternally drinkable, and I want my Imperial Stout to be the night cap that leaves all others for dust. Sometimes in the quest for these things you forget that the less than perfect beer you are brewing is in fact pretty bloody good, sometimes it takes someone else’s evaluation of ones beer to remind one of that.

When I visited Auckland recently I packed 2 flasks on my imperial stout, The Merchant of the Devil. One was for Martin and one was for Alex and Greig. The flasks were filled from kegs of last years vintage that are sitting conditioning and awaiting bottling.

Alex, Greig and Martin seemed to enjoy the beer with Martin posting an enthusiastically positive review of it on his Electric Landlord blog, you can check it out here. I’m glade you liked it folks cheers for the feedback.

Festival Gold

It was a 5 am start today. Today is the last brew day for the late summer ales fest in march. I mashed in early so I can be all cleaned up, home and hosed in time to have a wee poke around and tasting session at Shed 22 Macs Brewery this evening. I’m brewing a new beer today, Festival Gold is a single varietal brew combining Golden Promise pale ale malt and copious amounts of Goldings hops. I think it will be a cracker.

Early results from the Corny ferment

I racked the summer ale that I fermented in corny kegs today and had a sample glass from each fermentor while I was about it. The early verdict? The ale is very clean and considering it was fermented with us-05 it was reassuringly clear. The only complaint is it does seem a little under attenuated. All in all I’m rapt, this will be my method from now on.

Back to the Brew House

After about a fortnight off from brewing it felt good to get back into it today. To add to my feelings of excitement today I will be fermenting my first batch in stainless steel. If this experiment is successful it will be good bye to the uncertainties of plastic fermentors and the game of chicken as to when to change buckets.

Unlike fellow Wellington homebrewer Rob Owen who has an imported conical from the states I am going to use corny kegs as fermentors. The plus side is that cornys are easily attainable, reasonably cheap and I can get as many as my 2 brews a week schedule requires, they are easy to clean and can be lowered into water when fermentation takes place to control temperature. The possible down side is that the tall narrow shape might cause convection providing a less than ideal environment for the yeast. Only one way to find out …

A Religious Conversion

After years of using the Saf-04 English ale yeast, a dried twin of a Whitbread strain, I have decided to make a change. This is reasonably significant as I have always been an avid and vocal supporter of the strain. Recently however I have been finding that particularly when dealing with low gravity beers the yeast has been producing a lot of diacetyl, in addition a few people both pro and amateur brewers have been remarking that Saf-04, or 1099 its liquid twin, seem to hide hop aroma. My silver medal winning IPA was brewed with Saf 05, the dried version of 1056 which traces its history to the English Nottingham strain via the Ballantine Brewery and Sierra Nevada Brewery in the US. I’m going to use this strain for awhile and see how my beers fare. Today I’m brewing the first batch of Berhampore Best Bitter with the new yeast.

Just to be clear, I’m still firmly in the dried yeast camp. If you really needed proof that you can brew fantastic beer with dried yeast you need look no further than Barry Hannah, Brewer of the Year at the SOBA Homebrew Championships and runner up for Best in Show with his unanimous gold medal Mild. Barry only uses dried yeast.

Brooklyn Bitter

Today I’m brewing Brooklyn Bitter a strong bitter loosely based Young’s Special London Ale. Brooklyn Bitter will not be as strong as Special London Ale as its intended for draft consumption and it will be a touch darker but I do intend to infuse some of the striking hop character that Special London Ale used to present.

I say Special London Ale used to present a striking hop character as I picked up a bottle yesterday, the first to be marked Bedford, perhaps they have run out of tankered beer from London to blend or have just used up the old labels, and it was a very different beast. It looked like the Special London Ale of old, it smelt like the Special London Ale of old, but on the palate a sweet malt accented beer was revealed with very little bitterness. Where did the IBUs go?! The balance was far more like that of its former neighbour Fullers ESB and certainly not the beer that Michael Jackson described as possibly containing a whole hop garden in every bottle. Anyway I digress.

Brooklyn Bitter’s grist of Maris Otter malt, medium crystal and a touch of patent is currently mashing in burtonised liquor, once it is in the kettle it will be bittered with fuggels with large amounts of goldings being added late in the boil, finally s-04 will be added, hopefully it turns out well.