This began as a clone of Matilda Bay’s stunning Rooftop Red Lager, which is one of my all-time favourite beers.

But after various dramas and time delays, I decided it was too late into the year to brew something needing the colder temperatures (like a Lager, which is an inferior style of beer anyhow…), so I changed the yeast and went for the same recipe.

Ingredients

• 1x Coopers Draught Kit
• 1Kg Morgans Caramalt LME
• 500g Weyermans Carared grain
• 30g Hersbrucker Hops
• Safale US05 yeast

• OG: 1.037
• FG: 1.009

ALC/VOL. ~4.3%

Steeped grains for about ½ hour. Strained and rinsed. Boiled 10L water – added steeped grain wort and ½ tin of caramalt. Boiled for 30 mins. Turn heat down to simmer and added hops. Flameout after 5 minutes, added the remainder malt and kit wort.

Poured into fermenter (straining through grain/hop-sock), topped up to 23L and cooled to pitching temp – 26°C. Rehydrated yeast and pitched into wort.

Bottling Notes

Essentially this only took 4-5 days to ferment, it took off and bubbled madly during this time. It then just stopped completely, and didn’t move from 1.011 for 3 or 4 days. So I decided to sanitise the bottles and prepare to bottles. I bulk primed into 140g of Dextrose to give a medium carbonation. But just before I started bottling, I took a reading, which gave me 1.009. I was a bit converned, but as I had already started the process, I couldn’t stop now. So I hope fermentation had stopped, and I won’t end up with exploding bottles. Just in case, I draped tarps over the crates and laid them away from the other brews, so as to minimise the damage if it happens. Looking forward to see what the finished product is like.