OK, the beer may be complete shite, but you have to hand it to them – this ad is pure gold!!

 

Forget the Monarchists, support the Publicans

Coopers Brewery has scrapped a major advertising campaign after complaints from monarchists that it used a political statement as a slogan.

A billboard outside a major Sydney shopping centre read: “Forget the monarchy, support the publicans”, beside an image of a frothy schooner of beer.

“Initially on seeing it I thought it might be humorous, but then I recognised that as people drive into the car park all they’re going to see is ‘forget the monarchy’,” Australian Monarchist League national chairman Philip Benwell told AAP.

“To use that is a political statement, particularly taking into account the prime minster’s comments last week, and that this government intends to pursue a republic.”

The league wrote to the brewery with its concerns and the advertisement has been withdrawn.

“It was not our intention to attack the monarchy nor in any way was it a political statement,” a Coopers representative wrote in a letter to the league.

“It was an advertisement designed to demonstrate that we are not buying into the debate but instead supporting people and businesses (publicans) that are important to us.”

The advertisement had received approval from the Advertising Standards Board prior to use.

“Some people might think we are being a bit precious, but if we don’t take a stand these things will continue,” Mr Benwell said.

The billboards are believed to have been part of a national advertising campaign, but it is unknown how many of them were in use around Australia.

Last year I made a pilsener using a Morgans kit. I loved it, and it converted me over to the dry, crisp tastes of a good Bohemian Pils. This year, I thought I would try and replicate the recipe as best as possible for a partial mash. I decided to also stick with the traditional Czech Saaz hops variety, even though I was tempted to use the New Zealander B-Saaz variety, purported to be used in the very awesome James Squire Pilsener! The plan is to make another batch of this recipe using that hops, to see the difference in flavour the hops yields.

Ingredients

• 200g Carapils grain
• 1.5kg Bohemian Pilsener grain
• 500g Munich Malt 1 grain
• 2kg Light Dry Malt Extract
• 60g Czech Saaz hops pellets @ 60mins
• 30g Czech Saaz hops pellets @ 30mins
• 6x Czech Saaz hops plugs @ flame-out
• 1/2 tab Irish Moss @ 5mins
• Wyeast 2278 Czech Pils liquid yeast

Method

• Make a yeast starter from the liquid yeast from the night before.
• Placing grains in a grain-bag, steep grains for 1 hour at a constant temperature of 63-65°C
• Take grains out, rinse with similar temp water, and squeeze excess out.
• Bring wort to the boil, add 805g LDME, and add first load of hops.
• After 1/2 hour, add trhe second load of hops.
• Five minutes before the end of boil add remainder malt and 1/2 tab of Irish Moss dissolved in 1/2 cup water.
• At flame-out, add the Hops plugs and put lid on.
• Cool wort and top up in the fermenter to 23Lt.
• Drain the liquid from the yeast starter, and pitch the slurry into the beer wort. Pitching temp was 22°C

• 2 Aug               OG: 1.061
• 24 Aug             SG:  1.011
• 4 Sept              bulk primed with 140g Dextrose & bottled

ALC/VOL. 7.3%

Ingredients

• 2kg fresh Australian Ginger
• 3x Lemons
• ~500g Dark Brown Sugar
• ~250g Raw Sugar
• ~250g Dextrose
• 120g Maltodextrin
• 500g Lactose
• 500g Honey
• 3x cinnamon sticks
• 1x whole nutmeg
• 4g Yeast Nutrient
• 1x Coopers kit yeast (from Heritage Lager)

First, I chopped and crushed the ginger and lemon, and boiled in a grain bag for hours. I then left it sit in the pot in the fridge for a couple of days (due to time commitments rather than methodology). Eventually, I got around to brewing it….

I squeezed as much of the juice out of the bag, and then brought this ‘wort’ back to the boil, having added the whole spices. It then sat on simmer with the lid on for a while longer to get the essence of the spices into the wort. I then added the fermenting sugars. The original plan was to use 1kg of Dark Brown Sugar – however, Mrs Ravenwolfe used about half a pack the night before to make Sticky Date Pudding muffins; i didn’t even have half-kilo of dextrose lying around, so I had to top it all off with raw sugar. Needless to say there is now NO sugar in the house at all…. let that be a lesson to us all – ensure your brewing ingredients are hidden from baking wives.

Then it was just a case of adding the other sugars (non-fermentable) and the honey. The honey and the lactose will make it somewhat sweeter, but also a bit drier I expect. Strain out the bits of spice, pour into the fermenter, and top water up to 21 litres. I then added the nutrient.

With the yeast, I rehydrated it, and then poured it into the wort. Giving it a good stir, splash away, as the oxygen helps yeast do its thing with stuff like this – unlike beer, there isn’t much for yeast to munch on (can’t use malt as this is designed to be Gluten-free), hence why we add nutrient. The honey will help with this also.

• 19 July             OG = 1.040
• 9 Aug               SG = 1.012
• 13 Aug             SG = 1.009
• 17 Aug             FG = 1.009

bottled 18/8 and primed with standard measure of raw sugar per bottle.

ALC/VOL. 4.07 %

This was a real spur of the moment brew, and one that took advantage of what I had lying around.

Ingredients

• 1.5kg Coopers Amber LME
• 1.5kg Black Rock Pale LME
• 490g Light DME
• 200g Crystal Malt grain
• 25g Perle Hops pellets @ 60mins
• 15g Cascade Hops pellets @ 5mins
• 1/2 tab Irish Moss
• S-23 dry lager yeast

1. Steep the crystal malt for half-hour at 63-65C in 6 litres of water.
2. add 770g malt and bring wort to boil
3. add Perle hops
4. after 55 mins, add Cascade hops and Irish Moss
5. Flame-out at 60 minutes.
6. Add remainder of malt.
7. Allow to cool to room temperature, take gravity reading, and pitch dry yeast.

• OG: 1.050
• FG: 1.013
• ALC/VOL 5%

Bulk-primed with 140g Dextrose.

Fermentation was complete after two weeks, however I brought the barrel out of the cold cupboard and into the living room to sit at higher temps in order to push out any residual CO2 (such as a diacetyl rest). The last few days, I shook the barrel and swirled everything around to really get CO2 pushed out – hopefully I got it all!

I have planned to leave it prime for a whole month before trying, however past experiences with cold-temp brews (lagers, pilseners, etc) is that they really do take a little longer than ales – hence the name “lager”, which comes from the German meaning ‘to store’, traditionally in cold caves.

I’ve been doing a brew today (the recipe will be posted as soon as I sort this out…), and I have noticed this strange phenomenon on top of the wort.

I haven’t pitched the yeast yet, as I have been cooling the wort to room temp before doing so.

Here’s what it looks like:

Do you know what this is?

Is it a bad sign?

Is it okay to pitch yeast?

Despite the stresses I had with the yeasts, this batch has turned out marvellously!

Everything you could possibly want in a beer… it lives up to its dream of an American Amber Ale in a British Ale style. Its bitter, but not too bitter. The Cascade hops gives it a fresh hoppy aroma, while the Goldings give it that classic British Ale flavour. And clearly, the specialty yeast has added to the malty taste.

Its a little redder than I was going for – that would be the crystal malt grains. Next time, I will try adding something lighter in colour, but I was working with what I had on hand anyhow.

Head retention is good, and probably better than anything I’ve done in the past.

Fellow tasters have said its the best one I’ve done so far, and I have to agree – except for me my personal fave has been the Red Ale and my first attempt at Amber (both were quite sweet). But I do feel this one rises above them because the characteristics are more distinct than in previous brews.

This of course paves the way for the next batch of Partial-mash/extract brewing, where I will make another version of the Happy Pils.

I’ve been learning about this…. and trying to perfect my brewing so as to minimise loss.

Brewing comrade Kevnlis explains it all quite well over in a thread at Geoff & Oliver’s forum

But here is the nuts and bolts of it…

Basically, when making an extract brew, we need to add our own hops. Kits come already hopped.

The bitterness that we seek from the hops is extracted best in fermentable sugars, such as the malt extract we are making our wort from. To get the most out of our hops there is a formula to use, and here it is:

x = volume of water you will boil in, eg: 4Lt
y = batch volume, eg: 23LT
z = total amount of fermentable sugars to be used in the batch, eg 3 kilos
f = amount of fermentable sugars to be used in your boil, eg: 522g

f = (x/y)*z

It gets a little more complicated than this, so its best to read the thread mentioned above. Using the example data above this is what our equation would look like:

f=(4LT/23LT)x3kg

f=522g

So however much hops we choose to use needs to boiled up with 522g of malt extract (or whatever fermentable sugar we are using).

As I mentioned it gets a bit more complicated when you start to look into levels of yield, but a god piece of software like Promash will help here.

Hope this helps….

After the stress and anxiety I had with the yeast in the last batch, I decided to learn all about making starters for liquid yeast packs.

Being that the Wyeast smak-paks are quite expensive (compared to dry yeasts), I figured this could be a good process to use, as you can get more out of your yeast. The down-side to this is that you have the same yeast to use for 6+ batches, which means you could be confined to certain ’styles’ of beer – in the case of what I am doing currently, I am confined to making British styles Ales, which I wouldn’t be able to use to make a Pilsener or a Witbier. This doesn’t bother me, as I quite like Brit-Ales, and my choice of yeast this time around (the Wyeast 1335 British Ale II strain).

SO anyway, here is how to make a Liquid Yeast Starter:

1. Smack the pack and allow it to swell as per the directions.
2. Boil up 100g of LDME in 1L of water. Leave the lid on and allow to cool (in a tub of water swirled around if you want to speed the process).
3. Sanitise a 2L PET bottle.
4. Pour in cool wort you created in step 2.
5. Pour in your liquid yeast.
6. Bung and airlock your 2L bottle (you can get bungs that fit a PET bottle at most HBSes).
7. Leave it until fermented out. A couple of days should be about right.
8. Sanitise 6 stubbies, swirl your starter to resuspend the yeast, and pour an equal amount into each stubbie, then cap them.
9. Store the stubbies in the back of your refrigerator until you need to use them, then create a starter (go to step 2), and add this to your brew at high krausen, or about 24 hours.

I have taken this directly from a conversation on Geoff & Oliver’s Homebrewandbeer forum. There is plenty more detail to be found in that and other forums.

Another good guide to making starters can be found over at Brodie’s Castle Brewing….

As I mentioned above, I have gone through this process with a British Ale II strain. I won’t know how successful my attempt was until I go to make a brew with one of these starters, but I imagine I won;t have any problems.

This is my first go at brewing using only unhopped malt extracts and specialty grains (commonly referred to as extract brewing, as opposed to Kit’n'Kilo, which uses pre-made malt extract kits).

It has certainly been a learning curve….

Firstly, this was the first recipe I developed using the Promash software, so it took a bit of getting used to. Also, the summer holidays and the beginning of semester got in the way, which meant I started brewing this Ale just as the weather got a little colder. Essentially this means the barrel has been living in the family room where the temperature stays at a decent level, instead of the (now very cold – good for lager brewing) brewing closet.

Ingredients

1.5kg Black Rock Light LME

1.5kg Coopers Amber LME

695g Light DME

300g Crystal Malt grain

50g EK Goldings @ 60 mins

30g EK Goldings @ 30 mins

30g Cascade @ flame-out

½ tab Irish Moss

Wyeast Thames Valley Yeast 1275

Method

Steeped grains for 60 mins in 5LT water. Brought to the boil, and added DME, then added hops as per schedule. Crushed Irish Moss tab, dissolved in water and added 5 mins before end of boil. Added water to 23LT. Pitched yeast at 26C.

Unfortunately, I used a liquid yeast pack that was over 6 months old and didn’t make a starter. This means that the yeast didn’t start doing their business for about 3 days, which was quite distressing. The trick with liquid yeasts is to make a Starter – it also means you can get more value for your money!

• OG: 1.060
• FG: 1.016

I bulk-primed this with 160g of Dextrose, looking for a relatively high level of carbonation.

ALC/VOL: 5.8%