Calling all home-brewers

Discussion in 'General chat' started by club42, Jan 23, 2007.

  1. club42

    club42 Junior Member

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    In my intro thread, I stated that I drink Coopers Pale Ale, which should be the permie's chosen drop (no additives & preservatives). I've since been challenged by Monte, who thinks that home-brew should be the permies beer of choice.

    Let's hear from you lot, I know you're out there. Come on, tell me how good your own brew is, you know the secret, you know how to make the good stuff. You'd never go back to that mass produced chemical tasting stuff. You're delusional.

    Perhaps someone can let me know the pro's & con's of pouring your home-brew straight onto the garden, compost heap, chooks etc.

    Cheers,

    club42 :eek:ccasion5:
     
  2. beherit

    beherit Junior Member

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    Re: Calling all home-brewers

    Haha, it looks like the gaunlet has been thrown down - always a great debate this one!

    I'm of the opinion that home brewers can talk their brew up until the cows come home but the reality is only ever fully realised in the actual drinking. So as a martyr for the cause I (being impartial & open minded) will volunteer myself as judge if any of the homebrewers back themselves enough to disprove club42's rant and contest their brew against:

    A) a commercially brewed beer of my own choice (import or domestic)

    and

    B) some of Matt's GreatGreatGreatGrandfathers own stash - the locally produced, internationally accepted, Coopers (kindly donated by Matt of course!)

    whats say, will i chill a few glasses chaps?!
     
  3. MonteGoulding

    MonteGoulding Junior Member

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    I think the most ammusing thing here is that Matt hates homebrew but loves Coopers which is just a big version of homebrew. I'm sure Matt understands that it's not the size of your equipment that but the way you use it that counts ;-)
     
  4. Jez

    Jez Junior Member

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    I owned and ran a brewshop (with other sidelines) for years in a small country town where the only possible way to be successful was to physically prove to people that they could make a much better beer/wine/spirit than was commercially available.

    Like practically all things, the smaller the scale you're working on and the more personally involved you are, the better the result. The more you scale up, the more short cuts and sacrifice of quality you have to make.

    Having drank Coopers, in Adelaide, on tap, yes, it's a pretty good beer for a commercial beer - certainly far and away the best made in Australia. Like any 'live' beer (i.e. the yeast hasn't been carbon filtered out and preservatives like arsenic added in its place), it can't really travel long distances and come out as well at the end of the journey as it does when you drink it in the city it's brewed in.

    Coopers has really damaged the homebrewing market and its reputation considerably by focusing on making a cheap end product...pushing sugar instead of malt...marketing crappy plastic screw top bottles to put your brew in...and putting homebrew in supermarkets instead of brewshops - where the minimal amount of necessary advice to begin and all the later steps to expert level are available.

    When I was running a shop, you could only buy Coopers brews wholesale for about $.80 cheaper (not including freight or other overheads) than the consumer can buy it at the supermarket - try running a business with a profit margin of less than 5% per $9 item when the item lasts the average consumer 1-3 weeks. So naturally, all homebrew shops push other products ahead of Coopers...you still have to stock it, but you NEVER recommend it. And it's not that hard to get people onto other brews...Coopers has a very 'error resistant' yeast (i.e. if you have considerable temperature fluctuations when brewing and other bad practices it will resist starting to taste like banana), but it has no subtlety whatsoever, ale yeast is provided with every variety instead of what the variety actually requires, and a dry yeast is always considerably inferior to a decent liquid variety.

    I could rant about Coopers homebrew division...their massive flaws and evil mass production mentality all night, but suffice it to say, if you've made base brand Coopers beer according to their instructions with one of their crappy el cheapo brewkits, then you are about as far away from decent quality homebrew as you could possibly get.

    It's akin to comparing homebrand cat food with a meal at a top quality restaurant.

    I'm happy to give beer/mead/stout/porter/wine/spirit brewing advice to anyone who needs it...I've made and tried every brand and sub-variety available in Australia (including the many imported varieties) and I have a great love for the subject.
     
  5. Jez

    Jez Junior Member

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    Sorry, double post...
     
  6. Richard on Maui

    Richard on Maui Junior Member

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    Who said beer doesn't make you smart? :lol:
     
  7. MonteGoulding

    MonteGoulding Junior Member

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    Hi Jez

    Cool previous occupation! The guys in the shops always know their stuff and I agree with your statements on Coopers. Their new range of brewing sugars is a prime example. You've got to read the back to make sure the one your getting hasn't got sucrose in it.

    I was wondering if there were any organic kits on the market?

    I'm also wondering if there's a reasonable beer alternative from a perennial crop? I guess apple cider, ginger beer and citrus beer are ways to go.

    Cheers

    Monte
     
  8. FREE Permaculture

    FREE Permaculture Junior Member

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    I'm a VB man myself :)

    my last trip to europe was for 7 months,
    drove through most countries and tried all the beers, glad i'm back with my VB.

    [​IMG]
     
  9. MonteGoulding

    MonteGoulding Junior Member

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    Sorry mate but that doesn't say much for your taste buds.
     
  10. FREE Permaculture

    FREE Permaculture Junior Member

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    oh well, I don't mind guinness either.
    nice and thick does the trick, sometimes.

    [​IMG]
     
  11. club42

    club42 Junior Member

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    Jez, from the little bit that I know about Coopers, I'm led to believe that their homebrew kits are made to target asian beer markets where ultra-low alcohol (around 1-2%??) beers are the law? and Cooper's just cant brew a conventional beer to suit. So they use their home-brew kits to penetrate these otherwise (almost) closed markets, allowing keen drinkers to put a little more sugar in the mix than it might say on the instructions, thus giving a little more bang for their buck. So, whilst producing mega kits for the overseas market, it's cheaper/easier to just run out the same kits with minimal modification to the bits n pieces (I think the foreign ones have smaller sugar scoops) for the local market. I get the impression that Coopers are famous for the quality of beer they make in their bottles with their labels, so they're not too fussed about the quality the home-guy comes up with (it's easy to say he compromised his brew in some way). Besides, if you're buying their homebrew, you're probably buying their beer, so they've got you both ways.
    I'm sure there's some fact in this statement somewhere, please help me find it.
    And Jez, I'm interested in making home bourbon. Have you tried, is it any good. I'm also planning to plant some vines at home, so someday I'll have to pick your brains on making wine at home.
    I'm sure you could make a better homie than FP's VB, that's a dry argument.

    Monte: in relation to this comment: "it's not the size of your equipment but the way you use it that counts" I've often said "You can still make a strong fist with small hands" but that's in relation to a different subject matter.

    Happy Days,

    club42
     
  12. gbell

    gbell Junior Member

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    I'm a little confused... are you guys saying that I should be able to get a better quality product from the Coopers homebrew kit versus Coopers in a bottle?
     
  13. FREE Permaculture

    FREE Permaculture Junior Member

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  14. Jez

    Jez Junior Member

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    Yeah Monte, they really do make it difficult for people. Their straight liquid malt in a can is a pretty good product, but it's pretty much limited to brewshops.

    Not in Australia to my knowledge Monte, you have to get organic grain and do a full mash, or find some organic malt extract and do an extract brew (which is pretty similar to kit brewing). Weyermann's sell a few organic varieties of malt in their 'specialty' range, most of the bigger brewshops stock their malt - it is very good, but the range of styles is fairly limited and you have to bear in mind that it's imported all the way from Germany. There are a range of organic kits available in the US, but I don't know of anyone who imports them...most US kits are pretty dodgy as a rule compared to the UK and Australian ones and in my experience, it's a case of 'once bitten twice shy' with many importers.

    Organic hops are harder to come across than malt and you pay a lot more for them as they have a limited keeping time compared to pellets or the dried hop bags which are vaccuum sealed. They are a perennial which is fairly easy to grow on a small scale (unlike grains), but finding the variety you're after can be pretty tricky I've found...and that was in Tasmania where hops are pretty commonly grown. The need to keep fresh hops in a deep freezer (and even then only for a limited time) makes it quite a tough proposition in a shop.

    Well, pretty much all fruits and plenty of vegetables and herbs (and a few 'weeds!') are fermentable, but strictly speaking, to be classified as a 'beer' then it must contain malt - the Reinheitsgebot Purity Law in Germany states that only malt, hops and water can be used, but most other places there is some degree of latitude. In Australia our beer is typically a large amount of cane sugar (which - along with the chemicals added to preserve 'dead' beer - contributes a lot to bad hangovers incidentally), a fairly minimal amount of malt - the expensive ingredient - and sledgehammer hops like pride of ringwood, fuggles, cl80 etc to drown out the cane sugar flavouring. You can make cider out of a fair range of perennials - most berries are particularly good and easy to do...that's a great place to start. As a rule, anything that you can make a reasonable tasting juice out of will be ok fermented into cider or sparkling wine. Anything you can't make a reasonable tasting juice out of - providing it can be fermented in the initial stages - is better off distilled.
     
  15. ho-hum

    ho-hum New Member

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    gbaell & free permaculture

    I think Jez said it there in the first line but even that aside the entire object of home-brewing isnt, chickadee, to reproduce VB. It is mostly aimed at the homebrew market and reducing costs to drinkers - nothing complex about that and marketers know that anyone saving money will probably buy the cheapest kit to try it out. Maybe Coopers are onto a smart reverse marketing strategy here.

    If you have grown up on McDonalds & KFC I seriously doubt I could replicate their product to the point of your satisfaction. If you have grown up on 'homegrown' chicken and hamburgers you may consider me a wonderful cook. A lot of this choice is tied up in price, habit and convenience.

    I like scotch whisky but do not like 'bourbon whiskey'. It is entirely my choice to pay the price I do for the product I want.

    BTW, has anyone got a bottle of the Tasmanian whisky, I believe it has now aged 5 years??

    floot
     
  16. Jez

    Jez Junior Member

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    By 'kit' do you mean the can of brew or the equipment Club? Or the whole thing?

    A basic can of brew by itself will (give or take a little for a full fermentation versus a slightly incomplete one and the various brands and varieties) make roughly a 2.5%ABV (alcohol by volume) beer, which is why the laws Australia had in the early 70's (similar to what you describe above) made it extremely hard for any homebrewing industry to develop - with no added sugar you're already over the legal limit. The scoops provided in beer kits are for priming (carbonating the brew) and add almost no ABV, so reducing the size of them would just mean your beer is flat.

    I don't really know anything about the Asian brewing market, but I'd be surprised to hear that Coopers' mega rollout into all Australian supermarkets had more to do with Asian sales than domestic, or that their first kits were made with Asia in mind more than the domestic market.

    But I really couldn't say for sure one way or another.

    Well, like beer brewing, it depends what you use and how you go about it. Still Spirits make a range of 'legal' spirits and liqueurs which you can make with just fermentation - no distilling. They call them 'Alcobase' kits. Distilling is illegal in Australia ATM - in NZ you can distill for home purposes (more on that later). You can reach 21-22%ABV through fermentation alone. IMO, spirits which are meant to be distilled to the 37-50%ABV range don't really come out well with the Alcobase kits - too much sweetness remains and they lack the full bodied power and flavour of a distilled product.

    Liqueurs are more palatable, because 21-22% raw spirit (before flavouring) has you more in their commercial ABV range and most are sweet anyway...the drawbacks of fermentation without distillation are not so detrimental to the end product.

    It is legal to buy, own and operate a 5ltr water purifier/essential oil still in Australia without commercial licensing. It is also legal to buy a 25ltr stainless steel pot boiling unit...which the head (condenser) of the 5ltr still (by no coincidence) fits onto. 8) So you can fit together a 25ltr still with legally bought equipment. If you use it (or the 5ltr) to distill alcohol, you are breaking the law, but in practice, it's pretty common and unless you are distilling for profit the chances of being prosecuted are miniscule. Do it for profit on a large scale and you may well get an unpleasant knock on the door...unless you have the local cop(s) for a customer...:D

    So, back to the bourbon, you can make an exceptional quality bourbon provided you distill.

    You can use a pot still (which is what commercial spirit makers use) which produces an ABV of 40-50%, and what you put in it comes through in the flavour. If you use a reflux or super reflux still, you make a 80-90%ABV spirit, then water it down to required levels (and virtually no flavour of the original product comes through (it has an extremely weak taste akin to vodka with an extremely faint hint of rum if you've used dextrose as your fementable).

    Pot stills leave a lot of undesired forms of alcohol behind with the flavour, which is why commercial spirits are aged for many years in barrels which soak up the crap (though some remains) and smoothen the end product. Reflux stills take most of these unpleasant flavoured and undesired alcohols out, with the rest removed by carbon filtering. You can't carbon filter a pot stilled product much, or you lose much of the flavour you wanted.

    So, a home reflux still will get you a cleaner end product than any commercial spirit, which is why its drinkable virtually straight away (though it takes on character commercial manufacturers can only dream about if it is aged several years in a mini-barrel).

    Once you water to the ~40% range and add bourbon essence (which BTW, most commercial manufacturers do to some degree anyway...often using exactly the same flavouring) you have a superior product provided you used a good essence.

    The best bourbon essences IMO are:

    Top Shelf Classics American Bourbon (most comparable to Maker's Mark)

    Top Shelf Classics Tennesee Bourbon (most comparable to Jack Daniels)

    Prestige Sour Mash Style Bourbon Whiskey is pretty good too, but a bit below the above (depends on your taste really).

    Sam Willards and Edwards make reasonable bourbon varieties - again, it depends on your taste.

    So yeah, in summary, you can make better bourbon at home.
     
  17. Jez

    Jez Junior Member

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    Well no gbell, you won't get a better beer than commercial Coopers with their basic homebrew kit , their basic brew range and following their 'keep it as simple and cheap as possible' instructions. You will get something vaguely comparable - if you brew it as well as humanly possible.

    You can however, make a homebrew which kicks the arse off commercial Coopers if you have slightly more advanced equipment and methods than the basic Coopers kit.

    You can make a beer at home for roughly $20 a carton, which is brewed using simple kit methods, and uses Coopers own ingredients (the Thomas Coopers Premium Selection range and their liquid malts which aren't available in the supermarket) which they would have to sell for $80-90 a carton to be profitable using the same quantity and quality of ingredients you can use at home.
     
  18. MonteGoulding

    MonteGoulding Junior Member

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    Thnaks for the info Jez

    Any idea just how much land you need to grow barley for the standard 22.5 litre batch? I like the concept of doing it from scratch but I'm imaginiung needing acres of barley.

    Cheers

    Monte
     
  19. Jez

    Jez Junior Member

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    I'd be seriously guessing to answer that Monte - and of course yield will vary wildly with conditions, strains etc - but I do know that 'two row' barley gives a better yield.

    I had a quick search for articles which may help give a guide to yield per acre, but I only found summaries of articles only available in ag journals or that were behind paywalls - you may be able to find something helpful with a more thorough search. One summary I read stated that they were planting 90kg of seed per hectare, so you'd imagine they are yielding a few hundred kg's from that, but no doubt that is an example of a very intensive operation with loads of inputs.

    Full mashing from scratch, you'd need around 4-5kg of malted barley for a 23ltr batch...what the conversion rate from raw barley to malted barley is, I'm really not sure.

    One other thing I would add, is that malting the barley is quite a specialised operation...from what I've read you can stuff things up pretty badly if you don't know what you're doing...but that's all part of learning a new skill eh? :D
     
  20. permaculture.biz

    permaculture.biz Junior Member

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    G'day,

    Interesting thread. Appreciate your information there Jed. I have been home brewing since I was a kid helping out my grandad with his various, then and apparently still illegal concoctions. As an amateur industrial chemist he used to get up to all kinds of stuff in his shed on the farm and used to make mead, whisky, beer and fruit wine.

    I still brew these days. I made a couple of brews after coming back from Wisconsin this year, knowing that Christmas was coming up and we were wanting to save money for our upcoming world tour. I made the Coopers Cerveza and Stout. My wife and I share a Stout of an evening and she doesn't mind the homies. The Cerveza I hadn't made before and it was a real success. I used some organic sugar (as I always do) with very fresh rainwater and it is perhaps the first brew I have made that didn't taste like a homie. We had a pretty full on festive season with our big family and thirsty friends so it is unfortunately gone.

    That's the thing: you need to be dedicated to keep the supplies up - same with bottling! Our younger kids like to help out too - as with bread making etc. They fill the bottles and put in the sugar etc etc. and we have a nice time of - that is how it should be. My thing is that it is part of the regimen of respecting your food by understanding and participating in it production and processing - and to nuture this in kids is pretty important.

    I try and get a brew happening on the 1st day of the PDC's I teach too. On the evening of Day 1 I have a session (voluntary with usually 100% attendance!) that we precede and continue with a discussion headed: "The role of Ferment in Human Nutrition and Energy Cycling". This is a pretty broad discussion, and is followed up with some Kim Che and Sour Dough Bread Making as well. I first did applied this session here in Viet Nam with my 20 day Sustainable Cacao Agroforestry System PDC students (all government forestry/agricultural extension officers). That time I did a stout because the "bia" here is quite light and invariably blonde - so our brew was labelled "bia den" or black beer (they also called it "bia darren"!). Anyway we enjoyed this at our closing ceremony and it worked out really well. A lot of cries of "Chuc Mung" or Congratulations/Cheers went on that afternoon...

    At Wisconsin in November 2006 we made another brew, a Coopers Lager I think. It was pretty cold so it took about a 10 days to go off, so only had a couple of days in the bottle by course end. I got a note a couple of days ago that some of the students had a go of a couple of bottles this week and it worked out well. They are now going to get all of the 2006 Wisconsin PDC students together in a month and have a bit of a party. Too bad I won't be there myself.

    Thanks again for your good note Jez - quite informative for a brewing hack like myself who lacks the chemical genius of his Grandad but likes to have a play.

    Ciao,

    Daz
     

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