If you love good beer. . .

[Jovial Monk]

I had customers who used rainwater—for one guy the nearest tap water was 50Km away!

Main thing to do is healthy yeast, well aerated wort (pour in the topping up water from as great a height as you can manage (even mash brewers do this, some actually inject oxygen from a cylinder!) So buy a 11g sachet of yeast from a brew shop that keeps yeasts in a fridge.

Supermarkets sell cheap kits. I would go to a proper HBS (no, not just trying to boost fellow HBS guys ) and get the Coopers kit and liquid malt. Brewcraft shops don’t stock Coopers stuff.

[boxy]

I cant see any reason for rainwater to fail, as long as you get rid of any microbes. Seems like a better option that clorinated anyway, and is pretty much my only option anyway (so a moot point ).

The guy I'm reading at the moment (Grant Sampon, Understanding Beer Making) seems to be constantly pushing to avoid microbe contamination by limiting exposure of the water and mix to the air as much as possible. I would have thought that oxygenation of the water would be counterproductive. Isn't the fermentation an anerobic process, hence the sealed container encouraging the layer of CO2 over the mix?

I wont be getting my kit from the supermarket (once I've tried out this loaner), I was just wondering about the yeast/wort mix packs.

[Jovial Monk]

Grant Sampson is an idiot!

[Jovial Monk]

Yeast starts off using aerobic respiration and uses the oxygen to multiply rapidly. When all the oxygen is used up the yeast (a unicellular fungus) reluctantly turns to anaerobic respiration and makes alcohol. At this stage the yeast reproduces but not very much.

Yeast has killer in it, it will take of microbes to a large extent:

1. By rapidly dividing and growing in the aerobic phase it uses up the available oxygen quickly, so aerobic bugs are out of luck

2. If, by following my advice, you have a huge population of yeast cells busy making alcohol the pH of your wort drops rapidly towards a pH of 4, too acid for most bugs

3. yeast cells killing microbes directly

It is important to establish that huge population of active yeast by pitching a fresh 11g sachet of yeast into well aerated wort. If you want to make crap beer follow Grant Sampson and stop asking me!

Now, yes, you wouldn’t make beer using stagnant filthy water but brewers have had to do that in the past (one talked of red worms in his water!) but rainwater from a well maintained roof/guttering etc won’t have a high enough microbial population that good yeast practices can’t take care of. Boiling 20L of rainwater is a stupid waste of energy.

I told you the kits and malts to use already.

[boxy]

Don't get too annoyed by my questions. I'm still in the reading up/questioning stage. I take all opinions on face value, until I have enough experience of my own

[Jovial Monk]

Best thing you can do is toss that Grant Sampson book in the rubbish bin.

Rainwater is very soft, but the stage where water quality—additions of gypsum etc—was done back at Coopers Brewery, all you need is clean water that doesn’t taste crap—not Adelaide tap water

The yeast will take care of the microbes. But pitch enough—11g sachet stored in the fridge (even bakers yeast which is also saccharomyces cerevisiae should be stored in the fridge) and into well aerated wort: a 2L jug you fill and lift up as far as you can and pour into the fermenter.

[Jovial Monk]

Dunno how boxy’s HB went, if he followed my advice he had a 99.99% chance of making BEER!

Now, I bought some beer, Little Creatures Pale Ale. Bought it without my glasses on, saw it said MAR 12 for BB date.

OK, just drank that ale—BB date was 5 Mar 2012—a whole month old. Now, Little Creatures pat themselves on the back often about using all those hops! Yeah! Crap, when the beer is really really fresh, 2 weeks or less in bottle you get the true, full Cascade hop flavor. I got a memory of that.

OK, beer experts:

What beer is this beer modelled after? Hint: it comes from california.

What other C hops exist besides Cascade?

[boxy]

Yeah, the homebrews are going fine... but I decided to ignore your advice, and just "read the fucking instructions" on the pack. It's worked a treat so far, with no failures whatsoever. It's producing a better beer than the old VB (bought a carton of longnecks last week to compare), even buy just doing the basics.

Once I get some time, I'll definately go back and try some of your advice though, now that I understand the process a bit better, via experience/reading.

[donniedarko]

Brisbanites can go to the Archive Bar in West End once a month for their beer tasting nights.

Different beer style each month (last month was IPA) - costs $30 and you get a 3 course meal and 3-4 stubbies of beers you most likely have never seen before.

I thought I knew just about every beer you could buy in Qld but saw 3 IPAs I'd never even heard of.

[Jovial Monk]

Byron Bay Brewery Pacific Ale has a nice little explosion of Galaxy hops in it.