Category: Beer

Finally bottled the Cascade Draught I started fermenting back in August. It was quite a dark amber in colour but the flavour was hard to describe. Once it is carbonated and rested another month or so we will see what it’s true character is.

I hereby declare you to be: Honey Longbrew

Tuesdays’ SMH had an article in it’s Good Living section titled It’s no small beer.

The article tells of the many seachangers setting up their own breweries. For people who are only accustomed to beer that needs a marketing department there is some excellent info about lesser known ales and lagers to try. Mostly it talks about the companies making the beverages, rather than the beers themselves, though.

At the end of the story there is a list of some of the different craft/boutique/micro breweries and their products. See how many you have tried.

I’ve previously had:

• Bluetongue Pilsner
• Burragorang Bock
• James Squire Porter
• Little Creatures Pale Ale
• Matilda Bay Bohemian Pilsner
• Mountain Goat Hightail Ale
• Three Sheets

Let me know which you’ve tried. If you haven’t tried many, or are keen to, a lot of them are available at your local Dan Murphy’s or similar.

I took some photos as I mixed up my recent batch of Cascade Draught. I hope it helps some people understand the home brewing process.

Step 1 – Purchase

Buy your ingredients. Supermarkets, home brew shops and gifts received from others are all good places to get your stuff. In this case I am making a basic kit and kilo beer, adding some hops (and maybe some honey).

Continue reading “How to home brew”

Fermenting: 20/08/2006 Bottled: 18/01/2007

Priscilla smuggled this can of Cascade Spicy Ghost Draught back from Tasmania during her trip back home in March. I’ve made it up into a batch with some Ultrabrew (500g light malt extract, 250g maltodextrin, 250g dextrose) and added some Goldings hops. In a couple of days, after the vigourous initial fermentation, I will add some honey to the brew.

Cascade’s marketing doyens describe it like so:

A zesty wheat inspired draught with balanced hopping creates a refreshing spicy beer with a smooth yet slightly tart palate.

Which pretty much tells us nothing except it is really a wheat beer, despite being labelled as a ‘draught’. Goodness knows what they think draught is supposed to mean as a style of beer – it is a method of storing and pouring. I guess they are implying it is the same as the mass produced bland lagers you can get on tap in most places in Australia, whether they are branded bitter, lager, draught or even pale ale.

A popular feature of the last Cascade beer I made was the ripping yarn. Here is the one for the Spicy Ghost:

In the dead of night, it is believed a solitary, mischievous figure struts the granite halls of Tasmania’s Cascade Brewery, Australia’s oldest continually operating brewery.

According to legend, he lurks in dark corners, taking cover in the cool, cavernous cellars and materialising now and then. Here the ancient stone walls whisper of the past, of colonial times when life in Hobart Town was rough and ready.

This wheat-inspired draught brew is ghostly pale with a spicy edge that hints at a frisky character. The flavour is haunted by orange and coriander with quenching tart shadows and a mysterious underplay of rum.

An intriguing beverage… for true believers.

Update 04/09/2006: Added 800g of Blue Gum Honey on 27/08/2006. Still bubbling slowly 2 weeks after fermenting started.

Update 18/01/2007: Finally bottled this beer. Yay!

Driving past the old Transfield site on Station Road, Seven Hills, a friend of mine noticed a sign on the side of the road saying “Brew your own beer here” and asked if I knew what it was all about. Was it just another home brew shop, or something different?

Definitely something different. The Beer Factory is like a commercial grade microbrewery, where consumers like you and I can walk in off the street and make a batch of beer. Continue reading “The Beer Factory”

Yesterday, I bought some Guinness. Until recently the only Guinness you could buy here in Australia was brewed locally by Lion Nathan.

But I bought some of that Guinness Draught in a bottle that they had those fancy ads for. It has a “rocket” widget inside it to replicate what you drink in a pub in Ireland, and which may be some trouble to get out.

The great news is that this stout is actually made in the Guinness brewery at St. James Gate in Dublin, then shipped around the world to us. I personally haven’t done a back to back test, but I am assured by others that the local concoction is a shadow of the true Irish stout.

Rather surprisingly, this bottle had the nutritional information on the side. In order to make this post educational, I will reproduce it here.

Servings per package: 1 Serving size: 330mL

To give some perspective, here is the info from the apple, grapefruit & guava juice I had in the fridge, normalized to 330mL.

Normal Serving size: 200mL

I hope you are all now suitably educated on the benefits of beer. I also bought some Little Creatures Pale Ale yesterday, but I don’t have as good a story about that.

Fermenting: 29/05/2006 Bottled: 17/07/2006

I finally got around to putting on another batch of beer, and it is my favourite. The American Pale Ale wetpak from The Country Brewer has turned out fantastic both times I’ve made it. I finished the last bottle of this back in February, which feels like a while ago. I’ve actually had the can sitting there since early April and just struggled to find the energy and time to make it.

A wetpak is a kit of ingredients that you put together at home to create your beer. Country Brewer has just added another variety, Classic Oak Ale, so there are now 7 flavours available.

You get a 3kg can containing light malt extract and hops, 150g of crystal malt, 20g of cascade hops and 10g of Safale s-04 yeast. You then simmer it for about an hour, dilute it with water and add the yeast. This makes a beer containing very fresh ingredients with stacks of flavour, particularly the American Pale Ale.

We’ll probably be able to drink it around the fire sometime in July.

Fermenting: 24/04/2006 Bottled: 16/05/2006

I have very good memories of this beer. Last year I put it on in July, in the middle of winter, which helped this lager ferment quite coldly – about as cool as you can expect a yeast to stay active. We’ve been having a bit of a cold spell this autumn, so I thought it was a good opportunity to revisit an excellent beer.

The Xtract Pils is a 3kg can of nestle malt and saaz hops, which, when fermented using the included Saflager S-23, produces an impressively clear, flavourful beer with a great hop aroma. I think the thing that suprised me most about this beer last year was the fantastic head – thick, tightly packed and foamy. Much more than you could expect from a homebrew, even one with 3kg of malt.

The Xtract series are amazingly simple to turn into beer. Pour the can into the fermenter, top up with water, sprinkle the yeast. I’ve made cordial up at mission that was more complex.

This may take up to 3 weeks to ferment (current temp 16° C and falling), and another couple of weeks after that in secondary, but we’ll have a fantastic beer at the end.

Bottling notes: A lovely straw-yellow or pale-orange colour. Tasted so good it was worth drinking flat.

Fermenting: 05/04/06 Bottled: 23/04/06

In July 2004 Cascade started making their own homebrew kits. Brewery branded homebrew kits aren’t overly great – Coopers being the exception. Coopers is actually the largest single manufacturer of home brew kits in the world, exporting to 36 different countries and in five different languages.

But we aren’t talking about Coopers, who I have no trouble with. The real problem in Australia, as far as brewery branded homebrew products go, is Lion Nathan. Lion Nathan, originally a New Zealand company, owns a malt producing company called Maltexo. Maltexo produces homebrew kits (usually 1.7kg cans of hopped malt) and starter packs (including fermenters) under many different brands.

In Australia the main two are Tooheys and Malt Shovel Brewery. Visit their shop if you’d like. Other brands made in NZ by Maltexo are Black Rock, Brewiser, Wander, Brewtec, Mac’s, Beermakers and Goldrush.

The quality of these kits, though, is not great. Black Rock make some nice beers, as do Malt Shovel but all the rest are standard supermarket stuff – your Bilo or Franklins no-name kit is probably exactly the same. As an aside, about the only thing the malt shovel beers share with the James Squire range is the parent company, although they claim that brewing ingredients are selected by Malt Shovel brewers.

But on to Cascade Homebrewing – The CUB/Fosters Group’s entry into homebrew supplies. Fosters chose cascade as the branding for the hopped malt kits, but I’m not sure why. I guess Cascade comes across as a beer appreciators brand, as opposed to posers brands (Crown or Fosters) or bogun brands (VB, Melbourne Bitter, even carlton mid and draught don’t come across as posh).

The kits are made at the Cascade brewery in south Hobart, where Cascade premium, light et al is made. The marketing guru’s have made up some fictional twaddle to put on the labels. This is the blurb from the can of Cascade Imperial Voyage Pale Ale:

At day’s end, as guards muster convicts below deck and the captain retires to his quarters, a small band of sailors retreat to a dark cargo hold in the creaking barque’s belly.

By lamplight, they behold their illicit bounty – barrels and sacks of barley, hops and sugar. Encircling a makeshift fire, they brew a familiar beer: a pale, earthy ale with spicy aromas to magically carry them home to the comforts of England. Most evenings they laugh and sing and enjoy the fruits of their labour. The robust brew sees them through the four-month voyage to Van Diemen’s Land…and safely home again.

You can view the other ripping yarns at the Cascade Hombrew website.

Made this one up pretty simply with a bag of Coopers Brew Enhancer 2 – 500g Dextrose, 250g Maltodextrin and 250g Light Dried Malt. I might add some english hops for aroma in a couple of days. The Bohemian yeast is probably a bottom fermenting lager, so if the Lord would provide some cooler temperatures over the next week or so, we should get a very nice, crisp & clean beer.

Starting Gravity (SG): 1036 Final Gravity (FG): 1008 Alcohol: 4.2% by volume