Jared and the Giant Peach

Holy damn, we just made an IPA.

For the first beer after getting my new mill I decided to make a huge single malt IPA with mostly New Zealand hops and some Amarillo for bittering. Something to burn your taste buds out.

8kgs (17.6lbs) of Maris Otter.

320g (11.3oz) hops.

21 litres (5.5 gallons) of beer.

It ended up being about 300 IBUs and 8.5% ABV.

Here's the hop schedule:

40g Amarillo @ FWH

40g Amarillo @ 60 mins

60g Nelson Sauvin @ 30 mins

60g Motueka @ 20 mins

60g Cascade @ 10 mins

40g Motueka, 20g Nelson Sauvin @ flame out

Oh and Dan, who just got back from the states visiting family brought us some presents which I will talk about later on. Hint: it has something to do with IPA.

Click to enlarge!

'Milhouse' is what I'm calling my new mill. He's such a champ.

From about this point on, Jared got his hands on the camera and started taking ludicrous amounts of pictures. I filtered through them and he actually got some pretty tasty shots. Thanks Jared!

Dan's first time putting a record on, and it was a good one too!

Seriously some of the best brewing music.

I honestly didn't think we'd fit 8kgs of malt in my mash tun with 26Ls of water... But we did, and it smelled amazing. Maris Otter is just perfect.

Time for a beer!

You know what kinda annoys me? This trend of making weak ass smoke beers and labelling them 'Bacon Beers'. Any time someone calls the Schlenkerla Rauchbier a 'Bacon Beer' I want to slap them, that beer is the best example of a smoke beer, and it only tastes like bacon because both the flavour of bacon and smoked malt are derived from smoking over a wood fire. It would be like eating some smoked cheese and saying "this is bacon cheese!". Epic make great beers, but this beer is just kinda weak.

The first addition of hops: 40 grams of Amarillo at first wort hopping. Damn! It smells and looks just like a big juicy peach.

Boil time!

I remember my nan used to drink spirulina when I was younger, this is exactly how it looked, but definitely not how it smelled.

Speaking of grandparents, my other nan also bought me this sweet little bowl as a birthday present once, and it is a perfect hop measurer! Particularly with some Nelson Sauvin in it!

Lots of Motueka too, probably one of the best smelling hops I've ever used.

Waiting for the next addition.

I feel like using this many hops is somehow a criminal offence...

Flameout hops and then into an ice bath, give it a few stirs every few minutes and let it cool.

I'm hungry, what shall we have to eat?

OH SHIT!

That's right, the one and only.

Look at his smug little face. GOD DAMNIT DAN.

Dan: "If you fuck this up Oscar, I swear I'm going to murder you."

So as I mentioned earlier, Dan went back to Nappa Valley in CA for his sister's wedding and just happened to bring a few of these back for us with him. It is probably his most talked about beer, and there is definitely a reason for that.

Pliny the Elder is an incredible beer. It has 100/100 on both Beer Advocate and Ratebeer, which obviously doesn't automatically make it the best, but it's still pretty convincing.

Actually tasting the beer was a weird experience. Pliny the Elder has a sort of mythical aura within the craft beer community, particularly in somewhere like Australia where we can't really get it retail without it losing some of it's freshness, and Russian River are very obsessed with freshness (it says DO NOT AGE about 7 times on the label). Dan made sure to get it just before he left, and the bottles we had were bottled about 2 weeks before we got them.

It is an amazing beer. That's it really. My expectations were the highest for any beer I've ever drank, and they were met, but this beer isn't some crazy amazing weird different beer, it is just a perfect example of a double IPA. Beautiful sunset orange, amazing smooth bitterness that lingers just long enough, and an incredibly rounded hop flavour and aroma. Dan even said that he wasn't sure it should have 100 scores because it's not different, but then we both agreed that it does deserve it because it is the best example of a double IPA we've ever had. You just can't compare it to any other beer. I wanted to compare it to Epic's Hop Zombie, but it just doesn't work.

Also, I've yet to find an Australian IPA that could even come close to this beer. Why not?!

But really I am actually hungry, so we made some food.

Shredded supermarket roast chicken with diced bacon, jalapeños, and this awesome bourbon smoky bbq sauce we found, all smooshed into a wrap with cheese on top and home-made coleslaw.

Yep, that's how you make food to go with the Pliny.

So we ate in the backyard in the amazing Melbourne spring twilight.

Then me and Dan squeezed beer out of some hops. We weren't leaving any behind.

This was just one out of about 4 strainer loads of hops.

Got my yeast starter out, Wyeast American Ale II, pitched it into the beer. Got 1.082, a little under what I was expecting, but I got a couple of litres more liquid. Got to get onto my calculations!

Then we jumped onto the couches and put on an episode of Spaced, because Dan hasn't seen it yet. I've probably seen it about 10 times through. It's one of the best series ever.

Oh and Dan brought some more beers too!

Lagunitas Little Sumpin' Wild. This beer was awesome! A really hoppy, fruity, funky wheat beer that apparently you can buy from the supermarkets in the states for $10 a 6 pack. That doesn't make me sad at all.

It's time to get funky, so we put on the Mighty Boosh, which Dan hadn't seen either!

Russian River Supplication. Uhh... Holy shit.

A sour beer with Brettanomyces yeast aged in Pinot Noir barrels with added cherries. This just blew my mind. I never thought I'd see the day when the Caractere Rouge got a run for it's money, but this is it. The added funk from the Brett almost takes it a step above, and speaking of the devil:

Rodenbach Caratere Rouge. The lack of focus in this pic indicates that we had had just the right amount of beers.

This was the last beer of the night. If you haven't tried this beer you really should. A red sour beer aged with cherries. It is just a perfect example of a really, really good sour beer. At our bar we refer to it as 'Unicorn Blood'.

Cheers! Here's a picture of a door knob that Jared took:

Oscar

HOLYMALT

I made a beer yesterday.

Beer style: Imperial Red IPA

Malt Bill:

6kg Pale Ale
900g Half Amber/Biscuit
800g Crystal 60L
150g Carafa III
100g Crystal 120L

Hops:

25g Cascade @ 60mins
25g Cascade @ 50mins
25g Cascade @ 40mins
25g Cascade @ 30mins
40g Chinook @ 10mins
40g Chinook @ 0mins
Then dry hop with friends fresh Chinook/Cascade hops off his vine after primary.

23L, OG 1.060, Wyeast American Ale II

Beer name:

You know when you just want to make a ridiculous beer? That's how i felt yesterday. Brew day was kinda weird, had a few issues that i don't normally have. I took some pictures, and thought i'd share this little adventure with you. Let's begin!

Banana smoothie and a coffee, breakfast of champions.

Heating the strike water in off-screen pot.

This illustrates my new mashing setup pretty well, i've had it for a while, just never gotten around to posting about it. A really nice member of the Aussie home brewer forums gave it to me after he upgraded. His name is Jesse and he runs a hop business called Hop Dealz in Melbourne, i definitely recommend checking it out, because he is an awesome guy, and he sells good hops.

Mashing in an actual mash-tun and not using BIAB is SO MUCH BETTER. Even though i'm all for BIAB for new brewers, setting up a mash tun makes a huge difference. First of all you have much better temperature stability and secondly you can make much bigger beers. The only downside is cleaning it out, which isn't really that big of a downside at all.

Alright, malt all weighed out, time to crush! 

"Hey Hamish, can i use your drill?"

"No, my girlfriend has it and she's not home"

Alright, time to get Amish on this shit.

Fuuuck it was slow. But that's ok, i say to myself. It feels kinda nice actually, you can really feel the grain crushing under your own weight, and the sound it makes is really great. 

I am at one with the grain.

Well, until the hopper decides to come loose, and all the non-crushed grain goes pouring into the bucket full of my blood, sweat and tears.

It's totally cool, just re-crush the grain. But this time, do it a different way.

I'm pretty sure homebrewing turns you into a genius or something...

Crushed grain by my own fucking hands? This beer is going to RULE.

Great picture.

Alright, mash is underway, i guess it's time to heat up the sparge water and drink a beer! Which beer shall i drink? Oh how about this homebrew i made recently called the 'Burnt Toast and Jam'.

If you read my last post, you might remember a secret beer that i had been working on, and i didn't want to give anything away because it might be shit. Well, it's not shit. It's definitely not what i expected, but it's really good in its own way.

Basically it's a really dark, bittersweet ale with some peated malt to give the 'Burnt Toast' vibe, and then after fermentation i added a bunch of Blackberries to give the 'Jam' vibe.

It is a different beast. While being super dry and bitter, the dark crystal gives it this underlying syrupy-ness, (like jam) and then the acidity and tartness of the berries cuts right through. Weirdly enough, one of the most refreshing beers i've made.

Anyway, how's that mash looking?

Good. Yes.

Lautering time, and then i sparged it good.

I love brewing jargon.

Boil is underway and after the first hop addition, i get my first ever boil-over... I thought it would never happen to me. Everything just happened so fast!

It wasn't that bad, i lost maybe half a cup. Can't stop now though, i'll clean up later. Hop time.

Ooooo, fresh hops! A brewing friend gave me these from his harvest. I added a few of these along with pellets during the boil, but most of them will go in after primary fermentation. I need their aroma, and because i'm going to be no-chilling my beer, most of that might not hang around.

Recently i've been having a bit of a brewing crisis. I no chill my beer, which is when you put your post boil hot wort into an airtight container and let it sit overnight (or for as long as you want) to cool.

Some people don't like this for some reasons. Firstly there is the obvious: it is more susceptible to infections, which is absolutely true if you're not careful. Secondly, it will cause off flavours due to more exposure to oxygen and also because if it is left to sit at near boiling temperature, Dimethyl Sulfides (DMS), which cause sweet corn aroma and taste, won't be able to escape and will be trapped in your beer for all eternity! To be fair, i have no clue what DMS actually is, and i wouldn't have a clue if it was in my beer, but i know i am concerned about it because other people are. The last thing is that the cold break will be prohibited, meaning the proteins that form haze won't coagulate out of your beer and you will end up with hazy beer.

Anyway, as far as i can tell most of these are true except the last one. From what i've heard, the cold break happens no matter how fast the beer chills. I would have to confirm as all the beers i have brewed since no-chilling have all been wonderfully clear after a while in the bottle.

The others i am concerned about, but i am also concerned about water wastage, and my water bill. If you know of a way of chilling wort quick without wasting much water, let me know!

Anyway, i no-chilled the shit out of this beer, because all the beers i've made recently have been no chilled and have turned out great! I also put 40g of Chinook pellets in there as aroma additions (because the hot wort will stay hot for a while, and will still extract oils from the hops.)

This beer is probably the best smelling beer i've ever made. So. Much. Maltiness.

That brings us to the end of an exciting brew day, i hope you all enjoyed it as much as i did, even though there were mistakes, i still had an awesome time. Brewing is the best!

Also, if you haven't got this book, you should probably get it. I have been obsessed!

And to finish it all up and remind you just how small you actually are, here is an awesome picture of NGC 2841, a flocculent galaxy. Here is the full size, i recommend checking it out, it's very detailed.

Now that i think about it, it kinda looks like cold break being whirlpooled...

Why'd they name it NGC 2841 though? Why not something awesome like TERRORBANG!

Cheers!