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My first stout and my first brew using grains and chocolate. I’m hoping this will turn out to be a rich, sweet but smokey stout with a lot of chocolate and coffee undertones.

Ingredients

• 1 tin Coopers stout mix
• 200g Dave’s chocolate grain pack
• Morgan’s master dark roasted malt extract 1.5kgs
• 200 grams raw sugar
• 200 grams lactose
• 450 grams molasses
• 60 grams Cadbury’s bournville cocoa
• 4 tablespoons vanilla extract

Method

Brewed in the usual manner but the grains were steeped in a saucepan of freshly boiled water for 30 mins with the lid on. The cocoa, molasses and vanilla were brought to the boil with a litre of water and blended quite nicely. The sugar was simply added at the end as the OG was a little low. I don’t think it made a difference.

The original gravity (OG) came out at 1052 – much lower than I expected given the amount of sugars (including the unfermentable lactose). Final gravity by my guess will be around 1014.

Fermentation

Two days later and it’s bubbling away quite nicely. I will likely leave this brew to mature in the fermenter for about a week after initial signs of fermentation and SG have stabilised as it may need some time to settle. Three days later and it’s 1018. It tastes like a long black with cocoa, vanilla and just a dash of sugar. Beautiful.

One week later and the SG is still 1018. There are a few more “off” and yeasty flavours at this point but I believe these will go away with time so I will leave it another week in the primary then bottle.

Secondary Fermentation

Update: I picked up a brand new fermenter today which I will use for secondary fermentation. Transferring the brew from one to another is as simple as running a tube between them and turning on the tap. So I moved the stout from the primary to the secondary and will most likely leave it there for another one or two weeks as there is now no risk of that yeast cake going bad and attacking the rest of the beer.

What can I do with the spare fermenter but make another brew.

Bottling

A week after transferring to the secondary it was bottling day. The stout tastes just like a cold espresso but somewhat sweeter. Quite nice. I’m going to call it a breakfast beer. Something tells me it will take a while to finish. It’s far from a sessional beer.

Tasting

A week after bottling I made the mistake of cracking open one of the stouts. It was flat, as a pancake, with no head and not even a small fizz when opening the bottle.  Two weeks later and this time it wasn’t a mistake. There was a decent amount of carbonation, not too much mind you. The resulting liquid looks as appealing as a glass of cold coffee but the taste is fantastic. Sweet, chocolaty with some great coffee undertones. The vanilla added before fermentation is now non-existent – some of the brewers on the forums have mentioned this happens as the yeast seem to metabolise it so next time I will add the vanilla either to the secondary or while bottling.

I finally took the plunge this week and did what every Australian male has to do one time or another during his life and that is make my own home brew.

I picked up a kit from Dave’s Home Brew in North Sydney for a shade under $90. The amount of beer that can be made from this initial kit, which includes all the ingredients, would cost you $100 from the bottle shop so it’s worth a try. Even if you do need to hold your nose every time you drink your first brew.

So on Saturday evening I cleaned and sanitised all the equipment then panicked. As every brewer knows the enemy of the brew is germs and my nose was leaking and I was coughing after a pretty nasty cold.  Having to mix everything up in the bathroom as well didn’t help my confidence levels. Regardless I moved on and mixed the batch up – what will hopefully become a nice pilsener. The kit used was a Morgan’s Golden Saaz Pilsener.

Fermentation

After mixing the batch up and sealing the bucket all there was to do was to wait for some bubbling action through the airlock. I waited and waited and come Sunday there was no action to speak of, except for the occasional bubble every twenty minutes. Once again I was panicking. By Sunday evening though the airlock was bubbling away which continued through until Tuesday evening when it stopped again.

After reading through the forums on the net I decided Wednesday evening to crack open the bucket and take a reading using the hydrometer. This reading was 1011 which according the hydrometer markings is a finished beer. The colour is a bright yellow and slightly cloudy with a fair amount of carbonation even though bottling and secondary fermentation is meant to achieve carbonation.

Tomorrow I’ll take another reading and if it’s the same then it’s time to bottle. Finding 30 750 ml bottles is going to be a challenge though. My collection currently stands at two. Luckily I have a friend who may be able to help out.

Bottling

It’s Saturday, exactly a week after I mixed up the brew and it seems to have finished.

As it turned out my friend didn’t have anywhere near enough standard sized bottles. So I forked out $36 for 30 PET plastic homebrew bottles. So it looks like I’m going to at least have to brew two batches to make it a worthwhile investment. Given the ingredients for the next batch should run to about $30 I’ll probably just break even.

I took another reading of Specific Gravity (SG) this time the proper way by using the valve at the bottom of the bucket. Allowing 100 mls or so to drain off then taking the reading from another couple of hundred mls. I knew I was going to get different readings because the last was taken from the top and this time it appears to be 1014 (a little high for a finished beer). I don’t know how much I trust these readings as getting an accurate reading with this equipment is like trying to get a cat to sit still. The hydrometer just keeps bobbing about and sticking to the edges of the test tube.

You’re not really meant to bottle while you’re getting different SG figures but it’s been a week with the brew at a pretty constant 22C and it tastes ready. In fact it’s tasting pretty good now. It’s got quite a malty flavour and not as hoppy or metallic as I was expecting from a Pilsner.

Update: I’m holding off on bottling and will check the SG again in a few days. The general consensus on the interwebs is that the SG is far too high. Plus after moving the bucket a bit and letting it settle down it bubbled a bit more so I think it’s just taking its time.

The Saturday after

It’s been two weeks now since I “pitched” my brew and since checking on Wednesday the SG has remained at 1011. Still high but it’s time to go. After spending a couple of hours cleaning the kitchen and sanitising the bottles I bottled most of it. Except for a spare I kept to refrigerate and drink that night. Boy did that give me nightmares, but that may be because it was too young. I’m hoping once the minimum of a week is up I can try a fully carbonated beer that doesn’t taste like a lollypop and won’t leave me wondering what those dreams were about the next day.

More updates in a week or two when it’s time to crack open the finished product.

The drinking

Two weeks after bottling the beer it has matured enough to drink. Pouring the chilled beer shows it is well carbonated but has almost no head. It is slightly cloudy and has a very rich sugary yellow colour.

It smells like beer, slightly yeasty.

Given my un-trained palate I would say it tastes caramelish with a slight medicinal taste (I suspect idophor sanitiser). There are hints of ginger. The aftertaste is very much like apple.

Although the alcohol level seems quite low I’m very happy. I can drink a couple of  bottles without having nightmares or feeling ill the next day. Time to brew my second batch soon.

I am addicted to patience, also known as solitaire. One type in particular – klondike. The easiest of all the varieties of solitaire.

This game only requires basic problem solving skills but it is incredibly frustrating. You will find yourself having to give up on games a couple of moves from a win because the one card you needed was under that stack and there’s nowhere to move that king because a lone two sits there taunting you.

I play it on my mobile every time I have a spare minute. I feel as if I’m wasting my life but in reality the time would simply be wasted meditating or day dreaming.

The question I guess I’ve been coming around to is this – why do we continue to perservere at tasks that frustrate us? Is it merely a human trait or does your cat feel frustrated when it can’t quite reach that bench? Why does she keep trying?  Does your dog become frustrated when you won’t take the 20th hint that he wants to go walkies?

Are you the reader frustrated that I almost always leave my blog entries with an open end?

If you know me then you know that I rant on a bit about Sculpture by the Sea. Even though I love it to death and think it does great things for Sydney’s cultural desert – it does have its issues. Issues like exclusionism and over corporatisation. Take this chap’s plight as an example.

People have asked me – “Why don’t you set up your own show then?”. Well, I’m too lazy. Ok no, I’m not motivated enough to jump through all the hoops it would require. Mainly around permissions to use sites and the logistics of promoting the event.

What if one could install a virtual exhibition in a public place?

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I’ve finally finished my first roll of super 8 and Nanolab have processed and telecined it for me.  Richard from Nanolab was really helpful and even gave me some tips to improve things on the next lot of film.  Here’s the film in all its 3:30 glory. More info after the players.

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Finally..I’ve finished my first roll of 8mm film. I know I said I’d do this film in one continuous roll but I cheated a bit so I’m rolling over two. I still plan on doing the entire movie on the equivalent of one roll though.

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I’ve embarked on a project to document Sydney in the closing days of 2008. It will be filmed on 8mm film in a number of locations in and around the central business district (CBD).

The primary aim of the movie is to document what Sydney looks like in 2008. What wasn’t there in the heyday of the 8mm format and how it has changed since. By using this old film stock I hope to, rather contradictorily, show Sydney in a timeless fashion, in a medium that hasn’t changed for almost 50 years.

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Yes people it’s back on. Spring, open air, the ocean and sculptures. What could be better?

For those of you who don’t know Sculpture By the Sea is an annual event held in spring every year in Sydney.  Hundreds of sculptures are placed along the famous Bondi to Bronte seaside walk and hundreds of thousands of people come to look at them over a period of two weeks.

For Sydney siders this has to be the biggest art event of the year. Especially for such a superficial city as ours.

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In this series I will be attempting to document my progress with the making of a painting. The painting is just the latest in a series that have been centred around a silhouette of a cow. Why I obsess about cows on colourful backgrounds I do not know, so I’ll leave that until another time.

I will break down the process of painting into steps and analyse each of them. (more…)