Toast Beer / Homebrew Thread

Player most likely to be a beer snob

  • Sam Butler

    Votes: 2 20.0%
  • Andrew Gaff

    Votes: 2 20.0%
  • Jack Watts

    Votes: 3 30.0%
  • Brant Colledge

    Votes: 1 10.0%
  • Jonathan Giles

    Votes: 2 20.0%

  • Total voters
    10
  • Poll closed .
Aug 1, 2006
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We don't really care what club you go for in this thread, it's all good.

You can tell when the cap is on properly, it'll just be sealed down evenly and flat all the way round. Depending on how you progress it appears most move away from bottling and towards kegging, I haven't and don't think I will and I use one of the lever type cappers which is probably a bit smoother an operation when you've got 50 stubbies when compared to the style you've got.

Really though the name of the game is to produce beer that gets you sh*t-faced, then depending on how much you enjoy the hobby you can move to spending more on better gear and ingredients to make better batches.

Regardless keep us posted on how you go with some pics. We're all pretty keen to shoot the sh*t about homebrewing!

Yeah I'm on a homebrew FB group and it appears bottling is for noobs, tends to cause a shitfight whenever someone asks about bottling ha ha. Yeah I'll probably invest in a lever capper at some point, I assume I'll stick with it.

Unless you are looking to age beers beyond 12 months, stick with the PETs. Way easier and safer (no bottle bombs). Also you can keep track of how they are carbing up by giving them a bit of a squeeze- once they are hard you know they are carbed.

Yeah that seems fair I guess. I saw on one video where they bottle the PETs and squeeze them in a bit, meant to help prevent bacteria forming in the gap between the beer level and the lid?

Also can you just re-use a PET and the screw on cap or do you need to get a new cap for each brew?
 

Doashuey

Premiership Player
Sep 13, 2017
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Squeezing the bottle is to remove some of the air out of the headspace- nothing to do with bacteria. thought is that it removes some oxygen (oxygen in fermented beer should be avoided at all costs. However it is flawed, when you are carbbing up by priming bottles and letting yeast do their thing, they need that bit of O2 and will chew it up and turn it into CO2. In short, dont worry about squeezing but do fill your bottle up so you only have 1-2cm of headspace.
Yes you can reuse PETS and caps. Just wash and sanitise as normal.
 
Aug 1, 2006
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Squeezing the bottle is to remove some of the air out of the headspace- nothing to do with bacteria. thought is that it removes some oxygen (oxygen in fermented beer should be avoided at all costs. However it is flawed, when you are carbbing up by priming bottles and letting yeast do their thing, they need that bit of O2 and will chew it up and turn it into CO2. In short, dont worry about squeezing but do fill your bottle up so you only have 1-2cm of headspace.
Yes you can reuse PETS and caps. Just wash and sanitise as normal.

Cheers for that, and yes now that I think about it it did refer to oxygen.
 

FKASC

Reid’s Like Copium
May 28, 2017
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Cheers for that, and yes now that I think about it it did refer to oxygen.
I agree with Doashuey about PETs over glass.

Investing in PETs will also allow you to easily move to closed (pressurised) transfers from your fermenter to the bottle, if you eventually upgrade to a pressure rated fermenter such as a fermzilla, fermenter king or a kegmenter.

However you do need to be more careful with sanitation compared to glass. Make sure you rinse them out well straight after use and don’t scratch the insides with metal etc. invest in some sodium percarbonate and some starsan.

Drinking coopers longnecks is fun also.
 
Can you believe we’ve passed the 3.5k posts mark in this thread?

Gee...

Screenshot_20210210-130939.png


I'd say close to 50% of mine would've been made whilst drunk.
 

Doashuey

Premiership Player
Sep 13, 2017
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Couple of beers on tap atm.
Kviek part 2. Last one was astringent so upped the malt, mix of ale, Vienna and Munich vs straight pils. Used Nelson at whirlpool and dry hop at yeast pitch only.and it is bang on. Delicate and very drinkable with a nice waft of passionfruit and peaches. Not bad for a 5 day ferment.
20210214_175737.jpg


Beer 2 is my "British dunkelwiess". A left over English mild that I repurposed with half a kg of dry malt and pitched with 3068. Very nice and pretty close to style despite 0 wheat.
20210213_192256.jpg

Cheers.
 

FKASC

Reid’s Like Copium
May 28, 2017
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Was meant to enter my kolsch into a brewing comp this weekend but didn't realise the cut off was 10am saturday morning. For some stupid reason I thought the online form would be open until midnight.

I have a sour (which i brewed in Sept 2019) that will be entered though. Interested to see how it goes - pretty hard to judge sours though I suspect.
 
Jun 28, 2011
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In fairness I did start with a Shelter Brewing XPA. I'm annoyed I even dirtied my glass with that trash. One sip drain pour beer. Gross.

Can't believe in this day and age breweries send their sub par new beers to the market. It can kill a brand.

Shelter is trash..
I took the kids to the mermaids at busso jetty and we booked into shelter for lunch after.
Seriously, if the staff were horses you put the lot of them down... absolutely useless.
I had to flag them down as they walked past for a drink.
Then we were ignored for another 50mins until I flagged another down to order, then they didn't bring out any food for another hour.

It's a sterile s**t venue with bog average beer and reeks of some rich prick throwing money at success. * em.
Rant over
 

DanWCE

Brownlow Medallist
Apr 2, 2015
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Sounds like I'll keep driving straight through Busso on my trips South, then! I like Darleens and Fire Station but I can get my Rocky Ridge fix at plenty of places.
 
It’d look clearer if your camera hadn’t focused on the background! Looks good. I’ll send through a kolsch pic later

My camera phone is so dicey if you don't set it to flash, like even in full daytime the flash is necessary to get the best focus. Here's the same with the flash.

_20210219_090221.JPG
 

DanWCE

Brownlow Medallist
Apr 2, 2015
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It's a Sony with 21 megapixels. Kicks arse when it gets it right, but sh*te without the flash active.

I suggest day drinking. Ambient light plays a hug part in getting good beer photos. When I started the blog/insta page we lived in a two storey townhouse with really poorly positioned windows and I couldn't get a good photo to save myself.

The only workable light was the morning Easterly and it was hard to justify morning beers as often as is required to generate content haha.
 
Aug 1, 2006
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My first beer turned out pretty good, a Morgan's lager which was meant to turn out as a Crownie and it did. I tried it after one week and was very sedimenty but after the second week it was much better, also refrigerated for a few days was much better too.

I think my next lot is ready to bottle, are there any tricks with the hydrometer? I was getting a constant reading but then the reading suddenly went up, which I understand is impossible. I saw one vid which says you spin it when you put it in to prevent air bubbles, any other tips?
 

DanWCE

Brownlow Medallist
Apr 2, 2015
19,578
41,737
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My first beer turned out pretty good, a Morgan's lager which was meant to turn out as a Crownie and it did. I tried it after one week and was very sedimenty but after the second week it was much better, also refrigerated for a few days was much better too.

I think my next lot is ready to bottle, are there any tricks with the hydrometer? I was getting a constant reading but then the reading suddenly went up, which I understand is impossible. I saw one vid which says you spin it when you put it in to prevent air bubbles, any other tips?

You could leave it out for a few minutes to let the CO2 dissipate. There's also a possibility you sucked up some trub in your sample which may be affecting the gravity reading.
 
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