Australian Home Brewing Conference

Hi. We have just got back from the Australian Home Brewing Conference held over the week end in Melbourne. What a weekend it was too. I must have tried over 40 different hand crafted beers, most from the growing number of boutique breweries around Australia. What a range of high quality beers we have.

The conference was held over two days and had over 200 attendees. Brilliantly organised, beers started flowing at morning tea each day, and continued at lunch, afternoon tea, after the conference finished for the day, and onwards. There was a spectacular beer and food matching dinner, a club night for home brew clubs to show off their own brews and the Awards dinner for best brewers in Australia, hosted by none other than Paul Mercurio, an avid home brewer! Arguably, the two best home brewers in the world, Jamil Zainasheff and John Palmer, came out from the States to present to us as well.

If I had been really diligent, I would have recorded which beers were the best. Alas good intentions fell in a heap from the first night and I never really recovered. I was, however, in a suitable state to listen to what was said each day. There will be some things included in our next newsletter, but the predominant theme was working towards consistency in your brewing.

If you can not produce exactly the same quality beer each time you brew, then there is no point really in experimenting with different recipes, changing your equipment or anything else until you can. By ensuring you follow the same brewing procedures, from sanitisation to fermenting to kegging/bottling, every time you brew, you can then begin to change one variable each time to gradually improve you beer.

S0: Rule Number One of becoming a great brewer is getting your systems sorted - work out how you want to brew and stick to those methods every time. Keep a record of what you do and when something goes wrong, you will be able to see what you did differently that time.

More on this latter, but its a great idea worth thinking about as you whip up your next beer.

Have a great week. Cheers David