Brew like a mad thing!

Gluten Free Beer at Brisbane Coeliac Expo

2008-10-28T14:36:00.003+10:00

Hi
I am the manager of the Browns Plains store and I attended the Coeliac Society's Gluten Free Expo on Sunday, to promote our range of Gluten Free Beer kits. It was a great day, and the crowd was excellent. We had a Honey Cascade Pale Ale on keg and the interest in the beer was over whelming.

If you love your beer and have an intolerance to wheat or grain of any description and can no longer drink normal beer, you will appreciate how wonderful it is to taste the flavour of a real beer again. We received numerous comments through out the day about how great it was to be able to drink the beer and know it was possible to make it yourself and get it at less than half the price of bought GF beer.

Being a Coeliac myself, I know and understand what they are talking about. It was fantastic listening to the comments our tasters made on being able to drink real beer again.

I personally am not a beer drinker and never have been, but even I quite liked the taste of this beer. I brewed the beer myself and the instructions were simple and straight forward and I have to say, very easy.

If you are a beer drinker and miss the taste of real beer, do yourself a favour and come and see me in the Browns Plains store where I have some Honey Cascade on tap, or any of our other 6 stores and check out the Gluten Free beer range. There is also an Oz Pale Ale kit available to purchase as well.

Happy Brewing from Browns Plains
Debbie

Australian Home Brewing Conference

2008-10-27T16:53:00.003+10:00

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

Daniel's Trip - First letter back

2008-10-27T16:49:00.002+10:00

To all Beer Lovers,

The past 6 weeks of my life have been an amazing, beer filled adventure, including a brief glance at the London Brew Pub Scene, a pilgrimage to Mecca (aka Germany & Oktoberfest), a lot of time in Belgium - the home of creativity, and an experience of life as a beer-brewing monk.

When I started out I had high hopes of documenting the whole thing - including write-ups on each beer I tried. I've written down the names of 40 beers and kept notes on most of them, but that would probably bore most of us and I'm probably not yet as descriptive as the role of beer reviewer requires.

As the trip unravels, the style will twist and turn and I hope my musings inspire you to great things - whether it be in the brewing room, bottle shop or a trip abroad.

Prost, Cheers, Sante!

Daniel

New Fresh Worts

2008-09-18T18:52:00.007+10:00

We are really excited across the company at the moment, as we have a new Commercial Brewer supplying us with Fresh Worts. Northern River Brewing is a Boutique brewery in Alstonville, in the beautiful hinterland behind Byron Bay.

If you have been lucky enough to try one of their commercial beers (found in 1st Choice bottle shops and discerning restaurants) you will know they make some great beers. I particularly liked their stout, which is very smooth and not too bitter (I am a bit of a whimp on bitter stouts!). Their Blonde Ale is a crisp, tasty summer session beer, the Pale Ale is a beer with bite, not ashamed of its hops! They do a dark ale, a light beer, and a Raspberry one as well.....

NR Brewing are now producing fresh worts for us in the Pale Ale and Blonde Ale flavours. We launched the worts at our Enoggera Store a couple of weeks ago to much acclaim and will be doing another launch at Chapel Hill on October 4 - with a special Hefeweizen to welcome in the Summer. I've tried some of their early experiments with this beer and it just keeps getting better and better. So keep an eye out for the event and our write-up of it.

Daniel's Big Trip

2008-09-18T18:52:00.003+10:00

Hi all. Daniel, one of our younger staff members, has taken off overseas for a trip around the great beer sites of Europe. He will be stopping at the Oktoberfest very soon and will write about it. Daniel will also be visiting the Orval Monastry - one of the very original breweries, that gave rise to the great beers of Europe.

Daniel has been asked to conduct some serious research for us, and write about the various great beers he encounters along the way. Assuming Daniel can find the balance between sampling the beers (for scientific purposes) and writing coherently afterwards, he should have a few interesting stories to tell.

Stay tuned for Daniel's blog entries.

Hello from Jimboomba

2008-06-18T13:38:00.003+10:00

Hi my name is Kelly and I'm the manager of the Jimboomba store.
I have only been here for 3 weeks now but I am learnig everything very quickly. As I have never brewed before it is a big learning curve, but I am handling it well.

So far I have made a Corte's mexican beer and a Pilsner. The Corte's has come out beautiful not bad for my first attempt. The Pilsner is still a working process, but i will let you know how it goes. I hope to put down a lot brews in the coming weeks to expand my knowledge so when a customer askes for advice I can help them out.

I will be having a beer school on Friday 27th June 2008 at 7pm so if your interested please give me a call at the Jimboomba store on 5548 6944 to book a seat as they are limited.

I will be back again next week so till then Happy Brewing

2008-06-11T21:26:00.002+10:00

Its been a while since the last blog and the Belgian Trappist Ale we brewed for the demo night has come out a treat. The usual manky flavours to start with, but now after a month or so in a keg, it has mellowed out into a much better tasting beer. I am keen to see how this one continues to develop over time. Its on tap at the store, but is getting drunk very slowly and should still be around for a month or more yet.

Our next interesting beer will be a Cerny Pivo fresh wort. This dark, czech lager is a easy drinking beer, with some burnt toast or coffee flavours, but without the heaviness of a Stout or the strength of a Bock. I have never tasted this style and am keen to give it a go.

In the meantime, we have brewed up a mean Rogers Ale style beer - basic kit and a bunch of grain to give it some real flavour. Rogers, by Little Creatures, has absolutely got to be my favourite commercial mid-strength beer - loads of flavour and not watery and thin like most mids.

And while we are talking commercial beers, I think I have found my favourite commercial (but not necessarily easy to obtain) beer - Weihenstephener Traditional and Original. Even the Krystal is a lovely beer and I am definately not a wheat beer fan. First Choice stocks these and should be commended for their stock of interesting, non-mainstream beers. Weihenstephener is the world's oldest brewery, based in a Monastry established in 724 by an Irish Benedictine monk. The monks were certainly brewing by 1040 and selling their beer to aid their work in the community. So if you see a bottle, grab it and enjoy a real beer, made only of the things beer should be made of.

Free Brew Events!

2008-03-27T12:11:00.003+10:00

G'day,

Its Mel here from the Brewers Choice store in Enoggera. Im traditionally a kit n' kilo girl but love a good mini mash. I have free brewing demos at my store monthly, the last one being a cocktail night which was heaps of fun. The recipes will be on our site soon. Thanks to all who contributed. Theres a couple more upcoming events I'd like to invite you to...

The first is with a guest speaker from the USA's White Labs company, to be held on Wed night 2nd April at 7pm. Our speaker will be covering all aspects brewing beer with live liquid yeast and how to use it to make commercial quality replicas. Nothing like a real Irish Ale Yeast to make a great stout or Kilkenny-clone, considering its been scavenged from one of the oldest stout producing breweries in the world! My St Paddys stout turned out a pearler- just ask my mates :)

Pretty exciting stuff hey? You can also reuse it over and over again. I am running out of room in my fridge though...You can get yours cheaper at the event.

If thats all sounding a bit too advanced for you why not come to my Basic Brewing Class, its free, jam packed with info and you'll get the chance to see what all the fuss is about with yeast, hops, grains and malt being explained in full. Also get the low-down on cleaners an steriliser and all the cool hardware. Recipes and tasty treats available on the day too. Call to reserve a place for you and a mate on 3855 8800.

Hello from the Wacol Store

2008-03-27T10:56:00.002+10:00

Hi, and welcome to the Wacol store contribution. We are not brewing anything this week, with both our fridges full of fresh worts, a pseudo-Vienna lager and our Erin Irish Stout (waiting to be filtered). We will however be brewing a Belgian Trappist Ale next week, using a Whitelabs Trappist Ale liquid yeast. We are doing that at the Whitelabs demo we will be holding here.

I am not generally a Belgian Beer fan, particularly the wheat beers. However, in the interests of research, I have tried a few recently, including a Leffe Blond (growing on me), an Orval and the Hoegaarden, which I am actually starting to enjoy, after several tries.

The next beer I plan to make, based on a simple recipe from our Enoggera Store Manager, Mel, is a Bock, a dark German lager. Historically, March was the month to make beers for Oktoberfest, to leave them to mature for 6 months. By the time Oktoberfest rolled around the beers would be perfect. Whether or not we can manage to hold off drinking the Bock until September remains to be seen, but I am looking forward to trialling this beer for the first time.

Happy brewing. Wacol

Brewing like a mad thing!

2008-03-17T21:56:00.000+10:00

Hi. My name is David and I own a chain of home brew stores staffed by great people who are passionate about homebrewing beer wine and spirits and want to tell the world about what we are doing. So I hope we can provide lots of information and a bit of a regular run down on what is happening in our own little brewing worlds. I am a beer man personally, and my favourite beer brewed recently was an Aussie Pils recipe I did using a bunch of hops and carapils grain cooked up and added to a tin of Morgans Australian Pilsner. Loads of strong Saaz flavour which really mellowed out and blended in, after a month in the keg. Unfortunately, as the beer reached a beautifully balanced state, it ran out. As they say, "the best beer in the keg is always the last one!" Cheers and stay tuned for some more brewing stories from our Managers.