Miscellaneous beer makings

16.10.2009

Well we have finally found our local brew supplier. He's not that local, but he's in Norway which is a start. First batch was a Belgian-style Wheat Beer and the second was a dry-hopped India Pale Ale.

The dry hopping was a good experience. We used Fuggles pellets, which we got through our Norwegian supplier. Fuggles are a good aromatic hop variety perfect for IPAs. Ideally we'd be using freshly dried full-leaf hops, but we're still waiting on our supply from Gippsland, Australia to ramp up kick off production...

The next batch we're just about to put on is a Liquorice Stout—just in time for winter. Also, in one of those jaw dropping slap your cheek moments after realising our basement is directly under our kitchen, we have big plans to drill through and run a keg line up for parties.

More to come.

Bottling day

Bottling day

Nice orderly kitchen

Bottles

Bottles

One batch makes roughly 60-65 small (330ml) bottles. We're slowly moving to 500ml bottles but it takes time to build up stock as the ones we want cost almost 40NOK ($7-8AUD) each (including the beer in them, which is the best beer you can buy in Norway actually)

Bottles

Bottles

Aerial view

The tree

The tree

Sterilising rack for bottles.

Almost-finished wheat beer

Almost-finished wheat beer

Give it a couple of weeks in the bottle first...

Busted

Busted

Don't use a hammer to put caps on your bottles. You just break them and end up with litres of beer on the floor.

Secondary fermentation and dry hopping

Secondary fermentation and dry hopping

This was the secondary tub we bought to get the beer off the yeast in the primary fermenter for the dry hopping (Fuggles hops).

Filter

Filter

Complex 'stocking-over-kitchen-strainer' setup to strain dry hopped secondary into bottling bucket. Worked a charm.

Hops

Hops

This looks disgusting but it smells so damn good.

Bottle priming mix

Bottle priming mix

Light malt solution mixed into the bottling bucket so we didn't have to piss about with sugar in bottles.

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