Grain mill upgrade

I got a mill for crushing barley nearly a year ago. Before that I was crushing grain for my extract brews (and one partial mash) with a bottle or rolling pin on a baking tray, not a fun way to start an afternoon's brewing. It's not the best one you can get but then it wasn't the most expensive either. It works fine but the hopper was pretty small and flimsy and it was only mounted on a narrow bit of ply.

I lent it to my brother the other day and now it looks like this:

What can I say? Simon has skills

The new hopper holds around 6kg of grain and sits nicely on a 20L bucket. It's more stable and easier to use. A win all round.

Some people get into brewing and love all the planning and building and really enjoy getting everything together. That's not me at all. I sometimes wish it was but all I really want to do is brew. It's awesome having Simon around to make this kind of stuff happen.

DIY wort chiller

My bro and I made ourselves wort chillers a couple of months ago:

9m of 1/2in copper tube shaped around the end of a bucket.

Finished wort chiller. I neatened up the ends a bit afterwards.

It was really easy to do. I think in the end it might have taken a lazy 20 minutes to make both of them. We also found that you can just jam on a bit of garden hose without mucking around with hose clamps or tap fittings. It's not the prettiest but it works really nicely. 23L of 100'C wort chills to 25'C in about 20 minutes.

DIY roasting malts: crystal malt

I haven't managed to get hold of a coffee roaster for roasting malt yet but I thought I'd have a go at roasting some crystal malt in the oven and see how that turns out. As with last time, the info on Barleypopmaker was my guide.

I decided to use Maris Otter pale malt because I've got plans for a Best Bitter and I thought that the English MO crystal might give a nicer flavour than the ordinary crystal I use. The aim was for something reasonably dark, around the 300 EBC mark although I have no way of measuring that except by comparing it to commercial crystal malt.

I measured out 1kg of Maris Otter into a bucket and added enough filtered water to make sure the grain was totally covered. It soaked for around 4 hours.

I love the aroma of Maris Otter as it steeps

After that I mashed the grain at 65'C on the stove for an hour. This is the same as when brewing beer except that the grain isn't crushed. The enzymes are at work during this stage, converting the starches into sugar like they do in a normal mash and a fair bit of it remains trapped inside the grain. This is where crystal malt gets its sweetness from.

Into the pot

Next time a little less water so that more sugar stays in the grain

It took a bit of jiggling with the heat to keep it around 65'C

Then the grain goes into the oven at 120'C until it's dry. This part took ages for me and if I was doing it again I'd do a smaller batch so I could spread the grain out as much as possible to speed the drying up. I stirred it every now and then so that the grain dried out evenly. It tastes so sweet and soft at this stage.

Drying out took ages

Ready to go into the oven for roasting

Finally, the grain is roasted. The sugars are caramelised giving it that caramel/toffee flavour that crystal is all about. I roasted the grain at 180'C for 25 minutes at which point it was a nice, dark colour, I wouldn't have wanted to take it any darker.

The crystal malt just out of the oven

It tastes pretty good. It's quite dark and has a burnt toffee kind of flavour. There's roastiness up front and the sweetness follows on from that. There's also a deeper malt flavour to it than with the crystal malts I've used before.

Crystal and Maris Otter side by side

Overall, I'm glad I gave it a go but it did take me all day. It's the sort of thing that fits into a home day pretty well but would be a hassle to have to do very often. 1kg was really a bit ambitious with our crappy oven and that probably added a couple of hours to the whole process. Ultimately though, the finished product will determine whether this is worth doing again.

Making bottle labels

I like the idea of being able to do graphic design but I'm not so good with the execution. Somehow though, doing labels for batches of home brew is fun even if they're not amazing. Actually, it's the same with naming beers, It takes me ages but I enjoy making a complete package and giving it some personality.

My first go. BR stands for Bultman's Reserve. I send out a some beers every couple of months to a group of my beer loving friends.

What I'm planning for the June release:

DIY stir plate

My friend Jon says that the essence of hardcore punk is 'DIY'. I love that as a definition of punk and I like the idea of being a bit handy but I don't have a great DIY track record myself. This is my attempt to build a stir plate, something that will help my yeast starters to grow big and healthy.

It took:

• A PC fan
• A 12v adaptor
• A couple of crazy rare earth magnets
• A LED dimmer (for speed control)
• A plastic container
• Bolts, nuts, washers, blu-tac

I drilled holes in the lid to mount the fan. 4 bolts, each with 3 nuts between the lid and fan to provide a bit of space for the magnets to sit on top of the fan. A couple more holes in the container, one on the end for the speed controller and one on the side for the power chord.

Magnets nicely balanced and spaced for my stir bar

After stripping the wires for the power supply and the fan, they were hooked up to the speed controller.

I attached the magnets to the top of the fan as in the picture. I'd read that some people had difficulty getting them balanced and others had difficulty with spacing the magnets. I wasn't confident to just glue them down and blu-tac made it easy to get it right. It also means that I can easily move the magnets if I get a longer stir bar.

DIY stir plate in action

Pretty simple and totally effective. The bar spins well and stays spinning properly even at full speed. 

Normally, I'll be putting an erlenmeyer flask of wort and a bit of yeast on the stir plate. The idea is that as the magnetic stir bar in the flask spins, it keeps the wort moving and doesn't allow the yeast to fall out of suspension. It helps the yeast to be active and also introduces oxygen into the wort. These are perfect conditions for the yeast to flourish and quickly build up numbers before pitching into a brew.

DIY Candi Sugar

I have plans to brew (or rather, to get Bron to brew) a Belgian Dark Strong Ale this week. Chimay Blue is one of her all-time favourites so I'm hoping this one turns out ok.

With some help from instructions on another blog, we made some dark candi sugar to give the beer colour, some flavour, and a boost in alcohol and dryness.

We used:

1 cup of table sugar
1/4 cup of water
1/2 tsp DAP yeast nutrient
1/4 tsp cooking lime

First attempt

Just heat it up, add a dash of cold water if it's boiling too much and colouring too quickly and let it get to the flavour/colour you're after. We found that it turned pretty quickly from amber to black so watch out for that.


It took a few goes to get right but we eventually got it right.

Capturing wild yeast

I've been really keen to try and capture some wild yeast to use in a brew since I read about it in a homebrew forum a couple of years ago. It's a romantic idea, capturing the essence of Tasmania in a beer and creating something truly unique. A Tasmanian Lambic.

The main characters at work in a sour beer are the yeasts saccharomyces and brettanomyces, and the bacteria lactobacillus and pediococcus. These are pretty much everywhere so the plan is to capture some of these wild bugs from around my place and see what kind of character they give a beer. I used 4 jars to maximise the chance of success. If more than one works out then I'll mix them together and see what happens.

I cooked up 500ml of water with 50g of dried malt extract and divided it 4 ways. I covered the jars that are going outside with some cloth to keep any marauding insects and other debris out of the starters.

Jar 1 has a few grapes from our vine. Hard to see them but they're in there.

Jar 2 on the deck

Jar 3 on the disintegrating seat

Jar 4 under a very late fruiting peach tree

I've left jars 2-4 outside overnight and I'll collect them tomorrow morning. Jar 1 is on top of the fridge and hopefully some brettanomyces yeast from the grapes is already going to town on the grape/wort stew.

It's a longish term project. These starters might be duds and even if they're all good, I don't expect to have a finished beer in less than 8 months and possibly quite a bit longer. I'll brew a simple recipe and seeing how the bugs go with it. If it turns out well, I'll save the yeast and use it again.