Ginger Beer, a success

The Redbox ginger beer made from the Coopers mix was the final brew for the Bruce brewery with the brewery relocating to the city. This brew we had a couple of small problems with the yeast not starting, a lazy bottler the brew sat in the vat for over 3 weeks and the seal on the vat may of been a little dodgy. Due to impatience and the desire for ginger beer the first bottle was cracked 2 weeks after botttling, and we wait with baited breath to see if this met our lofty standards. We were all very satisfied and I may say the head brewer was quietly surprised due to the earlier issues and knowing that sometimes homebrew can be a fickle beast. So now we have a nice ginger beer, which has quite a nice little bite and just in time for summer. I think the next brew will be an amber or golden ale style beer, probably brewed after house guests consuming all of our wheat beer.

Elise's Spiteful Tongue

My lime and chilli beer, dubbed Elise's Spiteful Tongue, (other possible names were the Cold Englishman and the Fruity Tingle) is a stunning success! I made the beer with the juice of two limes added to the wort. When I bottled the beer I added a small chilli to half of the bottles. The result - the beers with chilli have a definate spice tingle and is not for the faint hearted somewhat overshadowing the tinge of lime. The limey beers without chilli have a light and fresh quality along with the lime overtones. A friend even likened it to cidar. As shown in the recipe below I used a mexican lager kit as I was hoping to attain a similar easy, light brew to corona, thus maximising the influence of the lime and chilli flavours
Personally I think my summer is complete. I will try a similar brew in the next few months, but with different sized chillies and observe the difference.

Recipe
Black Rock Mexican Lager
500g Dry light malt
500g Dextrose
Juice of 2 limes squeezed
Small red chillis

4.6% Alcohol

Notes:
- The chillis need to be sterilised. I used Scotch Whiskey (most strong spirits should be fine)

- You can add the chillis to the primary fermenter if you wish, but adding them to the bottle allows the production of non-spicy beer too, in case you fellow beer conniseurs do not enjoy spice.

- I've been told the size of a chilli is directly related to its spiciness the smaller the chilli the spicier it is. Keep this in mind when choosing chillis. Green chillies are much hotter than red chillies.

Powdered Corn Syrup

Pinko wrote an article on Hydrolized corn products. Here is the product I have bought, and it will find its way into a brew soon. 'Powdered Corn Syrup' improves texture and mouthfeel (so it claims). Its is soluble and has 'low sweetness', hence it shouldn't affect the taste of the beer. Is this true? Only time will tell...