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...

Fox Place Brew 80: Lager

A "yeast-starter" was produced from the tailings of the previous lager brewed at The Fox and was pitched into brew 80.  Despite the weather having turned cool last week, this lager strain was again a steady performer.  A graphical representation of the course of the fermentation is shown below.

The original and final density readings of this brew were 1039 and 1007 g/L, respectively.  These reading correspond to an alcohol concentration in brew 80 of approximately 5.1 % (v/v), or 1.7 standard drinks per schooner.

Fox Place Brew 78: Cider

Brew 78 was kegged after brew 79 because of this cider's lengthy fermentation.  Our experience has been that relatively nutrient-poor brews such as ciders and ginger beers undergo a slower fermentation that a malt beer.  This effect may have been exacerbated by a lack of external heating in this instance.  The development of this cider during fermentation is shown graphically below.

The Black Rock "Cider" kit was augmented with dextrose (1kg) and produced a wort with a density of 1034g/L.  The final density was 1000g/L and equates to an alcohol concentration of approximately 4.4% (v/v).  This brew is currently being force-carbonated and I intend to report back with some details of the finished product.

Hydrolyzed corn products in brewing

Phil was considering using corn syrup as a brewing adjunct. Corn is a cheap source of starch and from it a range of hydrolyzed products can be obtained. To avoid confusion, I consider it useful to briefly describe to use of corn derivatives in homebrewing. As an introduction, I will mention the processing of barley required prior to brewing.

A grain of barley is largely an energy source for the germinated seedling that it will nurture. The energy in a grain of barley is stored mostly as starch. Starch (polysaccharides) must be cleaved into smaller units such as maltose (a disaccharide) by enzymes in the germinated grain to make useful fuel. Enzymes from within the grain perform this function when barley is warm and moist. Artificially raising the temperature after germination speeds up enzyme activity and is called "malting". The malting process converts most of the tasteless starch into sweet maltose.

Barley is easily malted because it is rich in those enzymes that hydrolyze starch and generate maltose and some other dextrins. The enzymes from barley are sufficiently active that additional sources of starch such as corn or potatoes may be added to a mash containing barley. The barley enzymes will go work on corn starch and potato starch thereby generating extra fermentable sugars.

The use of starch derived from sources other than barley has become entrenched in brewing. The use of corn or rice in brewing tends to generate a beer with less body and flavour than its all-malt brother. Most of the commercial beer kits in Australia are made from malted barley and, to a lesser extent, wheat. Adding corn or potato starch when making up your wort will be ineffectual as active enzymes will not be available to hydrolyze starch. (The starch will harmlessly silt out in your fermenter).

To replicate those beers which may have incorporated corn, or simply to be economical, a variety of hydrolysed starches are available. These products are prepared via the controlled action of acids and/or enzymes on corn (or wheat or potato) starch. If partial hydrolysis has taken place, the starch will have been converted into an assortment of dextrins (oligosaccharides). Complete hydrolysis of the starch will yield dextrose (the monomer of corn starch).

Those dextrins derived from corn are called maltodextrin or corn syrup solids. These oligosaccharides are, unlike starch, soluble in water. However, they are mostly inaccessible to yeast as a food source; thus maltodextrin adds body to a beer (suggestively described as "mouth feel") and little else. Although yeast cannot access maltodextrin as a food source, you can! In this way maltodextrin can add a little to your body too.

Dextrose (also called corn syrup or glucose) is also soluble in water but is readily and completely digested by yeast. This monosaccharide increases the alcohol concentration of the brew as it is consumed. As alcohol is less dense than water, simple sugar adjuncts such as dextrose also effect a thinning of the beer. Likely, this is why dextrose and maltodextrin are often used in conjunction with each other.

Washing Bottles, Not lucky enough to own a keg system.

Well after stuffing around for ages finally got around to washing out bottles which probably has to be the most tedious part of brewing, apart from waiting for it being ready to drink.
The things i have found here are that you can never scrub as hard and fast as you want especially if the bottles are hot from the water being added. So to overcome this problem get a good quality bottle bruch and chop the wired top so that has no handle and attach to a power drill, preferable keyless chuck drill with multiple settings. This prove a highly effective and through way of ensuring that the bottles get cleaned on all surfaces.
Second ensure the bottle brush bristles don't melt! This happened with the new brush purchased recently when had almost boiling water in bottles to sterilise, place brush in bottles and removed and bristles had shrunk to half the size. Not sure if this was type of brush that was purchased as old bottle brush never had this problem.
Anyway now to wait a month or so and will have a batch ready to go.