The latest effort- NZ Black Rock brand tin - again involved a cook-up; a next-step towards our future challenge of moving from can kits and can kit improver kits to malt extract brewing. Apart from the fact that this can often be a less expensive way of brewing, it also unleashes a myriad of possibilities of style and beer type. We can take the building blocks of malt and add specialty grains for colour and flavour, boil up the bittering hops, choose some aroma hops and tinker with the very fabric of the beer universe. Not yet, but. When we get good. And when we start playing Beer Creator, I promise you all that it will be in a Morgan Freeman in “Bruce Almighty” way rather than in a Dr Evil sort of way.
The Australia Day Commemorative Lager is presenting us with some challenges. A little slow out of the blocks and light on the yeast activity despite a good period of temperature control. We may have struck our first batch of poor yeast. Which brings me nicely to the next topic. We have begun buying yeast separately. This means that we can use more per batch and at only $3 or $4 it adds very little to the unit cost. We have begun with Safale - a fairly common and easy to get brand. Used in the latest brew, it has certainly displayed fierce yeast qualities early on. A feisty foam appeared on top of the brew in only a few hours and the aroma is something special.
Cheers, Prof. Pilsner and Dr Lager
P.S. I apologise for the lack of fine tuning with the pictures on our posts lately. the program running this show seems to corrupt every pic I try to fit in. it all appears as compu-crap instead of as a picture. hope it is all back to normal soon.
