Norman Pilsner bubbles on

I checked our Pilsner last night. It was sitting at about 14-15degrees, and bubbling away, about once every 3 seconds.

That’s enough to keep me happy at the moment, I think.

Alan Ale 1 – The Imperial Voyage

Tonight we opened the first bottle of our first brew.

Built upon the Cascade Imperial Voyage Pale Ale kit. We added 1kilo of light malt (dry) and about 200g of dextrose.

Start with a specific gravity of 1048, ending on 1012, giving us about 5.4% alcohol/volume.

The beer is faily light in colour, and a little opaque. There was not a great deal of carbonation; minial head that didn’t last past the first inch drunk.

The flavour is not too bad. It’s still quite bitter, but this bottle is only 14 days old, and I’m confident that it’ll soften up nicely. The bitterness reminds us of a cheaper ‘bitter’ beer brewed in Richmond. Luckily, the whole flavour is a bit heavier than that.

Not the best, but definately not the worst – I’ve paid for worse beer before.

See some pictures here in my flickr set

Oh, and if you can tell me the how and why of what happened, leave me a note in the comments, I’d love to hear form you.

Cheers…

Brew 2 – Norman Pilsner

Well, Brew 1, the Cascade Imperial Voyage (an Alan Ale), was started before the blog began – it’s sitting in bottles, waiting for another week before we taste it.

Brew 2 is for K. It’s a pilsner, built on New Zealand’s BlackRock Czech Pilsner kit. We introduced 1kg of Light Liquid Malt and a magical Czech Pilsner Kit from our local brew-shop. The Czech Pilsner Kit contains a few different malts and sugars, and some hops, which were all simmered in hot water for 30minutes. There was also a second sachet of hops, which were added for the last 2 minutes of simmering.

We threw the kit, the liquid malt and the strained, Czech-improved water into our fermenter, and filled to 22 litres. This set our temperature to about 23dgrees. We added 11 grams of Saflager German yeast, and gently stirred it in. The kit is sitting out on the back porch at the moment, with a bit of muslin over the airlock, to stop too much dust getting into it.

Specific gravity is currently 1050.

I’m not 100% that this one will turn out okay – the yeast we have is rated best for 9-15degrees, and it’s potentially a little warmer that that at the moment – perhaps we should have waitied another month for winter to really set in. But still, we can always start another when this one is done, and the weather my be more accomodating.

Cheers, from The Basin Brewhouse.

Welcome aboard, sailor

Welcome to The Brew.

I was gifted a brewing kit for Christmas, and the first piece of advice I got from my brewing freind was to ‘write it all down!’.

So, I will. I’ve got a little book that I write in, but I’ll also share my notes, thoughts and experiences with anyone who wants to read. I might even ask you some questions (eek!)