Beer

Me! I like beer! Been home brewing for years.
I've got a 3 tap/3 keg fridge, and a 4th keg generally sitting patiently waiting for one to run out.
Local brew shop does fresh all-grain, all-hop worts, with a great variety. So it's tough to argue that I'm a home brewer these days.
Add water, add yeast. ferment. keg and bottle. Too easy and cheap as.
Got a mate that does his own all grain/hop brew. Takes him hours and hours. I'm fermenting in 15 min.
I'll still muck around with dry/finishing hops - maybe some fruit, depending on the beer and how I feel.
Currently got a german rye, double IPA x red, and a pacific ale on tap right now, and a wheat about to come out of the fermenter.
I'm huge fan of the less fruity sours that are on the market. Sours are great on a hot day.

All that said, I do love a simple and basic beer. Big fan of the Mountain Goat Goat, and the Matilda Bay Frothy along the simple beer lines.
Re: the comments regarding Export. While I can't comment on that in particular, I lived in the US for a few years. Mid-west. Beer county. Generally disliked Rolling Rock. Watery garbage. But on a stinking hot day (relatively speaking), a truely ice cold Rolling Rock was the go-to.
Have a fond memory of having a BBQ on the back deck, in shorts and t-shirt, with 24 bottles of rolling rock, shoved in the remaining snow around the deck. like I said, hot, relatively speaking.

Also, don't know if it's still around, or even what it really was (placebo and marketing?), but there are/were bars/clubs selling 'brewery fresh'/'tank beer' Carlton draught. That is/was good. Haven't been out for a beer in many moons now.

Good old Hannans

I remember taking a heap of cartons back from Kalgoorlie to Port Headland for the old man in 1980 they were a bargain at $8 a carton, I bet they gave everyone the ****s big time!

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Flatty said..

theDoctor said..

We put ironjack and great northern in the studio kitchen, cause no one will steal them and then when we have opening nights, punters come round for a look and a polite couple of beers and then leave rather quickly. We like to believe its mostly cause the beer is so sheet.

Ice cold export is the best beer
There's always bunch of fellas sitting in the sun in the park over the road who'd argue that it doesn't even need to be ice cold
But by the sounds of things, they argue over just about everything.

Each to their own i suppose. I might have to try Emus after this thread.

Yeah i was thinking of grabbing some after reading this. Sounds like I'll need to turn the fridge down a notch or two first.

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theDoctor said..

A mate's been brewing alcoholic ginger beer
Which he tells me is technically wine
But it's crazy crazy good
Especially the chilli one

I brewed some ginger beer a few year back. All organic, good ingredients, long fermentation. Added organic sultanas to the bottles at bottling, to stimulate secondary fermentation and give it a little fizz. It was awesome, refreshing and so easy to drink. My kids loved it . Couldn't get enough of it. Then one day I had a couple with a mate in quick succession and we both felt the effects of it. Only then did I google it to find out that it was possibly quite alcoholic. Never really occurred to me that it would be as we always made it as kids. Lesson learnt.

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JasonProsser said..

theDoctor said..

A mate's been brewing alcoholic ginger beer
Which he tells me is technically wine
But it's crazy crazy good
Especially the chilli one

I brewed some ginger beer a few year back. All organic, good ingredients, long fermentation. Added organic sultanas to the bottles at bottling, to stimulate secondary fermentation and give it a little fizz. It was awesome, refreshing and so easy to drink. My kids loved it . Couldn't get enough of it. Then one day I had a couple with a mate in quick succession and we both felt the effects of it. Only then did I google it to find out that it was possibly quite alcoholic. Never really occurred to me that it would be as we always made it as kids. Lesson learnt.

We had it in our family too, but I can't see it having more than a tiny amount of alcohol from the teaspoon of sugar per bottle to carbonate the water. That's about 5g per bottle, giving you about 2.5g alcohol in 700mls.
The recipe involved feeding a ginger beer culture in a jar with a teaspoon of sugar and powdered ginger every day, straining that and dividing the liquor into bottles, add sugar and water then cap and wait a week. Most of the alcohol in the culture would be oxidised away because it was growing in aerobic conditions. That's different to beer brewing where you keep air out to prevent that happening.

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Mr Milk said..

JasonProsser said..

theDoctor said..

A mate's been brewing alcoholic ginger beer
Which he tells me is technically wine
But it's crazy crazy good
Especially the chilli one

I brewed some ginger beer a few year back. All organic, good ingredients, long fermentation. Added organic sultanas to the bottles at bottling, to stimulate secondary fermentation and give it a little fizz. It was awesome, refreshing and so easy to drink. My kids loved it . Couldn't get enough of it. Then one day I had a couple with a mate in quick succession and we both felt the effects of it. Only then did I google it to find out that it was possibly quite alcoholic. Never really occurred to me that it would be as we always made it as kids. Lesson learnt.

We had it in our family too, but I can't see it having more than a tiny amount of alcohol from the teaspoon of sugar per bottle to carbonate the water. That's about 5g per bottle, giving you about 2.5g alcohol in 700mls.
The recipe involved feeding a ginger beer culture in a jar with a teaspoon of sugar and powdered ginger every day, straining that and dividing the liquor into bottles, add sugar and water then cap and wait a week. Most of the alcohol in the culture would be oxidised away because it was growing in aerobic conditions. That's different to beer brewing where you keep air out to prevent that happening.

I do an alcoholic version with all grain, fresh ginger, couple of vanilla thingos, a heap of lactose, and an IPA verdant yeast strain
Last batch was delicious didnt last long at all - but high alcohol at just over 6%

My favourites are Pilsner Urquell, Kozel and Budvar (the original Budweiser).
Occasionally I enjoy a Pale Ale (Sierra Nevada is nice) and few German imports.
Also Samuel Adams is great but I haven't seen it in shops for a long time.
I pretty much stopped drinking Heineken. Stella, Sapporo Asahi etc. They all taste the same to me.
I used to brew at home with some great results but was banned from it as I was drinking too much of it