By Joel Connolly

modelinggingerale

Christmas Ginger Ale AND Problems In The Brew House

Posted: January 25, 2012 · Comments: 0

Christmas Ginger Ale

So just quickly, I made a Ginger Ale for Christmas. It was meant to impress the hell out of the inlaws and the heavens were supposed to open and a new crown bestowed upon my head. However for a bunch of reasons none of this happened and instead I ended up with a few polite smiles and a lots of undrunk beer (ahhh 15 longnecks). And you know what? I don’t blame them, the beer was nothing like I intended and despite a megatonne of fresh ginger added to both the boil and the fermenter, the beer tasted more of honey than ginger. I added more than twice what the recipe called for but that didn’t seem to make a difference. The finished beer was beautiful and clear and straw in colour but I ended up having to add wedges of lemon to it in order to give it a bit of flavour.

So what went wrong? My best guess is that I used White Labs California Ale Yeast (WLP001) and it did too good of a job. It’s an epic yeast that is super efficient, leaves not much yeast character at all and I figure it just ate all the ginger flavour up! Here is a picture and the recipe I used, just for interests sake -

Recipe Overview
Wort Volume Before Boil: 24.71 l
Actual Wort Volume After Boil: 20.00 l
Actual Volume Transferred: 18.93 l
Actual Volume At Pitching: 19.50 l
Actual Volume Of Finished Beer: 19.00 l
Actual Pre-Boil Gravity: 1.040 SG
Actual OG: 1.042 SG
Actual FG: 1.004 SG
Actual ABV: 5.0 %
Actual ABW: 4.0 %
Actual IBU: 28.2 IBU
Actual Color: 5.5 EBC

Fermentables
US Pale Ale Malt 1.814 kg
German Caramel Pils 0.567 kg
Sugar – Honey 1.360 kg Start Of Boil

Hops
Slovenian Styrian Goldings 31.8 Loose Pellet Hops 60 Min From End
NZ Willamette, 28 g, Loose Pellet Hops 1 Min From End

Other
Lemon Juice of 2 lemons, 5 minutes from the end
Lemon Rhind of 2 lemons 20 minutes from the end
Ginger Root 177 g 30 minutes before the end of the boil
Ginger Root 59 g at the end of the boil
Irish Moss 5 g 20 minutes before the end of the boil
Ginger Root 120 g In Fermenter

Brew House Troubles!

My last few beers have been a bit crap. I’m very careful with my process and sanitation, I’m reading new books all the time, forums every day, The Brewing Network podcasts every day. I feel like I’m doing everything I can to knowledge myself up however I’m still making beers that aren’t even just average. Some of them are straight up terrible (I even had to dump a batch a few months back!). One of the problems I have is that I started brewing only 6 months ago and built myself up to my current level really fast. I didn’t slowly add equipment or casually improve process, I dived straight in the deep end so it’s really hard to know where to start trouble shooting. Boil? Fermentation? Recipe? Sanitation? Personal hygiene?

I’ve got a pretty good feeling it’s either in my boil or in fermentation. With respect to the boil, I’m still doing it on an electric stove top. I have a 35l pot and I really have trouble getting a vigorous boil going without taking the lid on and off the pot. Ideally your boil should be open and vigorous so as to boil off any unwanted nasties before fermentation. If you can’t achieve this you end up with off flavours and clarity issues. This problem I can do something about. All I need is a new burner and to move my operation outside. Not too much extra equipment and not much extra money. The other potential problem might be coming from fermentation. I can’t exactly control my fermentation temperature although I have a spot in my house that only fluctuates between about 18C and 24C and the swings are rarely that big. Usually they’re no more than 3C over a 72 hour period. This I can’t do anything about. I live in a one bedroom apartment with a patient (albeit unreliably patient) wife and there just isn’t room for a bigger fermentation system. To control temperature I’d need a fridge, a temperature controller and a place to put the two. So all I can really fool around with is the boil, sanitation and recipe formulation. I just hope I can improve the beer by changing the boil process.

The Experiment

It occurred to me that I might be able to test my fermentation conditions by using a fresh wort kit from Dave’s Homebrew. That way I can test fermentation conditions with a professionally made wort. If my beer still tastes like crap then I know it’s fermentation and I may as well quit. If it turns out alright, then it’s most likely the boil and I just need to buy a 3 or 4 ring camp burner. Note: I’ve taken extreme care to sanitise everything to absolute extreme so I can be sure fermentation is controlled and any off flavours aren’t caused by contamination.

Here is the fresh wort cooking away. I will report back once it’s all done.

I’m Turning 30 And Rapping At My Own Party

Posted: January 17, 2012 · Comments: 0
Naughty Rappers in conjunction with Umbrella presents PIMPISH BEHAVIOUR.
On Saturday 4th February SPOD will be joined by Donny Benet, Sydney supergroup The Naughty Rappers (members from Fishing, Richard In Your Mind, Umbrella) and Black Vanilla (members from Guerre and Collarbones) in a night of dirty raps, booty, bass and crunk.
The one off event will be held at GOODGOD on Liverpool Street in Sydney and will feature a live rap battle (just like on 8 mile!) and an original Crunk Juice, designed specifically for the event.
DJs featured include DJ Sex JacUZI, Kiltty Litter, Kenny G Spot, Jay-C MAN, Slippery Dik and Jehova Casanova.
“Turns out just about everyone in the Sydney music scene has an dirty rap alter ego.” So says artist manager at Umbrella, Joel Connolly.
“I originally wanted to throw an elaborate birthday party for myself and so I started asking some friends if they wanted to make up some dirty raps and form a band. Before long I had people from all over calling up and spitting perverse rhymes at me”.
Doors will open at 8pm and close later than the GOODGOD license probably allows.
All Naughty, All Night.
IMG_0659

Crowdfunding Your Music Projects

Posted: December 12, 2011 · Comments: 0

Recently one of the bands I manage, Belles Will Ring, successfully crowdfunded $6705. We wanted to print their incredible record, Crystal Theatre, on vinyl. These days printing vinyl isn’t a very profitable proposition and it’s getting harder and harder to talk record labels in to paying for it. And who can blame them? A little birdie told me that in Australia, Radiohead’s In Rainbows only sold 1000 copies on vinyl. I hope that’s not true but the person who told me was in a position to know. So if Radiohead has trouble moving LPs, what hope does a tiny indie band have?

Belles Will Ring were in a particularly odd position and we were facing a few obstacles:

  • Crystal Theatre had already been out for 6 months on CD and digital. Presumably most of their die hard fans had already purchased a copy in another format.
  • Belles are coming to the end of their record cycle and without a heap of touring to support record sales, we couldn’t realistically expect to shift many units (industry talk for albums).
  • Belles don’t actually have a huge fan base. They’re loyal, but not particularly big in numbers. This could been seen as astrength as well as a weakness – smaller communities provide the advantage of being easy to speak directly with so you are able to make your communications more sincere, you can react fairly quickly to individuals and the group of people themselves actually feel more connected with one another than they would if they were a part of, say, Coldplay’s community.
  • It’s nearly Christmas and, generally, folks have less disposable income this time of year (which is why indie bands don’t release records around Christmas).
The options in front of us were few and we ended up deciding to try and crowdfund the money. There are a few different services like Kickstarter and FundaGeek (only for tech industry) but we found the most appropriate service, and one of the few that works in Australia, was Pozible. I later found out about a service in Australia specifically for musicians called StartMusic.

I did a heap of research and combined with some of the lessons I learnt, I feel like I might be somewhat of an expert now on crowdfunding. And so, provided you’re using one of the services I listed above, I present an offering of knowledge from my brain to the interwebs.

Perfect Your Pitch

Pitching your project is the most important part of the whole process. You’ll do it over and over again in different ways but through all the different reasons you give for wanting to do it, you’ve got to have one central idea that will inform all the others. What are you doing and why are you doing it? You might want to consider the following:
  • Start with one sentence. Be ready to explain exactly what you’re doing and why you are doing it in one sentence. Think of it as a Tweet.
  • After you have the one sentence, expand it in to an elevator pitch. This time you have a Facebook update or maybe a Google + update. Take your one sentence then drill down in three different arguments for your case and then deliver your closing statement.
  • And finally, get all eloquent and exercise some poetic license. You’re an artist (or you’re working with one) so you should be able to express yourself. You’ll give this pitch on your blog, your emails to family and friends and also your youtube video.
Keep Your Timeframe Short
Unless you have a specific reason to do so, I would keep all projects under 4 weeks. I think 3 weeks is the ideal but 4 would be OK. There are a number of reasons for this:
  • Firstly, you don’t want to bore people. When you launch your project is fresh and exciting and you want to keep it that way. If you drag it out too long your audience will lose interest.
  • You only have so many things you can say about the project. You need to keep communicating with your supporters (both converted and those yet to contribute) and I guarantee you there aren’t enough things to say about it to fill out 2 months. If you have a short project timeline, you can keep things exciting and informative without losing supporters along the way.
  • Most of your supporters will jump on board right at the beginning or at the 11th hour, no matter how long your project goes for.
Give Your Audience Some Incentives
This is a necessity but it pays to put some serious thought in to it. Ask yourself “who are the people most likely to contribute and what would provide the most rewarding experience for them?”. Some easy but personal options include:
  • Put the contributors name in the liner notes! Or acknowledge them publicly in some way
  • Personal performances. This is a high up one and you would want to make sure you only give one or two away
  • Demos and unreleased tracks. Only give them to a few people so you can say that no one else will have heard them.

Anything you can think of that a) won’t cost you any money and b) will provide a unique experience for the contributor.

Community Build Those Mo Fos!

Finally I think it’s really important to remember that crowdfunding isn’t just a way for you to get some cash, it’s an excellent opportunity to build a community around yourself and to strengthen your existing relationships with fans. You’re involving your people in the process and by doing that you are giving them a sense of ownership over the project. This will help deepen their engagement and will reward them for doing so. Imagine if you make each person really feel like they made a difference? How easy do you think it is going to be next time you want to crowdfund a project? And think of the knock on effects you’ll get if you nurture your fans? I bet you get more people at your next show.

It’s getting harder and harder to make a buck in the music industry. It’s been in decline for years now and even the optimists would have to admit that there has been a cultural shift in the way people consume music, how they value it and what currency they are willing to exchange for it. Paradoxically there are more bands than ever making better music and playing more shows, all of which means the audiences are there and still willing to part with their cash. My feeling is that they are just confused about who they are giving their money to. The fact that Belles Will Ring were able to successfully ask their audience for cash to print some records just goes to show that fans have the dollars and are willing to spend it on art but only if they can actually see the artist benefiting from it (which might also explain why the live sector has become the most important stream of income for artists). All this says a lot about the relationship between artist and fan and I feel a renewed sense of hope!
black IPA

Event Horizon Black IPA

Posted: December 5, 2011 · Comments: 0

This one is for a Christmas Party with my music manager friends. I took a standard Black IPA recipe at about 6%ABV and upped the base malt to get it up to about 7.5%ABV. Hops are fruity! NZ Nelson Sauvin and NZ Pacific Jade

I didn’t hit my numbers exactly and that was because I’m doing Brew In A Bag and am still figuring out my volumes and how they effect my gravity. I kind of do a hybrid and pull the first runnings off the grist and do a mini sparge by pouring hot water over the grain bag while it is draining in to a bucket. This effects my OG obviously and I’m stil experimenting with how much sparging I need to do in order to hit my numbers.

Tastes amazing! I think it’s one of my best beers yet. It’s so roasty it feels like a party in a fire place, but somehow the Nelson Sauvin and Pacific Jade hops balance it out. It feels like it’s on the thinner side of a Black IPA, which i prefer because I can drink more that way. Next time I would probably add a bit more aroma hops, just to make it a bit more floral.

Event Horizon Black IPA

Brew In A Bag

Recipe Overview
Target Batch Size 19l Actual batch Size 19.5l
Target Pre-Boil Gravity: 1.065 SG Actual Pre-Boil Gravity: 1.069 SG
Target OG: 1.081 SG Actual OG: 1.076 SG
Target FG: 1.023 SG Actual FG: 1.019 SG
Target Apparent Attenuation:: 70.0 % Actual Apparent Attenuation: 73.7 %
Target ABV: 7.8 % Actual ABV: 7.6 %
Target ABW: 6.0 % Actual ABW: 5.9 %
Target IBU (using Tinseth): 70.2 IBU Actual IBU: 67.5 IBU
Target Color (using Morey): 69.8 EBC Actual Color: 69.8 EBC
Target Mash Efficiency: 70.0 % Actual Mash Efficiency: 71.8 %
Target Fermentation Temp: 18 degC Actual Fermentation Temp: 18 degC

 

Fermentables
Ingredient Amount % MCU When
US Pale Ale Malt 6.900 kg 89.6 % 10.1 In Mash/Steeped
UK Light Crystal (60EBC) 0.400 kg 5.2 % 3.8 In Mash/Steeped
German Carafa Special III 0.400 kg 5.2 % 87.4 In Mash/Steeped

 

Hops
Variety Alpha Amount IBU Form When
US Columbus(Tomahawk) 15.5 % 50 g 70.2 Bagged Whole Hops 60 Min From End
US Simcoe 13.1 % 33 g 0.0 Bagged Pellet Hops At turn off
NZ Nelson Sauvin 12.5 % 28 g 0.0 Bagged Pellet Hops Dry-Hopped
NZ Pacific Jade 13.0 % 28 g 0.0 Bagged Pellet Hops Dry-Hopped

YEAST: Wyeast 1187-Ringwood Ale (Re-pitched. Second generation)

Mash Schedule
Mash Type: Full Mash
Schedule Name: Single Step Infusion (65C/149F)
Step Type Temperature Duration
Rest at 65 degC 60

 

Mash Notes
Mash went well. I lost 4C by the end but I started bringing the temp up at 75 minutes. Mashed out at 74c. Used BIAB method so I filled the pot with 25 L of water and when sparging ran an extra 5l through. Ended up with about 24L in the pot and missed pre boil gravity by 1 point

 

Boil Notes
Added simco 15 minutes before the end instead of at shut off. I got confused!

Fermentation Notes
14/10 – Repitched the Ringwood from the Indian brown. Hope it works! Temp started out at about 24c. Higher than I wanted but hopefully it cooled down on the tile floor

16/10 – Ringwood is going really well! Fermentation is going off and bubbling like nuts. I have tried to rouse the fermenter twice a day since racking, as per advice from brew strong and things i’ve read on the internet about Ringwood.

18/10 – I also found it hard keeping the temp at 18C. The ambient was consistantly 18-19C but the fermenter was running hot and the reading on the temperature strip was about 22C. This is warmer than I want so instead of doing a diacetyl rest, which is supposed to be at 22C after an 18C ferment, I have just moved the fermenter upstairs in to the cupboard to try and stablise it at 21C.

After racking to secondary, I added the dry hop additions in a sack and weighted it down with some knives. Then I pulled the yeast off the bottom, rinsed it and bottled it. Fermenter was still bubbling about once every 90 seconds. which means primary was probably 95% done.
photo

Dogfish Head Indian Brown Ale Clone

Posted: November 8, 2011 · Comments: 0

UPDATE: So I cracked one the other night and it actually turned out pretty good! Three weeks bottle conditioning and it’s come good. The flavour and aroma were much for subtle than I would expect from a Dogfish Head recipe and this might have something to do with my recipe scaling. the caramel from the Muscovado sugar didn’t really come through and I think it might have actually been fermented all up, which would explain why the body is slightly thinner than I would expect from a Brown/Scotch Ale. The malt bil;l could be more intense on the speciality side as well. However this all seemed to work with the way the hop profile turned out, which also wasn’t as intense as I would expect from and IPA/DFH recipe.

I decided to brew this one to enter in to the Darlo Local Taphouse Brewshare night in mid November. The theme is “Weird Styles” and I wanted to bring something more normal than I usually do but at the same time different enough that anyone at the Brew Share wouldn’t have had anything like it before. I took the recipe from the Extreme Brewing book. It was originally for a extract and specialty grain extract and I modified it to be an all grain batch.

The grain, mixed and crushed

About half way through the ferment I realised I couldn’t really smell much of the hops and I was worried it was going to come out too sweet so I dry hopped some XXX in there. Stupidly, I didn’t use a hop sack and when bottling I ended up with a bunch of hop matter that I think made it over to the bottles. I also had a massive fail when bottling. I got about 4 or 5 bottles in and I realised I hadn’t bulk primed! I had to empty the bottles and start over again. I wouldn’t be surprised if I end up with an infection and I probably won’t enter this in Brew Share.

I had a go at crushing some grain with my Delhongi coffee grinder. As you can see, pulverised and there is no way a single husk was left in tact. However I think I heard Jamil say that darker grains can be crushed fine...

This one also seems to be taking longer to carbonate. It’s been more than two weeks and it still comes out a bit flat. I can be patient I guess!

And some shots of my homemade wort chiller in action. Turns out our ground water has a high temp so I have trouble chilling below 26C. I used sterilised ice bricks to get down that extra few degrees.

Batch 1 of Dogfish Head Indian Brown Ale

Target Wort Volume Before Boil: 12.00 l Actual Wort Volume Before Boil: 12.00 l
Target Wort Volume After Boil: 10.02 l Actual Wort Volume After Boil: 10.02 l
Target Volume Transferred: 10.00 l Actual Volume Transferred: 10.00 l
Target Volume At Pitching: 10.00 l Actual Volume At Pitching: 10.00 l
Target Volume Of Finished Beer: 9.50 l Actual Volume Of Finished Beer: 9.50 l
Target Pre-Boil Gravity: 1.055 SG Actual Pre-Boil Gravity: 1.054 SG
Target OG: 1.073 SG Actual OG: 1.061 SG
Target FG: 1.017 SG Actual FG: 1.013 SG
Target Apparent Attenuation:: 75.5 % Actual Apparent Attenuation: 77.1 %
Target ABV: 7.5 % Actual ABV: 6.4 %
Target ABW: 5.9 % Actual ABW: 5.0 %
Target IBU (using Tinseth): 57.8 IBU Actual IBU: 58.4 IBU
Target Color (using Morey): 37.5 EBC Actual Color: 37.5 EBC
Target Mash Efficiency: 75.0 % Actual Mash Efficiency: 73.4 %
Target Fermentation Temp: 18 degC Actual Fermentation Temp: 18 degC

Fermentables
Ingredient Amount % MCU When
US Pale Ale Malt 2.600 kg 83.3 % 7.6 In Mash/Steeped
UK Amber Malt 0.100 kg 3.2 % 1.7 In Mash/Steeped
Australian Crystal 140 0.100 kg 3.2 % 6.2 In Mash/Steeped
UK Pale Chocolate Malt 0.100 kg 3.2 % 16.6 In Mash/Steeped
German Carafa Special I 0.200 kg 6.4 5.5 In Mash/Steeped
Sugar – Muscovado 0.201 kg 6.4 % 3.3 End Of Boil

 

Hops
Variety Alpha Amount IBU Form When
US Warrior 17.2 % 15 g 57.8 Bagged Pellet Hops 60 Min From End
US Vanguard 5.0 % 30 g 0.0 Bagged Pellet Hops At turn off

YEAST Wyeast 1187-Ringwood Ale

Mash Schedule
Mash Type: Brew In A Bag
Schedule Name: Single Step Infusion (65C/149F)
Step Type Temperature Duration
Rest at 65 degC 90 minutes

 

Mash Notes
Am I measuring right? First reading had pre boil gravity at 1.023. Then I did it again and with temp adjust was at 1.054. Probably somewhere in between because OG ended up 14 points shy. Why? Did some research and it has to do with volumes of water. Turns out you can’t just guess the boil off and compensate, it’s more complicated than that

 

Boil Notes
Sugar added at 15 minutes before the end of boil

 

Fermentation Notes
Kept it downstairs near the door and the ambient temp was about 18 for 6 days. I waited for bubbles to stop alltogether before racking off to secondary and getting the yeast out, which i’ve since found out isn’t ideal. You should rack it over when primary is about 90% done.

I also did a dry hop addition of Vanguard. Nearly 20g. Straight in, no bag. The beer smelt very sweet and tasted so too. I never thought the hop additions were enough and from smelling and tasting I think I was right. This is supposed to be heavily hopped like an ipa but the rates just don’t match. Having said that they were high alpha hops so who knows. Trust in thy dogfish! I also could have made a mistake when scaling the recipe down from 19L to 12L.

At racking to secondary the hydrometer read about 1.020. Hoping it clears more!

Did a diacatyl rest and moved fermenter upstairs where the ambient temp is about 21-22C. In the cupboard, insulated.

At Bottling the FG was at 1.012. BAM!

from http://browncardigan.com/

Be A Man

Posted: November 1, 2011 · Comments: 0

This is so depressing – ‘When Bands Fall Off Cliffs’ (Guardian Article)

Posted: October 30, 2011 · Comments: 0
MusicIndustry

There Will Never Be Another Powderfinger/Silverchair

Posted: October 25, 2011 · Comments: 0

The state of the music industry has changed a lot over the years and the sad truth is, there isn’t room in the market for a band to make it as big as Silverchair or Powderfinger did.

The market has fragmented a lot and there is also a lot less money out there for bands to share in. What I mean is that consumers are spending less on recorded music and there are a lot more bands out there than there used to be and each of them are taking little pieces of the pie.

It’s easier than ever to record a few songs at home and it’s even easier to find an audience for your music online. It’s even easier still to then distribute your music through someone like Tunecore, who will make your music available in almost any iTunes store for less than $50 a year. This is what we called a double edged sword;

  • You won’t hear me say that more art is ever a bad thing. The artist is afforded the opportunity to express themselves and contribute to the cultural landscape like never before. The more art being created, the more cultural thumbtacks we have to help us navigate the world, help us understand it and explain it. ALSO
  • This long tail is not just contributing more music to the landscape, it broadening the landscape. The diversity and array of artists today speak to and have given birth to countless sub-cultures. BUT
  • With a shrinking music market (yes, record sales used to be an artist’s primary source of income and those sales have been in free fall for years – see the info graphic above if you don’t believe me) and an expanding number of artists, the number of dollars to go around is far less than it used to be. MEANING
  • It’s much harder for bands to reach that illusive “star” status and sustain it. Ergo, in Australia we will not have another band as big as Powderfinger and Silverchair were.

Because of this we are seeing a much for transient artist population, if that makes sense. Bands work for years both as musicians and also in part-time positions only to find that even if they do “make it”, things aren’t as they used to be. “Making it” now means just being able to pay rent and work full time as a musician. It’s a really hard life anyway and without the promise of the rock star lifestyle, artists are throwing in the towel a lot sooner.

What surprises me is that this hasn’t affected the quality of the music being produced. I would have thought that with so many people given a voice and a medium by which to share it, the amount of crap out there would increase and maybe make it harder to find the good stuff. But it seems the that The People are the great adjudicators and the crap never seems to make it further than it should. So, in summary: no more really big bands. Lots of mid-sized bands that disappear a lot sooner.

2kg of strawberries, diced up to extract more flavour

First BIAB: Alternate Future Strawberry Kolsch

Posted: October 14, 2011 · Comments: 0

A few weeks ago I tried my hand at a form of All Grain Brewing. It’s a method called Brew In A Bag and it differs from regular All Grain brewing in that

  1. You don’t require as much equipment and therfore as much space
  2. It’s like a “no sparge” method, however I do I mirco sprarge just to help attenuation
  3. You use a giant bag that holds all your grains in the pot. When mashing is complete you simply remove the grain bag (after doing the mini sparge I mentioned above.
There are many other advantages and a few traditional all grain brewers would list some disadvantages. The main reason I’m using the BIAB method is to save space. We have a one bedroom apartment and I wish to keep my marriage happy.
As well as being my first AG BIAB attempt, the was also my first attempt at recipe creation. In a nut shell I wanted to take a fairly clean beer, ferment it with something weird and split the batch in to two fermenters: one with strawberries, one without. The advantage of splitting like this is that I am able to compare the two side by side to see what difference the strawberries make and also if I totally stuff it up, at least only half the beer is ruined.
I choose a Kolsch as the style, only because it is fairly clean without being a larger. I used Jamil Zainasheff’s recipe from Brewing Classic Styles but instead of fermenting it with a Kolsch yeast like WLP029 – German Ale/Kolsch or Wyeast 2565 Kolsch, I decided to use a Belgian Golden Ale WLP570. I could pretend I’m super creative and technical for choosing this yeast strain, but the reality is my local home brew store didn’t have much in the way of yeast and this was a spur of the moment decision.

The Recipe

Target Wort Volume Before Boil: 24.00 l Actual Wort Volume Before Boil: 24.00 l
Target Wort Volume After Boil: 21.00 l Actual Wort Volume After Boil: 18.00 l
Target Volume Transferred: 20.00 l Actual Volume Transferred: 18.00 l
Target Volume At Pitching: 20.00 l Actual Volume At Pitching: 20.00 l
Target Volume Of Finished Beer: 19.00 l Actual Volume Of Finished Beer: 19.00 l
Target Pre-Boil Gravity: 1.043 SG Actual Pre-Boil Gravity: 1.047 SG
Target OG: 1.049 SG Actual OG: 1.043 SG
Target FG: 1.012 SG Actual FG: 1.011 SG
Target Apparent Attenuation:: 75.4 % Actual Apparent Attenuation: 73.7 %
Target ABV: 4.9 % Actual ABV: 4.2 %
Target ABW: 3.8 % Actual ABW: 3.3 %
Target IBU (using Tinseth): 18.0 IBU Actual IBU: 18.1 IBU
Target Color (using Morey): 7.4 EBC Actual Color: 6.9 EBC
Target Mash Efficiency: 70.0 % Actual Mash Efficiency: 77.3 %
Target Fermentation Temp: 18 degC Actual Fermentation Temp: 18 degC

Fermentables

Ingredient Amount % MCU When
German Pilsner Malt 4.000 kg 86.0 % 2.5 In Mash/Steeped
German Munich Malt 0.350 kg 7.5 % 1.1 In Mash/Steeped
German Wheat Malt 0.300 kg 6.5 % 0.2 In Mash/Steeped

Hops

Variety Alpha Amount IBU Form When
German Hallertauer Hersbrucker 4.7 % 30 g 18.0 Loose Pellet Hops 60 Min From End

Other Ingredients

Ingredient Amount When
Strawberry 4500 g In Boil
Irish Moss 15 g 15 minutes before the end of the boil

Yeast: White Labs WLP570-Belgian Golden Ale

As you can see I didn’t exactly hit my targets and I’m fairly sure this is because I was a bit lax with the water to grist rations. As in, I guessed it. Not far off  but still a bit short.

Everything was as you would expect except I added the strawberries in to the wort at the end of the boil. I dropped the temp to 74C as suggested by Sam Calagione in Extreme Brewing. This helps keep a lot of the strawberry aroma and at the same time sterilises the fruit. It also pasteurises the fruit without boiling it, which would set the natural pectine and cast a haze in the finished beer.

The brewery! Pretty small set up because we live in a one bedroom apartmentGrain bag submerged in the wort.

Mash at 67C. I turn the stove off, put the lid on the pot and insulate it with these hot/cold bags I found ($2 each). I lose about 1C over 60 minutes and about 5c over the next 30 minutes. I turn the stove on a bit after an hour just to bump it up.

 

The boil. I think I'd just added the first hop additions.

2kg of strawberries, diced up to extract more flavour

The beer spent about 7 days in primary and then 2 weeks in secondary. For the first few weeks the ferment smelt strongly of sulfar and I was pretty certain I had stuffed it up. However a little bit of research and I discoverd that the strain of yeast I used does stink of sulfar for a little bit but that it naturally dissipates over time.

Steph and I have been drinking both the Regular Future and the Alternate Future for a few weeks and they are getting better and better by the day. Alternate future was a bit tangy at first, almost like fresh strawberries taste, but it’s mellowing out over time.

And the finished product:

Tastes good!

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Your Music Isn’t Enough: The Importance Of An Artist’s Story

Posted: October 11, 2011 · Comments: 2

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the story you tell about an artist. The story and the way it’s communicated is important. So important in fact that next to the actual songs, I think it’s the largest determining factor in an artists success. Definitely more so today than 20 years ago but even so far back as Silverchair when they first broke out. The thing that captivated Australians maybe even more than ‘Tomorrow’ was the idea that these were kids still in high school. They won a band comp and went from there to become one of Australia’s biggest bands, a story that every kid with even mediocre guitar skills could grab on to. Or a more recent example would be Adele. Not your typical pop star either in looks or sound, she has sold a staggering amount of records and crossed in to multiple territories without major label reach and ostensibly off the back of some incredible songs. But there is more to her success than that. Her story is of the poor girl born to a single teenage mother. She just happens to possess one heck of a voice and is beautiful but could still be described as fairly “normal looking”. Of course the music is incredible but her story is one that we can all relate to and that has helped carry her records to the top of the charts.

A lot of artists get caught up with the actual communication tools. They will think of a band name and sign up to Twitter and Facebook and start sharing. It’s easy to share your story and to communicate with loads of people. The hard part is figuring out what you want to say and how much you want to share. In an age where it is so easy to share I think instead of asking which social network to use, which blogs to hit and how to get reviewed on that Knifefork website, artists should be asking themselves exactly what their story is and how they should be telling it.

The lifespan an artist has is getting shorter and shorter. Audiences seek out artists they know little about and once they learn all there is to know, the artist becomes less interesting. For the fan, the hunt and the chase is almost more important than the reward.

When an band is new and little is known about them there is an excitement to finding them, an energy amongst those that have found them. This energy is contagious and it can spread like wildfire, which in a lot of cases is the goal but you have to be careful. Spread too much too quickly and you’ll use up all your fuel and the fire will burn out as quickly as it started. The art of it is creating enough mystery in the story that at every stage of the artists career there is more for the audience to discover. WU LYF are an example of an act who have recently built almost all of their success off mystery. No one knew who they were, where they were form or even how to pronounce their name (another stroke of genius, it’s almost phonetic so there is another reward for the fan when they find out they’ve been saying it right all along). You couldn’t even get in touch with their manager, who they called War God. More can be read about the strategy here but it was actually genius. Instead of signing up for all the requisite social sites and working hard to build their likes and followers, they went in the opposite direction and the story was compelling enough that they found a manageable amount of success. From the audience’s perspective, becoming a fan of WU LYF was at once intriguing and rewarding and every bit of infomation that was drip fed only served to create even more interest in them.

My advice for bands starting out would be to sit down and have a good think about who you are, what you want to be, how much you want your audience to know and how you’re going to keep the attention of a generation of kids whose attention span seems to get shorter and shorter every week. Choose wisely because it’s a story you’ll have to live with for years to come.

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