Hot Tips 101: Calling all SOBA NHC Best-In-Class Winners

[Stu McKinlay]

Can the best in class winners from the SOBA homebrew comp please pass on some insights to those who weren't as successful (or who are new to the brewing game)?

What do you ferment in - plastic, glass, stainless?
Are you kegging or bottle conditioning?
What malts are you using (UK, German, Aus, NZ)?
Dry or liquid yeast?
Batch or fly sparge?
Who are they lucky people that generally get to drink your beer?
What do you think the main keys to your brewing success are?

[jt]

Gotta Agree on the same beer til you nail it. I did a couple of new recipes for the comp to fit the style guidleines and could've been my technique or my recipe, but and they suffered badly. The one recipe that I'd done a zillion times before came up with a bronze.

fairlane, talk to Sparky next week, he may have a couple of spare Gervin Ale yeasts after I've called in ..

[Dan]

What do you ferment in - plastic, glass, stainless?
30l plastic fermenters

Are you kegging or bottle conditioning?
Bottle conditioning, 500ml mainly and glass flagons when I get lazy

What malts are you using (UK, German, Aus, NZ)?
Some times I use uk or german base malts but 90% of the time I use gladfeild pils malt for base on everything!
Specialty malts I prefer would be munich and vienna, I use alot of roasted, brown and amber too!


Dry or liquid yeast?
Liquid yeast 95% of the time, usually stuff thats been in the fridge thats been split off my origional! will be getting into lab work this year when ive accumulated the gear and materials, havent had desirable outcomes with dry yeasts!

Batch or fly sparge?
Fly

Who are they lucky people that generally get to drink your beer?
Me! and on rare occasions the compost heap.

What do you think the main keys to your brewing success are?

Good guessing would be one of them, im not so much into formulating recipes via software, the grain bill is usually made on the fly whilst milling as is the hops, only ibu,s are formulated on rare occasions when specifics must be met!
otherwise I go on gut instinct which most of the time produces what im after! probably not a good thing if you want every beer to be spot on!
Doing a similar recipe, eliminating/adding amounts or materials undesired helps me to get an understanding on what the grain hop or yeast is providing! contrary to that reckless experimenting has led me to some great formulas!