JoKing's Page

Things have been crazily hectic since the weekend, and it’s only just now that we have had a minute to sit down and reflect on the eventualities of last week. It still feels rather dreamlike, and it is still difficult to comprehend that we took out what is one of the most hotly contested categories at the NZ Beer Awards. But we did, and it’s not as though we did it without the help of a few people over the years.

 

So here’s a shout out to all the people who have made a…

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Recently, I commisioned the fabrication of a new fermenter for my brewery. Several months, and several thousand dollars later - she arrived. She was in a bit of a state - and took me 3 solid days to clean out. Then I had to fabricate adapters etc so as to suit the existing hardware in my brewhouse... this took a lot of time, but I got it done within a few days.

 

So...…

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I just want to put out there what has been on my mind lately. It's a little bit random, so please bear with me a moment if you will. Also - I'm sure in the past I've touched on it slightly... but I want to make explicit my…

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After a great many hours in the workshop, countless welding flashes, a few trails... a few errors. After many a phone call from the Wife asking when I'll be home, and after more than my fair share of burns (from resting my arm on freshly welded steel) - Oh and I can't forget about all the singed eye brows, eye lashes, arm hair and head hair...

 

I have completed a trial batch on my best performing and ideal home brew system.

 

So…

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You're always learning new things about brewing when you're a brewer... like remembering important steps throughout the the brewing process. Especially remembering to put the temperature probe in the conditioning fridge when attempting to condition a nice robust Porter.

Dunno what I was thinking on this one, but I ended up with about 15 Liters of 8%…

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Yeah - it's been a while since I wrote one of these. I hate typing mostly... that's why. But I had a real serious incident during my brew today. You see - I had mashed in as usual. I mashed for around half an hour before I decided to start recirculating. I had already started collecting and heating my sparge water...

Then the power went off.

So instead of panicking, I decided to sprint around the house in my underwear saying this like "Un-fucking-believable"...…

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It's been a while since I've put a blog up - so I thought I'd put up something useful to y'all. Tyler and Mike were over when they saw me do this, and I think that both of them are doing it now. I don't know how may of you are doing it, but it's worth doing if you're not - as I haven't noticed any detremental effects on the beer when you do it. So, what am I talking about? Wort recovery... thats what. It starts after you have transferred your wort into the fermenter. Generally I cut off when… Continue

Things at the brewery have been on the go slow for the last month, and I have experienced a dwindling of stock to the extreme. I think I have 4 Litres left of Naked Poppy, 4 Liters of Trap Door - and I wouldn't hazard a guess with my IRA. And that's really all the stock I have remaining... apart from my half of the MMMMoMMft4CH - but thats a Kellerbier... so doesn't really count.



I pulled my socks up hard last week and quickly knocked out 2 beers - one on Wednesday, and one on… Continue

I hear you all asking yourselves... "What do I do with this 21 Liters of fermented beer, when I can only fit 20 to the lip of my corny?" Well - I have the answer for you... either drink it flat, or chuck it in the soda stream machine! Step1: When you are half way through racking into the keg, fill up a soda stream bottle.

Make sure you dont overfill the bottle.

Step 3: Give it a few nudges of CO2 - dont… Continue

It's been a couple of weeks since I've been and given a bit of insight to the brewery here so I thought I'd pop in and say hi... Yesterday was a massive day of home brew related activities. And I was mindful of a few of the discussions that were on the forum. First off for the day was bottling off the batch of Barleywine that Mike and Reviled brewed here in my whare. It's been a while since I bottled a batch - so I thought I get the assistant brewer to give me some help with this. I had about a… Continue

So first of all, thanks to Tyler and Mike for making this weekend possible. Tyler (Reviled) was good enough to take the photos of our monumental brew. But lets get back to the start... I arrive home from work on friday after a session of drinkies with my work mates. I get a text message from Tyler letting me know he has arrived. It's 6pm. I greet him at the top of my driveway, and we have a Dubbel. It all goes downhill from there - infact I can not… Continue

Schlammiger Roggen is German for Muddy Rye. I brewed this beer on Saturday - but was too hungover to be bothered with blogging it on Sunday! Here is the recipe: Original Gravity: 1.054 (1.046 - 1.056) Terminal Gravity: 1.014 (1.010 - 1.014) Color: 15.12 (14.0 - 19.0) Alcohol: 5.34% (4.5% - 6.0%) Bitterness: 18.4 (10.0 - 20.0) Ingredients: 2.5 kg Rye Malt 1.5 kg Munich Malt 1.3 kg German 2-row Pils .3 kg Caramunich® TYPE II .060 kg Carafa Special® TYPE III 28.0 g Tettnanger (5.2%) - added during… Continue

I didn't know quite how to start this blog, because I've built this beer up in my head over the last 7 months - as soon as I found out that Christina was pregnant. We took the test, it came back positive, and within minutes after I said "we're having a baby!" were the words "that's it - I'm brewing a Celebration Ale, we're having a party - and we'll crack the keg then!!!!" Well, the time has come. On a miserable Wednesday afternoon I made the managerial decision to leave work early and come… Continue

This photo was probably the best part of the brewday: i.e. before I had even started! So I had been planning a Dubbel for quite some time - about a month ago, Mike Neilson was kind enough to send me up some WyEast 3787 from one of his smack packs. Unfortunately, it leaked in transit and I only had about 5mls of smack pack juice to crank this beer. I started the propogation process by pitching the small amount of yeast into 500mls of 1.020 wort on the… Continue

New Zealand surely is paradise. I spent the last 2 weeks in Auckland making the most of my last few months as a non-parent, and generally trying as hard as I could to be irresponsible: considering that I am a role model to no-one... as yet.



So the fortnight kicked off a beauty at the Kumeu Festival. I had a reasonable hangover then, and I wrote a huge blog on it.



The next few days were somewhat… Continue

Have a look at the time this post has been added. There are no errors here – and the matter is made worse by the fact that I haven’t had any sleep yet. I can’t shut my damned mind up. I can’t stop thinking about what was probably one of the best 2 subsequent days in my recent life (aside from getting married and conceiving a child… of course).



There was an innocent exchange of comments with Greig McGill on my Ace of Spades blog post. The next thing you know, I’m stopping in to his… Continue

This'll be my last brew for about 3 weeks I think.



Experiwheat is another (2 weeks in a row now) spur of the moment brew that I "thought about". Last week, I was inspired by the realbeer.co.nz forum to brew a Schwartzbier - which I must say is coming along swimmingly. This weekend, I knew I needed to keep the levels of stock up, as they had been hammered somewhat over the summer period. Demand was up and supply was down. I'm going to have to have my assistant brewer take care of… Continue

This weekend, I had planned to brew another West Coat Blonde Ale - however there were many things to consider last night while I was dreaming of brewing. It was my 1st brew for a whole fortnight... so I was rather excited. Firstly, I had been down to

White Cliffs Brewery to pick up some lager yeast for

Mike Nielson after a short discussion about what yeast he should use in a… Continue

I had to go up to Auckland in the weekend for my Grand Dad'n'laws sad funeral, so there wasn't any brewing this weekend however....



I got to enjoy the spoils of being in the largest metropolis in NZ - and I made the most of it. I visited Chris at Wine Circle in Kumeu on the way home from the funeral to pick up some beer to drown my sorrows. Aventinus was tasting as good as ever - but probably the wrong choice for the sun shine supping. There was a load of sweetness that didn't agree… Continue

Well, I have been talking a bit about it on the forum - so I thought (spur of the moment) that I'd finally brew an American style Pale Ale. I had a packet of US-05 in the fridge that was due to expire... the dreaded 03-09 batch! I did a brew with another 03-09 packet 3 or 4 weeks ago: it was my GP Simcoe SMaSH. The beer is incredible - so I thought bugger it, I'll just use the same yeast... it's fermenting quite happily now at 18 degrees. What I thought I'd talk about this week is beer clarity,… Continue