The Backyard Brewer

Add caption Today I want to talk about beer snobbery, yeah I know that’s actually becoming a thing. Who would’ve ever thought that the drink of the common man (or women) would be used to promote elitist values and ideals? Well maybe that’s a slight overstatement, but in some ways it might actually be coming true, but why? For starters I want to say that beer is the drink of many different peoples, from many different cultures and it’s not beholden to anyone or any culture. You could easily argue that their is a beer for anyone and everyone, from the common man or women right up to the Queen of England! (I’m sure she loves a good pint of bitter by the way) But seriously beer is just a beverage, put simply it is a concoction of ingredients that has been perfected over centuries, yea even millenia, and these ingredients have been selected carefully over time to create what we know today as beer in its many forms and guises. And the purpose of beer is simple, it is to lubricate both th...

What is BIAB For those just starting out, brew in a bag or BIAB is a method of brewing that allows you to brew all grain beer in a single vessel. Traditionally beer has been and still is brewed in commercial breweries using several vessels called tuns, kettles and tanks, depending on their use and purpose. Home brewers for the most part have used scaled down versions of these with the most popular being the three vessel system. Typically the all grain home brewer would employ a cooler for a mash tun, an electric kettle or large pot for a hot liquor tank and another large pot as a boil kettle, and this system would require the brewer to move the liquor from the liquor tank, to the mash tun and then onto the boil kettle and finally into the fermenter after cooling. BIAB on the other hand allows you to mash and boil in the same kettle thus saving equipment and extra complexity. BIAB brewers can even utilise a single vessel and brew with either no sparging or reduced sparging by heating...

My First Beer Brewing Kit! So you want to start home brewing your own beer but you're not sure which method will be best or easiest for you in the beginning. Maybe you've read somewhere that beginners should start with extract brewing and step up to all grain when they've mastered the fermentation and sanitation? Or maybe you haven't and you like me, pretty much just started googling beer brewing kits and made your decision without any external influence. Either way, most of us eventually come across the idea that beginners should always start with extract kits so they can get used to fermenting and sanitation before they add in the complexity of mashing, sparging and boiling.  But my first big issue with this idea is this. Neither of these processes are in my humble opinion all that hard that someone has to focus just on them so they can become a better brewer long term! The cleaning and sanitation side of things is pretty simple, you just have to make sure tha...

My 30L and my 5L Fermenters This could seem like a strange thing to write about, but bear with me as I discuss beer volumes and what it means for the average home brewer and what it's starting to mean for me!  Firstly by the term "beer volumes" i'm talking about the amount or volume of beer that you or me the home brewer, produces on average over any given period. So this discussion is one about how much beer do we want to brew? And how much beer do we think we need? And how much beer can we reasonably consume over any giving period of time? These are all important and interesting questions as they determine what our home brewing setup is going to look like, as well as how much space we are going to need for both warm and cold storage and what type and size equipment we are going to purchase. And these questions often don't factor enough in our initial thoughts as we set off into the world of home brewed beer. More often than not these decisions are already m...

Enjoy the first video on my new backyardbrewer YouTube Channel

Fermenter King Junior on its First Brew Day As of the date that I've written this article, I've only been brewing for 11 months! So yeah, if your reading this anytime in the future i'm not an "expert" yet, whatever that means! But in my first 11 months I've now clocked up 23 beers of varying styles, sizes and methods, in fact i think I've already brewed every way possible except in a three vessel systems and in my toilet. Ok, so maybe the toilet thing was a bit too much but let's just say that I've had a world of experience in my first 23 brews. My first batch was an all grain brew using a 5L small batch kit I bought from a shop in Sydney. The brew day was clumsy and nerve wracking to say the least, but the beer i produced in that first bottle i cracked brought a literal tear to my eye. I wasn't going to win any awards, but it was a malty/hoppy flavor  bomb that blew away any fears i had that brewing at home couldn't produce  quality be...

Sanitizer Spray Bottle Ready Sanitizing To start with sanitizing and cleaning are two different processes or steps in the beer bottling or packaging process that should not be confused. Cleaning is the process of removing dirt and particles from your bottle whereas sanitizing is the process of killing as many bacteria and fungus as possible after cleaning and before you start filling with your beer. It stands to reason then that you want to kill as many of these critters as possible in order to avoid getting an "infection" in your bottled or packaged beer. The danger of poor or no sanitation is a build up of too many bacteria or fungi in your bottles which will feed off your beer faster than the residual yeast (yeast is a fungi and wild yeast is a wild fungi!). This will result in off flavored beer at best and over carbonated beer and/or bottle bombs at worst, and If you've ever had a beer bottle rupture you'll know exactly how bad it is trying to clean up the ...