My Brewery Label

After we settled in, I purchased a Coopers home brewing kit. This comes with everything to create your first brew, including 30 plastic PET brown bottles. These are said to be 700 ml but when I tested them with water, they are 750 ml.

In August I purchased 15 extra bottles as I wanted to make a whole brew of bottled beer and I inadvertently destroyed two by putting almost boiling water in them.

Purchase Cost

Item	Cost
Beer Kit	$84
Kegging gear	$300
Extra kegs	$83
Extra bottles	$26
Gas cylinder	$300
Other	$17
TOTAL:	$810

First Brews

I started the first brew on 26 April 2008 and discovered that the temperature in the house was a bit too low. Until this time I had not connected up my home weather station so I was not aware of the inside temperature. The temperature at that time varied between about 21ºC in the early afternoon to about 16ºC overnight. I put the fermenter in the laundry and using the clothes dryer and a basin with hot water to keep the temperature up.

As such, it took about six days to be ready for bottling. I did this on 3 May and on 12 May I tasted it. It was quite nice but a little flat. I put this down to the temperature being a bit low for the secondary fermentation. Despite this, it is going down well as I write this (almost gone then but totally gone now!).

As mentioned, my original intention was to brew in kegs and in mid-May 2008 I purchased the kegging equipment. I purchased two 18 litre kegs, one tap, lines and fittings and a CO2 cylinder. When we moved, our old fridge went under the house and I drilled holes for the lines and set it up.

What I did not know then but do now is that there are at least two different types of kegs, well, at least the connectors. The first one has pin (bayonet) fittings for the inlet and outlet connections. These are mostly Coke kegs and are considered the older type. In Australia these appear to be the less common type. The second has ball fittings. These are held on by spring-loaded ball bearings. These are mostly referred to as Pepsi kegs. The ones I bought are the Coke pin fitting kegs. The only problem with this is when I went to purchase some extra kegs, I had a bit of trouble finding some. I finally found some on Ebay (more about this soon).

On 12 May 2008 I started the second brew. This was a Coopers Pale Ale. I made a mistake when doing this as I thought that the Brew Enhancer 2 (which can be added to the standard brew to make it taste better) was added in addition to the sugar. Luckily I did not add it before I realised the mistake. As such, this brew only had normal Coopers sugar added.

This also took six days to finishing fermenting due to the reasons outlined above. I kegged it on 18 May and put it in the fridge with only a small amount of gas to evacuate the air from the space left inside the keg. After it cooled (one day) I put in 200 kpa of pressure. After two days I dropped this to 100 kpa but when I tested, I thought that the beer was a bit flat so I upped it again for another day. Another mistake! The beer was way to fizzy and I ended up with 80% froth when pouring. After a lot of effort, I got it right (you have to release pressure, shake the keg, release the pressure and repeat till you get it right).

This beer was great. It tasted very much like Coopers Pale Ale and it was drunk in under three weeks.

My next beer was a Hahn Premium kit I purchased. It cost a bit to buy but after tasting it when first ready, I am a bit disappointed as it tasted nothing like Hahn Premium. I have decided to let it age and will not taste it again for a month or more (it tasted okay but not like Hahn).

After I knocked over the first keg, I decided to do another Pale Ale and this time I did it with the Brew Enhancer No 2. As I was having a house warming party in mid-July, I had arranged to borrow two kegs and this is where I discovered that there are different types of connectors. As I said, I wanted some cheap ones and I found someone in Newcastle selling three on Ebay. I won these for $83. They needed some work done on the o-rings as they are in fairly poor condition. I got one working okay and then a second one. I will need to purchase some o-rings and do some cleaning to get the third one working as well as fix the other two up properly. I will do this after the party.

As the temperature in the house in Winter is so low, I purchased a cheap single bed electric blanket. I put the fermenter and any bottles on this and use the blanket to keep the temperature right. I find that 3 at night and 1 during the day works well.

Brews to Date

Brew	Date	Brew	Sugar	Extra	%	Storage	Tasted	Comments
1	26 April 2008	Cooper’s Lager	500g		4.3%	Bottled 3 May 2008	12 May 2008	Tastes nice but a bit flat. Too cool when secondary formation
2	12 May 2008	Coopers Pale Ale	500g		4.3%	Kegged 18 May 2008 (+8 750ml)	21 May 2008	Very nice. A bit flat but later put too much gas in. Got right in the end and polished off with the neighbour!
3	19 May 2008	Hahn Premium (Blue Mountains Lager)	400g	Malt and dextrose	4.0%	Kegged 27 May 2008 (+6)	30 May 2008	Cloudy and does not taste like HP but is a nice drop anyway
4	9 June 2008	Coopers Pale Ale	500g	Enhancer 2	4.3%	Kegged 14 June 2008 (+7)	17 June 2008	Was very nice, totally consumed at party
5	14 June 2008	Coopers Blonde	500g	Enhancer 1	4.0%	Kegged 22 June 2008 (+6)	25 June 2008	Was very nice, totally consumed at party
6	22 June 2008	Coopers Pale Ale	500g	Enhancer 2	4.3%	28 June 2008 (+6)	19 July 2008	Quite nice - about five litres consumed at party
7	7 July 2008	Coopers Blonde	500g	Enhancer 1	4.3%	13 July 2008 (+6)	6 August 2008	Very nice, going down well
8	14 July 2008	Coopers Pale Ale	500g	Enhancer 2	4.3%	20 July 2008 (+8)	25 August 2008	Excellent
9	8 August 2008	Coopers Bitter	550g		5.4%(?)	14 August 2008 (+7)	7 September 2008	A bit too dark for me, I drank it but I will not make it again
10	16 August 2008	Coopers International Lager	550g	Enhancer 2	6.9% (?)	Bottled 25 August 2008		Very, very good
11	26 August 2008	Coopers Pale Ale	500g	Enhancer 2	4.0%	30 August 2008 (+8)	10 October 2008	As good as all the other Pale Ales I have made
12	30 August 2008	Coopers Pilsner	300g dextrose	500g Light Dry Malt	2.8%	20 September 2008 (+8)	19 October 2008	A bit flat in kegs but tasty, bottles excellent
13	20 September 2008	Coopers Pale Ale	500g	Enhancer 2	4.8%	26 September 2008 (+8)	7 November 2008	Flat at first but now great
14	12 October 2008	Coopers Lager	600g dextrose		3.2%	15 October 2008	27 November 2008	Very nice
15	15 October 2008	Coopers Pilsner	300g dextrose	500g Light Dry Malt	4.6%	24 October 2008	3 December 2008	Excellent!!
16	24 October 2008	Coopers Blonde		500g Enhancer 1	2.9%	29 October 2008	7 November 2008	Very good
17	7 November 2008	Coopers Cerveza		500g Enhanced 2	2.7%	13 November 2008	13 December 2008	Yuk!
18	27 November 2008	Coopers Real Ale	500g	200g honey	4.6%	3 December 2008
19	10 December 2008	Coopers Pilsner	300g dextrose	500g Light Dry Malt	4.3%	17 December 2008
20	22 December 2008	Coopers Pale Ale	500g	Enhancer 2	4.6%	28 December 2008

I plan to try and keep three full kegs in the fridge and another in production so I can age them a bit. I will report on the ageing process once I have some that are older than the 7 weeks that I have so far achieved.

Since brew 3, I have been using the electric blanket to keep the temperature right for both primary and secondary fermentation. The bottled beer produced since then have been much better, with far more bubbles than the first ones.

Also, when I created brew 5, I added a chilli to three bottles. In mid-July, I tasted one and it was quite interesting. The beer went down well, but left a tingling taste in my throat. I was going to the other two bottles out during my party but I forgot. I took another one to a ski weekend and those who tasted it found it very interesting.

In August 2008 I purchased a Coopers Bitter kit as I wanted to try it out. This brewcame out very, very dark. It looks more like an old beer. I quickly tasted it after I gassed it up and it seems nice. However, it was a bit too dark for my liking and I doubt that I will make it again.

I also puchased a Coopers International European Lager and made this up. I decided I wanted to bottle this as it recommends putting it away for three months. Therefore, I purchased another 30 PET bottles. I decided that I would not drink this till near Christmas 2008. I tried it after 96 days and it was excellent. After over four months it is getting better. One of the best brews I have made.

I also purchased a Coopers Pilsner. This has been the best beer I have made so far. I made another brew almost straight after I kegged this one. This time I put them all in bottles. I left this brew for over two months before I tried and it was even better than the first one. I have since made another and intend to make one about every four brews.

In early November 2008 I made a Coopers Cerveza. I did not like this and will make again.

In late November 2008 I made a Coopers Real Ale. I added 200 grams of honey to the brew and will probably try this on New Year's Eve.

Cost of Beer

This cost includes capital cost and recurrent cost of making the brews.

Brews	Capital Cost	Recurrent Cost	Kegs	Bottles	Equals Cans	Cost per Carton	Cost per can	Recurrent per can
23	$884	$387	19	280	1,438	$21.20	$0.88	$0.27

Labels

I designed some labels for my beer and printed a few up. They are shown below.