The Brew Off – International Home Brew Day 2012
By Tom Dixon, President
International Home Brew Day was celebrated in true home brewer style on May 5, with members of the Canberra Brewers putting three brewing styles to test.
The three brewing styles being pitted against each other were a Heat Exchanged Recirculating Mash System (HERMS), a ‘traditional’ three vessel system and the newer Brew in a Bag (BIAB) method. Half of the HERMS brew also got ‘cubed’ to experiment with a no-chill method prior to fermentation.
With the meeting place already decided at Craig “Stagger” Webber’s fine Brewery/Bar, all that was left were the brewers themselves, their equipment and then beer, food and the rest of the club.
Stagger mashed in first with his HERMS system, with Matt Pollock mashing in shortly after on his three-vessel system. Due to the shorter times required to produce a beer using BIAB, Adam Langan mashed in last noting his sparge would take very little time compared to the others.
Matt Pollock checking on the mash
During the mash members of the club threw all kinds of questions at the brewers while enjoying some tasty beers brought along to the meet.
Stagger led the first beer style tasting of his day with his Berliner Weisse, a refreshing, sour, low alcohol beer. Stagger explained that its sour quality was derived from the addition of lactic acid and also, whilst still very young, brettanomyces yeast.
Garry "Gazza" Picker conducted a demonstration on how to braze copper using oxy acetylene. Helping Pat Baggoley assemble an immersion chiller, Gazza showed how simple it was to solder brass fittings to copper. Using the oxy torch to heat the copper until it was glowing red, Gazza then applied solder to form an effective seal between the brass fitting and the copper tubing.
Following lunch, and as the brewers sparged, Kurtz lead the second tasting with Stagger’s Robust Porter. Kurtz talked the Brewers through the typical recipe of a Robust Porter and compared it to the excellent example that Stagger had on display. Brewers were encouraged to describe what they tasted and their impressions of the style.
Adam Langan adjusts the bag on his brew
The wort was boiled for 90 minutes to drive off any DMS. Following the boil, half of Stagger’s wort was transferred to a cube for the no-chill beer. It took several members and a few second degree burns to push the remaining air out of the cube. The cube was then left overnight to chill to ambient temperature before fermentation.
The second half of Staggers batch was chilled via his plate chiller and then poured into a fermenter. Stagger added oxygen at a concentration of 1L p/min for 1-2 minutes, noting the importance of providing yeast with oxygen to assist in their propagation.
Adam and Matt chilled their beers via immersion chillers, and then transferred to their fermenters. Both beers were also injected with oxygen.
Once the brewing was complete, the brew day continued on into the evening with members continuing to enjoy some great beer and company.
Big thanks to Stagger for hosting the day and for his time to brew the beers that were on tap. Thanks also to Adam and Matt for brewing, and to Kurtz and Mashematics for sponsoring the day.
The beers produced on the day will be made available at June meeting as part of the Brewers Showcase. Members will be asked to taste the four beers and vote on their favourite.
Matt talks about his brew set up to interested club members
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