The Grandfather of homebrewing

It has been just over one year since my Grandad passed away and last weekend the family got together for a bbq and a beer in his memory. I had recently made the discovery that Grandad had been an avid homebrewer in his time, though the recollections of his success seem to be pretty...

Black Santa: an oatmeal stout

The time off over Christmas and New Year’s gave us some extra time to get to know our brew kit so we had to take advantage of it. On our first brew day we discovered our burners may have been mounted a bit high, so to avoid flames lapping out everywhere and melting all...

A taste of Sierra

I imagine if you’re like me, your Christmas/New Year’s break has provided ample opportunity to over-indulge in great beer as well as some not-so-great beer; as provided by uncles and aunties that you only ever see once a year, and very little time hanging around your computer reading or posting blogs. We were fortunate...

The Sierra Endeavour

A flash of inspiration the week before bottling gave us a name for our first batch of all-grain home brew, a beer based on Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. We named it the ‘Sierra Endeva’, and it seemed very appropriate for our first foray into this brewing method. Approaching bottling day, we figured it would...

Almost Brew Day

Just a quick post today. Brew day is almost upon us. It seems to have crept up rather quickly and unannounced, but maybe that’s just from the hustle-bustle of our regular lives getting in the way of brewing. In the last week we managed to assemble all the final pieces of the brew kit...

Building a brew kit, how hard can it be?

Building a “pico” brewery with a bunch of mates, how hard can it be? This was the question we had asked ourselves before we set out to answer it. One thing I found really handy was the documented progress of other brewers out there, so we thought that we would take you along for...