Over the last couple of years life seems to have been very busy and as a result very little brewing has been taking place. Instead I have been buying beer occasionally, but I have noticed the price seems to be ever increasing. Even for generic mainstream brands the price is approaching $2 a bottle. With the summer months upon us a refreshing beverage after work becomes an expensive hobby. So, time to get back into home brewing. I wasn’t really sure what style of beer to make but since it is summertime some form of pale ale was top of the list. A quick trip to my local brewing shop (LBS) and I was ready to go with a ‘Riwaka Pale Ale’.

A few months ago I acquired about 8 shopping bags of apples from a Golden Delicious apple tree to make cider from. I have never brewed cider before, but I figured how hard can it be? Once I got them home I faced the daunting task of juicing them all somehow. A bit of google voodoo seemed to turn up a few options of how to do this. The best approach seems to be find someone who has a big apple press. Since I don’t know anyone with a press the options are to use a electric juice extractor or blend it with a food processor and squeeze. I ended up going for a combination of these two. The juice extractor seemed to work quite well but was rather messy. The extracted juice seemed to have three distinct layers, a whitish layer at the bottom, a clear juice layer, and a top layer of foamy gunk. The top layer looked a bit uninviting so this was scooped off as much as possible. The blender option essentially consisted of blending until only small chunks remained, then squeezing. One tip I found on the internet was to freeze the blended pulp to help break up the fibrous structure of the apple. Since my Bock was still in the brewing drum this fitted in nicely, so all the juice and pulp was stacked into the freezer for a few weeks.

After cracking a few of my previous Black Beers I decided to try another darkish beer. But the big question was what style? My last few brews have involved adding extra hops with mixed success. In the case of the previous Black Beer I liked the flavour the extra hops added. In the case of the Hopped Pale Ale things weren’t so great, the extra hops seemed a bit much giving a bit of an off taste. This may have been the combination of hops I used, the Nelson Sauvin can have an overpowering flavor according to some brewers.

Recently the weather has taken a turn for the worse, although to be fair it never really got going over summer with lots of grey days. This has got me thinking forward to the winter months when having a big black beer in the fridge is never a bad thing. Time for a new brew, so off to the brew shop for a few supplies. I didn’t really know what I was after but came away with a couple of cans:

When using of pre-made malt extract the general recipe is to add 1kg of sugar to the contents of the can and add the yeast. Until now this has been the general process I have followed, although sometimes experimenting with different types of sugar or spraymalt/sugar combos. For this brew I have dived into the world of adding extra hops.

There is something rather refreshing about a ginger beer, especially on a hot summers day. A few months back I combined a Coopers lager tin with some fresh ginger. Although gingery flavoured, it was not a beer that you could have many of due to the high alcohol content. When poured it had almost zero head and needed to be very cold to hold back some of the harsh aftertaste. Rather than trying the beer+ginger approach I though I would give a dedicated ginger beer can a go.