Watching it rain...

A combination of slowly-dissipating lethargy and bad weather has been keeping me inside recently. Which has been bad for my ever-increasing waistline but good for my brewing - I get bored easily so need to keep doing things to keep myself busy, and beer is a gift that keeps on giving.

Last week I made a strong wheat beer, and after bottling off a few bottles this weekend to see what it would be like 'neat' I added a gallon of watermelon juice to the secondary.

How do you get a gallon of watermelon juice? With a blender, a sieve and lots of watermelon of course...fortunately sold over here at 69 cents per kg for seedless...


It does lead to a bit of a messy kitchen
but mopping it all up gives me something to do for the rest of the day. And of course is something that I feel is essential and not something I'm made to do because I made a mess. Honest.

What's the point? Well I'm hoping that the watermelon will add a fruity depth of flavour to the beer. Plus of course dumping a load more sugar gives the yeast something else to munch on, which will produce a stronger brew.

Unfortunately the temperatures up here are a bit high for good fermentation. Too high a temperature can lead to over-active yeast and the production of different types of alcohol molecule which can add strong flavours to the beer. So I have to use evaporative cooling (also known as 'a damp towel') to keep the beer as cool as possible. It's not ideal, but there's not much else I can do as installing aircon is a bit over the top for the garage. I'd want to put it in the flat first.

I also made an IPA a couple of weeks ago with so much hops in it that it wouldn't pass through the siphon tube. I've bottled about a quarter of this but you can see the three remaining demijohns awaiting bottling under the table. Not sure if I went over the top on this one - it tasted overly resiny during the bottling, so I think I'll need to let it sit for a few months to allow the hops to mellow out. That will also give me time to empty a few of my existing bottles...

Let's hope the rain keeps up.

Summer storms

Summer means storms in Queensland, and this summer looks to be a good one for bad weather. Today golf-ball sized hail stones fell across parts of SE Qld, and this is just the start of the season.
It also leads to some spectacular clouds
A zoom lens can lead to some great pictures
and a sunset setting on your camera accentuates the reds

I think this setting should be called 'sunset / post-apocalyptic', and marketed at people wanting to illustrate stories of the rapture.

Hug my fat sweaty body!!!

It's been incredibly wet over the last few weeks and I think that's dampened everyones spirits. The sun came out yesterday and Brisbane hit 30 degrees for the first time since April - it's been the coldest spring for a very long time. But now the clouds have come again, and in the tropics a cloudy sky just means more humidity. It may only be 28 degrees but that is everywhere - in the open, in the shade, in the flat, in bed. And the humidity is up at 70 - 80%, so it's like living in a sauna but without the Finnish chicks beating you with birch branches. With no air conditioning we have fans running constantly and shower three or four times a day to keep cool. It's not as bad as it will be though, because I'm still turning on the hot tap a little. In the middle of summer you only use the cold tap, and you let it run a little while first to let the warmed-up water in the pipes clear.

Sorry anyone in the UK reading this, I hope you're staying warm as best you can!