These are the people who will be organising events for you. If you have any suggestions, please contact any of the committee members.

Once again I have wimped out on typing 6 pages of original transcript, but at least all the spelling is correct - Ed’s notes excluded. Most of the news letter is dedicated to hops – a topic on which I have prepared a presentation.

Once again Andy Tasker has contributed a substantial amount to the Bar Chat Column - Great Stuff. Andy has his own web site which can be navigated to via the WHB web site.

That’s all my ramblings for now.

Enjoy your brewing.

Donald

You have heard of ‘Kodak moments’ well how about ‘Home Brew’ moments :

A couple of weeks ago some mates introduced me to fly-fishing. It was one of those typical winter’s days with a clear blue sky, sunshine and a light cool breeze. After a while I got the hang of swishing this light rod back and forth and landing the fly in more or less the place I wanted it. I was feeling quite pleased with myself and at that moment my wife appeared with a pint glass and a familiar big brown bottle. I sat and filled the glass - home brewed American Pale Ale clear and sparkling in the glass under a creamy white head. The beer was at its peak after bottle conditioning for 3 months. That first taste was delicious with the lingering hop bitterness.

Meanwhile my hapless fly was still out on the water, totally forgotten. I’m sure if a trout had taken the fly at that moment I would have cut the line !

Truly a ‘home brew moment’ that made a good day into a great day – I love this hobby – Cheers!

I read somewhere that Champagne bottles are designed to take normal beer bottle caps. Apparently the Champagne is conditioned in the bottle capped with beer caps. They are stored upside down so that the yeast collects in the bottle neck. After a given time the neck portion is frozen, the cap and the plug of yeast removed and the bottle fitted with the usual wired cork.

I thought that if the empty Champagne bottles can be re-capped with beer tops they would be useful for storing unfermented wort or even beer. Imagine going to a party with a magnum of Best Bitter – quite impresive!

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The committee has been throwing around a few ideas about holding our very own WHB Spring Beer Festival 2000. The date is set for 21 October 2000. It will probably be linked to this years competition with top beers being available to all attendees. Visit the web site for more information.

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The first written record of adding hops to beer was St. Hildegard von Bingen's Physica Sacra in the mid 1100's. Hops provide the bitterness that balances the malt sweetness.

The hop (humulus lupulus) grows in many parts of the world, favouring climates with moderate rainfall, warm, sunny days and cool nights.

Understanding Bitterness

The alpha acids in hops is not soluble in water. In order for these acids to release their bitterness, they must be boiled vigorously so that these acids isomerize and become soluble. Once these acids are released into the beer, you've got a drinkable product. If you happen to have access to very sophisticated laboratory equipment, you can measure the bitterness directly. This unit of measurement is known as International Bittering Units or IBU's for short.

If you add one milligram of iso-alpha acid to one litre of beer, you have one IBU. More IBU's = More bitter beer. Every style of beer has its own range of IBU's. I've read that the human taste mechanism can't detect more than 50 IBU's in a beer.

With some simple math, a homebrewer can adjust a recipe for hops with different AA%. Here's the formula:

For example, if you add two ounces of 5AA% Fuggles to a five gallon batch, it calculates out to:

If your batch came out perfectly but next season's Fuggle crop tests at 7.5AA%, you'd do the math and only use 1.3 ounces of hops. Many published recipes for beginning brewers use the HBU measurement system.

The short comings of the HBU method of determining bitterness does not take into account factors that affects the efficiency of alpha acid isomarization. Some of these factors are:

Adding hops to the high gravity first runnings from the lauter tun. Tends to soften the bitterness of the bittering hops.

Bittering hops Boiled for about an hour – boiling for more than an hour does not incresse the hop utilization.

Flavour hops Boiled for 15 to 20 minutes. The flavour is obtained from hop oils which are fairly volotile and evaporate during the boil.

Aroma hops Added during the last 5 minutes of the boil

Mash Hopping The process of mash-hopping is simplicity itself. Take one third of your late addition hops and toss them into your mash tun with your grains. Mash, lauter, and sparge as you normally would and add slightly less bittering hops than you normally do.

The starting point for all of these is the whole unprocessed hop flower. Hop flowers are harvested once a year, processed, packaged, and held in cold storage until sold. Depending on the level and intensity of processing, many different products can be produced including Type 100 pellets (highly compressed whole cones in half ounce plugs), Type 90 pellets (ground whole cones extruded into pellets), and a wide variety of purified and concentrated extracts and essences

Hops accomplish four major things:

They add bitterness via alpha acids being isomerized (rearranged without changing their composition) into more stable and soluble iso-alpha acids.

They assist in the production of a good hot break by supplying tannins that combine with unwanted proteins.

They add to beer stability due to their antibacterial properties, and,

They lower the surface tension of the wort so that a vigorous boil can more easily be maintained.

Hop Evaluation

"Aroma is tested by smelling a crushed handful of whole cones. The hops should have a pronounced aromatic smell free from extraneous taints and odors, [list of unpleasant odors]. Smell may also be tested by rubbing the cones between the fingers which splits the lupulin grains. The aroma of the sample should not be sharp, but fine and mellow."

The second method is to make a hop tea by boiling or steeping a hop sample in water. This evaporates a lot of the hydrocarbons and gives you a better impression of how a particular sample will contribute in the brewkettle. In order to be as consistent as possible, I recommend always using the same container to make the tea (a 1 L erlenmyer flask is good) and the same water to hop ratio (2 g hops per 600 mL water). Prepare the tea the same way you plan to use the hops in your beer, boiling (or steeping) for a predetermined time. After cooling the tea add water to bring the volume back to your starting point and evaluate the flavor and aroma both for quality and quantity/intensity. Although this method does not employ any fancy instrumentation, it can be very effective, especially if good sampling notes are kept.

1. Start with the best hops you can get and store them in the freezer in barrier packaging if possible.
2. Monitor the aroma quality of your hops using either the Aroma Unit (if you can) or by physical evaluation.
3. Be very consistent in your brewing process making adjustments based on your evaluations.
4. Try to eliminate as much oxygen as possible from your packaging process.

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Two injured in brewery explosion in Halifax, Nova

Scotia. The beer was not harmed.

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Micro-brewing is going mainstream. That is if a article in the latest issue of Style magazine is anything to go by.

Consider the introduction to the article by Peter Sapseid:

IF YOU HAVEN’T TRIED IT, YOU’VE PROBABLY CONSIDERED IT – BREWING YOUR OWN BEER IN YOUR GARAGE. BUT BEFORE IT BLOWS UP IN YOUR FACE, CONSIDER A GROUP OF BREWING MAVERICKS THAT ARE GING THE IMAGE OF THE PLAIN OL’ PINT. MICRO BREWERIES ARE SPRINGING UP ALL OVER SOUTH AFRICA. IN EVERY BUSINESS SENSE THEY DELIVER, BUT CAN THEY GO THE DISTANCE.

The article goes on to say: Wine drinkers are urbane sophisticates; beer drinkers are loutish oafs. A sweeping generalisation, perhaps, but one, I’d argue that’s widely held. …………..

………….Ah beer – so enslaved by unfair stereotypes. But for those of us who drink it, beer is more than a drink; it’s a passport, a creed, an etiquette. Who says it is brutish and blokish? There’s a band of brewers who want to change that perception. But it means re-educating the boys down the pub. ………

…..Castle lager is the dominant label in the SA Breweries stable, and SAB in turn dominates nearly 98 per cent of the local beer market. But before you start punching the air, and yelling "Best Bottled Beer in the World" consider that Castle owes much of its success to brilliant marketers, not its brewers. The marketing team at SAB can inspire more patriotic fervour in a 30 second commercial than Robert Mugabe at a tobacco farm raffle. ………

……Of course, the SAB strategy is simple. They argue that they want to own the local market and concentrate on going global; on taking a good local brew into Africa and abroad. But even their brilliant marketing has now met with certain challenges………

……And all because of one word: "preservatives". In August 1996, Style ran an feature on beer in which SAB’s public Affairs manager, Adrian Botha, responded with eloquence, diplomacy and panache, to allegations that Castle was flooded with preservatives: "That’s absolute, categorical bullshit."

…….The SAB juggernaut has, by its dominance, created the perception that we – the consumers – lack a choice outside of the SAB stable. In turn, we are afraid of straying off the well-trodden aisle of brand products. But the times they are a-changing – also in the beer business, albeit on a micro-level.

As early as 1983, the first micro-brewery, Mitchell’s, opened its doors to thirsty locals of Knysna. It’s one of several independent breweries that have sprung up around the country, fuelled by pride, passion and a commitment to brewing beers of the highest quality. Since then, we more adventurous beer-swillers have been making space in our fridge’s for Bosun’s Bitter, Birkenhead Brew and perhaps, a few bottles of Pie Eyed Possum lager.

According to Micro-brewers, the best thing about their beer is that it isn’t riddled with preservatives. Brewed on site, it comes straight from the brewing process into your glass. The beer, they say, tastes fresher, crisper and stronger than the big brands. ……..

……..Mitchells Brewery became a wholly-owned subsidiary of UK Brewing giant Scottish and Newcastle in 1997. Perhaps then, they no longer qualify as a true micro-brewery, but rather as a macro-micro-brewery. Not that SAB is looking nervously over it’s shoulder in Mitchells’ direction. Neither, for that matter, are Mitchell’s trying to compete with the brewing colossus. The impact of the micro-brewing industry on the market domination of SAB is, in fact, negligible, and is wonderfully described by the Managing Director of Mitchells, Peregrine Solly: "It’s like the mouse raping the elephant," he laughs, "The mouse might be having a wonderful time, but the elephant hasn’t noticed."

(Solly arrived in Cape Town in 1996 with his wife and four children, bringing with him the resources and expertise of Scottish and Newcastle’s 150 years of brewing. Lex Mitchell remains the director and figurehead of the brewery and Solly believes he is the "greatest "living" brewer in South Africa, which should keep Charles Glass from frothing in his grave.) (Antoinette Drumm has now taken over from Peregrine Solly as the MD of Mitchells – read more about her in the latest issue of Style.)

Both Solly and Lex agree that their brewery is making steady inroads into the beer market. The emphasis on quality over quantity; contentment of capacity.

The Bad Boys of Birkenhead:

If you find yourself on the R43 to Hermanus, do yourself a favour and visit Birkenhead Brewery, where you can taste "Africa’s Southernmost Pint."

Birkenhead was the brainchild of Ben Chowney (a wacky American known in the company as "Bad Ass), who has seen the micro-brewery concept thrive in the USA, but he is quick to acknowledge that South Africans are extremely brand-conscious and price-sensitive……

….He sees the growth of the micro-brewing industry as vital to the development of a beer culture in SA, and views smaller breweries as part of the beer family, each with it’s own style and character. ….

….Unlike it’s namesake, the HMS Birkenhead, which sank in Walker Bay in 1852, the brewery looks well on course and is sailing towards a bright future. Lest you forget that the brewery is about serious fun, you may see the Birkenhead Beer van around town with it’s traffic-stopping logo: "Beer – helping ugly people have sex since 1852."

Banana Beer

Among the rolling hills over the Natal Midlands, you’ll find the charming Rawdon’s Country hotel. Situated in shady grounds, it has always been a beautiful place to visit. In 1996, it became an even better place to pop in to – when the Nottingham road Brewery was built on it’s premises.

Pure spring water is drawn from an artesian well on the grounds, and the beer is lovingly brewed by Armstrong Ngwane. Locals and visitors are kept happy with an outstanding range of ales and lagers like Pickled Pig Porter and Tiddly Toad. The brewery produces between 16 000 and 18 000 litres per month, which is distributed to selected outlets in Durban, Pietermaritzburg and Gauteng.

Brewery manager, Peter, Roux, is excited about developments at the brewery and in the micro-brewing industry, but this is tempered with his despondency at the attitude of beer drinkers in this country. …..

……The irony of the smaller breweries wanting to produce a premium beer that has as its focus excellent taste, is not lost on some. Neil Pendock writing in the Sunday Times opined: "Forget about flavour; the goal is drinkability. Strong flavours and tastes are its enemies." After the spat between SAB and Namibia breweries, he wrote: "SAB was furious because it knows an ugly secret: that selling beer is all about perceptions. Taste has little influence on consumer preferences."

"Niche players need to strive for excellence" says Peregrine Solly of Mitchells, echoing the sentiments of his brewing colleagues. Yet it is also obvious that their endeavours to produce great-tasting beer will not impinge on their insistence that having fun and being proud of one’s work is just as important. ……

…..Castle lager may have stood the test of time and might always be king of the Castle, but the micro-breweries have come "beering" gifts, encouraging us to take the plunge and try their beer.

[Extract from "Leaving the Lager", Style, August 2000]

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Wheat Beer