homebrewandbeer.com

Hi all. I was browsing recipes from this site
http://www.liquorcraft.com.au/wa.asp?id ... etails=110. Could somebody please tell me what are Brewblends as Ive also seen them mentioned on the forum quite a bit. Im guessing there just a combination of brewing sugar and a particular type of malt extract suitable for a particular recipe ?

Correct Dave d.

Brewblends are made by brewcraft (a homebrew chain store here in Oz) and sold in their chain of shops, similar to coopers BE1 & 2's.
There are different ones depending on what you want to do in a brew and consist (generally) of maltodextrin, light dry malt and dextrose.

I used one or two when I first started but then went to putting my own together and shortly to all grain.
Bad thing with the brew blends is they dont normally like to breakdown the actual parts of ingredients, but I believe their #15 is similar to BE2.

IMHO you are much better to make your own mixtures and using LDME instead of Dex anyhoo. That way you know exactly what has gone into it and can reproduce it next time if you want.

I think there was a post somewhere that had some of the brew blends and what they (roughly) contained.

Cheers,
Nick

Yeah, all-malt is the way to go. Aside from that, I could never be happy making a beer that I did not know all the ingredients.

Thanks for your detailed response guys, Im getting the impression that home brewing is big in OZ. All my reasearch leads me to Austrailian sites and forums like this. There are certainly no homebrew chainstores here, in fact homebrew shops are scarce !!!

Dave d wrote:Thanks for your detailed response guys, Im getting the impression that home brewing is big in OZ. All my reasearch leads me to Austrailian sites and forums like this. There are certainly no homebrew chainstores here, in fact homebrew shops are scarce !!!

Maybe it's time for you to emigrate.
Can you play rugby?

Not sure why there are not many home brew shops in the UK. Maybe there are some restrictions or laws governing it.

Its very popular in Australia as you say, usually because we are the most taxed nation on the planet, and our idiot prime minister keep upping the alcohol excise every couple of years, making a decent case of beer to buy at the moment somewhere around the $40AU mark.
Much cheaper ( and better ) to homebrew when you can make beer that is better then a lot of the commercial stuff for around $10 a case ( using K&K ).
More if you AG brew of course..

It is very surprising considering some of the best kit concentrates are made there i.e Muntons who also make the Brewcraft kits

Probably because some of the best beers are made there, and they're available at a decent price. I guess it comes down to the ratio between the attractiveness of homebrew vs the attractiveness of commercial, with factors of both quality and price.

Yeah true never looked at it that way, also have to factor in the wingy lazy issues to

I looked at home brew gear when i lived in the UK and the price was way more than what i would pay for slabs of cheap swill (stella etc) and the fact i was paying 1.28GBP for a pint of bitter...... altho AG is cheaper obviously.

scanman, I don't think that there has ever been a pm who hasn't upped the excise! Even Hawk did AFAIK, and he loved a beer.[/i]

Seems to me Honest Johnny has done it more then the rest. Its almost like every 6 months it goes up. Beer went up again recently in pubs, apparently bcause of the drought.
A schooner was going to go up between 10 and 30 cents a schoner.
As if it wasn' already expensive enough.

I have given up paying that much for beer. I was an occassional brewer till June this year, when the excise went up again.

When a half decent popular beer is on special at $41 a case, its time to give up and start brewing your own.
I find now, as any brewer will tell you, the beer is fresher, and doesn;t give you those nasty headaches after a session.

scanman wrote:...and doesn;t give you those nasty headaches after a session.

Your're just not having enough of a session Scanman.

Cheers,
Greg

scanman wrote:Not sure why there are not many home brew shops in the UK. Maybe there are some restrictions or laws governing it.

No TommyH Rugby is not for me !!! Emigrating sounds tempting. Ok here is my take on it. I have travelled a lot and have come to the conclusion long ago that people in the UK are more than willing to settle for crap beer if its cheap and gets you pissed thats it. Compared to somwhere like Germany where I work often its beer heaven. You can go into a bar there and be offered a choice of over 300 beers !!! In the UK there are nightclubs where you could pay AU$45 and the bar is free all night. The beer is basically cheap and nasty so maybe HB is not worth the effort for a lot of people. Its seems you guys are not willing to settling for cheap and nasty beer and prefer to make your own. When I come back from working in Europe it takes me a while to be able to drink the beer again the UK unless I pay huge amounts of cash for Belgian or German beer.

gregb wrote:

scanman wrote:...and doesn;t give you those nasty headaches after a session.

Your're just not having enough of a session Scanman.

Cheers,
Greg

Cartainly not as much as when I was younger. But I know drinking the same amount of HB compared to the same amount of commercial crap certainly doesn't make you end up the same way.
The gut suffers the same, but the head certainly doesn't.

Then again, maybe i'm tollerant of it after all these years.

Dave d wrote: The beer is basically cheap and nasty so maybe HB is not worth the effort for a lot of people. Its seems you guys are not willing to settling for cheap and nasty beer and prefer to make your own. When I come back from working in Europe it takes me a while to be able to drink the beer again the UK unless I pay huge amounts of cash for Belgian or German beer.

I think thats the problem. What used to be cheap and nasty beer now costs over $30 a case to buy, so not real cheap.
And of course its nasty, and that is every reason to make a beer that doesn't like camels piss. ( not that I have ever tried camels piss, but I can imagine)