Tell us how bad our beer is

If you were at Alex's party the other night you were probably drinking some of our homebrew. I think we had the following in the tub:

1. Ginger Binger. Had 'GB' on the cap. Tasted like ginger
2. Powered by Centrelink. Had a dollar sign on the cap
3. Wild Beery. You will know what this one was if you have a functional tongue
   

Leave a comment and tell us what you thought of the beer. We didn't put our best brews into the tub because we don't like any of you that would have cost too much money. So feel free to say they were awful.

Personally I loved the ginger beer. Very gingery and very sweet, much more flavour than Bluetoungue's version. Powered by Centrelink was okay but nothing to be very proud of. Wild beery was a bit of a disaster and I hope we can all forget about it soon.

edit: Either we have no readers (likely) or no one can work out how to comment (less likely). Anonymous comments have been turned on!

To the Extreme! - Tom's extremely brown

Hi Everyone,

Tom's extremely brown was actually an amber ale wort bought from out local brew shop. We bought the wort for $40 and the yeast for $5. I gotta say, totally awesome.

Basically a wort is a pre-made solution of everything you need that comes in a giant 15 litre jug. All you need to add is yeast and 5-7l of water and you are done.

It was actually our very first brew, but, being that it was a wort we didn't need to do anything to it and it turned out awesome. Totally worth the extra moolah. This beer was elementally drinkable and had everything you want from a malty darker ale: the nutty/chocolate after taste, the raw yet smooth bitterness, low carbonation without being flat and that kind of heady palate that goes right through your nose to your brain without saying goodbye.

While it is a little more pricey than a lot of hte brews we make the extra money does show in the quality. As with most things you get what you pay for. Kits make really good beer, but you can spend up to $55 on a kit if you want to or as little as $8. The better the kit, the yeast and the malt solutions you use the better the beer will turn out. In this case it was excellent.

It had a very dark brown colour, with a good head (however head retention was surprisingly low; meaning that the head disapeared quite quickly with drinking) and a great aroma.

Better than: James Squire and practically everything else we have made apart from Bodens Belgium
Worse than: Chimay blue. I was racking my brain for any dark beer that wasn't a bloody tripaste or whatever they are called that was better than this. Chimay blue still has that extra alcohol but isn't as pretentious.. however it costs 160 a case so Tom's Extremely Brown is one eighth the price.
The same as: maybe something from another micro-brewery. There is a place in Sydney called the Lord Nelson, in the Rocks. They make their own beers and a few of theirs would match up to TEB, however again the price is prohibitive being that those are around 7 dollars a pint. The Australian, also in the Rocks, has a lot of Australian dark ales from all over the country, a couple of those would also match but again would be expensive.

[Boden note: We just put a second batch of this on. Can't wait! 26/06]

Colonel Jesus' Fruity Temptation: Straight kit, straight brew, straight up.

Hey guys, just a short one today.
This brew is just yet another example of how brewing kits can be fantastic without any alteration or creative assistance.

For CJFT we used a Brigalow cider kit, 1kg of table sugar and kit yeast. The result was a surprisingly authentic-tasting English-style cider; a very dry fore-taste accompanied by a sweet after-taste that made for good drinking.

The result of this uninventive endeavour was a beverage that was good for sipping, binging and excellent for refreshing, even if you aren't in the mood for something alcoholic. We definitely recommend this for any fans of cider, or even fans of refreshing drinks filled with good, old fashioned alcohol.