A New Season With A Spring In Our Step!
Last minute gift ideas for Dad on Father's Day include Home Make It Gift Vouchers, Course/Workshop Vouchers, Brew Kits, Home Brew Equipment & Ingredients, kits for Cheese Making, all he needs for Sausage & Salami Making or Coffee equipment, & more! Have a look at the range in store & get a 10% discount on selected items - just mention this newsletter!
Homemade Sausage & Salami Equipment Kit
With this kit you will be able to make your very own fresh range of sausages & salami just the way you like them!
Includes:
- 1 X #8 Manual mincer
- 1 X #8 Metal knife & 6mm mincer plate set (Sausage making)
- 1 X #8 Metal knife & 12mm mincer plate set (Salami making)
- 1 X #8 Funnel clamp
- 1 X #8 Funnel 15mm (Sausage making)
- 1 X #8 Funnel 25mm (Salami making)
- 1 X Salami pricker
Complete Instructions included.
Ingredients not included. For best results we recommend purchasing one of the many Home Make It™ Homemade Sausage Recipe Kits or Homemade Salami Recipe Kits available. There are many flavours to choose from and the recipe kits include ingredients & instructions required to make great sausages and salami!
Giardiniera
A perfect compliment to antipasto, delicious on its own or in a sandwich, traditional Giardiniera is a simple & tasty pickle of capsicum, celery, carrots & cauliflower. Americans are known to add spicy chili for an extra kick.
For six to eight 500ml jars, you will need:
A Large Bowl
1 Medium Saucepan
6 - 8 x 500ml Jars
2 Large Red capsicums
2 large Green Capsicums
1/2 Bunch of Celery
2 Large Carrots
1/2 Head of Cauliflower
1/2 Cup Sea Salt
1 Sprig of Oregano, 1 clove of Garlic (chopped in half) & 1 Bay Leaf per jar
Optional - pitted olives, pickled Jalapeno chili, chili flakes, mustard seeds, fennel seeds, celery seeds, or other fresh herbs and spices (add to taste)
For the pickling brine:
4 cups of White Wine Vinegar
4 cups of Water
2 tablespoons of salt
Extra virgin Olive Oil
Roughly chop vegetables into the size that suits you, or use a mandolin slicer for finer results. Place in a bowl, sprinkle with salt & mix through. Cover with water, tightly cover in foil or cling wrap, & leave overnight. This draws out extra moisture & gives a better pickle. Rinse & drain. Prepare the jars by adding garlic, herbs & spices. Add the vegetables - you may want to layer them or just mix for a more rustic look. For the brine, mix the vinegar & water with 2 tablespoons of sea salt & bring to the boil. Pour the boiled brine - carefully! - into each jar to cover the vegetables, leaving a little head-space. Top with olive oil & seal with a lid. For longer storage, place each jar in a large pot of water & boil for 10 minutes. Otherwise, keep in the fridge & consume with a few weeks.
Home Brewing
Extract brewing is the starting point for many home brewers. It often kicks off as with a Brew Kit given as a Father's Day or Christmas gift, with a basic hopped wort extract (Draught or Lager) & a kilo of brewer's sugar included. Extract brewing requires little equipment, & only a little time to produce great tasting results. Mix the ingredients with water right in the 30L fermenter, dilute to 23 litres & pitch the supplied yeast - easy!
There are a few tips that will immediately improve the flavour & aroma of your finished extract beer. Instead of basic sugar, use a kilo of malt mix or dry malt extract, or try a tin of liquid malt extract. You could also add an amount of corn syrup extract, or maltodextrin. This will provide unfermentable longer-chain sugars that will add body & texture, & enhance malt flavours, for a fuller, richer beer.
You can also step things up by adding small amounts of specialty malts, such as Crystal Malt, to boost flavours & aromas, as well as to adjust colour. This can be as simple as steeping 100g - 200g of crushed malt, in a French press or a small grain bag, or even in the wort extract tin, and straining the resulting "tea" into the fermenter, or you can try a Partial Mash.
Partial Mashing is a process where a portion of the wort is made by mashing a small amount of base & specialty malts, but most fermentables are still malt extracts or simple sugars. You would do this to obtain the character of base malts, for example Vienna Malt, that can't be found in extract form, as well as for the individual contributions of specialty malts, like Chocolate Malt, or Cookie Malt. 1 to 2 kilos of grain are added to a grain bag & steeped in a pot of water at around 65°C for up to an hour.
You can improve hop character in a number of ways - pop your favourite hops in a French press with hot water, & add the resulting "tea" to your fermenter, or dry hop by adding hop pellets directly into the wort after primary fermentation has completed, usually in a hop bag. This makes it easy to get to know what impact varieties of hops can have on your preferred styles. Traditional hops will add a floral, spicy or herbal note, while New World (American, Australian & NZ) hops bring a range of fruity flavours & aromas, from citrus to passionfruit or grape-like characters.
Another fundamental improvement is to choose a specific yeast strain. Extract kits are supplied with a generic yeast, often tried & tested, & certainly adequate for many applications. Specific strains provide more creative control, with fermentation flavours that will bring out the best in any style of beer. Dried yeasts are easy to use, but offer a relatively limited range, while liquid yeasts are available in a huge number of varieties with unique profiles & properties. Whether you are making a crisp lager, a hoppy pale ale or a complex Belgian saison, there is a yeast strain that will best serve your purposes.
Anything that comes into contact with cool wort must be thoroughly cleaned and sanitised. Wort is rich in sugars, & provides moulds and bacteria an ideal home to proliferate. Brewing yeast is highly competitive, but the slightest contamination can have disastrous impact on a beer's flavour, aroma & longevity. Organic soils can be washed off with basic detergents - you may prefer a low-suds fragrance free cleaner - but these need to be rinsed. A second, sanitising step is then required. No-rinse sanitisers can contain hydrogen peroxide or acid/surfactant blends but are safe to use when made up in to the correct solution as directed. Fermenters, spoons & paddles, hop bags, bottles & caps, & gravity fillers - all these need to be sanitised before use.
It's also important to avoid dissolved oxygen in your finished beer. Oxidised beer will be darker, & exhibit cardboard flavours, with muted hops & malt character. While aeration is crucial just before yeast is added, to promote yeast growth & healthy fermentation, steps to avoid unnecessary exposure to air need to be taken during & after the fermentation process. For extract brewers, the hotly debated topic of hot-side aeration (that is, during the mash & boiling of the wort) is not much of an issue. However, there are many opportunities for oxygen to make its way into your finished beer.
Splashing while transferring to a bottling bucket or into bottles or kegs, frequently opening the fermenter to check progress or sample the brewing beer, poor seals, a dry airlock - all these are to be avoided. In an ideal set-up, all transfers would be closed, with bottles & kegs purged with CO2, but simple measures will reduce oxygen ingress. Use silicon tubing to fill vessels from the bottom up, rather than splash from a height, sample from a spigot rather than the top of the vessel, & cap on the foam when you bottle (trapping CO2 escaping from the beer, rather than air, in the headspace).
Better Than Basic Draught
1.7 kg Coopers Draught or Morgan's Australian Draught
1 kg HMI Ale Mix (600g Dextrose, 300g Light Malt Extract & 100g Maltodextrin)
100 g Viking Crystal 50 - crushed
12g Morgan's Finishing Hop Pellets - Amarillo, Galaxy or Saaz (for example)
SAFAle S-04 (yeast often used for English style ales)
Large Saucepan
Grain Bag or Large Sieve/Strainer
Warm the tin in some hot water in the sink or bowl, to make its contents more runny & easy to pour. Use filtered tap water, boiled & cooled to minimise any chlorine or chloramine. With around 10 litres of water in the fermenter, mix in the tin of extract & the Ale Mix & stir thoroughly.
Steep the 100g of crushed Crystal malt in hot but not boiling water (around 75°C, if you can manage) - you can use the empty tin that's now handy, or use a small pot or saucepan with a small grain bag. Strain the results into your fermenter and top up with cool water to around 20 litres. A smaller volume (say, 19 litres) will give you a stronger, tastier beer, or you can dilute to 23 litres for a lower alcohol "session" strength.
Pitch in your yeast, aiming for a temperature around 18°C. You can add your finishing hops at the same time, or wait until the bubbling foam or krausen of fermentation begins to settle. This yeast (S-04) will tolerate fermentation temperatures from 15 to 22°C, but again, aim at 18°C. In around 2 weeks you will be able to bottle (adding two carbonation drops to a 640-750 ml bottle), & after a couple more weeks you will be drinking your beer.
Intro To All Grain Brewing Workshop - Book Now!
If you are looking to step up your brewing from basic kit & kilo, you can join us for a fun & interactive workshop providing an introduction to the world of all grain brewing. Learn how to make great homemade all grain beer from scratch & impress your family and friends! A brew will be made on the night while we discuss the process, ingredients, equipment and recipe development.
Special Offer: Customers will get to take home a free HMI All Grain Kit on the night - valued at $20!
Reservoir store:
Wednesday 12th September 2018, 6pm-8pm
Bookings accepted until Monday 10th September 2018
Book online, call 9460 2777 or email reservoir@homemakeit.com.au
Clayton store:
Wednesday 5th September 2018, 6pm-8pm
Bookings accepted until Monday 3rd September 2018
Book online, or call 9574 8222 or email clayton@homemakeit.com.au
Specials
Click on our sale banner below for this week's Specials:
Vouchers
Gift Vouchers and Course Vouchers make an ideal present for any maker in your life, & are a great last minute gift for Father's Day! Available In-store or ONLINE.
