During our hot summer, many brewers experience problems with fruity flavours in their beers. It is especially noticeable with good beers where the brewer is using better water i.e. carbon filtered town water. In other words, with bad beers made with sugar, unfiltered town water or poor sanitation procedures it may be difficult to detect fruitiness from poor temperature control in amongst the other faults. Many brewers have employed the box with ice procedure during the summer with good results.

Once the temperature is under control, the quality of the brewed beer improves out of sight. Temperature control also allows the brewer to employ liquid yeast instead of the dry yeast option. Once brewers experience liquid yeast, they are often amazed at the step up in quality and the difference the yeast can make. It is fair to say that most winning beers use liquid, although in some styles, dry yeast does have some advantages.

Getting started with liquid, is easy and importantly well worth the effort. The brewer will require a couple of clean 750 - 1000 ml. screw top jars. These will need to be sterilized in some way.

The brewer could use a bleach solution in the bottle or some of the iodine and phosphoric acid sanitizer now available. Boil 2 litres of water with 250 g liquid or dry malt for 15 minutes and pour the very hot liquid into the jars to a level of about 75% full. Use fairly heavy jars, pre-warmed and be careful. Screw the lids on and then drop one of the jars off to our shop at 32 Thuringowa Drive before the 17th February. The jar should have your name on it but Doug can do that for you if you wish.

We will introduce a German ale culture into your jar and it will be able to be collected on Saturday the 21st February. There is no cost for this service. At this time the culture will be working.

Any brewers wanting help with a recipe should ask for help when dropping off the jar. The yeast could be used on your standard brew but a recipe would be an easy way to show off the difference liquid yeast can make. We are grateful for the sponsorship of this program by Wyeast and look forward to helping brewers improve. Don't be afraid, it's well worth it!

Cheers… Younga