Hop Garden...

Expose von Houblons!

Chinook looking healthy!

The hop garden nedded a little weeding, some fertilizer and some more string in places but it seems to be pretty good! Pretty good growth from the Chinook plant, with heaps of flowers ripening slowly we hope! It is exciting to know that they can pretty much look after themselves once the infrastructure is in - Thanks again Skip! We will reap the rewards come harvest brew time!

Giles

VF# 18

VF# 17

VF# 16

VF# 15

VF# 14

VF# 13

VF# 12

VF# 11

I you like big pale ales with the hop content to kill a small horse - then you would've loved this brew!! As you could understand it did not last long! Being 6% alc cont. it needed all those hops to balance out the big malt! We nailed it on this one - so be cautious it can scare people from hops for ever. You do need to ease them into big ones like this.....
Giles

VF# 10

The 'Rivalry Bitter' will be a signature brew of the VF. But for the initial flight of the Rivalry it fell flat on its face. Suffering through lack of attention to Malt and Hops and Yeast, simplicity in our ingredients did not mean clean and bold flavour. The end result was very drinkable thanks to a solid base malt content - but the brew suffered from a lack of bitterness and the big sugar content meant that the cloying nature of all that two row barley keep this juggernaut from ever taking flight. We will try again and it will impress, but for the time being it is a return to the drawing board.

Giles

VF# 9

I cannot remember this brew. It does not leave any lasting scars on my mind..... So does this mean it was well brewed using VF#7 as a guide we knocked out a session hightail copy? Probably - I would love to think at this point in our brewing career we could do such a thing. I have a fuzzy memory of sharing in a keg of this at a mates buck show and thinking it was pretty good! So it is confirmed that VF# 9 was a success. Interesting point - look at the amount of malt used = 30.5kg and only getting 1.056 from 116L of fresh wort. This is pretty inefficient - so hopefully you will see the figures improve with future brewing.

Giles

VF# 8

The experience of VF#8 should not have been forgotten, but sadly I think it was.... Fresh Hops from the hop garden in the South East of South Australia and a great big mess!! Blocked hoses - blocked pump - a heap of grain and a big learning curve!
Current hop production at that time restricted us to barely one brew, having tested the hops quality by self administering tea - and nearly defecating myself! Note to self: do not swallow the hop tea!! So we put all our eggs in this basket - hoping for a bitter ale, see the title IPA on the picture above it ended up more of an English ale with beautiful malt character, and the fresh hops aided in the clean finish. This was all luck - having no idea of the actual bittering quality of our fresh hops except for the digestive quality it eventuated in a very good ale. Wonderfully balanced and with lovely toffee quality - obviously gained from the Munich and Amber malts. Oh well lets not stuff up the next hop harvest ale!?! Read VF#11 for the debacle.

Giles

VF # 7

VF # 7 was a bit of a coup for us as we had been tackling some big equipment issues and overcame them with a little innovation. VF#7 is Mountain Goat Hightail Ale copy, the reason we used the Hightail as a benchmark is because it has all the qualities of a superb session beer. And of course we all know very well what it tastes like - through research!
Not much to the recipe but what is important is the addition of Marris Otter, the classic English Malt - also note the London yeast 1028 (Wyeast). These two factors meant we were now pointing the rocket in the right direction!! And this beer did not last long in the bottle - I vaguely remember a cards night in a small shed which got very lively on the strength of VF#7.
Great hop character and really nice malt throughout the profile. We attempt this again with limited success, maybe when we are even more experience we will return to this one and give it a polish.

Giles

VF # 6

As dark ales go this was a good attempt that aged really well as I recall. We struggled with the stepping mash temperatures, which in hindsight was pretty unnecessary. The hops were fairly standard and the yeast was just Safale 04 packet, so really nothing to impart any whopping flavour except the black and choc. The roasted malts did make it a great ale but the mix was a little unclear, with 4kg of Cara Munich combined with the choc malt the sweetness almost seemed overbearing, luckily there was sufficient acid to clean it up. The black malt did not have a huge chance to show up. I think we should revisit this recipe at some stage, but look at making more of a chocolate porter or stout in the vein of a Youngs or Fullers?
Giles

VF # 5

Nice tidy little dark ale, we were tossing up the required amounts of dark malts to have in our dark ale. After the success of creating a very drinkable dark ale in VF#4 we wanted to step it up a bit, but keep our variables in check. We reversed the amounts of dark malts to see the effect on the flavour, in retrospect we just needed a little bit more. VF#5 was a bit more successful as you can see from the gravity readings, once again the results lacked some body but we could see some big steps being taken in the right direction. I think P has some left over, I don't?

G

VF # 4

Our first dark ale had high expectations, well in truth we knew nothing about brewing in general and thought we could nail this one. We made it OK but as you can see from the notes that we did not get great efficiency from the amount of malt that we used, and I can only assume that we did not pitch enough (Safale 04) yeast. The result was a fairly passable dark ale, it alcked a bit of depth or middle or both but we drank most of it before the end of July. I think the Skipper kept some s0 maybe I should ask him?

G

Beer awards....

This years results for the VF are in and have been limited to the dark ales or Aus2 division, with 3rd and 4th being taken out by our dark ales 16 and 15 respectively. These beers were developed by none other than The Creeper, and brewed in the last few months. I am extremely proud of these beers as they are full of flavour, roasty toasty and clean finishing.

G

Welcome

The VF Brewers started brewing a few years ago and slowly developed a skill of drinking most of what they produced far top quickly meaning brewing always was a a priority. And still is today.



The Brewery was a labour of love and can pump out up to 110L of wort at a time! Sound like a lot? Not when you have thirst like a dead dog!
i love cascade hops!!!!!!