Being born into a military family, this hoo-haa about the public wearing of uniforms by the Services is close to my heart.

I am proud of my dad, my sister and my brother-in-law.  They have served their country at home and abroad, in places such as Basra and Pristina.  And they should be able to walk down the street — any street — with their heads high, saying “I served you”.   

Because if they can’t, what they have done and still do, and what our parents and their parents did all over the world in the last hundred years, is meaningless. We, the people they protect and serve, are duty-bound to honour and respect them. 

So I say, wear your uniforms with pride, and if any bastard has it in for you, you have a sidearm for a reason.  And I’ll gladly be your witness.

make your own rpg website without going through all the coding

Fantastic. 

 I only use it for my flickr account, and I’m glad, because with all those ‘inline popups’ it’s as close to unusable as you can get. Utter crap. 

You can get them to write beer recipes and post them to a weblog (passim), but they’ll never pick up dead roaches and slugs from the laundry floor.

Ingredients

• 1 can Coopers Lager™
• 1 can Morgans Caramalt™
• 1 kg dextrose
• Cascade Bohemian Yeast™

Day 1: SG 1045

Day 10: SG 1012

Day 17: SG 101

Bottled into 30 x 750 ml PET bottles with 7 g priming sugar per bottle.

Notes

Six weeks after bottling and being tasted by a colleague who proclaimed “I don’t like homebrew” it rated a “bloody fantastic”.

Definitely more of a cooler climate brew – the caramalt added a wonderful rich finish to it. Another one to be brewed again methinks.

Ingredients

• 1 can Cascade Spicy Ghost™
• 500 g dextrose
• 500 g powdered malt extract
• 250 g powdered corn syrup
• 2 fresh red thai chillies

We used Windsor Ale yeast

Day 1: SG 1040

Day 7: SG 1010

Bottled into 30 x 750 ml PET bottles using Coopers Carbonation Drops™ to prime.

Notes

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, quite a lot of burpitude with this brew. Will definitely be doing this one again.

There is a honey research group at USyd and who regularly have vast quantities of honey going spare. We thought that mead was a good idea…

Ingredients

• 5 kg honey (a mixture of leptospermum, banksia and eucalyptus)
• Zest and juice of 1 lemon and 1 lime
• 1 tsp each of: coriander seed and cloves
• 1 piece of liquorice bark approx. 4 cm in length
• 3 pieces of cassia bark approx. 4 cm each in length
• 1 black cardamom pod, split
• 1 nutmeg freshly ground
• 25 g Fuggles finishing hops
• Made it up to 23 litres

We used Lanvin EC118 champagne yeast and kept the fermentor at a reasonably constant 22 °C.

Day 1: SG >1050 but we didn’t have a hygrometer capable of measuring any further at the time.

Day 49: SG 1020

Day 67: SG 0995

Day 84: Racked it off into a clean barrel and added 1 tsp finings

Day 102: SG 0993 bottled into 30 x 750 ml PET bottles – no priming involved this time.

Notes

Two months after bottling it was clear and slightly fizzy. Very dry.

The honey has given it a very strong flavour (yum) and I prefer to dilute it a bit with lemonade.

Ingredients

• 1 can Coopers Cerveza™
• 1 kg Coopers Light Dry Malt™

Day 1: SG 1040

Day 10: SG 1016 and added 1/2 tsp yeast

Day 15: SG 1015 added finings

Day 16: Bottled 30 x 750 ml PET bottles, 7 g priming sugar per bottle

Notes

Day 32: Nice flavour but not very fizzy

Two months later it was crystal clear and tasted wonderful. V. fizzy. Perhaps the cooler climate (Southern Hemisphere Autumn) meant we should bottle condition for longer.

Ingredients

• 1 can Brigalow Ginger Beer™
• 1 kg Dextrose
• 1 x Coopers Beer Enhancer No.2™
• 1/2 cup of grated fresh ginger

Day 1: SG 1035

Day 10: SG 1005, 1g gelatin added (finings)

Day 13: Bottled 30 x 750 ml PET bottles with 7 g priming sugar per bottle

Notes

Sediment settled nicely and brew remained slightly cloudy. Nice flavour but needed more ginger. We have since discovered cans contain precious little ginger. I think we will make it up from scratch next time…

We will be making our homebrew recipes available for all ((hic)).  Kate will be writing them up and they will be in a separate category for your Bacchanalian pleasure.

Ingredients

• 1 can Brigalow Ale ™
• 500 g powdered malt extract

Day 1: SG 1040

Day 8: SG 1010, finings added

Day 13: Bottled 30 x 750 ml PET – used 7 g priming sugar per bottle.

Notes

Crystal clear! The ‘homebrew’ tang took approx. three weeks to clear.

We saved a couple of bottles and had them a year later – still wonderful!