Innovative Products & Technology (Australia)

Yes JMJ has emerged from minutes of contemplation in his secret mountain top lab.......

and with a measured dose of man nagging by my good self has decided to wack some vanilla extract into the kegs. Now remember we're talking extract not essence. Big difference in flavour so be careful if you ever add it to your own brews as it can quickly overpower your beer.

Now let's back up a bit. You may remember when we started our long journey on the road to making the fabled Mocha Porter we became a little concerned about how the vanilla should be added, if at all. So we started by procuring vanilla beans, gutting one and placing it into one of the fermenters to see what impact it would have on the taste. The result was basically a very faint odour but no perceivable taste impact. So after kegging and tasting again we were left with the decision to leave what was already a fantastic coffee flavoured beer as it was or to chance the vanilla. Well being a wild and daring bunch at Boomers we decided it was time to go for broke and stick to the original plan to produce a Vanilla Mocha Porter. So having basically failed with the bean we decided to see what others had done about adding vanilla extract via the Net. The best advice we read was to accurately dose a glass and then just scale it up. Simple! So back to the secret mountain top lab went JMJ......

returning soon after to the Boomers Bar with pipette in hand (at least I think it was his pipette!). Drop, drop, drop, taste test, all good!!

The coffee, porter and vanilla flavours just blend so well. A fantastic winter beer for the coffee lovers.

I am starting to worry about the JMJ though. His obsession with his mad science experiments is beginning to impact on me.......

JMJ keeps telling me that the Boomers Health Plan provided electro shock therapy is a benefit but I'm not really sure.........urgh.......what were we talking about again?............Oh kegging. Check out the high tech kegging operation.......

Yeah nothing but state of the art at Boomers kiddies! Oh speaking of state of the art and more importantly MORE POWER!! Here's our new transfer pump for our recycle cooling water .....

Combined with the SABCO Chill Wizard we're humming along getting to yeast pitching temperature within minutes of finishing the brew which helps ensure we limit the potential for contamination. Boomers Brewery is becoming one slick unit!!

Speaking of units I have always been a great lover of Matilda Bay's original Dogbolter brew. Boomers Original Dogbolter

You see I have a small bit of history with Matilda Bay. I was there at its birth. It was the first new brewery to open in Australia since WWII. The year was 1984, Bondy had won the America's Cup the year before and Matilda Bay Brewing's had selected the Sail & Anchor Hotel in Fremantle to start their brewing enterprise. Although I didn't know at the time my family history with their selected location went way back. So let's go back a while to WWII when my grandmother was a cook at the Freemason's Hotel in Fremantle which was later to be known as the Sail & Anchor.

Nan & my father (nicknamed Pongo after a 1940's newspaper cartoon character) actually lived upstairs in the hotel, which was leased by the US Navy during the war years. In fact I remember dad telling me how he used to wait for a sailor to come out of the main bar drunk and he'd offer to sell them his bike to get back to the ship as it was a long way to go particularly when all steps aren't forward!. Dad would then follow the wobbling bicycle down to the wharf, retrieve it and sell it to the next drunken sailor. A clever little enterprise. On ya Pongo!

So back to the story. Many years later, still unaware of this family history with the pub, I used to force myself to have the odd beer in the Sail & Anchor front bar while watching the likes of John Butler busk for a dollar outside the Freo Markets, which was located across the mall. I always sat at the same small table against the wall reading the weekend paper and forcing myself to drink the odd beer. In that wall, that my table rested against, was a window which had looked into a very uninteresting store room. Then one weekend some big stainless steel tanks appeared. WTF? So while ordering my first beer of the day I asked the regular barmaid what was going on. She said "we're going to start brewing our own beer". Bonus I thought. And that was the beginning of the Matilda Bay Brewery and the boutique beer craze that was soon to engulf WA and then the rest of Aus. So here I am many years later with my own micro brewery attempting to replicate that first Dogbolter, which I had had enjoyed so many times while supporting the growth of the industry.

Unfortunately with the rapid evolution of boutique beers Dogbolter got left behind and at one point went out of production. However you can't keep a good Dogbolter down! So Matilda Bay's starting brewing it again as part of its Reserve Range. Boomers Dogbolter

Well done gents for bringing it back. Unfortunately to me though it's like most sequels, it's a shadow of its former self. And that's not a guess. I had three full original stubbies and now I have two. That's right I chilled one down because I had to know if I was dreaming or if it was actually better. Naturally after all that time it was flat but hell what magnificent flavours. So for me this isn't just an exercise to clone a known brand of beer it's a trip back in time. Now let's see if I can get it right. From memory Matilda Bay's first runs of their Dark Lager (soon to known as Dogbolter Special Dark Lager) had an ABV of somewhere around 8% and its big brother Iron Brew was over 10%. Both got cranked back with Dogbolter landing at a respectable 5.2%.

So with all that waffle out of the way. I set out on my Dogbolter journey by seeking a recipe on the Net, plan a brew day, secure the ingredients and now what name? Can't use Dogbolter as I certainly haven't achieved that exulted title yet and sadly the original is no more. Obvious! Boomers Dog Bolted! After putting the grain bill together it was time to use our newly modified MORE POWER grain mill seen here some days before brew day......

JMJ is manning the ignition key of the 12v DC reduction motor which has made the whole milling exercise such a brilliantly easy task. So having milled the grain and the water up to temperature off I went. Everything proceeded to plan until a series blockages started to occur. What a nightmare! Bad enough with two of us there but shit I'm alone! What the hell? Quick SMS to the JMJ............. The response was brief and accurate "Rice Hulls?" What a deadshit! I hate it when he's right. Ok ignoring my lack of ability I soldiered on. The result was........

this...... Boomers Dog Bolted 2

and I have to say even at this stage I am having some flashbacks with flavour an wonderful aroma's. Will it taste the same? ......big ask but stay tuned. JMJ rocked up to give advice while I was filling the fermenters as you can see here.....

I think he was saying something about only idiots forget rice hulls! I forget coz I nodded off while he was espousing the virtues of my brewing ability. Bloody Kiwi's!

So what's happened to Fluffy the booze hound you ask? Well she's out of the safe house and has returned to work this week licking up all beer losses from the brewery floor as you can see below....

Well I guess more accurately this is Fluffy resting after licking up all beer losses from the brewery floor . Don't ya love dedication? If we could only train Sputnik to do something useful like licking the floor but he'd only complain that he doesn't have a tongue. I'm afraid he doesn't doesn't have Fluffy's can do attitude. Oh and yes I did check JMJ for Rohypnol so Fluffy is just resting!

So that only leaves the bit you all hang out for the most............the educational bit!!! So what to do? Well my Dog Bolted recipe is based on a Schwarzbier so here's some background on that style of beer......

Schwarzbier, or "black beer", is a German dark lager beer. It has an opaque, black colour and a full, chocolatey or coffee flavour. Although they share some similar flavours they are milder tasting and less bitter than British stouts or porters, owing to the use of lager rather than ale yeast and no roasted barley.

Schwarzbiers are bottom-fermented beers, though originally top-fermenting yeast was used in brewing them. The alcohol content usually ranges from 4.8%–5%. They get their dark color from the use of particularly dark malts in brewing. The malt in turn gets its color during the roasting procedure. Dark beers are some of the original types of beers brewed, with lighter colors only becoming possible with lighter, short-roasted malts approximately one hundred and fifty years ago.

The roots of the Schwarzbier lie in Thuringia and Saxony; the oldest known Schwarzbier is Braunschweiger Mumme ("Brunswick Mum") brewed since the Middle Ages (the first documented mention is from 1390) in Braunschweig. The earliest documented mention in Thuringia is of Köstritzer from 1543, a popular Schwarzbier still produced today. The East of Present-day Germany has many unique varieties of this style from regional breweries. It is often served with dark, chunky breads with cream cheese. It also pairs well with marinated meats like brisket and is an excellent companion to German Sauerbraten.

Perhaps the oldest style of beer in Eastern Europe, “Schwarzbier”gave the city of Kulmbach, Germany, its royal name as “silent capital of beer.” During a 1935 dig located seven miles west of this Bavarian city of Kulmbach, archaeologists unearthed an amphora-shaped beer vase from an ancient Celtic burial pit, an artifact dated from the 8th century B.C. Within the confines of the ancient vase, was a substance determined to be blackened bread, a material associated with the earliest brewing techniques of the Celtic and Germanic tribes of Europe. These techniques employed half-baked bread immersed in liquid, and subjected to the unpredictable action of wild, airborne yeast. The blackened nature of this bread is powerful evidence that these ancient tribes brewed ale that was deeply opaque, the first schwarzbier?

So that's it for now. What's next? Well kegging and tasting the Boomers Dog Bolted masterpiece of course. But what does the JMJ have up his sleeve? I did hear him muttering something incoherent as he toddled off into the distance.

So will Neil the brew minion produce a first class original Dogbolter clone or will it taste like liquefied barkers eggs? Does JMJ have a plan to brew something new or just plot to conquer the world from his secret mountain top lab, will Fluffy ever stand up again and return to duty, will Sputnik ever learn to lick without a tongue? For answers to these questions and more stay tuned!!!