By G. C. O’Beirne, of Brisbane, Queensland
Special Correspondence of The American Brewers’ Review – 1902
In Queensland we work on top-fermentation lines, and very top they are, too. I suppose there are very few breweries outside of Queensland working on similar lines and without ice machinery. Ours is a semi-tropical climate and a large portion of our product is consumed in the tropics.
The character of the beer is something after the moderate to light gravity English mild ales, being lightly hopped and somewhat sweet. We brew from English and locally grown and malted grain and the best crystalised cane sugar, and our grists are made up, roughly-speaking, of 50% malt and 50% sugar.
We mash on the English infusion system for an initial heat of 149o – 150o F, stand 1½ hours, drain off, boil 2 hours, add sugar and 2 pounds per hl. (54 gallons) of hops. We start fermentation at 76o F in winter or 86o F in summer, and add 3 pounds of yeast per hl. Fermentations under these conditions are very rapid, and the temperature rises to 90o F and over. The wort attenuates from an original gravity of 20 pounds (s.g. 1055) to 7 pounds (s.g. 1019) in from 16 to 18 hours’ time, when it is run down into cleansers (small pieces of about 52 gallons each). Here the yeast works out of the bung holes, and in the course of another 24 hours the beer becomes quiet. In five days from mashing, the beer is fined, racked brilliant, and immediately sent out. The final attenuation is very low, from 5 to 1 pound, yet the beers drink very fairly full and are always very bright.
This beer keeps well for a month or two in package, but is liable to become sour if allowed to remain on draught for more than a few days during the hot weather.
A large trade is done here in bottled goods. The beer when racked as above is put into the bottling room and after settling for 12 hours is run off and pumped into a carbonating cylinder, from which it is bottled at 33-35 pounds of pressure, after which it is pasteurised at 145o F.
This gives a well flavored bottled beer, but on which is somewhat wanting in brilliancy the beer having a peculiar grey haze when poured out. Several systems have been tried here. Filtering by itself is not of much use, while filtering and pasteurizing is little or no improvement on our present system. I have an idea that carbonating, chilling and filtering in the above rotation with or without pasteurizing might prove successful and I am looking for information on each of the above objects.
Crescent City Brew Talk 