Episode 26 – Guile Brews with Peter Symons

Peter Symons is an avid writer and researcher of historic beer styles. He has already written two books on his journey to deep dive into the history of Australian beers. His newest book Guil Brews dives into the history of Cornish beers of his youth and the history of these beers and how to make them.

Here is a link to his books: http://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?contributorId=1403462

Here is a link to his website, there is a chapter form Guile Brews you can check out. https://prstemp.wixsite.com/tritun-books

Last here is the 1930’s Golden Strong Ale recipe we talked about in the episode:

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Show Transcript (A.I. Driven There will be Errors)

Colter Wilson: The history of beer is something that’s always really fascinated me. You may have noticed in the last few episodes peppered within, we’ve had an author or two, talking about the history of beer. Well, today we have another author. His name’s Peter Simons, and he’s written a few books, Guile Brews, Six O’Clock Brews and Bronze Brews.

And we’re going to dive into the history of Australian beer today on Homebrewing DIY

And welcome back to homebrewing DIY, the podcast that takes on the do it yourself aspect of homebrewing gadgets, contraptions and parts. This podcast covers it all. Today on the show, we’re talking to Peter Simons, author of his newest book, Guile Brews. He’s also written a book called six o’clock brews and bronze brews.

We’re also going to dive a bit deeper into his book called Guile Brews   and revisit the Cornish beers of his youth. It’s going to be an exciting show, so stick around. But first, I’d like to thank our patrons. It’s because of your support that this show can come to you week after week. Head over to patrion.com forward slash homebrewing, DIY, and give at any amount.

We are currently still doing the offer where if you give it $1, you get access to our ad-free RSS feed as well as early released episodes. We’ll also send you a home brewing DIY sticker head over there. It’s a $5 value, so it’s totally worth it. Also, if you do give it the $5 level today, we’re going to send you a free gift from our sponsor scrubber. Ducky’s . I’ve sent out a few and uh, I’ve got some feedback from Ian who is also a. $5 contributor on our patrons. And he actually sent me a note this week saying that he received his scrubber ducky, and that he was. Really excited to use it and surprised by the quality. I have to admit that when I used it, I felt the same way.

So head over to patreon.com forward slash homebrewing DIY today. Another way to support the show is always by giving us a review. If you head over to Apple podcasts or pod chaser.com you could give us a review and your reviews going to help other homebrewers find the show. The last way that you can support the show is to head over to our website, homebrewing, DIY, dot beer, and use some of our sponsor leaks.

There you’ll find a sponsor leak for brew father and adventures in homebrewing. You click on the link, the prices stay the same, but it lets them know that we sent you and they support the show in turn. So please head on over to homebrewing diy.beer and support us today. Well, this week, I finally started drinking my Irish red ale that I made with, uh, my boss back a few weeks ago.

Uh, it’s all 

kegged 

up and ready to go. It tastes great. Actually. Uh, surprisingly after all of the problems I had with this 20 gallon batch, I felt like it was just one thing after another that just kept going wrong with it. Uh, but in the end, despite myself, uh, somehow I still made a pretty good beer. So drinking it today and, uh, tastes great.

Also this weekend, I’m pretty excited to try out a new England IPA recipe, a tweak to my last one, uh, added a little bit more oats and decided to do a hundred percent Pilsner as the base malt, and then we’re going to do galaxy and Amarillo for the hopping. So very heavy. Dry hop on the ends on the backside, and we’re also going to do very, very few bittering hops.

But, uh, yeah, we’ll, we’ll see how it all goes. I’m pretty excited to see how this beer is gonna turn out. So now let’s just dive into today’s show. We’re going to talk to Peter Simons a little bit more about some beer history as we dive into the history of Australian beers and as well as his newest book, Guile Brews.

I’d like to welcome Peter Simons. He’s a. Well known author in the brewing world. He’s brewed such books as bronze brew, six o’clock brews, and his newest book gile brews. And I’d like to welcome to home brewing DIY. 

Peter Symons: Hi, how are you going? 

Colter Wilson: Well, well, welcome to the show and I think the first place we’ll, we’ll start with our conversation today would be, let’s, let’s talk a bit about your first book and bronze bruise and, and really how you started writing about beer and how you put out that book.

Peter Symons: Okay. Um, well I’ve been, I’ve been brewing for over, uh, over 20 years. And, um, we had a, uh, a conference in Melbourne modeled on the, uh, NIC. Uh, which is now Homebrew colon. And the first one of those, um, uh, conferences was held in Melbourne in 2008. And the, a couple of the stars that, uh, were brought down from America were John Palmer and g-mail designer, chef.

And, uh, we got to hang out with them a bit, who drank a few bays and as you do, and, um. GMO was doing the brewing with style show on the brewing network and he asked me at very short notice if I could talk about Australian sparkling aisle. Well, I like to make sure I’ve got my facts organized. So I went to the, um, the state library in Sydney.

And started looking for appropriate books so that I could get some, some context to, um, uh, to the style. And then I did the podcast and it’s sort of set off something in me to go and look for. Other historical beers. I’ve always been a fan of Ron Pattinson’s shut up about Barkley Perkins blog. Uh, and he had a lot of let’s brew Wednesday historic, mainly U K, but a few other beer recipes.

So I, I started looking about for where I could find. More information about historic Australian beer. Now, there’s lots of brewing histories. Uh, this is across the whole world, but they usually, the founding of the brewery, uh, when they’ve been bought by another brewery, uh. Perhaps being taken over by a larger predator than the closure of the founding brewery, and then a loss of the beers that were being produced.

And what went on in the 19th and 20th centuries is repeated in the craft Barre craft beer industry. And in this sanctuary, uh, most of these histories were, were all about. PayPal, Dennis Steaz, little bit of contemporary events. I might talk a little bit about the brewery. It’s architecture. Might be a bit about the plant use for brewing, but usually nothing about the actual bear.

Uh, I might put a few label descriptions in, but they weren’t really helping me, uh, get to the goal of recreating some historic beers. So with bronze Bruce and the subsequent books, I’ve taken a a brewing centric approach. I’ve, I’ve used the historical context pretty much as, as a contemporary brewing brewery description adverts with illustrations.

Uh, this is a really big, um. Newspaper archive in Australia called trove, which is a free, uh, uh, free a website. I highly recommend it if you are interested in, in searching through old newspapers, uh, and because you can search on it and you can get a lot of background information. So with all that information.

From the web. I still did not have any actual historic recipes. So initially I went to the powerhouse museum in, in Sydney. Uh, I contacted one of the curators and he said, yes, we’ve got some books. So I went along and I took my camera with me. This is back in probably 2010 and photographed away. I had no idea what I was looking at.

I just photographed everything that was available, and then. When I went home, I started to analyze what it was that I had. Uh, what I had ended up with was a tooth and company 1844, triple X and Porter recipe. Uh, and that was really one of the very earliest, um, beers that I’ve ever, ever found a, a primary record because these, these records are.

The original notes, just like you would keep notes today with, um, brew father with what you’ve, what you’ve, um, brewed for the day. Uh, and other brewing records. This is what people noted that when they’re actually brewing the beer, then not necessarily recipes, their production records, so that it does require a level of, uh, interpretation, shall we say.

Colter Wilson: Yeah. If somebody’s got a. Bruno, like for my, like I would use for my own personal brewing, especially my kind of handwritten jotted down notes. It might be things like mash temperature. It’s not going to be as detailed maybe with the ingredients I used. Uh, or was it, what, what, what kind of, what kind of things were in those notes that, uh, helped you kind of get to a recipe.

Peter Symons: Well, it, if you’re lucky, you get a, you get the materials used, uh, for, uh, uh, uh, 19th century Australian beer. You’re talking the easy bit is, uh, up 30% of, uh, sugar, which is probably a raw sugar Demerara top sugar. Uh, and then you’ve got some mult. And the molt, uh, uh, would have come from either from the U K in tanks, uh, an early form of, um, containerization, if you like.

What state was in when it had traveled, you know, halfway around the world, uh, for brewing is, is a open question. It did take quite a while before they, um, uh. They had developed enough of an agricultural industry to grow barley, but lights are on in the, in the, in the 19th century. They, they were definitely using domestic barley.

So you, you’ve got a molt and you’ve got sugar. Sorry. 70% molt. Now, that molt was probably fairly fairly ropey. Uh, probably wasn’t very well modified. So you’ve got, you’ve typically got those, those things. You would have hops listed as his, so many pounds of hops. Um, very rare. Do you get the actual addition times?

Uh, you might have the boil boil time, uh, and if you’re lucky. You get a gravity. Gravity’s in theory, we’re talking about are in pounds per barrel and pounds per barrel is, can be converted into specific gravity. Uh, the barrel we’re talking about isn’t a us barrel. It’s an Imperial barrel of 36 gallons. So with that information, you get the original gravity.

Sometimes I will list the. A final gravity, which may not actually be the final gravity. It might be that it was the racking gravity, uh, and may not take into account priming and, and, and things like that. But within those sort of. Those constraints and conversion of archaic, uh, measurements like quarters in the U K, uh, uh, quarters, typically 336 pounds of Bay smolt other malts were different whites, but that’s, unless you’ve got something in the log that actually overrides that, that’s not a bad.

By default in Australia, a quarter was 320 pounds. So it does affect the percentages of the Grissom and the, the percentages, uh, what I used by S, the, the recipe, uh, you mentioned mashing, mashing. Usually some meshing temperatures were in there, and if you’ve got a big enough spread, say over five or six bruise over a number of months, you can definitely work out a pattern and, and, and get to an approximation of what the, what they were actually shooting for in the way of a recipe.

Oh, 

Colter Wilson: cool. So, so you’re, it’s almost, the way I would kind of put it in modern terms is you’re kind of looking at the meta data and if you get enough of it, you can kind of put together what they were actually doing based on having enough of that kind of almost almost, not the full picture, but get enough partial pictures.

You can put together a full picture. I guess that 

Peter Symons: would be the way. Yeah. Yeah. Um, uh, there’s a level of interpretation required. Uh, and when I started out, I was working on a baseline of having nothing to compare anything else to, uh, over the last eight, nine, 10 years, uh, I’ve now seen literally thousands of brewing records.

And you, you can pick up patents. So I mean, metadata pattern, uh, patterning, that type of thing. You get a feel for what it was. Yeah. Yeah. That’s 

Colter Wilson: so, so your first one was in search for the Australian sparkling PLL. 

Peter Symons: What does, 

Colter Wilson: could you describe that beer and maybe IX explain to somebody here in the States that’s maybe never had one.

What that beer is 

Peter Symons: like. Yeah. Well, actually the, whilst the first book was inspired by, uh, uh, talking about Australian sparkling, uh, Australian sparkling is, is really, uh, a single product now from Cooper’s brewery in, in Adelaide. And in my, so it was a notable exception from the first book, the second book, six o’clock bruise.

Uh, I was again, at a Homebrew, uh, conference in, uh, in Adelaide, and dr Tim Cooper was the. Uh, one of the guest speakers. So I had a copy of bronze bruise in my, in my hot little hand. And I went up after he, um, he said he’s pace. I go in the queue of all the people that were there, and I asked him very nicely if I could look at his archives and some months later he actually.

Uh, uh, we managed to arrange it and he gave me an office and brought out the original burrowing books out of the company. Saif from 1862. Uh, and I was permitted to, uh, photograph and copy and do whatever I needed to do. So I ended up with about a hundred years of how, uh, Cooper’s aisle, Cooper’s sparkling, uh, had developed.

And that formed the backbone, if you like, of the second book. That answered your question about sparkling aisle. Really, it wasn’t that romantic when sparkling aisle was introduced. Mostly it was just bottled what I have a draft beer they had at the beginning of the 20th century, so it wasn’t particularly special, what it, what it did, and this is one of the, one of the problems about.

Simplification and generalization. Every beer is a product of its time and its particular circumstances. And that BM may well have stayed the same for 10 2030 years. And then there was some event like world war one or two or depression or taxation, and the beer changed. Uh, to a lesser extent, the, uh, the materials used in creating the beer, the, the hop type stayed consistent for long periods of time.

So to generalize about Cooper’s sparkling aisle, which you can get to today is not the same as, uh, from PSI. The 1970s, the 1950s, the 1930s or turn of the 20th century. So it’s very difficult to, to say what it is. And at the, uh, homebrewing conference two years ago, uh, I talked about Australian sparkling and, uh, one of the brewers standing.

Melvin had actually brewed three different versions of the bear, and we put it to the informal vote of the people that were there, which ones they liked, and they were all similar. The, so you, you have a, uh, a highly effervescent. Uh, quite an earthy, uh, tongue to the hopping. It’s reasonably alcoholic for, uh, for drinking beer.

So 5.9, I know, I know in the, in the States that that would be considered a session aisle. But it’s not, it’s, it is, it is not really sessionable. It does go down really well on a, on a hot day. So it’s got a malt backbone in there. Uh, historically it used. 25, 30% sugar, uh, to die. It’s a normal, uh, and today, the signature that’s used in it is prior to Ringwood, uh, which gives that earthy, earthy flavor to it.

So it’s highly carbonated, very refreshing. And for people that might be members of the aha. Uh, I did a talk in Minneapolis a few years ago about Australian sparkling and delved into it and a lot more, not more detail, and you should be able to get that, uh, in the homeroom colon archive, if you remember.

Colter Wilson: Yeah. The, the Homebrew con archive. You go over to the HCA website and you’re a member, you can have access to all of the. The, the presentations that are given at hombre Homebrew con, they video them and they put them on the archive and you can watch them. And it’s, it’s really cool. And, uh, the fact that you were in Minneapolis a few years ago, if we want to dive a bit deeper into that style, we could definitely look that up.

And also, when you talk about six o’clock brews and bronze brews are, are there recipes in those books or do you mainly just dive into the history. 

Peter Symons: Uh, now the, there’s, um, uh, the whole thing about them was to, to compensate for the, uh, the, the works of history about a brewery and the B is we actually get to grips with what the beers could have tasted like, and, and try and get them to, uh, uh, as accurate a representation, uh, as I could.

And a lot of my, um. All of my mates in the extra special, uh, brewers club, which is local here in Sydney. Uh, I put the hard word on them and they brewed a lot of the recipes. So I think there’s 50 odd recipes in, in bronze bruise this, uh, another umpteen recipes. And because a lot of them are similar, I’m not saying that every.

Every beer, uh, in the book was brewed. But we, I think we brewed enough of the beers for me to feel comfortable that if you, if you take the recipe, you should get something that’s a drinker will be here. Uh, there were a few, um. Uh, mistakes in translation. I, uh, I miscalculated some salt additions on one particular beer and I wasn’t really intending to make it goes, but, uh, that’s what I ended up anyway.

That’s why you do some probably, is just to make sure that, that you got about right. 

Colter Wilson: And so is homebrewing right there. We use the trial and error til you get it right. 

Peter Symons: Yeah. And, um. But again, I’ve, I’ve wanted to make sure that, that what, um, uh, what I was putting in the book would, would lead to a decent beer.

And, uh, feedback I’ve had over the years is a lot of people have brewed the beers. Uh, I’m not sure that many of them have actually brewed it to the recipe that’s in the book. I said, no, the story perhaps. Uh, but, um. A lot of people seem to have been happy to try and recreate some, uh, some beers unless good.

Colter Wilson: Awesome. And let’s dive a bit into your newer book. A guy called Bruce. Uh, you’ve abandoned Australia for this one, and, and dove into a, some European ales. So why don’t we dive into, uh, what, what’s covered in that book. 

Peter Symons: Well, it’s, it’s, it’s all interrelated really, because so much of the Australian brewing industry was influenced by, uh, the UK.

And I’ll use the, I’ll use the UK as being all the bits except Ireland, um, which is a separate country at the time. Again, you’ve got a timestamp these things at the beginning of the 20th century, it was all one place. So Britain, it was Britain and Ireland. Arland was ruled by, um, uh, by England, London in particular.

Uh, and that old developed for the early part of the 20th century leading to a separate Island. So. Where I say you K the brewing traditions in Australia were mainly, not exclusively, but mainly from people that came from, from England in the, in the 19th century. Which meant you’ve got, um, infusion mashing.

You’ve got various techniques, but it also meant that as, as a stripey was a colony of England. Uh, the vast majority of the people here. Had actually come from England or Ireland and were drinking beers that they liked. And there was an import market. So a B is like bass, red triangle. Pale ale was imported, uh, as was Guinness and McEwens and a whole lot of other famous, um, breweries from the UK generally.

So. What I wanted to understand was how were the locals competing against the imports? Because the imports were very different beers in my mind, and that set me off. Looking through archives in the UK to be able to compare and contrast between, uh, they response, if you like, of equal to best imported, uh, from Australian brewers.

Well. What were they actually competing against? And I tried to find sufficient, uh, comparison beers for both, um, bronze brews and six o’clock breeze. And then I ended up with literally gigabytes of photographs of ’em. Uh, other information from, from England and Comal. And I wondered what I should do with it.

And I thought, well, I still have in mind to do a third Australian book if I can find more original sources. But in the meantime, I thought I would capture for posterity what I’d found. So I’d, I’d gone through, uh, Courtney Spears. Well, I grew up in Cornwall, and Cornwall is not part of England or the UK.

It’s a separate country. A lot of people don’t understand that, but at least your listeners will understand that. Uh, and the beers. I, uh, I drank as a lad, uh, and I was very keen to try and find those beers and I succeeded to a, a reasonably good extent to get there. I. I went to various breweries, and then, uh, probably 2017, I had the opportunity for work to, to go to, um, uh, the UK and I organize my trip such that, uh, I would be in, in London and I took a day trip up to, um, uh, Stratford upon Avon.

And there is the, uh, Shakespeare archive, which contains lots of stuff about Shakespeare, but it also contains the flowers, brewery records, uh, over a hundred years of records. Again, a hundred years of records enables you to see the shifts and, and, uh, development of, of different beers, usually with the same names, but actually a different beer.

I then was, um, was quite happily, uh, wandering around on Facebook. And I saw one of my mates, uh, Richard Adamson of a young Henry’s brewery and Sydney was doing a collaboration brew at bank’s brewery in Wolverhampton. So I sent him a message, as you do, and I said, could you ask the brewer whether I could have a look at these archives?

And after a bit of backwards and forwards, um, uh, in my trip to the UK in 2017, I went to Wolverhampton, took the tour, which I highly recommend, and, um, and spent two days photographing the archives. We are listeners that don’t know banks is, um, uh, in the West Midlands black country. Very much the home of mile dial.

So I was very keen to discover why could what I could about mild aisle and then also on that trip, because there’s nothing like coordinating your work with your research activities. I went to cork. Well, I actually went to Dublin first, caught a bus, went to cork that evening, drank some start by Guinness Bay, mish and Murphy’s, and then I spent the full day in the court university archives, uh, photographing the Murphy’s brewing records.

Uh, and the archivists there were, were very helpful. And everywhere I’ve been, when I’ve explained what I, what I’m trying to achieve, uh, the archivists had been really, really good. And. That gave me Irish States, it would have been nice to do Guinness. On the other hand, a regional brewery like Murphy’s, uh, it was accessible to me.

It suited the timing. And, um, they really have produced some interesting beers. Uh, uh, if, if you think that Irish stout as currently defined in the BJ CP guidelines. Is is wonderful. Well perhaps you ought to try, uh, 1889 extra stout from Murphy’s. I just see how different that beer is cause it is really different.

And uh, may or may not be to your tastes, but I think you should give it a crack. Well, 

Colter Wilson: let, let’s dive into that a bit deeper. If you were to be, if you were talking about a beer. That is different from the 1889 version to the 2020 version. 

Peter Symons: What 

Colter Wilson: kind of high level differences would you S would you see like the quality of the grain, the different types of hops they used?

W. w. w what would you say are the fundamental differences in those beers? 

Peter Symons: Well, the, the Murphy’s bear, uh, that had the run maltings on site. Uh, they were, most of their Bali was local to the area, so they were molting their own, uh, they weren’t using any sugar. Uh, they, they were using black molt. So black, Peyton milk, not Rose smoke from, from all the information I’ve, uh, I’ve worked through, uh, they were using a lot of black mold, uh,  from other references in the, in the records that I found.

Uh, they seem to be buying pressed yeast from Guinness. So press gees, just a waste product for Guinness. So I th I think something like a w O P w O for reputedly, uh, the Irish IO East, uh, is a good basis. Um, but no adjuncts, so a, no, like barley, no rice, barley, just very simple pile mold, black mold. Uh, and the proverbial lot of hops.

Now they were using, uh, Hope’s from California in some of the, um, and some of their brews. Uh, I can’t quite remember off hand. Uh, what went into the 1899 version, but there was a much higher hopping right. Than a modern day. Let’s call it a Guinness dry stop. It’s the 1889 is a dry style, but it’s a dry and bitter stock, and they, uh, the use of black pipe molt gives it that slightly hot, dusty.

Tight finish along with the bitterness. It, it does make for a nice pint. Um, but it is not at all like the, uh, the 4% ABV. I’ll just, I’ll just look it up and take it. So at least we’re getting the right information. The, um, uh, I think it was about

yes. Mother over for yourself for a minute. I’m looking up. 

Colter Wilson: No problem. 

Peter Symons: You’re all right.

So that’ll be him from Murphy’s. The other thing in Murphy’s, I’m managed to find in 1912 their complete product range. Here we go. Ah, so it’s a a 7.6 to 8% IBV. So it’s a 10 78 original gravity finishing gravity 10 20 

Colter Wilson: wow. That’s not even in the same range of what a Murphy stout is today. Like right now it’s.

Probably what 4% alcohol, and, and to kind of say, Hey, this is what a dry stout was, is today in comparison to an a seven or 8% beer from a hundred years ago is not even close. 

Peter Symons: That’s right. And it, it’s, um. Uh, in my taste testing, this is draft beer. Uh, the differences between draft Guinness Murphy’s and Beamish.

It was very, very subtle. I felt that the modern day Murphy’s had a little. Bit of crystal sweetness in it, but they were really, really close to each other and there they’d allow alcohol beers. Really? So, uh, an extra state from Murphy’s in 1889. Uh, clusters foggles and Halla tower. So it, it is, uh, I’ve brewed this one a couple of times, eats their version of extra style.

There is probably just at the bottom end of a foreign export stack, uh, or the top end of a double side. Oh. Uh, in modern. Style God on. So yeah. 

Colter Wilson: And I, and I’m actually surprised to see, to see cluster listed there. You know, that’s such always kind of driven as such a truly American hop. So like for example, if you make a, a traditional style American cream ale, you traditionally, you should have cluster in it, right?

And so, uh, I was really surprised to see a classic historic. British or, or really Irish stout with cluster Hopson and it just, it kind of talks about like, you know, shipping was a thing then and people were brewing at scale and, uh, and they were using what they had. 

Peter Symons: Um, it was a commodity market, uh, that, uh, in Australia that I bought, I bought things on price.

Um, probably not too much on quality and in some instances, but, uh, hops from all over the world. Both thing Britain, Ireland, Australia, uh, Halla chai was an interesting choice. So they were buying, uh, they were buying alpha and effect. They weren’t, they wouldn’t have called it. I wouldn’t have called it that then.

Uh, but I’ve seen a lot. Of cluster used, uh, in Australia, uh, hop grows, uh, use golden cluster, uh, in the early part of the 20th century, probably for 50 odd years at least. And they, when, when prohibition kicked in in the States, uh, the rule, these hops that had no market, so they were really cheap. And you can.

The protectionist barriers that the local hop growers, both in the UK and in Australia, they wanted tariff barriers. Yeah. Another thing that, um, seems to crop up from time to time in history, uh. They wanted terrorists to protect their industry, uh, from these cheap imports. And really the, what were the West coast growers at that time in the States?

Uh, they were dumping product because what else could they do with it? Nobody was using it in, in the States, uh, in that prohibition period. 

Colter Wilson: Yeah, and it’s funny how economics still has a lot too, even today has a lot to do with the beard that ends up in your glass, right? Uh, for example. We, we, we still struggle to get specific hops from Australia.

I’ll, I’ll use a galaxy for example. Just the cost of galaxy here in the States is really high. It’s a very sought after hop and obviously it’s, I think even a patented hop or it’s not really a hop that you can, you know, grow here in the States. And so it’s funny how the economics of beer still have a lot to do with what ends up in your glass.

And it. It was that case a hundred years ago. It was that case 200 years ago, and it’s that case even today. 

Peter Symons: Well, the possibly even more so in the past where successive governments had promised regulations. So the cost of the cost of a beer was regulated. So you, you had to be economic in your use of materials in, in brewing.

And that includes the use of hops and making sure that you. You still had to produce something. It was a, a drinkable product, but you, you also had to bear in mind the economics, as you say. Yeah. 

Colter Wilson: Well, let’s, let’s talk a bit about, uh, your current, uh, projects that you’re working on. What, what’s in the future for you?

Are you, you said you were still working on another book about history, Australian brewing history. Is that still in the works? 

Peter Symons: Yes. Yes. I, I, um, because my wife won’t listen to this, uh, I’m actually writing our family history, which has got nothing to do with brewing. Of course. But every now and again, I’ll need a break.

So I do a little bit of adding to what I’ve got. So I’ve, I’ve bumped into a bit of a roadblock. I’ve, I don’t have much from Queensland, and I don’t have much from Victoria in terms of primary records. I’ve, I’ve been to Carlton United breweries, uh, I’ve looked in their archive and. Unfortunately, the sort of information that I would look for or I need to do, recreations is simply not there.

What I have picked up in my travels, I have some, uh, uh, some historic beers from new South Wales in the country areas. Uh, and I have some interesting bits of history that are sort of developing, but I, I do need some more. Some more primary sources, some more production records, preferably from Queensland, uh, or on, I know there’s an archive in South Australia, which, uh, you have to have the permission of the plant manager to access that.

And I asked a couple of years ago, and I was politely told, no, might have to ask again at some stage. So, yeah, I do need a bit more, um. A bit more content, but I do have the structure of, um, of a third book on Australia. Yeah. 

Colter Wilson: Awesome. And what are you, let’s talk a bit about just your current homebrewing.

What are, what kind of beers are you into personally brewing right now. 

Peter Symons: Well, funnily enough, uh, because I’ve brewed so many recreations over the years, I’m enjoying brewing something. Well, several beers that aren’t recreation’s. Uh, I grow my own hops. And, uh, we just harvested the hops here over three kilos of Chinook hops and some, uh, I want to say it’s all some cluster hops.

So a few different hops. And I’ve still got quite a lot of hops from previous years. So I’ve been, I’ve been brewing, um, pile owls using my homegrown hops. Uh, so I like, uh, I like a pile. I mean, we’re still at the backend of summer here. Uh, so you a nice coffee. I’m at 4%. A good hot character, not IPH hot character, not fruit salad.

Uh, not murky things is, you know, we’ve nice, nice, clear, crisp beers. Uh, I’ve got, I’ve recently bought a, uh, from Zilla, which enables you to, um, ferment under pressure. And that’s great for, for transferring. And I, and I, I feel as though it’s giving a better flavor profile, not only from being able to do dry hopping without oxygen getting into it, but also the, uh, just the ease of transferring into the keg.

Uh, and you can almost serve it direct from the, uh, from the fermenter as a, uh, as a real ale, uh, not artificially carbonated. And that’s been really nice. Um, but yeah, the, um, uh, this time of the year, it’s, it’s real really pile swimming on, considering doing a, a milk stout next. Uh, so I like, my stats aren’t my, my piles.

Colter Wilson: That’s awesome. And I know that we had a bit of a conversation before we started recording the show. And you, you told me that you’ve had some pretty cool projects, at least on the technology side. Uh, you’ve built a brew pileus what, why don’t we talk a bit about like, what, what you did to build a brew pileus uh, and, uh, and, and you said you’ve built two of them right?

Peter Symons: Yeah. Um, it’s not, I probably need to say what my background is first, so that you get an appreciate. I’m not a computer person. Um, in terms of programming. So the whole programming thing was a bit of a challenge. Uh, my history is more in application engineering, so I can understand, uh, an electrical engineering and, and that sort of stuff.

Uh, but that was a long time ago. So I did my research. I found this thing called get hub. Now a lot of your listeners will go, Oh, I know. I had no idea what get up was. So I’ll go there and there’s all this stuff. That the practical considerations of somebody that does not, I know about flashing aprons, I understand the principles of doing that.

Actually trying to get it to work with windows or Linux or whatever. Ah. The hardware construction was easy. That’s solid up the Bates, uh, stick them on a breadboard, uh, buy a bits from China in the first place. Uh, all that. Not really a drama in that bit, but the, actually configuring the software now OD brew in the garage.

Which is a, uh, Zincalume clad Faraday cage. So trying to get wifi signals out of the garage was a problem. So my son, who is a, uh, into it support and such, like. Uh, suggested that I needed to extend the blue cable to the garage, and then I put a, um, a repeat access point in, and that got over my problems to a degree.

Uh, and then I was finding. It was hanging. Uh, everything was secondhand so that the modem was really old and, uh, it uses an access point. So I, I did a collage BOJ. I simply put a timer on that dropped the modem out every hour. So I dropped the power off the modem so it recycled every hour. So that, uh, if it hung, he would only hang for a while.

And I was, and that worked fine. Uh, and then this year, uh, there’s something in Australia called the NBN. This is a government owned monopoly that provides your internet and phone a service. And their modems and, uh, IP addresses and all the rest of it would not work with the setup that we had had a fairly complicated home network that worked just fine.

So the second one I built, I use the M now D, M, D, M,U , whatever it’s called, a 16 pro with the external, um, wifi. Uh, Ariel, I touch wood. It’s working in the garage and I can actually see that, uh, very easily. Now when I’m on the, uh, home network and of course with a brew father, which is great, uh, I can get all that going.

Reporting straight in to my batch and see that where wherever I am on longterm user pro mash, which a lot of people would go, what’s that? Well, in 2003 it was absolutely the bee’s knees of ’em. I’ve brewing software. Uh, all my, uh, recreation recipes were derived using that. And then I bit the bullet last year and moved to brew father imported.

All my. Uh, recipes in using XML and then cross check them all using brew father. And, uh, Thomas is a great guy, is, uh, actively, uh, developing the product. And, uh, I found it really, really good. I know it’s on your site as a supporter, but, uh, uh, I just find the whole, the whole experience, uh, so much, uh. So much the better because of his involvement with me.

Colter Wilson: Yeah. He’s a really great programmer. He has supports amazing and, and not because he’s a supporter of my web, uh, of my, my show, I’ve actually, I used brew father well before I got into podcasting and it was one of those things that when I pulled up the web app the first time on my laptop, I was like. Hmm.

Somebody actually gets how brewing software should work. It should be this easy. And, uh, you know, the, the water calculations, you just hit the button and they work. It’s amazing. And then tweak them a little. Like, I don’t, I don’t know, just, I, I can’t tell you how big of a fan of brew father I am. I love it.

It’s my favorite software. And, uh, if you go over to my website and hit the banner. Uh, there’s my plug, uh, brew father knows we sent you at night support the show, so please do that. 

Peter Symons: Well, uh, yeah. And, and in, in the, um, if you go in the library and you type in 1930, you will find a recipe that I’ve shared.

For a, a 1930, uh, gold mail from, uh, from the UK, which again, didn’t fit in the book, but, uh, um, it’s there for anybody to have a look at if they want to get an idea of the golden miles on a new thing, either 

Colter Wilson: now they’re not. But, you know, still a 1930 versions can be very different than a two way a 20, 20 version.

Right. 

Peter Symons: It’s, it’s quite close. If you apply the style. When I banged it into the Interbrew father, I was surprised how close it was to the style guide for the 20, uh, 2015 style guidance for, uh, for a golden mile son. Anyway. Cool. 

Colter Wilson: Yeah. So, uh, we’ll, we’ll definitely make sure that we have, uh, all of your information on the show notes.

So please, if you’re listening to the show and you want to dive a bit more into, uh, Peter’s books, just look in here. I’ll have links right to his web store. And also I’ll have links to his website. He has a portion of his book in there that you could read so you can kind of get an idea of how his books laid out.

And, uh. I, I just want to say, Peter, thank you so much for coming on the show. It was a really great conversation and I feel like I learned a ton and, and I feel like our, our listeners will, uh, so thank you very much for coming on to Hubbard. DIY. 

Peter Symons: No worries. Thanks very much for having me.

Colter Wilson: I’d really like to thank Peter for coming on today’s show. It was a fascinating conversation and I personally learned a lot. I’m also going to link to his website in the show notes as well as his Facebook page, and I’ll list the recipe we talked about earlier in the show right here in the show notes.

So just keep an eye out for that. Well, that’s it for this week, and we’ll see you next week on homebrewing. DIY.