What a hobby this is! I joined Worthog Brewers in February 2001, and never looked back. After looking through the Worthogs' web site, and attending an all-mash demonstration by Jeremy Wallis, I immediately went about building my all-grain brewery.
Basically, I designed it around an 80-liter conical fermenter. It was easy to get regular-shaped vessels of the required volume. This made some nice beers, so I started improving other aspects of my brewery by building:
- A motorised malt mill
- A "rotary kiln" grain roaster
- A counter-pressure bottle filler
- A polyethylene roto-moulded hot end
- Washing machine pumps for
wort transfer
Browse, and enjoy!
My signature beer is an American Pale Ale. I find that approximately equal additions of 40-minute, 30-minute, 15-minute, 0-minute and dry hops (Centennial and Cascade) give a beautiful balanced character to my ales. You want to avoid hop astringency from overboiling, and loading the aroma at the expense of flavour can tire the palate.
I also enjoy making a Berliner Weisse for summer drinking, a Dry Irish Stout (any time!). Perhaps the joy of homebrewing is brewing many different styles - I looked up all the brews I've done on Promash, and found that I've already brewed 42 different styles.
My brewery is located in Centurion, South Africa. (This is between Pretoria and Johannesburg, see map.) I am a Chemical Engineer by profession, and I can be contacted by e-mail at mike at heydenrych dot info.
The Heydenrych family name is dicussed in detail at www.heydenrych.co.za. Another site on the heydenrych.info domain is my sister at carolyn.heydenrych.info; have a look at her awesome pots.