Little Creatures Rogers’ Style

Little Creatures Rogers Copy

This is a really simple home brew and is basically a copy of the Little Creatures Roger’s beer. Which is a slightly darker beer, an American Amber Ale if you haven’t ever had one. It is a mid strength and really good tasting beer. This is one of my favourite’s and have made this one many times and highly recommend it.

Of course this is home brewing so make sure you have sanitised everything. I have not mentioned this in the steps below as this is a given – every little thing that comes in contact with the brew needs to be sanitised.

Ingredients

• 1 kit Morgan’s Royal Oak Amber beer kit
• 500g Light Dry Malt – you can use any brand, I use the malt that my local home brew shop puts together
• 1 x Premium American Ale Yeast (I use Morgan’s but you can use any)
• 1 x Morgan’s 12g Cascade Finishing Hops
• 1 x Morgan’s 12g Nelson Sauvin Finishing Hops

Method

Fairly simple to make, boil some water (I use filtered water usually) and add it to your fermenter. Make sure you soak your Royal Oak Amber kit in some hot water for about 10 minutes prior, in order to make this next step a bit easier. Add the beer extract (Royal Oak Amber) and the malt to the fermenter and stir until ingredients have dissolved.

Once you have stirred for a few minutes and everything has dissolved, add approximately 20 litres of water. Make sure that you watch the temperature while adding this water as you want the temperature to be somewhere between 22-25 degrees celsius. If it is to cold add some warm water and vice versa. Add water until you get to the 23 litre mark on your fermenter.

Stir the brew one more time to ensure it is well mixed in. Now take your first hydrometer reading (OG). I usually get a reading of around 1042 but it will depend on the malt that you use.

Once you have taken your OG, add the yeast ensuring the temperature is around 22-25 degrees. Stir quickly and then seal your fermenter with your air lock.

Wait 4 days and dry hop the brew. Basically on the 4th day add the Cascade and Nelson Sauvin finishing hops to the fermenter – don’t soak in warm water as per the instruction on the back of the hops. Take in the aromas of the hops and you will understand where the Roger’s beer gets its flavour from (that’s if you’ve had one before).

On day 5 take a hydrometer reading and you should get one somewhere around 1012. It is always safe to wait another day and take another reading. If you get the same reading on consecutive days then your brew has finished fermenting and is ready to bottle, or keg if you have a sweet setup.

You should get approximately 28 x 750ml bottles – around 21 litres. Then leave your bottled brew for at least 2 weeks before drinking. The longer you leave it the better it will get.

I like to batch label all my brews so that I know easily what I am drinking. I use the round coloured labels from Office Works. I use orange for ginger beer and yellow for beer and then I write the month and year (e.g. 1019) on the label and make a note in my brew notes of the label, the brew name and the alcohol content. That way when you store different brews over time you can easily remember which one is which.

Hydrometer Readings

• OG (Original) – 1042
• FG (Final) – 1012
• Alcohol Content (ABV) = 1042 – 1012 = 30 / 7.36 = 4.08 + 0.5 = 4.60%
• Added 0.5% because I bottled and added sugar (carbonation drops) to each bottle.

The thoughts of Peter.

For more home brew recipes see our other posts here.

This is the home brew shop where we source all our ingredients from, Better Brew on the Sunshine Coast. They are very helpful.