I bought a homebrew kit on Thursday and waited till this evening to brew my first batch of stout. So black it’s called Miners Stout. I hope I can drink it! I’d forgotten just how much sterilisation is required, and haven’t even got to the bottle-cleaning stage yet. The kit came with a fantastic book which lists dozens of Australian and famous world beers and tells you how to make something pretty bloody close to them. They even have Duvel and Chimay in there, alongside Oz classics like Coopers Sparkling Ale. Being a fan of Boag’s Honey Porter (a little too seasonal to make it into the book), I’d read on the bottles that they use the sometimes scarce Tasmanian leatherwood honey to make it. Despite me growing one of these exact trees in my backyard in a pot, none of the book recipies seemed to advocate doing that, they seem to think you add Lactose instead to add a sweet finish to an extremely bitter beer. I don’t think I’ll be getting that from Safeway, so it’s back to the customer-unfriendly shop in Heidelberg for more supplies I suspect. Now to design a Vandenberg label for the 650ml bottles. Hmm.. 
Hard at work late on a Saturday night