How to Brew..all grain in Canberra

No this inot the John Palmer book but I reccomend it.

This is a shortcut method (you will need a personal walkthrough and what better way than by joining Canberra Brewers)

Yes you can buy an all in one device for mashing and boiling and these vary in price from $500 up but do you want to make that investment?

A good option is to buy a Digiboil https://mashematics.net/wp/shop/#!/DigiBoil/p/722599662 and a grain bag https://mashematics.net/wp/shop/#!/Large-Grain-or-BIAB-bag-suitable-as-giant-boiler-hop-filter/p/824767088 .

You will probably use about 5kg of grain, predominately malted barley and this should be freshly milled, ideally just before you brew or at most the day before, the reasons are complex but a good analogy is do you like your coffee ground just before making or pre ground and kept in an non vacuum packed plastic bag.

Heat about 20 litres of water to 70C in the Digiboil, toss your freshly milled/cracked grain into yyour grain bag and immerse in the water, you should strap or otherwise the bag so it sits above the bottom, just is enough. Set the temp to your requied mash temp, 66C is a good compromise and from time to time, say every 10 to 15 minutes pour a few litres of the mash liquid out and pour back throught the top.

After 60 minutes all of you should have conversion, that is a sugary liquid, the grain have absorbed 5 litres so yo will have about 15 litres, ther are still sugars in the grain so you will need to sparge, that is wash them out so lift the bag up and run hot water  75C slowly through to rinse until you have about 24 litres in the boiler. Discard the grain.

Boil for 60 minutes adding hops as per recipe cool as rapidly as possible, an immersion chiller if fine some people use a hot cube method, I personally do not agree but thats up to you..

Check your specific gravity with a Hydrometer https://mashematics.net/wp/shop/#!/Hydrometer/p/824973519 and write it down

Add your cooled sugary hopped liquid (wort) to a fermentor https://mashematics.net/wp/shop/#!/Traditional-Pail-Fermentor/p/824767838 with your selected yeast and ferment for an ale around 18 to 20C ideally controlled. It should be finished in a week, again use your trusty Hydrometer.

This method is not the most efficient in terms of starting gravity so expect your gravity and therfore your ABV to be maybe 10% down or just use less volume.

Package, thats a whole different story.

Drink

Repackaging Hops

With this first lot of 2025 harvest US hops showing use by dates of December 2030 in factory packaging it is worth buying in bulk  and repackaging.
Primarily you want to be looking at least a few years storage and the only way to do this is to ensure you package correctly, fortunately this is not a difficult task.
The primary destroyers of hops are, in order, oxygen, heat and light.
Oxygen is fairly easy to deal with, you can buy a vacuum packing machine anywhere between $60 to well over $1000, you will not be packing huge amounts so lower end is almost certainly OK.
Next, the bag, these need to be impermeable to Oxygen, sandwich bags or lolly bags are not. If you are using a household machine you need micro channel bags, this can be had quite cheaply on ebay. Now simply let the machine do its work !
You do need a tight pack so all the air that was in the bag in withdrawn and there are no gaps. An impermeable bag is not much use if the hops are loose with the air that came in with them.
Now you are happy that oxygen will not oxidise those all imortant oils and terpenes you need to keep them cold.
Manufacturers state that the ideal temperature is 0 to 5C.
There is nothing wrong with freezing, in fact most home brewers find it more convenient.
As to light, yes you will probably be using clear, though micro textured black is available, some people put there hops in larger light proof bags but given that you will not open your freezer often this is insurance but not critical, as is say keepng oxygen away.

You will find 2025 harvest hops here in the shop
Good luck and happy, hoppy brewing.