Home brewing kits ....

The_blue said:
Yeah thanks! :)

I've got the kit in a 2nd FV at the moment with a 2 part finings kit. I can't get my beer to a nice low temp to help force the yeast down. :(

I'll give it another day then try it (for research purposes of course!)

Gor a wherry kit go go straight in after. Looking forward to having 2 cornies on the go :)


Being a cornie user do you add extra sugar to the FV to make up fot the .5% you don't get from adding sugar in the barrel for priming?
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It doesn't matter so much when you do all grain brewing, my yeast always finishes at 1.010 so I adjust my original ingredient quantities to match any given abv in aiming for. I force carbonate my cornies with a pub gas cylinder, it is a lot quicker.

Just wait until you have half a dozen cornies all full - you seem to find a lot of new mates, lol

G.
 
I'm the king of the VW shows with my cornie. Random folks were buying pints off me at the disco saturday night ;)


Not planning on moving past cans! The g/f would kill me if i bought something else lol.

I've just made up the wherry kit to 21 litres, not 23.


That gives me 1045 OG and this kit last time stopped at 1015 so i recon i'm in for nearly 4%.

I should have a bag of spray malt handy lol.
 
For Wherry I had to use a Campden tablet to remove the chlorine from the tap water or it tastes like TCP. I'd also ensure that you have a good 12 weeks ageing in the keg - regardless of the 'ready i 14 days' claim. The result is a far creamier and smoother pint.
 
I wouldnt brew without treating the water with campden first. Makes an unbelievable difference. When i first started with kits i brewed a few that went straight down the sink because of the tcp taste lol. Nearly put me off home brewing.
 
NickK said:
For Wherry I had to use a Campden tablet to remove the chlorine from the tap water or it tastes like TCP. I'd also ensure that you have a good 12 weeks ageing in the keg - regardless of the 'ready i 14 days' claim. The result is a far creamier and smoother pint.
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Really do agree with this, with pretty much all of the can kits. And is the water down south really that bad? I've never treated the water up here in Abderdeen and never come across this TCP taste.
 
Just made up 5L of Raspberry cider and 5L of blackcurrant cider using the old recipe I used just tweaked slightly to add more fruit. it's the same recipe for both ciders so just choose the fruit...

Raspberry/Blackcurrant Turbo Cider

Ingredients
4L of Apple Juice
250g Raspberries/Blackcurrants
~50g Sugar (to get to ~6-7% alcohol)
~1tsp Cider Yeast
~1tsp pectic enzyme
1 yeast nutrient tablet

Method
  1. Add the juice and sugar to the fermenter
  2. Crush/Blitz the Raspberries/Blackcurrants and add to the fermenter
  3. Add the yeast nutrient tablet and Pectic enzyme to the fermenter and shake well
  4. Add the yeast, wait a few minutes and mix it
  5. Leave in a warm place until fermentation completes
  6. Syphon into sterilized bottles, through muslin or filter paper.
  7. I may stop the fermentation an sweeten it here, not sure yet though.
  8. Leave some where warm until it's settled/cleared for a few weeks
 
Tonyator said:
For anyone thinking about making Cider from shop bought apple juice...

Tesco are doing BUY 1 GET 2 FREE on Princes apple juice (until 2/8/2011), so it's £1.42 for 3 litres it works out cheaper than Tesco Value juice.

I bought 15 of them today and some blackcurrants to start another couple of Ciders.
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Cool, cheers for the heads up. Will try and drop into one asap :D
 
I went blackberry picking last night. Came home with a hoard of about 2.5 kg of fruit for winemaking. 2 kg went into a bucket last night with some boiling water and a campden tablet. Will seive it into a demijohn and add yeast and sugar probably tomorrow night. In the meantime; BLACKBERRIES!!! :D

Edit: Blackberry wine

Method so far:

01/07/11

2 kg blackberries into a bucket
Pour over 1.7l boiling water and a mug of stewed black tea made with 2 teabags
Mash up to a pulp
Add 1 campden tablet, 1 teaspoon of pectolase, 1 teaspoon of yeast nutrient
Cover and wait 24 hours

IMG_7308.JPG


IMG_7314.JPG


02/07/11

Strain through a seive
Strain through a muslin into demijohn

03/07/11

Add 1kg white sugar and 1 teaspoon of Young's wine yeast to demijohn. Fit airlock. After 12 hours it's frothing up and brewing:

IMG_7307.JPG


Next step: waiting :D
 
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Didn't realise there were some other home brewers on this site.

Here is my setup.

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Dont use the King Kegs anymore, no where near as good as the Cornies.

A Barley Wine on the go.
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Strawberry Cider
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Two of my Corny's got six now.
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Currently got 2 Wherrys conditioning (i leave them a min of 3 months), a Geordie Mild. Drinking a homemade Cherry Cider, and got a Kriek fermenting.
 
Got the blackberry wine brewing last night. Added 1kg white sugar and 1 teaspoon of Young's wine yeast to the demijohn. Fitted the airlock. After 12 hours it's frothing up and brewing:

IMG_7307.JPG


Now waiting :D

I'm keeping the original post updated with the full method, to save scrolling through all the pages as I add individual updates: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=19723648&postcount=415
 
Added 250ml of juiced apples from work to the BB wine. This is very significant because it includes the one and only apple I could find on Isaac Newton's apple tree. Damn groundsmen must have pruned all the apples off at some point because all the trees were bare :(

Will be topping it up to the top with shop apple juice when it has calmed down in a day or two.

Also put on a second blackberry wine. Ingredients for this one are as follows:

1.7kg blackberries treated as per before
1.7l boiled water
Mug of stewed tea made with 2 teabags
1kg sugar
1 teaspoon each of pectolase and yeast nutrient
1 teaspoon of Young's wine yeast

Will be topping this one up with red grape juice instead of apple.
 
Okay, so... I've taken the plunge and ordered a kit. The Woodforde's Premium starter kit (Wherry), to be exact, along with a separate Pilsner kit and a 1kg of Light Spray Malt.

From looking around online, one minute it all looks very simple, and the next I'm highly confused about ratios. Can anyone tell me if I have the right idea with these steps (PLEASE at this point leave out any suggestions of random things that might make it better... I just want a textbook "first try" before I begin experimenting!):

1. Clean equipment.
2. Sterilise equipment with sterilisation tablets, then rinse. Can anyone recommend a specific type of tablet that I could maybe pick up at Tesco, Asda or Morrisons? Just the type used for babies' bottles etc?
3. Pour can contents into barrel. Rinse the remainder into barrel with boiling water as well.
4. Add sugar (I've noticed normall 1kg is required for kits that need extra. I think I'll be going 50/50 sugar/spray malt since I have 2 kits to get through with it). Stir until dissolved.
5. Top up with cold water to the desired number of pints for the kit.
6. Pitch the yeast, spreading as evenly as possible on the top of the barrel contents. Do I stir it in here also?
7. Seal the lid.
8. Attach the airlock, and half fill with water. Bubbling in here will indicate when fermentation is taking place.
9. Leave for 7 days, or until bubbling no longer occurs.
10. Prime bottle or keg with 1 level teaspoon per pint of beer.
11. Syphon beer across.
12. Seal bottles/keg.
13. Leave it to condition for at least 6 weeks (I'm thinking three months or so -- is that too long?).
14. DRINK.


So, are those basics correct, or is there anything I'm doing completely wrong there?
 
The wherry is a 2 can kit and needs no extra sugar :)

The rest looks fine!

I stir my yeast. Yeast needs oxygen so splash about. Finished beer hates O2 so disturb it the least you can ;)



i'll give you 20 mins till you drink the 1st pint :D
 
The_blue said:
The wherry is a 2 can kit and needs no extra sugar :)

The rest looks fine!

I stir my yeast. Yeast needs oxygen so splash about. Finished beer hates O2 so disturb it the least you can ;)

i'll give you 20 mins till you drink the 1st pint :D
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Cheers! :)

The first kit (which I'll likely have on the go by this weekend) is, theoretically, for Christmas but I think it's more likely that I'll condition it until October before bottling it all up and getting the second batch on the go for the festive season! Means I can get stuck into it earlier in the guise of "preparing" for the holidays so the wife can't complain. :D

Is it OK to condition it in a keg for, say, 8 weeks then decant into bottles for the fridge? Is that the ideal method anyway?
 
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