Home brewing kits ....

What yeast are you using? That has the potential to ferment out at a stupidly high percentage... Never made root beer but in the brewery we never hit that high on our 14%s...
What are you expecting your final gravity to be? 3 kilos of sugar seems excessive.
 
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Ahleckz said:
What sugars do you people use for kits? I'm planning on making the step to dextrose as I'm seriously lacking body in my latest brew and suspect it's a sugar issue. Getting some spraymalt tomorrow to try and fix it though but the next batch I'd like to use a different sugar. I normally just use super market caster or granulated sugar...
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Spray malt will give you way more body than sugar. sugar thins beer down dry. though the spray malt will take longer to condition. Yeasts can make a difference as well. Nottingham will give you a dry beer but let hops shine through. i use s04 for stouts. i would ditch the yeast that comes with kits and get something else. the first kit i made was a coopers ipa. used a kilo of spray malt in place of sugar and it was a lovely pint. just more expensive.
 
which ones? i usually pitch about 25 and ferment around 18-20 in my kitchen. i put the bin out the back to regulate the temp. i tried the wlp029 kolsch yeast. made a 1 litre starter and stupidly put tinfoil over the lid with an elastic band. cue cracked jar, half the starter wort leaked out. pitched a half litre and the beer tastes weird. not an infection but i was aiming for 1010 and it went down to 1005. my mate loves it but i dont.
 
Right, put 250g of light spraymalt into my IPA on Friday to give it some body as before it was just watery. Just drew some out to check gravs to see if it can be bottled tomorrow. I had a sip. I went back and drew out a pint. It's awesome, easily the best stuff I've made. This spraymalt is a bit good.
Definitely having a few pints of this straight out of the FV tonight. Not sure if I'm going to end up poisoning myself with yeast but it's worth it. It is gorgeous stuff. The colour is very off, not sure if it's worth racking it. Haven't had any brews for ages so don't know if I can be bothered. But I am very concious it could be the yeast giving it this colour...

Had a taste of my (or should I say Aceface57s, as its his recipe) Raspberry Wheat Beer yesterday to check fermentation. That's going to be very nice also. Got up to 1.7% in 24 hours to. Still very sweet so I'm hoping for a 6.5/7% brew.

When I was in my Brewshop on Friday, I noticed that they were selling carbonation tablets. Basically round pills (size of a boiled sweet) that you use in place of priming sugar. Seems like a total waste of time and money to me.

I assume that as I'm not brewing under pressure there's no way to force carbonation into my FVs? I would like to draw a beer off and it have a bit of sparkle to it? Also, in all my previous brews the carbonation has quickly been lost when opening. It's a shame.
 
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I want to get a starter kit with an Elderflower Cider kit, although I'm hoping it tastes like the Elderflower & Lime Kopparberg (which at £2 a bottle isn't cheap). Something tells me it won't be the same.

By any chance has anyone used the Magnum Elderflower Cider Kit?
 
Speak to me about Christmas Ales! I've just had an idea to draw off 1 gallon of my IPA into a 1 gallon demijohn and add some spices and what not (thinking cinnamon, cloves, ginger, etc) to make a Christmas Ale out of it. Anyone made one, what did they use?

I'm also going to rack off another gallon into a demijohn and prime that instead of bottling just to see what goes on (and it means I have less bottles to wash ;)). Will be plonking that on the table next week for my pals to pre-game on.

Tonyator, haven't heard of it. Though there is little stopping you from making a cider base (look for Edworts Apfelwein, the recipe I think is posted in here by me somewhere) and adding to that to get a flavour you prefer. I couldn't hazard a guess at the quantities of lime and elderflower that you'd need but you could easy make lots of 2 litres batches in coke bottles or something until you get the right taste.
We've just attempted a fruit cider doing this and it's fermenting vigoursly at the moment. Not sure if it's going to taste any good but it was a dirt cheap experiment. Here is our recipe for that:
fruitcider.png
 
Ahleckz said:
Tonyator, haven't heard of it. Though there is little stopping you from making a cider base (look for Edworts Apfelwein, the recipe I think is posted in here by me somewhere) and adding to that to get a flavour you prefer.
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Yeah sounds good, I mean I was thinking of using a kit first as it should be simple, then attempt something a bit different after the first attempt.

I just need the equipment to start off, I can get a whole starter kit with the Magnum Elderflower cider kit, and everything I need (40 pint plastic keg as opposed to bottles) for a round £60-70. But does anyone have any recommendations of places online to get a starter kit or all the bits and pieces separately for less than that?
 
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Throw it over this way Ace, I've just started a Googledocs thing to keep track of mine as I kept binning the scraps of paper with gravity readings and what not on.
Got some mash to be making, for the first time, no idea how much I should be using though. Trying to make a chocolate/ginger beer sort of thing. Any advice?
 
Oh, that looks very fancy indeed! Will have a play with it later.

Any experience priming with honey? I'm playing with my IPA (just about to 'bottle' some in a 3 litre container, and prime it to high heaven to create a kind of homemade keg. I'm going to wrap it in a towel, as it'll probably explode!) and fancy doing a few bottles primed with silly things like honey.
 
I've tried priming with maple syrup but I didn't notice to much of a difference with taste really. The only time I've noticed a difference is when I primed with cherry syrup, it was a fountain upon opening too. Doing a big bottling sesh tomorrow, 20ltrs of admirals reserve and 5 ltrs of a rioja. I really need to order a new keg but can't spend any money till I know if I've got this new job or not argh!
 
Just primed the 'keg' (a 3 litre Robinsons squash container) with 45g of sugar (made a simple syrup) and filled it with about 2.8litres of IPA. My view is this - it saves me having to wash bottles (I hate washing bottles!) and saves time filling them up (I hate bottling!). Also it would be FAR easier to just take round one of these things to a party/friends house than lug round 6 700ml glass bottles. I'm very concious that it'll explode though, lol.

Don't know if you read up but I put your raspberry wheat beer on, 500g of dark brown soft sugar (fancied a change), 250g of mild spraymalt (had some left over, so threw it in) and 100grams of caster sugar. Plus an entire bottle of that raspberry syrup stuff. OG of 1.039. Concerned that it's slightly low but we'll see what happens. Had a taste yesterday (6 days of brewing and tasting good!)
My friend went away with some of the syrup and made a fruit cider to. Here is our spreadsheet doc with some of our brews on. Many haven't had any information recorded, and I haven't been bothered to update it with old brews (just to keep everything together really - https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub...T1pwcldlajZrSVlKVUNRcW9CNXc&hl=en&output=html)

Oh, another thing. STILL waiting to be paid by the brewery. :(
 
Man that sucks! I would have thought for a company like themselves they would be on the ball. You seem to be getting well into the beer brewing these days. I'm still totally into my beer brewing but have gone down the wine route now as well. Got a 6 bottle kit on and hoping it's half decent so that I can stick a 30 bottle kit on the go and save myself some money.

That OG is a bit low might make it a nicer brew though, mine was rather strong and took a while to reach it's peak, but two or three and I was done for the night, not good on school nights!
Day off tomorrow so I'm trying for the FIRST time ever my cider that I made from my own home grown apples very shortly, just have to finish this bottle of wine first:D
 
Yeah, you'd think so. **** up in a brewery comes to mind, funnily enough! ;) I don't think it's necessarily an accidental thing I just think they were hoping I wouldn't notice. Hopefully it comes in this coming week. I'm still sticking with beer really, with me it comes and goes though. There'll be loads of activity for a few weeks/months and then all settle down. But I'm trying to do more of it. It's really a money issue though, if I had more then I'd be buying better kit and going down full mash routes which I'm a lot more interested in. However, my friend who I do it with (and is generally the bank of our 'brewery') isn't that keen on that and would just prefer to be making relatively simple brews that taste okish but get you hammered but he is coming round to my way of thinking albeit slowly.

Are you just using the bog standard wine kits? Seen them in my brewshop but haven't really had a good look at them perhaps worth doing a wee one to see if it's any good I suppose.

Yeah, might be a bit low. Did you add extra sugar to yours or just assume that the sugars in the syrup would be sufficient? Also, my friend has used some of the syrup to do a fruit cider. Few cartons of juice and a bit of raspberry and a bit cherry but no extra sugar. OG on that was 1.059... He reckons it'll be great I'm not so sure.

Oh, that has to be good if it's from your own apples. How much did you get out of it? Enough to spare me a bottle? :D
 
Yeah I'm using a beaverdale rioja kit, will post how it turns out when it's done.
I didn't manage to try the cider last night, trying it just now. It's different a little like scumpy jack but not quite. I think it will taste a little better if I give it another 3 months lol. It isn't very carbed, really could do with a little more sparkle, but not much I can do about that now, apart from adding some lemonade.
Can't say I drink too much cider in the winter time so will probably manage to keep it till next summer.
I added a bottle of maple syrup to the wheat beer I think for extra fermentables, and use the whole bottle of syrup. No regular sugar was added apart for priming.
 
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