Home brewing kits ....

cider, the turbo one with tesco value apple juice. I've now started it, i did activate the yeast in water with some sugar before placing it in the demijohn
 
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It should be fine. The difference is the wine yeasts are developed so they drop out the brew quickly, form a dense sediment at the bottom so that racking is easier and don't impart too much yeasty flavour into the brew. It'll also withstand a higher alcohol content. Bread yeast may not settle out very well and might leave the brew tasting a little yeasty. Worst case scenario is you'll have to get a pack of Vin Clear finings to clear the cider.

In other news. The WOW is completely cleared and I bottled it today. It's much improved in flavour and sparkly clear, but needs a little sweetening to make it drinkable. I have 5 bottles for on the shelf, so I'll leave them a few months and see how they improve. I also put on two more gallons of cloudy cider because I'm drinking the last lot way too quickly :D
 
Just brewing some Lions pride.
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:)

Not tried it before. It's been going about a week now and has just about stopped fermenting. I'll give it another 2 days, syphon it into a clean tub then add some finings. After that it's into the Corni keg :)

Jusy on ebay looking for another keg. No bargins like before :(
 
Drank most of the raspberry cider in the last week or so, 3 teaspoons of sugar per glass and it was lovely.

The next batch will hopefully be made around pay day, with more raspberries, and I think I'm going to stop fermentation and sweeten it in the bottle this time.

The Mango Cider was nice but the mango flavour wasn't strong enough...

I think with the raspberry Cider I'm going to try a blackcurrant one as well.
 
We've got two pear and tree's bursting with fruit along with loads of brambles with blackberrys on them. Would love to do something with them, but can't be splashing out on kit. :(
 
kenmare said:
We've got two pear and tree's bursting with fruit along with loads of brambles with blackberrys on them. Would love to do something with them, but can't be splashing out on kit. :(
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The most expensive part of the kit would be a juicer or fruit press... the actual brewing equipment won't come to much...

Airlock, Grommets (x2) and Cider yeast ~£5 from Amazon
5L water bottle (x2) and Sterilising Tablets ~£3.50 from Tesco

See... less than a tenner. Obviously you can spend a lot more on brewing equipment, but that's the bare minimum, with that you could brew around 15 pints a time.
 
The_blue said:
Yeah please.

I'd use bacon as bread if i could!:D
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You need one sachet of gelatine per 25L of beer. Basically, sanitise a cup and saucer, tip the sachet contents into the cup, and add around 1-2 tablespoons of water, cover with the saucer and leave it for 15 mins. This allows the gelatine to be rehydrated. Next, boil the kettle, and let it cool down for 5 mins (VERY important part, NEVER add boiling water to gelatine as it will denature it, making it useless) and add about 100ml to the cup, give it a good stir, cover again and leave for 15 mins (this basically pasteurises the gelatine, stopping infection). Then add it to your beer, give it a GENTLE stir once or twice and that's that.

I do all the above after I have racked the beer to my corni keg. It will take around a week to work, and the first 1/4 pint out will be cloudy and full of gelatine but the beer above will be bright as a button.

Hope this helps!

G.
 
Getting a heap of elderflower soon so going to make some elderflower champagne. Might also get some nettle. Going to go foraging and see what berries I can get. Should be fun!
 
Grahame said:
You need one sachet of gelatine per 25L of beer. Basically, sanitise a cup and saucer, tip the sachet contents into the cup, and add around 1-2 tablespoons of water, cover with the saucer and leave it for 15 mins. This allows the gelatine to be rehydrated. Next, boil the kettle, and let it cool down for 5 mins (VERY important part, NEVER add boiling water to gelatine as it will denature it, making it useless) and add about 100ml to the cup, give it a good stir, cover again and leave for 15 mins (this basically pasteurises the gelatine, stopping infection). Then add it to your beer, give it a GENTLE stir once or twice and that's that.

I do all the above after I have racked the beer to my corni keg. It will take around a week to work, and the first 1/4 pint out will be cloudy and full of gelatine but the beer above will be bright as a button.

Hope this helps!

G.
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Exelent! Not tried adding the finings into the keg. A assume your talkimg standard tesco style gelatine?

Got myself a 2nd keg today and another kit. Will give this a go.
 
The_blue said:
Exelent! Not tried adding the finings into the keg. A assume your talkimg standard tesco style gelatine?

Got myself a 2nd keg today and another kit. Will give this a go.
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Yeah mate, just standard tesco gelatine sachets are fine. It doesn't make a hard sediment at the keg bottom, so it comes out of the corni dip tube just just fine and won't cause any blockage. I actually do one better - I have a temperature controlled fridge which I use for fermenting in, once the fermentation is finished, I turn the temperature down to 4C and leave it for a few days. I then transfer to the corni and add the gelatine. The cold beer makes the gelatine work so much faster. I literally have a crystal clear pint after 2 days, although I still leave the keg a minimum of 2 weeks to allow the beer to mature. Glad I could be of help! :)
 
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?
 
Welll after a few weeks of being patient last week I cracked into my brew!

I took the suggestion from PlacidCasual and went with the Woodfordes Wherry double tin pack and can definitely recommend it to anyone thinking of having a go, in fact the whole process went very well aside from initially blowing up the keg. :p

This afternoon has mostly been spent enjoying said brew so to PlacidCasual this one is for you... cheers!!

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Hey! Just found a few pints left in my old keg! Thought that had all gone. It's about 2 months old now and i've disturbed some sidiment in it but wow it tastes great!


Can't remember which kit it was though :(
 
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