Home brewing kits ....

i got one from morrisons for my coopers fv, £2.98, it isn't huge, about an inch either side and enough room to slip a couple of PET bottles half filled with ice in the front and back. im brewing 19 liters at the moment and the water comes to an inch under the brew line, i figure about 80% is under water so should regulate it well. brewing a proper lager now so 12-15c is a must.

Original ozy lager was bottled yesterday and have started a mexican cerveza with 1kilo of extra light spray malt, est ABV is 5.7 as i brewed at 19L, also decided to go with Saflager S-23 yeast as i heard the yeast has a massive effect on the final product.

incidentally i have been reading all over the internet this is a notoriously slow starter of a yeast and having pitched today at 11 o'clock its already starting :D, pitched at 18c and its been at that till tonight and have got it down to 15, going to stick a ice bottle in tonight then replace that with two tomorrow morning and that should get it down to 13 and hopefully keep it around there. nice krausen forming on top so im really pleased!


also seen rave reviews of the better brew czech pilsner so i think that will be my next brew either that or an ale that's quick form fermenter to drinking so i have something while all these lagers are lagering and conditioning
 
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Kanifee said:
i got one from morrisons for my coopers fv, £2.98 .
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Cheers I will have a look in mine, if not I will have to just buy a big tub and make a lid for it as ll the ones I've found big enough have a folding lid.

The cerveza you did, did you use the brew kit enhancer and 1kg of extra sugar?

Justin said:
Got a bit of naughty distilling going on with my Brother in law...

It's pretty strong!!
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Is that for cleaning off CPU paste ;)

Not a Don anymore? Surely you should be making booze like that :D
 
Kanifee said:
sounds exciting! how strong is pretty strong?
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It's stronger than any spirits I've had, so I'm thinking between 60% and 70%.

dannyjo22 said:
Is that for cleaning off CPU paste ;)

Not a Don anymore? Surely you should be making booze like that :D
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Nope, stepped down. Don't have much time any more!!

Whether it's actually safe to drink is another story... I've had a very small amount and seem OK, but I'm not going to drink much of it in one go as we have no easy way to test for methanol... It's very much an experiment/bit of fun.
 
The water bath i have my lager in is a real pain in the ****, i need six bottle frozen on a constant rotation of two at a time to maintain 14c , this is with the window of the room wide open and an outside temp of around 6~8c, at night its creeps to about 15c when im not around to put the frozen bottles in the bath. no sooner are they in the bath of water they have defrosted, i just cant freeze them fast enough!

luckily i am buying a new fridge freezer for the kitchen next week so i have talked the O/H into letting me have the old one for the back bedroom. Im going to build one of those temp control managers that are used on the home brew forums. the freezers temps are directly proportionate to the fridges so im hoping by some luck maintaining 12~13c in the fridge will hold the freezer around lagering temps, two beers with one mouth and all that stuff :D



Just a side note, the Cerveza with the s-23 yeast is flying along with a nice big krausen now.
 
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I think persoanally it will be far easier to do them in a garage with a heater to 13 degrees in a water bath or wait until the winter and do them with heat/water bath. Rather than running the fridge. Of course you can't do that if you don't have a shed or garage. My garage currently sits at about 13 during the day and 8 at night, so a little cold at the minute at night. So the heater would only run for a little time at night.

My plan is to do that next winter rather than try to chill down to brew. Just get enough ready so you can do 4 brews in two months and have it all ready for the summer :)
 
Yeh that's my plan, a little late to the game but I realy want enough lager to see me through the summer months. Unfortunately no shed/garage for me but the missus did suggest a shed the other day which I was very shocked at, I'm going to build one its just a case of when as I'd like a decent size man cave to hide away in :D
 
Happy to report that after an initial struggle with temps and fighting the creeping heat the temp inside the fv has stabilized and sitting at 12-13c for the last 2 days with only one or two ice bottle changes a day now so very happy, still going to set up a fridge as lagering will still be a challenge.
 
In my brewing news, the watermelon and red grape wine is finished. I've stabilised it with Campden and sorbate but not used finings because the haze doesn't bother me. It's... rather odd tasting. Nothing wrong with it, just odd tasting and very, very strong. I've been experimenting what to do with it to use it up in a more palatable way, with juice, strawberry Ribena etc. Only 3.5 more litres of it to go :D
 
Jonny69 said:
In my brewing news, the watermelon and red grape wine is finished. I've stabilised it with Campden and sorbate but not used finings because the haze doesn't bother me. It's... rather odd tasting. Nothing wrong with it, just odd tasting and very, very strong. I've been experimenting what to do with it to use it up in a more palatable way, with juice, strawberry Ribena etc. Only 3.5 more litres of it to go :D
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I just came in here to ask you how that was going.

I'm a big fan of things with 'interesting' flavours. The kind of thing that you can't decide if you do or don't like it, but are going to eat/drink quite a bit of it while finding out :)

I cracked open a bottle of each of those Turbo ciders over the weekend. the Cloudy one from Lidls juice is 8% and tastes it. I spilt a bit and it smelt like white spirit. It tastes a million times better than before I bottled it, but still a bit odd. Its unbeliuveably fizzy though, like Champagne fizzy! No idea why, it had the same 1 tsp of sugar as the other ciders.
The Princes one tastes a lot more like a 'regular' cider, but still isn't as good as the Black Rock kit I did, so I'm going to be sticking with kits for the moment.

Next up is an On The Rocks cider. Just deciding weather to make a flavoured one or not.
 
Great news lads, i know recently someone mentioned doing a root beer, alcoholic or not id love to know how this is progressing if at all as its something i would love to do.

on the brewing front, ozzy lager is bottle conditioning nicely and i keep dipping in for a bottle just to quality control, taste is smoothing out and residual bitterness is clearing slowly, another two weeks should be sweet.

Mexican cerveza is clearing in the FV nicely and should be getting to the end of primary soon. planing on a keg and maybe going all grian in the next 4 or 5 brews, next brew is a heavily tweaked coopers IPA with stella bittering hops and Cascade/Columbus hops for flavor and aroma with some caramalt added for flavor and 2kg of light DME, at 5.3% it should be epic!
 
Kanifee said:
Great news lads, i know recently someone mentioned doing a root beer, alcoholic or not id love to know how this is progressing if at all as its something i would love to do.
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Me and Glaucus have had a go. My last one was amazing because I love root beer and I've only just got around to putting on a new batch last night.

4 litres of water
400-450g sugar
1 tsp yeast
25g Zacharain's root beer essence

I stick it all in the demijohn and leave it for 24 hours or so for the yeast to get going, then decant it into 2x 2 litre bottles. Then leave it somewhere warm until the pressure gets up like a shaken bottle of Coke (1-2 days) and put it in the fridge. The yeast drops down to the bottom in a day or so and you can drink it. The best thing? If it goes flat, you just take it out the fridge and let it warm up, the yeast jumps back into life and fizzes it back up again :D
 
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