Home brewing kits ....

To anyone thinking about brewing from kits, even the most expensive kits coupled with basic equipment will be cost effective after 2 or 3 brews and after that will be saving you money. Kit brewing is very clean and easy and won't stink your house/flat out and turns out very very drinakable ale.

The only thing is you'll catch the brewing bug. I'm just about to start full mash brewing and I would suggest even given the amount of kit I've bought (i've been a little bit lavish) that after 1 or 2 mash brews I'll be back in the black. To date my average pint cost has been well below £2 even including equipment purchase and it will only continue to drop over time. The incremental cost of full mash beer is probaly only 35p-50p a pint.
 
PlacidCasual, got any pictures? Are you close to Glasgow and want to be kind and sell me your equipment and become teetotal instead? :D

Read the thread godinman!
 
Aye, could do. Unfortunately I don't have a camera at the moment so it would be lacking fun pictures. Going to do a simple kit tomorrow though, I'll see what I can do with that.

Ace, should still be the first week of October. Waiting for my friend to confirm he has it off work.
 
Ahleckz said:
It's so easy to make, there's really no reason not to do it! It's very easy too, the hardest part of the process is bloody bottle cleaning. The cider doesn't taste great straight away, it's very much best left for some months but there's no reason why you can't drink it straight away. And as you made it yourself you'll think it's delicious.
As for kit, all you need is:
A container
A syhponing tube
An airlock (though you can use a balloon)
Sanitizing stuff (I use proper brewers stuff, but you can use baby sanitizing powder or even bleach as long as you rinse well).
Bottles
Your ingredients (including yeast)
A hydrometer (to work out the strength, not necessary but good to know).
A funnel (makes everything easier)
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Cheers, it does sound quite simple once you've got all the bits. There used to be a really good homebrew place near me but it's now gone, but I'm sure I'll be able to get hold of all those things. Do you know of anywhere which sell Montrachet yeast?
 
Superewza said:
*cough* Do you have to be 18 to do brewing? :p
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Nope. Join in whatever age you are! (Though if your parents catch you and don't approve (though I'd imagine your Dad used to do it) then leave the "Some bloke in Glasgow told me it's fine! He's got a pink signature, that's how 'ard he is!" line out of it please.)

MikeHunt79 said:
Cheers, it does sound quite simple once you've got all the bits. There used to be a really good homebrew place near me but it's now gone, but I'm sure I'll be able to get hold of all those things. Do you know of anywhere which sell Montrachet yeast?
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Nope, but isn't that just the same as champagne yeast? Should be fairly easy to get hold of. I'm going to my brew shop tomorrow morning though, so I'll have a look and see if they sell that yeast. If they do, I can always post you some down if you can't find it.
 
Thought I'd upload this pic, it has a really useful equation on it. Only one kit out of the 4 I have used so far has come with an accurate method of working out the true alcohol content. Only thing to remember is taking the original gravity.

img001.jpg


Like Ahleckz I have only used kits so far and been much less adventurous with them. I started up by going to the brewmart in sheffield, for £25 I got a 5 gallon wort, glass hydrometer, pot of sterilizer, syphon, kilo of dextrose and a basic 40 pint syrup of my choice. I then went down morrisons and got 20 2L bottles fizzy water for 12p each:D, the cost per pint of my first brew was about 70p, and gets cheaper with each additional brew. (I have since bought a glass thermometer and heater though).

I'll get some picks up of my current brew tomorrow if i'm not feeling too lazy.
 
Managed to get 3.5 ounces of 'Amarillo' hops to add to my IPA and using Muntons Premium Gold yeast. Mike, they didn't sell that yeast you were after. They did say that they could order it in though.

I've decided to use 1.5 ounces and 2 pints of water and made a 'hop tea' in my cafietere. Leaving that for 40 minutes to steep before adding it when I add the sugar into the syrup.

As for my camera - It was on my old phone, which worked, but it turns out that I don't get any signal on it for some reason so I can't twitpic the pictures onto my twitter and there's no other way to do it. Sorry! I'll write about what I'm doing though.
Here's a write up:

Ingredients:
1 x 'Muntons IPA Bitter kit
1 x Muntons Gold Active Brewing Yeast
1.5 oz 'Amarillo' hops.
1.5kg Granulated Sugar (some people will frown at this, but it's always worked out fine for me).
40 pints of Glasgow's finest tap water
Equipment:
1 x 40 pint fermentation vessel with airlock
1 x Scales
1 x Measuring Jug
1 x Cafietere
1 x Funnel
1 x Pot
1 x Syhpon
1 x Hydrometer
  1. Filled one of my big blue (pictures found earlier) fermentation vessels with fairy liquid and hot water. Leaving it to soak. Unfortunately, plastic seeps in odour and flavour quite well so it's still quite apple'y after previous apfelweins so a good soak is needed. Should be fine after an hour of soaking. Then I add a few teaspoons of 'VWP Steriliser Powder' and fill the container with warm water. Let that soak for a bit.
  2. Fill my sink with water and sterilising powder. Throw everything I'm using into it: Measuring jug, bowl for scales, funnel, hydrometer, syphoning tubes, cafietere, pot.
  3. Make 'Hop Tea'. I'm doing this to add a bit of an extra dimension and hopefully a better smell. Should make it tasty, I really like hoppy beers so I can't wait. Boil the kettle. Fish out the cafietere, scale bowl and jug and give it a rinse. Measure out 1.5 ounces (I'm just having a guess at how much to use) of 'Amarillo hops'. Measure a pint of water, pour into the scales bowl and then pour the hops and water into the cafietere. Realize I need more water, repeat previous process. I did 2 pints of water (brimmed the cafietere). Leave that to steep for 40 minutes or so.
  4. Fish out the big pot (just using a big cooking pot) and place hot water in it, open the can of syrup and place in the hot water for 5 minutes.
  5. Fish out funnel, put into cleaned and sterilised fermentation vessel, and pour in the syrup, which should be more watery now thanks to heating and go in easily. Pour in the hop tea, and then pour in all the sugar.
  6. Put the lid on, and give it a bloody good shake until you reckon all the sugar has dissolved.
  7. Pour in enough water so it gets to 40 points (aprox 32 pints in my case). I have a 3 litre jug which makes the job quite easy.
  8. Fish out your hydrometer, and syphoning tubes. Syphon a bit of the brew into the hydrometer tube and drop the hydrometer in, spinning it as it goes. Note down the reading, this will be your original gravity. You use this to work out the % alcohol. 1.050 for me.
  9. Pour some cooled boiled water into a sterilised mug, and pour in the yeast. Leave it for 10 minutes to rehydrate and then pour this into the fermentation vessel.
  10. Put airlock on, and put away for anywhere from a week to 3.
  11. You've just made beer!

Wooohoo!
 
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Cheers dust. It's quite simple, I purposely waffled on a bit and made it simple so hopefully other people can see how easy it is. I'm looking forward to trying this as it's the first time I've used hops.
Some other guy was in the brewshop at the same time as me and was asking about starting to brew. He looked very daunted, but me and the owner told him how easy and cheap it can be so hopefully that's another brewer! The woman suggested I was an expert as I was clutching my very expensive packet of hops as I was speaking to him.
Hopefully can get a few pictures of the finished product which I will post in 'ere.
 
Back to distilling, you have to be much more careful due to the risk of producing methanol is high. The reason they like it to be licensed is not to make it hard for you to do, simply to stop people accidentally blinding themselves.
 
Yeah, there is that as well... But I still don't think that's necessarily the reason as distillation itself is a piece of cake. I did it in standard grade biology in 2003, though we weren't allowed to drink the final product. Mrs Fraser, damn you!
 
I've wanted to make my own brew for a while. This thread has convinced me to take a trip up to brewmart in sheffield this week and get some kit. We have quite a large basement which I think will be perfect for making some beer :D
 
Hmm, what kind of temps are we looking at? It's adjoined to the kitchen, which has an aga in. Not sure how warm the basement bit will be yet (first year in this house), but the kitchen should be plenty warm if the basement isn't.

How does the stuff you picked up from brewmart compare to the Woodfordes micro brewery kit that has been linked too?
 
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