yes, if brewing from scratch, it’s too alkaline. Not sure if it has as much affect on kit beers though

Generally speaking, malt extract beers* do not need water treatment because the critical mashing stage has already been performed. However, if you are living in a hard water area and you are experiencing clarity problems, then the high alkalinity of your water is probably affecting your beer. Water treatment can be limited to just boiling your water first and perhaps adding five grams of calcium to your wort boil** as an insurance measure – Graham Wheeler, Brew Your Own British Real Ale, 3rd edition (CAMRA) p47

* technically kit beers are hopped malt extract, or, in other words, wort. It’s just been concentrated to get 23 litres worth of wort into a can (or two) weighing around 1.5kg
** with kit beers, the boil has already been done, and doesn’t need to be done again.

There is a brilliant section on the Thornbridge brewery website thats worth a read .
Covers all the areas of beer production in an easy to understand format and is well worth printing off.
You need water with a P H of about 6.0 and a decent level of salts ideally . Hardness expressed as CACO3 gives an indication of calcium, wich is the most important thing.
We treat with acid solution , and a mix of Gypsum / CACL /Epsom salts
John , 1015 is really too high for bottling BCA’s . You need to go a few degrees lower , then force test a sample at 26;C to see how far it will attenuate . Adding primings at 1015 is asking for grenades . If your wort wont go lower in your fv look at O2 additions or a tiny amount of yeast food / mash tun temp..

yes, I agree. But some of the Muntons kits allegedly stick at 1020 for a few days and need rousing, so I used 1015 as a ball park figure above which it most likely hasn’t finished fermenting; chances are if it’s 1015 on one day, it’s still fermenting and unlikely to give the same reading three days running anyway.

The point I was trying to make is the kits often say “fermenting takes 4-6 days”, when in fact it can often be double that. New brewers will assume that it’s done when the instructions say it will be, but I’m trying to point out that it’s only done when it’s done, not when the instructions say it will be.
And the only way to be certain is to have steady readings three or more days in a row below a certain threshold. OK 1015 was too high, but if I’d said 1010 and a brew didn’t go below 1010, they’d wonder if it had finished or not!

Although some of the recipes in the GW book quote a final gravity of 1010 – 1012 or even 1013.

None of my brews so far have failed to get below 1010, but there’s always a first time
Having said that, I did a pilsner BIAB before christmas, OG 1050 and FG about 1004, so if I’d said check it at 1010, it would still be busy fermenting away!

I was passing the Range today so thought I’d dip my toe in the water by trying one of their wheat beer kits.. made it up with 10 litres of bottled water I had knocking around from Christmas and 13 litres (3 boiled) of straight from the tap spring water.

Simple and easy to make up and the OG came out at about 1045 which is in the right ballpark.. just the waiting now!

that’s the hard part 😉

As tick follows tock, follows tick…
8)

So, come on then, is it any good?

3 weeks isn’t long enough 🙁

up to 2 weeks to ferment.
another 2-3 weeks in bottle for secondary fermentation in a warm place to give it some life.
then a minimum 2 more weeks for bottle conditioning in a cool dark room.

My Hobgoblin clone has come out excellent…

Very happy 🙂

excellent.

I have, on the go at the moment:

just bottled: 36x 500ml bottles of Coopers European Lager (from a kit)
just bottled: 32x 500ml bottles of Old Heckled Spen (can you tell what it is yet?)
fermenting: 19 litres of “Something Peculier”

and finally, just started a 90 minute boil (mashed earlier today) of a hoppy pale ale to my own recipe, 20 litre batch. Bittering hop – 20g Challenger, 10g Cascade; aroma hop – 15g Cascade; dry hop – 15g Cascade

OG should be 1048, FG aiming at 1011, 4.8% ABV
Should be nice & citrussy 🙂

Just kegged up 40 pints of Ale, and started 40pints of nut brown ale (Muntons) wort.

Have had to buy beer to fill the gap, does not taste as good adn feels wrong 🙁

indeed it does. I’m aiming to become self sufficient, in ale at least 😉

Just had a cheeky sampler of a Cascadian Dark I brewed a couple of weekends ago. Needs a lot of maturing at 6.7% ABV but mmmm, tastes good 🙂

turns out I only have 16g Cascade left after the 10g in at 90mins, so the dry hop will have to be Bobek

Well, the wheat beer kit from The Range came out pretty good for a first effort.. And for minimal effort too! Was finished fermenting after about a week and seemed perfectly drinkable about a week later..

Next step – proper stuff with hops!

check out http://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk – they have a forum just like we do here, full of sound advice, recipes, kit tweaks etc

I’m planning a nice citrus pale, have a healthy supply of Citra hops in the freezer – 15% alpha, should be a good tongue curler!

Been pretty happy using Bobek before John, never dry hopped but use a bunch at flame out for my usual.

Nearly got enough bottles for my first brew. IPA from The Range with my starter kit bucket etc… Thinking of using spray malt instead of sugar now already..

Looking at the bottles I bought and the 25 or so that I have drunk, it seems now like a right gaff to sterilise them all to perfection and I can’t help wondering about a pressure barrel….

Could someone let me know the advantages and disadvantages of each please?

I’ve only used bottles – agree they’re a hassle to clean and sterilise. Uncapping a nice homebrew and pouring it out cannae be beat, though 🙂

I could be wrong, but I think a drawback of a simple pressure barrel is longer term storage – they’re not sealed to the same extent as bottles and there might be a decent headspace in there [do you need to fill this with CO2?] so the beer degrades quicker. Bottled brew will last ages by contrast.

It depends how much ale you’re drinking – if you fully expect to tan 40 pints in a couple of weeks, or you’re brewing for a party say, then the barrel might be the way to go. If you’re looking to store over the longer term then bottles.

I’ll be bottling 2gallons of brupaks beers of the world Old London Porter later, then it’ll be the mighty Coopers Imperial Stout going on, a truly volcanic brew. Good times!

Thinking of using spray malt instead of sugar now already..

spray malt will definitely improve the finished taste compared to plain old sugar.

sterilising bottles isn’t that bad. if you rinse them out as soon as you empty them, that’s a start. Just make sure you rinse AFTER you’ve sterilised them 😉

For me, bottles win over pressure barrel every time. I have a Rotokeg which holds about 40 litres. If you only fill it with 23 litres (or in my case, 18-19), that’s an awful lot of head space of oxygen to get at the beer. I’ve not managed a successful keg yet, 5 or 6 tries, every one went off before it was conditioned. Never again.

Old Peculier clone is now bottled & labelled up, 34x 500ml, mix of glass and Coopers PET bottles. The PET bottles are great for showing when it’s up to pressure through the secondary fermentation.

John.
You have to redox a keg for a long shelf life .
Fill with a .5% peracetic acid solution, then fit a C02 canister on the top . Blow out all the PAA with C02 .
Keg is now ready for filling . Even if you only 1/2 fill it , and leave it a few weeks , it should be sound .
When sampling be sure to put a squirt of C02 back into the headspace to keep a positive pressure in there .
If you transfer to keg with 4-5′ of fermentables and a reasonably high yeast count you might actually need to bleed off C02 to keep your DC02 levels in the ballpark .

Pretty much what Garry said as far as bottles go.

Just put a yeast starter on tonight for a Chimay White clone I’ll be knocking out next weekend, I’ll be bottling as I’m told it’ll benefit from a bit more time conditioning.

Spray malt is certainly the way forward; sugar will thin the beer out whereas spray malt will give it a bit more body.

John, have you done the Old Pec before?

stm – thanks, I think you’ve mentioned that before. not sure I want to be playing with acid 🙁

Haze – yes, this is my second batch of the OP, from Graham Wheeler’s recipe. I enjoyed it so much I thought I’d do it again 🙂

A very interesting thread, think i’m gonna have to get on this homebrewing lark.

Bottled 24 pints of my latest brew on Friday, it’s a strong un so will leave to mature for a couple of months.

Through various means and favours we’re in the final stages of hooking up our beautiful stainless steel 100ltr brewery in my garage. When my wife gets back from holidsay next Sunday she is going to be proper p1ssed off as her car , erm, won’t fit now ! Has been assembled from some old kegs (water boiler, mash tun and boiling tun) and a proper stainless tank for fermentation courtesy of my friendly stainless tank maker who owed me a favour. All hooked up with food quality piping and pumps etc. total cost $750 so far which is not too bad. We ran a quick brew through two weeks ago on the part gear and it is fine. It’s getting Malt just now that is the hard part…

LEARN FROM MY MISTAKE!!!

A word of caution to anyone planning on buying brewing supplies on the internet from a particular firm. I recently went ‘Online’ to buy ‘Homebrew’ supplies. I tried to ‘brew It Myself’ and hence not pay tax to the PM and his deputy.

I ordered some items from this site a month ago, a couple of emails from them stated that items were due in stock within 1-2 days. This was 2 weeks ago. I am still waiting. The website has no contact address or phone number. I have heard of orders dispatched, however I am not the only person to have had bad dealings with this firm. I urge you all to do your homework and check reviews for this company before purchasing!!

I think I know which company you are referring to.

http://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=21760

I’m lucky in that I have at least 4 decent home brew shops within half an hour drive (in fact they’re all en route between work & home), so I tend to buy my stuff in person.

Just ordered myself a Coopers Starter kit – looking forward to all those cheeky post ride beers this year 😀