I am thinking a batch of pale ale would make the xmas hols go much better, so suggestions please, coopers or….?

tick – I have a load of barrels & demijohns & bubble traps sitting unused in the garage (no perry pears or cider apples this season) so might put them to good use…..

so what do I need to make a brew?

The Coopers kits are pretty good IIRC. I haven’t done a brew run in a few years now, have everythind in the utility room though so may have a scrubbing and cleaning session soon and get a brew on.

Wonder if my pale malt and vacuum packed hops are still okay…..

St Peters IPA is very nice, it’s quite strong though. I’ve got a Coopers on the go at the moment but haven’t tried it yet so can’t comment. All I would say is get it on sharpish so it has enough time to condition in the barrel before Christmas

if you get a kit from eBay for example, do you need to buy dextrose and spraymalt to go with it?

What’s spraymalt for?

Some kits, like the St Peters ones don’t need anything adding to them, others need some kind of sugar added to bulk up the amount of fermentables.

Spray malt is dried malt extract, generally this is the best thing to add if the kit asks for more sugar, just use it weight for weight as a replacement for glucose/dextrose. Don’t use granulated sugar.

coopers are good kits, you use spray malt instead of sugar,gives more body/taste

I’ve found the ‘2 tin kits’ better, i.e. where you don’t need to add the extra sugar. I usually condition mine for at least 3 months, if not longer otherwise you’re just not tasting it at its best. Might be a bit late now if you want to drink it at Christmas.

nick – why not granulated sugar?

Granulated sugar bad temp control and tap water are potential causes of the home brew taste problem.

Woodfordes wherry is a good brew. Just finished my first barrel and it was a great success. Like stated above 2 can kits are great for starters like me. The beer was quite a lot like old speckled hen tbh. Off to the shop for another kit today in an attempt to get something half drinkable for crimbo.

Too much granulated sugar will thin it out, use brewers sugar or even better spraymalt (as above).

A Campden tablet will knock the chlorine out of your tap water, although if your water profile is similar to mine around here then you’re better off buying a few 5 litre bottles of water.

Woodforde’s nelsons revenge was lovely, ruby coloured, full flavour and about 5%. I wouldn’t recommend admirals reserve, it was a bit bland and uninspired.
Just done Festival Golden stag and Way to Amarillo….will let you know what it’s like 🙂

There was quite a good thread on this a few months ago… HTH 🙂 (hic!)

can anyone recommend a clear online brewing guide?

For the effort have a look at the Whitehouse recipes currently enjoying the honey porter and have the pale ale just bottled

go to http://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk for all things homebrew

for a starter pale ale I’d go for something like Brupaks’ Linthwaite Light, IPA or Fixby Gold. They’re two can kits so do not need any extra sugar, and also come with a couple of hop pellets if you want to experiment with more advanced techniques such as boiling the hops for extra hoppy flavour. I’d avoid the one can kits as they all require extra sugar/spraymalt, and can give that homebrew taste(TM)

Also, if you can, add a crushed campden tablet to your water to remove any chlorine – that certainly helps.

basic minimum equipment:
1 fermenting bin – 2 if you decide to do the campden tablet trick
big long plastic spoon
trial jar
hydrometer
thermometer
campden tablets
heat-proof glass jug
siphon tubing and a “bottling stick”
bottles or a pressure barrel. I prefer bottles, the beer keeps longer.
sterilising solution – VWP for example comes in powder form, add 1/2 a teaspoon per gallon of cleaning water.

method:
1) sterilise/sanitise EVERYTHING
2) rinse it all WELL
3) if you have 2 fermenting bins, fill one with water, and one crushed campden tablet. You can use bottled water if you’re in a hard water area
4) follow the kit instructions, using the treated water from step 3
5) stir well, and take a sample of the wort with your clean trial jar; float the hydrometer in it to get an Original Gravity reading. make a note of this.
6) check the temperature using the clean thermometer. if the temperature is right (18-23degC, lower for lager), add the yeast.
7) put the lid on and, if it has a hole for one, fit an airlock half filled with boiled water from the kettle.
8 ) leave at least a week. ignore the kit instructions for how long to leave as every brew is different.
9) when the fermenting seems to have finished, take another sample with a clean (see step 1) trial jar. Float the hydrometer, take a reading. Don’t add the sample back to the main batch. If he hydrometer reads under 1010, repeat two or three more times at one day interval. If it’s not below 1010, leave it a bit longer.
10) when the reading stays steady under 1010 for 3 consecutive days, it’s finished fermenting. If you have a spare clean fermenting bin (see step 1 again), put the first one on a worktop and siphon the beer into the second one, making sure you leave the sediment behind.
11) if you have any finings, add it now. not essential but helps the beer clear quicker.
12) leave a couple more days
13) make up a priming solution with about 100-200ml boiling water and 80-110g of sugar (granulated is fine for this) in a clean heat-proof jug, let it cool to room temperature. put some clingfilm over it to keep airborne bacteria out.
14) clean your bottles and caps/pressure barrel (see step 1), then add the priming solution to the beer, stir well and siphon into bottles/pressure barrel. cap the bottles, or, if using a pressure barrel, grease the cap threads with vaseline.
15) leave in a warm place for at least 2 weeks for secondary fermentation, this is what gasses up the beer
16) move to a cool dark place and leave for at least another 2 weeks – this is called “conditioning” and is what lets the beer clear. The longer you can leave it, the better it will taste.
17) serve cool, not chilled, and enjoy. Try to pour carefully, leaving the sediment in the bottle.

there are dozens of styles of beer kit available, try whatever takes your fancy. If you like, you can experiment with added ingredients such as honey (for a Waggle Dance type of beer) or extra hops. Don’t go crazy, or you could end up wirh 5 gallons of undrinkable beer.

To go for full-on All Grain beer brewed from scratch the way the commercial breweries do, requires a lot more equipment and expenditure – but there is also a short-cut, equipment-wise, called Brew In A Bag. Method here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kfi86yzhPvw.

All Grain brewing is an all day job just to get to the stage of pitching the yeast, but the results are well worth it. If you try this, you’ll never do kit beers again.

*bookmarks. Blows kiss at j_d*

you’re welcome 🙂

Thanks J-D…Purchase made 😀

what did you get?

I’m just off to the LHBS now, for some grains & hops. Aside from what I’ve already got in, I need:
3kg Pale Malt
500g each of Munich, Wheat, Cara Red and Cara Munich malts (I don’t need the full 500g of each but that’s the size of the packets)
100g each of Amarillo, Cascade, Centennial and Nugget hops (size of packet again)

to make 23 litres of “Dirty Celebration” American IPA from a recipe on http://www.brewmate.net/recipe. Original recipe calls for an OG of 1058, I’m not going to make it as strong as that, aiming for 1047. Should still be around 5% ABV so plenty strong enough

Fixby Gold turned out like piss for me, twice 🙁

I’ve done Fixby Gold once, really nice. I tried Woodfordes Norfolk Wherry, bloody awful – but I think I fouled something up somewhere along the line. That was the last thing I barreled, I’ve bottled everything since.

my first adapted kit was Coopers Pale Ale with extra Cascade hops, turned out fantastic, deadly darcy named it for me, “Hop Hop & Away”.

I’m quite keen on giving this a go. The idea of making my own beer and sharing it with a few friends really appeals to me.

Are the starter kits any good?

Can you customise them later to make different types of beers. I like the idea of experimenting with the recipes to get a nice brew!

My favourites are German Wiessbiers are there any good kits for these?

Extract kits in general are good yes, you can get decent ale out of them. Need a little more sophistication than simply dumping it in water as the instructions will say ( ie a boil), but if you read John drummers post and follow the links they will see you right.
Brewing is endlessly customisable and experimental, part of the charm. Some styles are very hard to replicate at home (e.g a coors light), others are very well suited (a strong ipa say), but they can all be done in principle.

I have a Summer Lightning kit and a lager all maturing nicely. The lager kit required brewing sugar as it was a one can kit, I used 50/50 light spray malt and brewing sugar as an experiment. A voyage of discovery, the Wherry kit is fantastic as a starter drinks well from about 6 weeks in the bottle and improves a little more after that.

Can you customise them later to make different types of beers

you can indeed 🙂
have a look here: http://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=20386

my first kit adaptation involved taking a Coopers Pale Ale kit and boiling some extra Cascade hops in a panful of the wort for 20mins; when I turned off the heat I added some more, then when it all went in the fermenting bin, I added yet more (this last is called dry-hopping. Commercial breweries, when they do this, often do this after kegging but before shipping to pubs, but I’d given up on kegs by this point)

(boiling / not boiling the hops adds various flavours & aromas. Boiling the hops for a long time adds bitterness; for a short time adds flavour and aroma, and adding them after the boil adds aroma mostly. beer kits have already had all of this done, then reduced to a sticky goo that you dilute back to normal thickness before you add your yeast)

it was lovely. Then I switched to all-grain in the brew-in-a-bag method & haven’t looked back since.

I have about 15 bottles of porter left in the “cellar”, 34 bottles of chocolate stout maturing & 19 litres of American IPA in the fermenting bing; doing a batch of porter for a mate tomorrow. Then next weekend I’ll probably do some Old Peculier just in time for Xmas

just finished my first barrel of woodfordes wherry – lovely stuff. While that was being drunk I did a yorkshire harvest pale which I’ve bottled, and I’m going to try a stout next.

so far so good

I’m going between the coopers ipa kit as my first. Came out like a good but average ale. The second one went a little strange so giving that some time before binning.

3 & 4 are from Mr Obama with adaption for local availability. One a dark honey porter is dry and nice getting better and fairly strong (6-8%) I guess. The other is a hoppy pale honey ale. There were my first nine kit beers and also saw me move to bottled water. A marked improvement.

Finally we have the ginger beer. Great with some ice in the sun.
800G of grated peeled ginger root
2Kg brown sugar
Zest & juice of 4 lemons and limes.
I used and ale yeast but a Champaign was also suggested.
Zest of the lemons and limes in 3l of water boiled. Dissolve sugar and add ginger. Then into the barrel with the juice and yeast.

Just the nice side of kick.

Right I’m going to have a go.

One question, is there a lot of smell while its fermenting?

The cupboard under the stairs would make an ideal place to put the beer while its fermenting as its dark, has a pretty constant temperature as its insulated from the temperature fluctuations in the rest of the house, but ami I going to stink out the entire house in the process.

As much as i like the smell of beer enduring it 24/7 might put me off the finished product!

I do mine in a kitchen cupboard, I can only smell it up close.

no, it doesn’t smell very much.

boiling the hops is a different matter, that does stink. but if you’re doing kit brews, you won’t be doing this, normally

busy day for me today:

1) brew an all-grain Porter from scratch. just shy of 20 litres in the fermenting bin at OG 1050, a little higher & a little less volume than planned but I’m sure my mate, who I’m brewing it for, won’t mind.
2) rack last weekend’s 5.5%ABV American IPA into secondary FV, add finings
3) one red (Rioja) and one white wine (Chardonnay) 6 bottle kits started
4) one 30 bottle white wine (Chardonnay again)kit started. Mrs_d likes her Chardonnay 😉

with any luck it’ll all be ready for christmas, and still give me time to get another brew on next week, which should also just about be ready for crimbo. one week to ferment, 3-4 days secondary into bottling; 2 weeks secondary fermentation in bottles, then a week in the cool to clear, which won’t matter so much if I do something dark such as a porter, stout, or Old Peculier/Hobgoblin clone…

looks like a brewery in here

I am about to start first extract brew. Trying an IPA with average bitterness. Planning a part boil with about 10 litres of water. Have fuggles hops. Anyone know how much hops to add and when? I have asked this on brewing forum but not much reply?

Do you know the AA% of the fuggles,and what strength of IPA are you looking at?

Says Alpha 3.81% on the fuggles. I have a tin of Coopers Amber malt extract. I was told that could produce somthing IPA like. Looking for something 3.5% ABV. I was planning on topping up to about 20 litres and adding sugar if required to get the OG up to about 1040. Any advice welcome. All previous brews from kits. No speciality grains planned for this one for simplicity.

Fuggles generally have a low alpha content, not sure they’ll add enough bitterness for an average IPA. I’d pair them up with East Kent Goldings.

I have no experience of how/if you need to adjust quantities in a partial boil, in a full boil I’d go for 35g of each for 60 minutes, 15g each for 15 minutes and 15g of Goldings only at flame out.

Tap those figures into some brewing software should give you an idea of IBU (bittering unit), you’ll want around 40-60 for a run of the mill IPA.

I’d avoid using sugar to get your OG up,it won’t do much for either flavour or body.This recipe will give yoy 12 litres at 3.7% ABV,and 12 litres is easier to manage for a first brew.I like fuggles,this should be ok.

Fuggles IPA
Recipe Specs

Batch Size (L): 12.0
Total Grain (kg): 1.500
Total Hops (g): 60.00
Original Gravity (OG): 1.038 (?P): 9.5
Final Gravity (FG): 1.010 (?P): 2.6
Alcohol by Volume (ABV): 3.73
Colour (SRM): 6.9 (EBC): 13.6
Bitterness (IBU): 36.3 (Average)
Boil Time (Minutes): 60
Grain bill
1.500 kg Liquid Malt Extract ? Amber (100 )
Hop Bill
30.0 g Fuggles Leaf (3.8 Alpha) @ 60 Minutes (Boil) (2.5 g L)
30.0 g Fuggles Pellet (3.8 Alpha) @ 15 Minutes (Boil) (2.5 g L)
Recipe Generated with BrewMate

I’d use an ale yeast,Girvin is easy to use and gives good results.

Good luck,
Ian

Right game on

Just bought a starter brewing kit (bucket and gubbins!) and a Brupaks West Riding Wheat beer kit!

Hopefully I’ll get some beer in time for xmas!

Thats just what I was after Ian. Thanks.