After a fairly terrible first attempt I’m trying to brew some beer again

It’s doing its first ferment at the moment. The kit says it takes 4-7 days.
Once it’s hit the recommended specific gravity I’m going to pop it in a barrel for the conditioning.
I’ve got the suger to add but what’s not clear is what temperature it needs to be kept at for stage two
The room it’s in now is cold so I have a heat belt on it and it’s about 21 degrees.
once barrelled does it need to be kept warm or does it not matter..?

Fancy trying a lager next (well if this works!) any easy, good kits out there?

Ta all

It’s doing its first ferment at the moment. The kit says it takes 4-7 days.

Kit instructions lie. I would reckon two weeks, possibly three, though I tend to ferment at 18-20 degrees. Best thing is to measure it with a hydrometer – you know you’re done when it stops dropping. Generally, you would keep the barrel warm for a few days to get the sugar fermenting, then into the cold for conditioning. I find the flavour improves if you leave it for a couple of months.

21 degC is at the high end for fermentation IMO, I aim for around 18 degC.

Once you transfer to a conditioning barrel then get the temp right down, I put the barrel in the garage in winter. You don’t want it to freeze but sub 10 degrees is good. This stops any residual yeast activity and allows the beer to clear down.

21 degC is at the high end for fermentation IMO, I aim for around 18 degC.

Kit says between18-28 degrees….
Might cool it down a touch!!

Maybe should have said it’s a golden ale at the mo..
lager seems to be done a bit cooler but as I said this is all a bit new!!

20 – 24’C is good for Nottingham Ale Yeast
18 – 20 ‘C seems to suit SO4 better
7 days is more than enough. You want some residul sugars for secondary fermentation so aim for 1/4 grvity then remove the heat belt and move to the coolest inside room in your house.
Leave cold for a 5 – 8 days before transfer then allow to warm up to 16 – 18 to start secondary feremntation off again. If its in a pressure barrel then it may be as quick as 72hrs before it needs dropping back to below 9’c then its more or less ready

I wouldn’t use a pressure barrel. If it’s not properly clean you’ll lose the whole batch. If you use bottles and one of the bottles is not properly clean, you only lose one bottle

Two weeks at room temp after bottling then two or more weeks somewhere cooler

Yeast has to go through three phases during fermentation.

Adaptive – the cells of the yeast multiply produce enzymes to metabolise the sugars present in the wort. Some yeasts produce more of some enzymes than others, which is why some yeasts can attenuate further than others.

Attenuative – the enzymes convert the sugars into alcohols

Conditioning – the yeast metabolises it’s by-products

Now, depending on factors including how much healthy yeast there was to start with (kit’s are really bad for this, often insufficient yeast and old packets), temperature, oxygenation of the wort etc the first and second stage can take from 24 hours to over a week. Conditioning can then take a week or months, again it depend on temperature, yeast health, all-sorts.

The advantage a homebrewer has over pro’s is time, we can leave it in the primary fermenter for weeks because it costs us nothing. Which means all the yeast can be working on it. It takes months for beer to go off in the primary so no worries there. A lot of home-brewers leave it in there for 2-3 weeks as a minimum. This way the beer that comes out is already drinkable and secondary fermentation in the bottle only has to fizz it up, there’s not the ‘conditioning’ to do (which can take months in bottles).

If you’re going to secondary ferment it in a pressure barrel rather than bottles it’s a little different, but you can still speed it up by leaving it longer in primary.

As for temperatures, warmer is better in secondary (within sensible bounds) because almost all the sugar has already gone there’s less chance of producing by-products. I crank my controller up from 18C to 23C at the end of primary. Then I’ve conditioned in bottles at upto 28C because by that point there’s no need to chill.

Then you cool it, as cold as you can go without freezing. This does 2 things, 1 – yeast goes to sleep and falls to the bottom. 2 – proteins percipitate out, without forcing them out of solution the beer will always go cloudy at low temps (then clear if you leave it in a glass to warm up).

Using liquid yeast made a huge difference to my brewing when i was making beers. Not sure if it’s because liquid yeasts are intrinsically better or that the yeast i was using before was particularly bad however.

21c is too warm for primary fermentation, aim for about 18c.

I made a few kits before moving on to all grain and although I made some drinkable beer, it still had a “twang”.

Make the leap and go all grain.

Fancy trying a lager next (well if this works!) any easy, good kits out there?

If you want to brew a lager, you need good temperature control. A true lager yeast ferments at about 12c. If using kits, stick to ales.

I always recommend this site for home brewers http://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk/index.htm

The kit says it takes 4-7 days.

A lot of home-brewers leave it in there for 2-3 weeks as a minimum.

Coot – This rings true with what Chris B, who makes a-mazing homebrew, does. He basically sticks in primary fermentation and forgets about it for a month, then bottles it.

My chief weapon is aeration – bucket on the floor, fill using a kettle held at head height. Yeast needs the oxygen to start and water that’s just been boiled or come out of a tap has very little. That and a brewing fridge with heater and controller for constant temperature and bottles.

Amongst my chief weapons are aeration, constant temperature, bottles and near fanatical devotion to cleanliness

For conditioning, I would normally do a week at room temp, then to the coolest place possible, usually the garage.

For lager, I’m sure you know this, but lager is more technical because it involves fermenting at low tempratures (10deg) and “Lagering” (extended fermenting for 4 weeks)at cold (0-4 deg). You basically need a fridge with precise temperature control to get something that tastes like lager.

You can brew with lager yeast at ale tempratures, but it will taste like ale, not lager.

Amongst my chief weapons are aeration, constant temperature, bottles and near fanatical devotion to cleanliness

As with any “food” production good hygiene is important. However, I think a lot of fanatical stuff is encouraged by the stores to sell a lot of over priced chemicals.

Remember beer was brewed for thousands of years before anyone even knew what a microbe was. Fermenting beer is more robust and resists infection better than most think.

I use Lidl non – perfumed oxi cleaner and Starsan type no rinse sanitiser. Never bother with air locks either, completely unnecessary.

I’m also a fanatical fan of Monty Python’s Spanish Inquisition sketch…

Reporting back..!
I left the beer in the primary far longer than the kit said, as per advice ^^
I decided to transfer it to the pressure barrel as the specific gravity stabilised and the water in the airlock began to pull back to the beer side instead of appearing to be under pressure and being pushed away from the beer.

I think I put to much sugar in the barrel for secondary however in theory it’s ready so I’m sat here with a pint of beer I’ve brewed.
It’s really not to bad! It tastes a bit weak which could be a bit dangerous!
Looking at it I can’t work out the abv as I didn’t take the specific gravity at the beginning to note the difference between start and end SG so unless someone knows another way….!

Here’s to the next attempt!!!

Well done sir. Don’t obsess about SG – your not paying revenue so it doesn’t matter if it’s 4.5% or 5.5%. The amount of malt and sugar is all you’re worried about as you’re allowing the primary fermentation to gobble it all up.

MartynS – Member

Looking at it I can’t work out the abv as I didn’t take the specific gravity at the beginning to note the difference between start and end SG so unless someone knows another way….!

I recommend near infra-red spectroscopy for ABV determination, about as quick and accurate as other instrumental methods, but overall a much more versatile machine.

The reference method to measure the density of your beer, is to distill the alcohol into a fresh flask leaving behind all of the remaining stuff (sugars and other ephemera) which otherwise obscure the measurement (compared to water sugars increase the density, ethanol lowers it). Measure the density of a known volume, containing your alcohol and convert to ABV using HMRC tables.

Send me a dozen bottles and I’ll run it at work for you. NIR takes 1ml, but I might need enough for repeats!

Matt

@matt….
Nice try!!

I had to have another, just to check, you can’t fly on one wing can you…

The next lots getting bottled to see if there is any difference!

Marginally less expensive than getting a lab to do it, you can take a gravity reading and refractometer and because they compensate for sugar/alcohol in different ways and back calculate the OG and abv%.

As it’s a kit you can just google it and probably find someone elses OG and as long as you followed the instructions it’ll be close enough.