Hi all got kit for Crimbo no equipment as yet. Kit is coopers ipa, read various sites regarding equipment, just need some more newbie/ numptie basic info, want to bottle finished brew, good idea? Do I need two tubs, vessels do they need taps, which is best , preferred site supplier of equipment? Cheers in advance , brocks

if you want to bottle finish it then the only equipment you really need is a fermenting bucket and siphon. you can siphon straight into the bottle, depending on the type you’ll need a crown capper too. all available from wilko’s if you have one local or any home brew shop. also it’s a one can kit i would recommend using spray malt or liquid malt extract as the added fermentable as table sugar does lead to a thinner final product.

if you are going to brew again and keep bottling then it could be worth investing in a second bucket and a little bottler so speed things up and make bottling easier

vwr to wash everything.
A brewing vessel (BV) with a tap and hole in lid.
A little bottler (bottling wand) for the tap.
A big paddle.
A proper capper – it’s a pita to do with the duff 2 armed thing, get the proper 1 armed bench top one for a few extra quid.
Bottles? I use heffeweissen ones.
crown caps.
Airlock bubbler.
2x good bottle brush – they are good for 5-6 brews only
I forget the right name, but something to measure the gravity, plus a measuring cyclinder (makes it easier to measure a small volume).

This is the bare minimum to make homebrew kits easy and repeatable to make, you can get away with less and cheaper kit but it’s a lot more faff, worth spending a bit more to make is easier.

A thermometer is handy.

I use homebrewwest a lot – irish based (their craft range is verygood), if your in stockport the homebrew shop there is great.

As a rough guide:

Wash everything in VWR using the BV, make sure to clean the BV lid. Rinse, use the BV lid as a clean workplace.

Boil a kettle, fill big pan with some water. add wort tin stuff to pan, fill emptyish tin with 1/3 boiling water. Use paddle to get most wort from the tin and into pan. Maybe do again if needed… the wort is where you are paying your money, get as much as possible out – I leave a clean tin.

Add your sugar/DME/LME (not sure whats with the ipa kit) to the pan, make sure everything is dissolved properly – stick a bit of heat under it.

Fill BV to ~65% full with water. The quality of water makes a difference, on the isle of white I’d use bottled water (more expense), in manchester tap water is fine.

Now add your wort mix from the pan, rinse out the pan with more boiling water, you should now have enough ullage to adjust the temperature to that required for the yeast. Humans are very poor at absolute temperatures, this is where the thermometer is handy. You have to work quickly to adjust the temp, grab a sample (from the tap! into the measuring cyclinder) of the wort mix in the BV and add the yeast because the wort mix is a big fementing vessel for any bugs that get in before the yeast. Some yeast need a stir, some a soak and some can be just sprinkled on top.

once the yeast is in seal up the lid and add the airlock with a bit less water than you think (they do not like boiling water btw). Then read the gravity reading and record it on the little round bit of paper provided and add the date.

After 10-14 days in a warm place (I leave mine in the kitchen) take another small sample from the tap into the measuring cycling and calc your %abv using the supplied formula. Then 24 hours later take another reading, fingers crossed it’s the same gravity, which means it’s finished fermenting. Try not to move the BV too much as you get sediment everywhere. Don’t bottle if your gravity is still dropping as the capped bottles turn into voatile pressure bomobs (spesh if doing ginger beer)

Wash and steralise your bottles (and bottling wand), it’s the job I hate the most, down to 90mins to wash and bottle ~46 500ml bottles now.

To each bottle add some sugar – I think the general formula was 70g sugar in 100ml boiled water and then add 5ml solution to each bottle (coopers do carbonation drops for ease, some people use a 2nd bv to add the carbonation sugar).

Use the bottling wand and crown capper to bottle the beer. I like to keep track of the last 4-6 bottles depending on sediment content so I know if I get one why it’s cloudy.

Then keep the bottles somewhere warm for a week to allow the yeast to turn the sugar into about another 0.5% alcohol and to pressure the bottles (heffe bottles are designed for bottle fermentation). After a week store somewhere cool for another 2-4 weeks before drinking, Will be better the longer you leave it up to about 6-12 months.

Always remember to give the bottle a quick rinse when you empty it, easier to get damp sediment off the bottom of the bottle straight away than stuff allowed to go mouldy and weld itself to the bottom of the bottle.

enjoy!

I made my first home brew at the end of last year from a kit like yours. Turned out brilliant! Very tasty. The kit I needed was as follows:

1 20L bucket with tap
Thermometer
Hydrometer
Air lock thing for bucket
Big stirring thing
Bottle filler attachment for bucket tap
Sterilising solution
40 x 500ml PET bottles

I’ve been told by a few folk that hygiene is the main thing. So get everything well laid out and clean before starting and sterilise everything that touches the beer. Use cooled pre-boiled water for rinsing.

My main problem was maintaining the temperature, mine went to sleep after 10days as it got too cold. Started fermenting again when it warmed up no harm done.

Enjoy!

This time of year we used a brew belt – electric heater that would fit around the cask and let the yeast get up to a happy temperature

Otherwise house was too cold for the fermentation stuff to spring into life as enthusiastically as you may want

Not much to add apart from to agree that a bucket with a tap that works with a rigid tube/bottling thingy helps a lot, much easier than a syphon tube with tap. And I found that the Wilko’s capper is quite fussy as to which bottles it works well with.

I use purple beer line cleaner rather than VWP. VWP is basically powdered chlorine based bleach, and if you don’t rinse thoroughly, or leave some of the grains behind, it can add some pretty unpleasant flavours to your beer.
Think liquid “germolene” 😯

When you get round to bottling, I recommend at least one Coopers PET bottle in each batch, so you can tell when it’s fully carbonated – the bottle will go from being squishy when you fill it to rock hard when carbonated.
Bigger Tesco stores sell them at about £10 for 24 bottler, and being screw caps, you don’t need to worry about a crown capper.
Most bottled ales come in a bottle that you can reuse, but I find that Wychwood bottles have a rim that’s too wide for mine.
Beer bottles should be brown, to avoid the beer getting “light-struck” which is really unpleasant. Think “skunk” 😯

This time of year we used a brew belt – electric heater that would fit around the cask and let the yeast get up to a happy temperature

Otherwise house was too cold for the fermentation stuff to spring into life as enthusiastically as you may want

I wouldn’t recommend that, if the fermenting temperature is too high -above 25 – you can get some more odd flavours. If your house is really too cold to ferment between 18 & 22, brew lagers!