Barrelled 40 pints on Tuesday. Festival pilgrims hope.
Just splashed a nudge into a glass. Seems to be building up pressure in the barrel nicely, looks the right colour, good head.

Doesn’t seem to taste great though. Very bitter, perhaps a little sour which I believe can be a sign of infection. Is this what I’d expect at this stage and will it get better or does it sound like it’s going bad?
i was going to leave it for 3-4 weeks before having a proper drink.

I used to make homebrew years ago, it was a hit ‘n’ miss affair really. Most of the time it was awesome, occasionally it tasted a bit odd, still drinkable though. When it was nice it was really nice.

I could never get to the route of the issue but I was doing something wrong even though I followed the same process every time.

How long since you brewed it?

I tend not to touch any of my beers for at least a month from brew day, often much longer (2-4 weeks fermentation, 2 weeks carb, conditioning). I tend to taste a lot along the way and some beers are a bit wild until they hit the 4 weeks+ mark.

Is that a kit? Some kits are supposed to be quite naff anyway aren’t they?

Yeah, it’s a kit. I fermented it for just over two weeks like it said. Checked the SG and it had stopped bubbling so I reckon it was the right time to barrel. This is supposed to be one of the better ones. The instructions say 2-4 weeks carb and conditioning.

3 days too early to say, as far as general taste goes. Had a few improve remarkably through conditioning.
It can tell you if something has gone wrong, though – like if it tastes appalling after 3 days then there’s usually trouble at mill and no amount of conditioning will improve matters. That doesn’t sound like it’s the case here, though, so patience is the order of the day.

Wait a bit longer.

I’ve had beers that tasted a bit rubbish, then completely mellowed out just given a wee bit extra time to condition.

Excellent, thanks. Just wanted a bit of reassurance. A home brew forum has also suggested leaving it at least a month after sticking it in the barrel.

Off to the home brew shop now to get my next kit, a lager this time I think. That one I’ll be bottling. Still trying to find some cheap bottles. This place does 15 for a tenner which sounds a bit pricey. Online is much cheaper which is a pity.

Wow! That is expensive. My LHBS (which is generally pretty pricey for most stuff) does some good, strong bottles at 12 for £3.50

Where are you based Samuri? More than happy to grab you some and drop off if you’re anywhere around my travels.

Which brand of kit? I do mostly Coopers and they all turn out OK. The IPA with extra dried hops is my favourite.

I tried a Brewmaker IPA. The fermentation was much less vigorous than a Coopers. After bottling it had a yeasty homebrew taste. It improved slightly after a few weeks but got nowhere near as good as a Coopers.

i bottled a festival razorback IPA in July, I think its just coming into its own now.

My first brew was a woodfordes wherry and it was ok, but you could taste that yeasty homebrew taste. It didn’t last long enough in the barrel to mature much.
My 2nd was the IPA which i’ve bottled and pretty much left alone in a cool garage for months, except the odd tester. That had the HB “tang” but its almost completely gone now and i have a light amber beer with good carbonation and a lovely grapefruit nose.

my 3rd brew was a woodfordes Nog, bottled at the end of sept with the intention of using it for a halloween / bonfire party. its going to be a christmas / new year brew at least as it has got the homebrew taste at the mo, so i reckon a nice cool condition in the garage will work wonders. Its bad enough at the moment that i’ll serve the IPA that i made back in july. Not quite a bonfire beer but no point in serving something i’m not happy with.

To be honest i wouldn’t really touch a brew after barrelling / bottling for at least a month, possibly two. The hardest things about home brew is developing a. patience and b. a good rolling stock 🙂

oh and samurai – the best place to find bottles is on the shelf of your local shops 🙂 find a beer you like in a 500ml brown bottle and buy them, enjoy them, rinse them once you are done and scrub the labels off (sometimes easier said than done)

the good thing is you can reuse your recycled bottles if you build up enough of a stock to bottle multiple batches of beer.

If you’re anywhere near these people http://www.ampulla.co.uk/Shop-For-Glass/Glass-Beer-&-Cider-Bottles/c-1-169-204/ they look good.

Oh,and definitely leave it alone for a month,it will taste much better then.
Ian

As others have said, homebrew often improves over a month or two.

As for infection, I am very sloppy about sterilisation, and have never had a problem. I wonder if I’m lucky, or if it really isn’t that common a problem. Of course it would be annoying to lose a batch if it did go wrong, so I can understand people erring on the side of caution. But I wouldn’t immediately look in that direction just cos the beer isn’t great. Temperature, ingredients (including water) are all big factors. Recently I’ve been reusing 500ml PET bottles which I find v convenient, you get to drink the (gin and) tonic first and the soft bottle makes it easy to check pressure during secondary fermentation.

I often found that beer in a pressure barrel would taste a bit “off”. I think it’s oxidisation from all that air sat on top of the beer before secondary fermentation can build up a layer of CO2

I bottle all my beer now. Theakstons, Black Sheep & the new Fullers bottles are my favourites as the labels fall off as soon as you show them some water. You can also get Coopers PET bottles from Tesco, box of 24x 500ml bottles for a tenner. Reusable a few times but they soon start to crackle, at which point I bin them

regarding kit beers, the two can kits are often better than the single can kits, to which you have to add sugar. especially if you use normal sugar rather than spraymalt or dextrose.
All Grain is the way to go if you want home brewed beer that doesn’t taste like homebrew beer kits…

There’s a lot of good advice in these walkthroughs http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/viewforum.php?f=30 and on the rest of the forum, http://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk/forum/index.php?sid=cfa898a2d27589c5f33db9378c98ec1f is very good too,not so many prima donnas on brewing sites 😀

I’ve done a Festival Pilgrims Hope and it one of the nicest kits I’ve brewed, they are always in the barrel at least 4 weeks and usually more before drinking though. I’d leave it alone for a while if I were you.

click wilko’s do 6 bottles with grolsch type tops for 8 quid.

Just got back from the shop. He has the PET bottles which are cheaper but I’m still not keen on the idea of plastic bottles (bizarre, I know). He also said leave it in the barrel for a month for best taste. Seems to be the consensus.

I’ll see what I can build up through my own activities and then buy some to bring it up to 40 odd. I’ve bought a pilsner kit which I’ll get going tomorrow. I forgot to get a second bucket which is annoying.

Where are you based Samuri? More than happy to grab you some and drop off if you’re anywhere around my travels.

North West, Leigh/Warrington. If you can that would be very much appreciated.

I will go all grain John, once I’ve done a few kit brews first. Just wanted to gain some experience first.

I’ve done a few kit beers

All have been pretty good.

I’ve moved onto the slightly more complicated extract kits – Brupaks Brewers Choice. All have been really good.

I’d love to do an all grain brew but I’m a bit tight for space for any additional equipment.

I always bottle and every kit I have done has improved after 4 weeks in the bottle

oh and samurai – the best place to find bottles is on the shelf of your local shops find a beer you like in a 500ml brown bottle and buy them, enjoy them, rinse them once you are done and scrub the labels off (sometimes easier said than done)

Erdinger Wiesbeer labels come off really easily, Franziskaner are a pain though!

He has the PET bottles which are cheaper but I’m still not keen on the idea of plastic bottles (bizarre, I know).

As long as the PET bottles are proper and lined and you don’t drink it out of the bottle it won’t affect the taste (which is the same with a can) the whole glass bottles thing is marketing mostly, and for smaller brewers, the only way to deliver beer, because bottling plastic and cans is expensive for short runs.

Most of my bottles are Franziskaner, I put about half a dozen in a plastic bin, fill with hot water & a couple of scoops of bicarb, an hour later the labels have fallen off and the foil comes off whole.

I’d love to do an all grain brew but I’m a bit tight for space for any additional equipment.

all you need extra is one of these:

£115 ish

(it’s about the size of another fermenting bin and when not in use your fermenting bin will probably nest inside it anyway)

and a mashing / sparging bag, less than a tenner. Or a sheet of voile from your local fabric shop, a couple of quid, make your own bag.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kfi86yzhPvw[/video]

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWH9oCiY4Lw[/video]

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_qI9O_BmNo[/video]

and no, that’s not me. I’m from Yorkshire, not Australia

a 23L (5 gallon) batch will typically use 4-6kg of grain (at £1.80 for a kilo of pale malt and £1 a half kilo of other grains, not expensive. Even cheaper if you buy in bulk) and possibly as little as 50g of hops, from £4 per 100g). plus your yeast.

That had the HB “tang”

crush a campden tablet into your water before you add it to the kit / grains. This will get rid of the chlorine in the water and can go some way to get rid of that “tang”

Right, here’s where I’m at now.

Dark festival ale has now been brewing for the allotted time so time for a pint. It tastes absolutely delicious. Bit cloudy though, is that just a time thing or just a home brew thing?

darkbitter by Jon Wyatt, on Flickr

Munsters Pilsner went into the bottles tonight. That’s still very cloudy but I’d expect that at this stage. Still a few days in a warm place to go before moving to the garage.

lager by Jon Wyatt, on Flickr

That’s a lot of beer. The barrel is now in the garage.

allbeer by Jon Wyatt, on Flickr

yes time will clear most beers store somewhere nice and cool for a few weeks
and dark if in those clear bottles as light can make your beer bad tasting .

Thanks. The bottles are just there for two days to start off the secondary fermentation and then they’ll go into the garage where it’s cool and dark.

Depends on the conditions – if you allow plenty of time for secondary fermentation then the taste improves considerably. Also, using the right sugar is a must. Ordinary bleached white sugar doesn’t give best results, but I’ve made some passable brews using brown sugar.

I have a friend who uses a heat pad underneath the primary fermentation tub.

Looking good Samuri! But soon enough you’ll get 6 kegs, 4 bottle crates and realise that

That’s NOT a lot of beer.

😆

Cheers,
Jamie

i’d secondary ferment in bottles / keg for two weeks at the same temp as the primary fermentation, then move to a cool place. If you dont leave enough time for the secondary fermentation you could end up with a flat, yeasty brew.

Cheers

*bookmarks thread*

Is that normal then David? I did that with the barrel but I’m worried about the bottles jizzing their contents all over my study if I leave them there too long.

I use Coopers carbonation tablets for secondary fermentation.

I’ve always had good results with these. Much simpler and more accurate than adding brewing sugar

Two to three weeks after bottling, at room temp, then move them somewhere cool for conditioning is normal.
I have 30+ bottles of Old Peculier clone sitting by the radiator. Been there 3 weeks, I opened one a week ir so ago and it was still quite flat. The few PET bottles in the batch are now quite firm so come the weekend I’ll try another bottle

Re the cloudiness: a) did you use any finings and b) did you pour carefully or just dump it out of the bottle?

Looking at those pics, you’re leaving too much head room in the bottles. If you use a bottling stick then fill the bottle to overflowing. When you remove the stick then the beer level will go down to the right level.

Also, avoid clear glass bottles. Brown are best, sunlight can affect/taint beer (I avoid breweries who bottle in clear glass – Shep Neame being a case in point).

I use Coopers Carb drops when bottling, one per pint bottle for an ale, two recommended for lagers.

I’ve generally found that to get real clarity you need pay attention to your beer post boil. Be very careful when you are going from primary to secondary or clearing not to get too much sheeeite in the beer and defintely do a secondary for a week to really clear it. Before you bottle, if you can, get the fermenter in a nice cold place like a fridge to drop everything out. Then wine thief it out from the top, not the bottom. Fill yoru bottles to the top. Any Co2 produced will go in the beer not into the void. Or better still keg it in corny kegs and co2 it. Best way is co2 into the keg, fill it, gas it and vent it to get all the air out. I do 80/160 litre batches and can get crystal clear beer.

Ooh blimey. Lots of words there I don’t understand.

No finings. The primary fermentation bin has a tap near the base so I just let it run out into a second bucket. Left a couple of pints and the crud in the bottom. Then I siphoned from the second bucket into the bottles. Used priming sugar (it’s like a powder) but I’ll guarantee I put different amounts in each bottle. Hard to get right.

I used a bottling stick which has this upside umbrella thing at the barrel end, I taped the stick to the side of the barrel with the stick flat on the bottom.

Noted on the headroom in the bottles and I like the idea of the carb tablets, they sound much easier than trying to measure stuff out.

To be honest, I’d much rather just barrel everything. A lot less faff and easier to store but I wanted to share the love with friends, hence the bottles.

No finings. The primary fermentation bin has a tap near the base so I just let it run out into a second bucket.

Did you do this in such a way as to exclude as much oxygen as possible?

Its not easy on a small scale to do alot of testing for gravity without high losses. To get it polished in a bottle best to use some copper finings . Then transfer from FV to secondary bucket and use a tiny amount of finings . Wait a week then bottle. The amount of cells per ml needed for secondary is tiny , less than 1 million per ml .

As stated that bottle is no where near full enough and is too yeasty. After primary fermentation the yeast will start to floculate as it runs out of simple sugars ( glucose , Maltose, sucrose ) and starts attacking the malto-dextrins . Maybe cool your FV a touch more after fermentation is over before transferring to secondary.

Leave in secondary for 3-4 days more at a lower temp with some aux finings to drop some protein, although aux has a little more effect on dropping temps . Isinglass better on a rising temp.