The home brew thread

[Two Gun Bob]

You also have to prime your bottles for the secondary fermentation to take place.
You do this by adding dextrose or sugar to the bottles in a measured amount.
Even kegs or barrels need priming with sugar roughly 80 gramme to 40 pints
The normal way is once primary fermentation has finished you either keg or bottle the beer where secondary fermentation and conditioning happen together. Some peeps rack the beer off the yeast into another vessel to aid clearing before bottling or kegging.
Leave the keg/bottles somewhere warm for the priming/secondary fermentation to work, for say a week or two,
Move it/them somewhere cool to condition for a few to several weeks.
Lager yeasts are some what different and require far more conditioning than ales and at much cooler temperatures
Lagers are stored for longer periods which is where the term lager comes from,its German for to store.

If bottling the lot you can rack the beer off the yeast to a second bucket or keg and stir the brewing sugar into the whole batch as that distributes it nicely, and then just simply bottle from that.
This is known as batch priming.

There are some really simple products on the market for newbies that aid you in getting the right amount of sugar in each bottle for priming.
Coopers do packets of priming sugar pellets to add to the bottles saving you the hassle of weighing it n then fretting over inadvertently placing a smidgin's too much dextrose in the bottles and blowing your brewshop up : )


See the instructional video below where an articulate brewer by the name of Corky from the infamous youtube network describes in layman's terms the processes involved.
Its good to talk ; )

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

 

[TINY]

Thanks for the links mate. After watching some of the videos from "Craig tube", I've decided to buy the Coopera DIY lager kit; it's a tad expensive at £68.00, but I figure as long as I do it correctly, and make a few batches, then it'll be worth it and each pint made will cost less and less. Can't wait to get started!

 

[RP2]

The packets of Coopers pellets are brilliant!

1 for ale/lager
2 for fizzy cider

 

[TINY]

A little a head of myself no doubt, however, how does one over the issue of sediment in a bottle after "secondary fermentation"?

 

[sky tot]

Im just finishing of drinking my 2nd batch of homebrew.Both have been from the Brewferm range-1st one was a Belguim Grande Cru, 2nd one was a Belguim Triple ...
Both beers imo were very nice but strong 8 %..
Bought both beers and all my basic starter kit from Julies Homebrew supplies in Newton Heath. She is really helpful an
and even gives you her phone number for when you need advise ( which I did ) . <a class="postlink" href="http://www.homebrewshops.co.uk/place/julies-homebrew/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.homebrewshops.co.uk/place/julies-homebrew/</a>

 

[-dabz-]

Not sure if it's been mentioned already, but if your brewing from a kit, boil the water first to get rid of any chlorine or whatever it is they stick in the water. It's gets rid of that weird taste that comes with home brew and makes it more like a proper beer.
It's not much more effort to brew from the raw ingredients and well worth going the extra mile if you can be bothered.

Turbo cider is a good one for lazy gits.
Get a few cartons of fresh pressed apple juice and flirt it into a sterilised demijohn, add yeast, bung in an airlock, leave for two weeks, drink.

 

[Two Gun Bob]

Yep looks a cracking starter kit Tiny and that chap at craig-tube really seems to know his hops from his wort.
I decided to plump for the milestones real ale starter kit at £79.99
Reason was that I already had a massive collection of Steinhausser bottles in my big blue refuge bin waiting to be emptied and the only extra I would require would be a bottle top machine at a £10.
Also the milestones kit had the king keg barrel incorporating a top tap.
Top tap is good for drawing the ale away from the trub or sediment at the bottom ensuring an A1 clear pint.
This would be more ideal for my session real ales such as the Woodfords wherry and Lions pride I have on the go.



I also intended to just bottle my lagers and Pilsners so the combination of both keg and bottles seemed best for me.
Tell you what though I just come in from grafting and had a had a cheeky lickle nibble from my keg and looking good.
Primed to the keg now all the deliciously mouthwatering and exquisitely lovely 40 real ale pints of it.
Will store at room temperature for a week then store more cooler at around 12 c for 3 week for conditioning.
If you sup the wine as well pal then your quids in and will return your initial investment the fastest as it will produce 30 bottles for under £30. Comparable quality of about the £7-£8 a bottle mark.
Some of the Beaverdale kits that a pal of mine has just knocked out retailing at the £50 mark are comparable with a £10 a bottle wine and are truly quality.
These also make up 30 bottles so do the sums
The good thing with the wine is you can just use the equipment you have bought for beer brewing, its basically one and the same.
If your anything like me then you will quickly need more fermentation vessels which are on offer at the moment for only £7 each at Wlikinson's which is an absolute steal so fill your boots to capacity quickly!
Remember the wine making is not rocket science and is probably the easiest to achieve for newbies like me.
If you can make a glass of vimto then you can rip 30 bottles of extremely palatable and drinkable wine out in less than 2 weeks. Amen and happy days to that

I grabbed a Wilkinsons Cervasa yesterday for only £7.50 for 30 pints.
Don't know when we can brew it as the house resembles and stinks like a mini withererspoons at the moment and also I have no buckets left but I simply just could not resist !

Wilko's own brands are produced by Muntons one of the top players in home brew.
They are however single malt tins as opposed to quality kits offering 3.5 k double tins of malt.
So add DME (Dried malt extract) at say 500 gramme and some brewing sugar of 500-750gramme to supplement.
And maybe add some sazz hops for extra lager flavour.
And if you do have the facilities to keep your fermentation to a minimum temperature range then consider swapping the supplied ale yeast in the lager packs for a saflager 23 yeast for better taste and authenticity.
With the extra DME it still only retails at the fandabeedozy £12 mark or 40 pence a pint ; )

Sky tot
You could probably clean your jewelry in that primeval concoction at the 8% mark !

Thanks for the links mate. After watching some of the videos from "Craig tube", I've decided to buy the Coopera DIY lager kit; it's a tad expensive at £68.00, but I figure as long as I do it correctly, and make a few batches, then it'll be worth it and each pint made will cost less and less. Can't wait to get started!

 

[tom]

Thanks for the links mate. After watching some of the videos from "Craig tube", I've decided to buy the Coopera DIY lager kit; it's a tad expensive at £68.00, but I figure as long as I do it correctly, and make a few batches, then it'll be worth it and each pint made will cost less and less. Can't wait to get starte

Check tesco first they had this kit cheaper the other day was the Oldham store mindd!

 

[tom]

Sainsburys sell kilners home brew too

 

[TINY]

So my first couple of batches of home brew are under way. Did my first beer on Sunday evening, a coopers lager from their DIY kit. Looking good already, fermentation definitely taking place. This morning I started a wine off, a Sauvignon blanc, which was the easiest thing I've done. The instructions call for me to leave it for 5-7 days, then add some more stuff and shake the demijohn periodically for the next few days.

I'm looking forward to sampling them both! I must have watched 100-120 videos on the subject in the last week!