Thread: Help withnallstoke get wankered.

Originally Posted by Bower

A diary is good too, if you gat a real good brew you want to remember what you did and when.

Good idea. I'll do a photo thread on the process.

Originally Posted by Mad Hatter

And what pray are you going to name this salacious beverage?

Dunno yet.

Originally Posted by Katana

Yeah plastic soft drink bottles are the best.

The 1.25 litre withthe 3 dimple legs was the perfect size and and dregs stayed in them.

We had great brews from stouts to lagers.

The 2 things are clean clean clean and the longer you leave them the nicer they are.

We had up to 100l going at atime and never had a screw cap soft drink bottle go, even on our 'experimental' brews that would have exploded glass bottles the pressure just popped out the area between the legs ....

Mark

yep
i can vouch for the plastic fizzy-drink bottles.
used to use recycled beer quart bottles and a crowning tool until a friend showed me the light.
over- priming at bottling time can have some entertaining conclusions!

let us know how the brew turns out.

You only need a little bit of sugar when priming, or it'll turn out like that gassy shit one buys in Germany.

Originally Posted by withnallstoke

The plan is to buy a black plastic bin (only available in black), with a lid.

Use a 5 gallon water container, available at Makro etc..

The bin itself will be stood in a bowl of water to prevent climbing insects/ants from getting into it

You need to keep the beer at around 22c otherwise off flavours will develop during fermentation. Keep it in a cool place, drape a wet towel over it and point a fan at it. This will help you keep it cool, also consider adding ice into the water bath every day.

Still no idea on how to bottle it though,

Just use PET pepsi and coke bottles.

Kit beers never turn out that good, especially if you are adding sugar, but you should still be able to create something drinkable. To create a really good beer is difficult and there is a lot of stuff to consider.

Some key points:

-after fermentation has begun, avoid mixing in any air at all costs as this will create off flavours with age.

-keep fermentation as close to 22c as possible

-consider buying 2 buckets so you can siphon into the other after about a week of fermentation. This will aid clarity. You can also then mix the priming sugar to the entire bath before bottling to make sure every bottle is equal.

-remember the 1 2 3 rule. That is 1 week primary fermentation, 2 weeks secondary fermentation and then 3 weeks in the bottle, before drinking.

-disregard the kit instructions, they are rubbish

-If possible use dry malt extract instead of sugar when adding to the kit

Originally Posted by madjbs

If possible use dry malt extract instead of sugar when adding to the kit

This is a VIP [Very Important Point] - ideally your kit should contain dried malt extract, if not complain to the idiot who supplied it.

Here's a book, Beer Tap into the Art and Science of Brewing, a brief description......a week in the life of a small-scale brewer, to be 'borrowed':

h33t - Beer Tap into the Art and Science of Brewing - torrent


And, while looking for a nice piccie, I found this:



Don't know if any of the torrents is still working, but here you can give it a go:

Homebrewing For Dummies, 2nd Ed.~tqw~_darksiderg Torrent Download

The Brewing Bible

^ Agreed, that site has all the info you need to make a decent beer and it gives you walk through instructions for brewing with a kit.