We don't have enough space for 40 glass bottles so I was going to stick half in the barrel, but thinking about it it's probably too much of a faff so I'll use half a dozen 2-litre lemonade bottles.
Will be reading back through this thread in the next few days, already seen some good tips about bottling like ADJB's "sterilise in the bath" trick :)
I only use 2l PET bottles these days as 40-50 glass bottles is just too much of a PITA - 11 2l bottles is much more manageable! I'm not even particularly careful with the sterilisation process when bottling these days and I've never had anything go wrong with the beer. I do use sterilizing powder, dissolve some in water, stick a bit in the bottles and give 'em a good shake. Then rinse them out a couple of times with clean water.
To be fair, my beer doesn't last long enough for anything to go wrong with it :-)
Had a bit of a panic last night as fermentation seemed to have stopped - I think it had got too hot, so I moved it to the downstairs toilet/shower room where it's slightly cooler and it had started up again by this morning. Phew!
The problem at the moment is the ambient temperature is higher than ideal to do a normal brew. I will be starting a couple of brews of wine off tonight and they will be going under the stairs to ferment which is about the coolest bit of the house with a regular temperature rather than anywhere (like the kitchen for example) where there could be up to a 15' fluctuation over 24 hours. Brews like a stable temp not a rapidly changing one. I won't be putting a beer on until it gets quite a bit cooler because of this.
I'm hoping it'll be OK in our shower room, it's in a much cooler part of the house (it's a 1940s ex-council house, the part that would once have been the coal hole and utility/washing room, I think it's a single brick skin so nowhere near as hot as the rest of the house)
The temperature's usually pretty constant in there and the thermometer's showing 22 degrees at the moment. I'll just have to keep an eye on it...
Never had this problem during the cold/wet summer of 2012, I had to lug the first bucket upstairs to our bedroom for a while to keep it warm!
Beer's all fermented now. Originally I was going to bottle all 40 pints of it, half in glass bottles and the remainder in 2 litre PET bottles... but I realised too late I needed to syphon into a second bucket and add the sugar before bottling (I have a second bucket but it's too small), so I decided to use my barrel as the second bucket and just keep half in the barrel.
One problem though, I've got a crown capper and a load of caps I inherited from my father-in-law, but I just can't get the b$%&@tard things on! The instructions were pretty basic (put cap on bottle, put capper on cap, hit with hammer) but after a couple of minutes of whacking with said hammer it still wasn't sealed at all!
It's one of these, obviously I'm not whacking it too hard but am I being too gentle with it? Perhaps I should fork out for a more advanced capper?
Went for Plan C in the end - tried filling up a 500ml bottle and it was half foam, I guess because the secondary fermentation was taking place in the barrel rather than priming the bottles - not sure why it said to do that but it could be because of all the gunk from the dried elderflowers
So rather than bugger about with 20 bottles of foam for four hours I just filled a couple of PET bottles for my brother-in-law and will have to drink the remaining 30-odd pints from the barrel - not a problem :D
Oh well, at least I know for next time (and will invest in a more advanced capper, ta ADJB)
Came across this and this while wandering the interwebs. Very good for people who like a more "hands on" (read as advanced buggering about) approach to brewing.
Well just having my first proper pint now, it doesn't taste half bad but it's gone flat already! I think I buggered about with it too much during secondary fermentation, I should've just left the whole lot in the barrel rather than trying (and failing) to bottle it.
Oh well, you live and learn. Got about 35 more pints to drink, best get cracking :)
Came across this and this while wandering the interwebs. Very good for people who like a more "hands on" (read as advanced buggering about) approach to brewing.
Interesting, although I can't even seem to manage basic buggering about at the moment! But useful if I ever get to grips with mashing tuns and wort and stuff.
Started my first non-lager brews over the weekend. A Coopers stout and a cider. 25% off offer at Wilkinson's at the mo so thought I'd give something different a punt. The stout smells REALLY strong :-)
Ooh, now I do like stout. Must make a trip to Wilko's.
It's a pretty good deal at the mo - ?10.40 IIRC for a 40 pint kit - 5.3% off a kilo of sugar too! Make sure you get the Wilkinson's brewing sugar which is also reduced (about ?1.50). It's the best brewing sugar I've used.
Done the first decant on two gallons of wine for daughter (strawberry and apricot)
Put on a 2 gallon brew of Suave for the misses
Put on a gallon of Strawberry wine for daughter
and the biggie.....
Somewhere a bit higher up in this thread I mentioned that Tesco's were having a big sale with kits dirt cheap. At the time I got 2 Coopers Ginger Beer kits along with loads of other stuff. I have done it before and its very nice but has, for me, two problems. Firstly it's a bit weak, 3.5% if you follow the kit, that's fine as it's an all day supping beer as your round the barbecue on that nice sunny day we get once a year. It doesn't get you monged no matter how much you put away. Secondly, and worse for me, it's not got the sort of bite you get with a lot of ginger beers and I miss that.
So i've made a few changes to see if I can put these things right.
The basic kit is the can of syrup, 1 kilo of sugar and 20l of water. I have made this tonight with 2 cans of syrup, about 1.75 kilos of sugar and made that up to 20l in total plus I have added 2 300g jars of ginger paste acquired from the local Indian supermarket.
To be honest it looks as if it would be better homed in Porton Down rather than in the kitchen. I have taken the precaution of leaving the lid cracked on the fermenting bin and putting the bin on a load of tea towels for when it tries to escape. My main worry is that the supplied yeast wont have the balls for the job but I have a reseve yeast ready if it dies on me. I'm going fishing in the morning but I will have a quick look an see if its started to fester and then pray it doesn't explode while i'm out or 2 gallons of Suave wont calm the misses down.
It will be interesting but if it will be drinkable is a different question....
Just bought my first demi-john from Wilkinson's. Bit of an impulse buy as we don't drink wine other than at Xmas - still it'll do for a turbo cider! Might make a batch of wine for my mum though - is it best to use one of the kits or make your own up?
I dont drink wine but I brew a fair bit and on the recommendations of the drinkers Beaverdale kits are normally quite good for normal wines and for fruit wines I use either Solomon Grundy kits or Muntons Kits.
Need to check the local country/farm stores round here for brewers yeast, then I am going to attempt to make a small batch of cider. If I can get the yeast before next Wednesday, that'll be when I do it as I shall have chez boozy to myself for a day or so.
Need to check the local country/farm stores round here for brewers yeast, then I am going to attempt to make a small batch of cider. If I can get the yeast before next Wednesday, that'll be when I do it as I shall have chez boozy to myself for a day or so.
If you still have your Mr Beer kit defalcos are selling the cider refills for $10 right now..half price...I'm going to pick me some up this afternoon as it's right around the corner from where I work but might be worth the shipping for you.
Note: It takes a long time to condition in the bottle...I've found 5-6 weeks before it carbonates. Makes great cider though.
I dont drink wine but I brew a fair bit and on the recommendations of the drinkers Beaverdale kits are normally quite good for normal wines and for fruit wines I use either Solomon Grundy kits or Muntons Kits.
Will do, thanks. The reason I asked was that a sort-of friend on Facebook had done a pineapple wine from scratch that was apparently very nice. It was his first attempt and he didn't use a kit so I thought a non-kit might be the way to go.
On a side note, I've just cracked open one of the Coopers Aussie lagers I did a few months ago. What with being on hols and other things going on at work I hadn't had the chance to drink them quickly like I normally do. Gotta say that the extra time really has worked wonders - it's seriously nice, not just nice! Really didn't think it would make *that* much difference!
When I do a lager I tend to leave it at least 3 months and normally 6 months before I drink it. I leave my ciders for 6 to 8 weeks and my bitters 2 to 3 months. The wine normally gets at least 3 months.
It does make a massive difference because the tastes have a chance to mature properly and it seems to settle any inconsistency between different bottles from the same brew. This is why I have so much on the go at any time, 400 bottles of beer and 100 bottles of wine on average, to allow them to mature and get the full taste. It's also why I bottle stuff and don't use a barrel.
Looks like I'm going to have to up my brewing then! I generally do two batches at the same time and once I've drunk half I start another two batches. It's a good process that maintains a constant supply, but i realise now I need to let them mature more.
Just bottled the stout and what a pain the arse that was! Bottling stout is the same as pouring one - get it to a certain level and then leave it a few minutes for the head to disappear. Quite frustrating...
However - having a taste during siphoning confirmed one thing - it tastes superb. I'm not really a stout drinker and I doubt I'll do it very often but this one can mature for a while and really up the flavour. Definitely a thumbs up for the Coopers stout.
Looks like I'm going to have to up my brewing then! I generally do two batches at the same time and once I've drunk half I start another two batches. It's a good process that maintains a constant supply, but i realise now I need to let them mature more.
Just bottled the stout and what a pain the arse that was! Bottling stout is the same as pouring one - get it to a certain level and then leave it a few minutes for the head to disappear. Quite frustrating...
However - having a taste during siphoning confirmed one thing - it tastes superb. I'm not really a stout drinker and I doubt I'll do it very often but this one can mature for a while and really up the flavour. Definitely a thumbs up for the Coopers stout.
I didn't find that the stout foamed for me.. I only re-sugared a little after primary fermenting as you don't really want fizzy stout.. (About half as much sugar as usual gave it a decent head without making it 'lively')
In fact, you can probably just drink it straight after primary ferment if you want. It tastes fine while it's still flat. I got stuck into mine early - I got through about 30% of my first batch before it started getting fizzy.
However, while It does taste really good, as I mentioned in a previous post, it had really weird effects on me (unpleasant zoned out trippy feeling - specifically the next day after the 'alcohol feeling' has gone away).
I can only assume it's some interaction between me and Cooper's yeast, or it was making Fusel alcohol (as I think you suggested). Made that kit twice now and it's had the same effect on me, but I've made plenty of other kits and they were all fine.
I've still got about 30 bottles left of my last batch of Cooper's Stout. I've tried drinking one of them per evening so I'm not getting over-exposed to whatever is doing a number on me, but even with that much I still end up feeling 'zoned out' the next day. Haven't touched it in a few weeks now. I've had a few mates offer to take it off my hands, but don't want to give it to them knowing the effect it had on me.
Can you let us know how it goes with yours.. Like I said, I'm assuming it's a personal allergy on my part, but I'm a bit concerned as it's happened twice now.
I've also done a batch of Munton's Mountmellick Dublin Stout in the past and that was really good and had no ill effects on me.
(Actually made it with a bottle of Ribena cordial and a couple of scoops of cane sugar instead of liquid glucose, and it gave it a hint of blackcurrant in the background - was really nice!)
Well what I suspected was right with my experimental Ginger beer, the yeast just wasn't man enough for the job. I went down to my local homebrew shop and had a good long talk with them about what I had done and we decided that the best bet was to use a wine yeast to do the main fermentation and see how that goes with a view to syphoning it off to a new bin when it gets down to about 1025 - 1035 and then giving it an ale yeast to finish it off and for the secondary fermentation. The wine yeast was slow to start but now it's kicked in its doing a fine job with a very evil sludge having developed on it so I will wait for it to subside a bit and give it a hydrometer reading to see what the score is. This is going to be a treat with caution brew because A, Its going to be very strong, B, It has every chance of being undrinkable and C, I don't want to go blind.
Must admit I never even considered that. All champers is though is fizzy wine so I suppose it sort of works out the same as far as alcohol tolerance goes. Problem is I put that much gung in the mix with all the extra ginger I couldn't get a hydrometer reading worth using, I should have taken one before I put it in.
@Grunaki: Have to report that I've had no residual effects from the Cooper's Stout. I've not exactly had a session on them, the other night was the most I've had (3) and I was fine the next day. Other nights just having the one I've also been fine. I had a similar thing with the Young's Pilsner I used to brew. I don't bother with that any more.
I did take your advice about the fizzyness and constantly opened the bottles (I second ferment in 2l pop bottles) for a week as they firmed up - thanks for that, they're just perfect now.
Got to say, the Cooper's Stout is outstanding in is taste. I'm not a stout drinker, I don't think I've even had a Guinness since about 2009, but I've deffo got a taste for this!
Report #2. After a fair old skinful last night, 3 cans of Czech lager and 2 litres of the stout I can report... no ill effects! Surprisingly not even slightly hungover, but that was probably down to the 2-and-a-half hour karate lesson before the drinking session began :-)
Time to add some fresh yeast to this thread and make it bubble again. :P
I've started brewing beer since last time this thread was posted in. I'm not using kits though but doing things the hard way instead - all-grain brewing, which means I'm milling the malt myself, then mashing, boiling and finally adding yeast to ferment it. Adding hops along the way and sometimes dryhopping too. I like how that gives you complete control over the results.
I'll be brewing my beer #8 this Sunday. Many of my beers so far has been porter/stouts or deep amber in colour, so this next one will be 50% pilsner malt and 50% Vienna malt - which are both malts that are very light in colour - so hopefully I'll get a light yellowish beer this time. I haven't decided what yeast and hops I'll be using yet.
So far I've used anywhere from 5 kg to 7.5 kg malt in one brew and as much as 7 types of malt in the same one.
I brew around 20 liters at the time and bottle on a mix of 33cl and 50cl glass bottles.
Here's how my fermenting corner looked a couple of weeks ago;
It's a bit less crowded today;
I'll bottle #6 on Sunday so after I've made #8 I'll still have 2 fermenting buckets in use.
Comments
I only use 2l PET bottles these days as 40-50 glass bottles is just too much of a PITA - 11 2l bottles is much more manageable! I'm not even particularly careful with the sterilisation process when bottling these days and I've never had anything go wrong with the beer. I do use sterilizing powder, dissolve some in water, stick a bit in the bottles and give 'em a good shake. Then rinse them out a couple of times with clean water.
To be fair, my beer doesn't last long enough for anything to go wrong with it :-)
The temperature's usually pretty constant in there and the thermometer's showing 22 degrees at the moment. I'll just have to keep an eye on it...
Never had this problem during the cold/wet summer of 2012, I had to lug the first bucket upstairs to our bedroom for a while to keep it warm!
Beer's all fermented now. Originally I was going to bottle all 40 pints of it, half in glass bottles and the remainder in 2 litre PET bottles... but I realised too late I needed to syphon into a second bucket and add the sugar before bottling (I have a second bucket but it's too small), so I decided to use my barrel as the second bucket and just keep half in the barrel.
One problem though, I've got a crown capper and a load of caps I inherited from my father-in-law, but I just can't get the b$%&@tard things on! The instructions were pretty basic (put cap on bottle, put capper on cap, hit with hammer) but after a couple of minutes of whacking with said hammer it still wasn't sealed at all!
It's one of these, obviously I'm not whacking it too hard but am I being too gentle with it? Perhaps I should fork out for a more advanced capper?
So rather than bugger about with 20 bottles of foam for four hours I just filled a couple of PET bottles for my brother-in-law and will have to drink the remaining 30-odd pints from the barrel - not a problem :D
Oh well, at least I know for next time (and will invest in a more advanced capper, ta ADJB)
Oh well, you live and learn. Got about 35 more pints to drink, best get cracking :)
Interesting, although I can't even seem to manage basic buggering about at the moment! But useful if I ever get to grips with mashing tuns and wort and stuff.
It's a pretty good deal at the mo - ?10.40 IIRC for a 40 pint kit - 5.3% off a kilo of sugar too! Make sure you get the Wilkinson's brewing sugar which is also reduced (about ?1.50). It's the best brewing sugar I've used.
Done the first decant on two gallons of wine for daughter (strawberry and apricot)
Put on a 2 gallon brew of Suave for the misses
Put on a gallon of Strawberry wine for daughter
and the biggie.....
Somewhere a bit higher up in this thread I mentioned that Tesco's were having a big sale with kits dirt cheap. At the time I got 2 Coopers Ginger Beer kits along with loads of other stuff. I have done it before and its very nice but has, for me, two problems. Firstly it's a bit weak, 3.5% if you follow the kit, that's fine as it's an all day supping beer as your round the barbecue on that nice sunny day we get once a year. It doesn't get you monged no matter how much you put away. Secondly, and worse for me, it's not got the sort of bite you get with a lot of ginger beers and I miss that.
So i've made a few changes to see if I can put these things right.
The basic kit is the can of syrup, 1 kilo of sugar and 20l of water. I have made this tonight with 2 cans of syrup, about 1.75 kilos of sugar and made that up to 20l in total plus I have added 2 300g jars of ginger paste acquired from the local Indian supermarket.
To be honest it looks as if it would be better homed in Porton Down rather than in the kitchen. I have taken the precaution of leaving the lid cracked on the fermenting bin and putting the bin on a load of tea towels for when it tries to escape. My main worry is that the supplied yeast wont have the balls for the job but I have a reseve yeast ready if it dies on me. I'm going fishing in the morning but I will have a quick look an see if its started to fester and then pray it doesn't explode while i'm out or 2 gallons of Suave wont calm the misses down.
It will be interesting but if it will be drinkable is a different question....
:lol:
Good luck!
I dont drink wine but I brew a fair bit and on the recommendations of the drinkers Beaverdale kits are normally quite good for normal wines and for fruit wines I use either Solomon Grundy kits or Muntons Kits.
If you still have your Mr Beer kit defalcos are selling the cider refills for $10 right now..half price...I'm going to pick me some up this afternoon as it's right around the corner from where I work but might be worth the shipping for you.
Note: It takes a long time to condition in the bottle...I've found 5-6 weeks before it carbonates. Makes great cider though.
http://www.defalcos.com/virtuemart.html?page=shop.product_details&category_id=30&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=1726
Will do, thanks. The reason I asked was that a sort-of friend on Facebook had done a pineapple wine from scratch that was apparently very nice. It was his first attempt and he didn't use a kit so I thought a non-kit might be the way to go.
On a side note, I've just cracked open one of the Coopers Aussie lagers I did a few months ago. What with being on hols and other things going on at work I hadn't had the chance to drink them quickly like I normally do. Gotta say that the extra time really has worked wonders - it's seriously nice, not just nice! Really didn't think it would make *that* much difference!
It does make a massive difference because the tastes have a chance to mature properly and it seems to settle any inconsistency between different bottles from the same brew. This is why I have so much on the go at any time, 400 bottles of beer and 100 bottles of wine on average, to allow them to mature and get the full taste. It's also why I bottle stuff and don't use a barrel.
Just bottled the stout and what a pain the arse that was! Bottling stout is the same as pouring one - get it to a certain level and then leave it a few minutes for the head to disappear. Quite frustrating...
However - having a taste during siphoning confirmed one thing - it tastes superb. I'm not really a stout drinker and I doubt I'll do it very often but this one can mature for a while and really up the flavour. Definitely a thumbs up for the Coopers stout.
I didn't find that the stout foamed for me.. I only re-sugared a little after primary fermenting as you don't really want fizzy stout.. (About half as much sugar as usual gave it a decent head without making it 'lively')
In fact, you can probably just drink it straight after primary ferment if you want. It tastes fine while it's still flat. I got stuck into mine early - I got through about 30% of my first batch before it started getting fizzy.
However, while It does taste really good, as I mentioned in a previous post, it had really weird effects on me (unpleasant zoned out trippy feeling - specifically the next day after the 'alcohol feeling' has gone away).
I can only assume it's some interaction between me and Cooper's yeast, or it was making Fusel alcohol (as I think you suggested). Made that kit twice now and it's had the same effect on me, but I've made plenty of other kits and they were all fine.
I've still got about 30 bottles left of my last batch of Cooper's Stout. I've tried drinking one of them per evening so I'm not getting over-exposed to whatever is doing a number on me, but even with that much I still end up feeling 'zoned out' the next day. Haven't touched it in a few weeks now. I've had a few mates offer to take it off my hands, but don't want to give it to them knowing the effect it had on me.
Can you let us know how it goes with yours.. Like I said, I'm assuming it's a personal allergy on my part, but I'm a bit concerned as it's happened twice now.
I've also done a batch of Munton's Mountmellick Dublin Stout in the past and that was really good and had no ill effects on me.
(Actually made it with a bottle of Ribena cordial and a couple of scoops of cane sugar instead of liquid glucose, and it gave it a hint of blackcurrant in the background - was really nice!)
EIDT: This is the one I got (though as mentioned off ebay).
http://monsterbrew.com/Prod_RedStarPasteurChampagneYeast.cfm?gclid=CKis5MPoscACFcZQ7Aod9n4AGA
I did take your advice about the fizzyness and constantly opened the bottles (I second ferment in 2l pop bottles) for a week as they firmed up - thanks for that, they're just perfect now.
Got to say, the Cooper's Stout is outstanding in is taste. I'm not a stout drinker, I don't think I've even had a Guinness since about 2009, but I've deffo got a taste for this!
I've started brewing beer since last time this thread was posted in. I'm not using kits though but doing things the hard way instead - all-grain brewing, which means I'm milling the malt myself, then mashing, boiling and finally adding yeast to ferment it. Adding hops along the way and sometimes dryhopping too. I like how that gives you complete control over the results.
I'll be brewing my beer #8 this Sunday. Many of my beers so far has been porter/stouts or deep amber in colour, so this next one will be 50% pilsner malt and 50% Vienna malt - which are both malts that are very light in colour - so hopefully I'll get a light yellowish beer this time. I haven't decided what yeast and hops I'll be using yet.
So far I've used anywhere from 5 kg to 7.5 kg malt in one brew and as much as 7 types of malt in the same one.
I brew around 20 liters at the time and bottle on a mix of 33cl and 50cl glass bottles.
Here's how my fermenting corner looked a couple of weeks ago;
It's a bit less crowded today;
I'll bottle #6 on Sunday so after I've made #8 I'll still have 2 fermenting buckets in use.
Good times. :D
My games for the Spectrum: Dingo, The Speccies, The Speccies 2, Vallation, SQIJ.
Twitter: Sokurah
Crikey doing it proper! Is that at home? I find the kits messy enough.
Had chance to test it yet? If so how does the finished product compare to the stuff you buy?