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Home Brew Questions

mr steev said:
It may be a bit too warm tbh. It depends on what you're brewing though. Most ales should be around 70F/21C but the fermentation process can add a few degrees on top. A shed should be ok I would've thought, but maybe not for lager
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Also, light strike. You would HAVE to make sure your brew was shielded from sunlight. Which might tend to make it too hot, too...

Really, you want somewhere fairly dark with a reasonably steady temperature.
 
My steam beer (lager kit with extra malt and brewed at ale temperatures with an ale yeast) lacked something. I've still got 25 pints or so in the keg, so I am considering adding something to it to give the flavour a little more depth - one option is some coriander seeds, unless someone's got a better suggestion...?
 
Both of the brews I've made so far have come out a bit odd tbh. There's a sort of metalic taste in the background that's more than just hops. I'd describe it as "metal hops".

Anyone else experienced it?
 
Just treated my bottling collection to some tre sexy bottles with corks and wires courtesy of that posh Lakeland shop sale:oops::D:thumbs:

http://www.lakeland.co.uk/18069/Lakeland-Sparkling-Wine-Bottle
18069_1


99p

My Belgian beer never looked so good :cool:
 
existentialist said:
My steam beer (lager kit with extra malt and brewed at ale temperatures with an ale yeast) lacked something. I've still got 25 pints or so in the keg, so I am considering adding something to it to give the flavour a little more depth - one option is some coriander seeds, unless someone's got a better suggestion...?
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A couple of kilos of raspberries would of been nice ;)
 
fractionMan said:
Both of the brews I've made so far have come out a bit odd tbh. There's a sort of metalic taste in the background that's more than just hops. I'd describe it as "metal hops".

Anyone else experienced it?
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The odd metalic taste is most likely from chlorine in your water.
I treat the water with a campdem tablet a couple of hours before making up the brew.
 
Addy said:
The odd metalic taste is most likely from chlorine in your water.
I treat the water with a campdem tablet a couple of hours before making up the brew.
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Hmm. Could be. I'll look into it.

So you put the tablet in the water, leave it for an hour, then add the water to the mix?
 
friedaweed said:
A couple of kilos of raspberries would of been nice ;)
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Probably a bit late - I am seriously underwhelmed with it, although I have had no sense of taste since a throat op a week and a half ago, so perhaps I should be a bit tolerant...

But yes, raspberries - that might make it worth having another try.
 
fractionMan said:
How does anyone distinguish between the umpteen lager/pilsner/cerveza kits out there?

My coopers australian turned out great (with extra malt) but I only picked it cos it was half price.
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With those types of kits I'm just buying Coopers over here as they're very cheap (£6.50 a can) and they seem to make good beer. I've just opened a Coopers APA (slightly early) and it's lovely :)

My latest brews have been decent, the only fuck up has been a lager where I used carbonation drops and it didn't carbonate properly :( My favourite so far has been Woodfordes Wherry, I've had people round and they were drinking that in preference to proper beer from the bottle shop.

I've got a problem with a couple of brews at the moment with extremely slow fermentation. I put a headcracker on on 28/6 that started on 1067, it was 1030 10 days ago and is 1024 today

I've the same story with a Coopers Stout (+ extras) on 26/6 it was 1066, it was 1023 10 days ago and today it is 1020.

I gave both of them a stir and added another packet of yeast each this afternoon, but what could be causing this slow fermentation? I was expecting both of these to get down to about 1010 pretty quickly. At the moment the temperature here fluctuates a lot from mid 20's in the day to nearly freezing at night and our house isn't really insulated, could it be that they're too cold at night?
 
Cid said:
Which yeasts are you using
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Nothing special. The stout has coopers yeast in it from the kit. The headcracker yeast was replaced in the HBS as it was out of date, I think it was standard ale yeast.

I topped them up on Monday with cheap ale yeast from BigW (it's kind of an Aussie version of Wilkos). Is there any type of yeast I should be using?

During the same period my Turbo Cider went from 1064 to 1003 using champagne yeast. So I'm not entirely sure about blaming the night time temps.
 
Champagne yeasts tolerate all manner of shit, so the comparison doesn't really work. The optimal range for the one I'm using on my elderflower champagne is 15-25c and it'll be fairly happy from 10-30. Will also ferment to 16% or so. Beer yeasts are much more sensitive; from a quick google Coopers is more like 20-26c, and big fluctuations in temp can't help either. Alcohol content in your headcracker is 4.86%, 6.04% in the stout. Coopers can handle that afaik, but may be a bit on the high end - combined with the temp the yeast may just have slowed down a lot. Same could go for the headcracker, but depends on the yeast. Don't know much about beer mind, but I reckon temp is your problem.

Topping up with different strains may also not be a great idea, but not sure.
 
That headcracker should end up at about 7%, it's only a 20 pint kit, so it'd better be strong! I'm going to leave them both until the weekend and have a look then.

The reason I put in a general ale yeast was that in one of my earlier brews (Woodfordes Wherry) It got stuck at 1020 and another sachet of cheap yeast finished it off nicely.

It's probably the temp though. I've moved to the wrong place too hot to brew in summer and too cold to brew in winter :facepalm: I'm going to have a chat with the folks down the HBS to see what they do.
 
Also remember water has a high specific heat capacity; slow to get warm and cool. Your brew may never actually reach the high temps in the house. I think the normal solution is heat pads/jackets and insulation btw.
 
fractionMan said:
Hmm. Could be. I'll look into it.

So you put the tablet in the water, leave it for an hour, then add the water to the mix?
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You don't need to leave it an hour - Half a crushed up campden tablet with the water you're going to use for the brew and that's all you need to do. I'm not convinced it even makes that much diff TBH. What I'm tempted to do, right is do an oldstyle brew - Using a cheap kit but with normal sugar instead of brewing sugar (yeah, the stopping drinking fell by the wayside a bit), but anyway, a ten pound beer kit with a kilo of normal granulated and non-campdenated water. Just to see what it's like.
 
I haven't posed much on this thread, mostly in silent protest at the abandonment of Voley 's original "Quick question" thread.
But as I am currently brewing a "Bounty" style beer I decided to ditch my principals as I feel you all should know about it.

I made a Double Chocolate stout that has been brewing since Tuesday with Safale S04 yeast, this is a fast fermenting yeast and it erupted in about 10 hours.
Tomorrow I am going to rack it onto 200g of lightly toasted coconut and 100g of cocoa powder and leave it for a couple of weeks.

I have made a Choc-Espresso stout in a similar way using cold pressed coffee and it was fantastic but I couldn't sleep after a couple of pints.
If this coconut caper is any good I am planning a dark cherry/coconut stout in the near future.

I will inform you of results.
The 2 main HB threads should, nay, must be merged and made a sticky. There is a wealth of information for young players to be found in them.
 
I look forward to hearing how that turns out badseed, as for the dark cherry idea, I had a nice sour cherry porter the other week (Holgate's Midnight Cowboy Project) which turned out to be very good, in a slightly peculiar way.
 
badseed said:
The 2 main HB threads should, nay, must be merged and made a sticky. There is a wealth of information for young players to be found in them.
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If you send me the links I will do this for you.

eta: Done. Luckily the threads didn't overlap much in time, so the merge won't make things nonsensical. I've changed the thread title slightly too.
 
Last edited:
I got a dozen demijohns off freecyle yesterday.I think much of my bottling of turbo cider will be in these. I like the idea of a big drink. :D
 
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