Your current / planned brews

tteknulp

Herb Powell wrote: »

Nice one, hadn't heard of using golden syrup before. What's the process for that? Do you just lob it in, or do you have to process it?

You just put in with kit contents ,its bettter than dextrose ,you can make candy sugar yourself by boiling sugar and cooling ,as hard to find easily

AwayWithFaries

Two brews on the go this week. Got the St. Peter's Red Ale 40 pints and a 10 pints of cider.

The ale is straight forward enough I expect it to turn out alright. I went experimenting a bit with the cider though:

4 litres Apple Juice
1 litre Orange and Mango Juice
1 tablespoon honey

Should be interesting.

blueshed

AwayWithFaries wrote: »

Two brews on the go this week. Got the St. Peter's Red Ale 40 pints and a 10 pints of cider.

The ale is straight forward enough I expect it to turn out alright. I went experimenting a bit with the cider though:

4 litres Apple Juice
1 litre Orange and Mango Juice
1 tablespoon honey

Should be interesting.

cider looks nice, what juice did you use. did you add any yeast. ordered a few 5 lt demijohns this week and plan on making plenty of small brews.

blueshed

did a 22lt Aldi/Lidl Cloudy Apple brew Wednesday evening and hope to brew the Coopers Sparkling Ale tomorrow, anybody try this kit.

Herb Powell

tteknulp wrote: »

You just put in with kit contents ,its bettter than dextrose ,you can make candy sugar yourself by boiling sugar and cooling ,as hard to find easily

Good stuff, I had considered making candi sugar before alright, but I'd like to try the syrup. How much of it do you need to put in, compared with malt extract or the like?

matrim

Hope to bottle my cider this weekend but I'm worried it might have stalled. I haven't noticed any bubbling in the fermentor since Monday or Tuesday.

BeerNut

The bubbler doesn't tell you anything useful. Check the gravity.

matrim

BeerNut wrote: »

The bubbler doesn't tell you anything useful. Check the gravity.

Plan on doing that tonight or tomorrow.

tteknulp

Herb Powell wrote: »

Good stuff, I had considered making candi sugar before alright, but I'd like to try the syrup. How much of it do you need to put in, compared with malt extract or the like?

700g if i remember correct ,a tin and a half of lyles brand ,green can , after 3 months the triple is dangerously drinkable ,about 6% ,the abbey needs longer and finishes 8% ish

Devi

baron von something wrote: »

my coopers lager will be ready tomorrow.had a sneaky bottle on tuesday.at 3.8% it was a bit light/watery.think it needed more than the 2carb drops i used too.hopefully it improved over the last few days or maybe i'm just too used to pilsner style beers.

Also bottled a better brew lager last nite.it both smelled and tasted remarkably similar to the highland cask brew that innis & gunn released last year.i put about 125g american medium oak chips in the brew.unfortunately i didnt soak them in whiskey though.maybe next time.super looking forward to see how the final product turns out

Don’t do as many kits as I used to but when I do I use the 1.5kg tin of LME as the extra fermentable, affordable, great head retention, good body and an abv into the 5%.
http://www.thehomebrewcompany.ie/light-premium-liquid-malt-extract-15kg-p-1748.html

Knifey Spoony

Knifey Spoony wrote: »

Currently enjoying my first homebrew, which is just a couple of days shy of being three weeks bottle conditioned (couldn't wait any longer really). It's a Copper's pale ale, so it's a light refreshing beer. Would make for a good session ale, maybe a bit too light for my usual tastes.

But, definitely a few lessons to learn for the next brew: use a bit more DME, could do with bit more of a malty kick to it and boost the alcohol content slightly, and use two carbonation drops per bottle, carbonation seems a bit low (used 1 and a bit drops in this brew). But otherwise, I very happy with it.

Had a tasting of this beer last night with some friends and one of them commented that it's "nicer than Heineken". Not bad for my first brew then :P

howamidifferent

Been a busy weekend for me.
Bottled 56 x 500ml of a slightly different turbo cider. Mixture of Lidl Cloudy Apple juice and Lidl Apple juice from concentrate with 3lb honey, 500gm LME & 750gm strawberries. I haven't used any sweetener. Hoping it will be sweet enough itself.

Also bottled 40 x 500ml (Make your Own Beer) wheat beer, 89 x 500ml of (Make your Own Beer) English Mild.

Have another Wheat beer kit to throw on which has a best before Apr 13 on it before I move to some wine kits.

stuchyg

howamidifferent wrote: »

Been a busy weekend for me.
Bottled 56 x 500ml of a slightly different turbo cider. Mixture of Lidl Cloudy Apple juice and Lidl Apple juice from concentrate with 3lb honey, 500gm LME & 750gm strawberries. I haven't used any sweetener. Hoping it will be sweet enough itself.

Also bottled 40 x 500ml (Make your Own Beer) wheat beer, 89 x 500ml of (Make your Own Beer) English Mild.

Have another Wheat beer kit to throw on which has a best before Apr 13 on it before I move to some wine kits.

Sweet Baby Jesus, I would rather do a 10 year stretch then do that much bottling, fair play to ya.

How much and how large are your fermenters

mrmeindl

I've ordered the bits for my first brew, I bought a starter Kit from HBC, using a coopers IPA, and have carbonation drops for when its done. Any tips before I get started?

howamidifferent

stuchyg wrote: »

Sweet Baby Jesus, I would rather do a 10 year stretch then do that much bottling, fair play to ya.

How much and how large are your fermenters

Ya, bottling was a pain...between washing and sanitizing bottles and filling, it took a full day from 9:00 to 17:00

I have 6 fermentation buckets, two of which I bought as a wine kit and are 25L each and 4 I bought for beer which are 33L.

I put on a DOCs Merlot last night along with another DOCs red called Sangiovani.
Instructions say 3 weeks in primary minimum and 2 weeks secondary with a month or so conditioning. I took a chance on these as they were 29.95 each versus 49.95 each for the other DOC kits on HBW.

Hoping to have a nice stash for parties or BBQ's if we see any summer :P

Must get that out of date Wheat beer on this week also.

BeerNut

mrmeindl wrote: »

I've ordered the bits for my first brew, I bought a starter Kit from HBC, using a coopers IPA, and have carbonation drops for when its done. Any tips before I get started?

Use spraymalt as your top-up fermentables. Ignore everything the Coopers instructions say. Ferment it for at least two weeks.

Other than that it's always been a very well behaved kit for me and tastes pretty good at the end.

Lovely Bloke

BeerNut wrote: »

Use spraymalt as your top-up fermentables. Ignore everything the Coopers instructions say. Ferment it for at least two weeks.

Other than that it's always been a very well behaved kit for me and tastes pretty good at the end.

Yeah, get light, or extra light Dry Malt Extract, if you get medium or dark you'll be left with a India Amber Ale or a Black IPA or something. Two 500g bags would be grand

Sanitise, sanitise, sanitise.

I've actually got a Coopers IPA on the go at the moment, going to dry hop it for a week before bottling with some Cascade hops

mrmeindl

BeerNut wrote: »

Use spraymalt as your top-up fermentables. Ignore everything the Coopers instructions say. Ferment it for at least two weeks.

Other than that it's always been a very well behaved kit for me and tastes pretty good at the end.

Thanks, I bought 1kg of "brew kit enhancer to use in place of the normal sugar, according to HBC it's "1kg of a blend of spray dried dextrose and spray dried maltextract "

Should that do the job?

Lovely Bloke

yeah, that should be grand, when are you brewing?

BeerNut

mrmeindl wrote: »

Should that do the job?

Pure spraymalt would be better, but if that's what you have then use it.

Viper_JB

Just started a batch of the coopers ginger beer yesterday evening, added like half a kilo of ginger in a muslin bag kitchen still smells of ginger and lemon....hmmm lovely. This is my second brew so fingers crossed that all goes well.

mrmeindl

Baldy Conscience wrote: »

yeah, that should be grand, when are you brewing?

BeerNut wrote: »

Pure spraymalt would be better, but if that's what you have then use it.

Thanks guys, gonna start this weekend hopefully. Only issue at the mo is a lack of beer bottles, I've been told green ones aren't great so I've to get hold of some more brown ones.

BeerNut

Just make sure you keep the green ones in the dark.

Tube

Getting ready to fill this with 200L of imperial stout. We bought a number of ex whiskey barrels in the Club, and this one is being filled by no less than 9 home brewers.

All of us brewed to the same recipes, in our local club's case (Liffey Brewers) an 8% stout, which is loosely based on Saruman's National Brewing Championships 2013 silver medal winner. A very nice stout indeed!

It'll be aged for 6 months minimum.

stuchyg

Yesterday I bottled my blue moon clone. Made 1 gallon peach n grape wine, 1 gallon ginger beer & a 12 ltr extract batch of cascade hopped APA

Edwardius

Opened a bottle of a Maris Otter/Centennial SMASH today. Tastes awesome, great body and "biscuityness", I like the Centennial hops a lot. I think it cost €14 total for 21 litres of 7% beer!

I'm torn between an extra stout and a black "IPA" for the next brew day. I want to do a Duvel clone sometime but I'm scared :P.

Tube

Edwardius wrote: »

Opened a bottle of a Maris Otter/Centennial SMASH today. Tastes awesome, great body and "biscuityness", I like the Centennial hops a lot. I think it cost €14 total for 21 litres of 7% beer!

Sounds great, but expensive! Going on our last couple of group buys that would have cost in the region of €8!

mrmeindl

I started the IPA kit on sunday evening, it never really bubbled but a lot of foam built up on the top of it, I've been using a heating pad and a fleece over it to keep it warm. The SG went from 1.4 to where it's at 1.1 currently. I'm worried that fermentation might have stopped due to it getting cold overnight before I found the heating pad, currently there's no foam and there's no bubbles going though the air lock. Any comments/advice?

stuchyg

mrmeindl wrote: »

I started the IPA kit on sunday evening, it never really bubbled but a lot of foam built up on the top of it, I've been using a heating pad and a fleece over it to keep it warm. The SG went from 1.4 to where it's at 1.1 currently. I'm worried that fermentation might have stopped due to it getting cold overnight before I found the heating pad, currently there's no foam and there's no bubbles going though the air lock. Any comments/advice?

1.40 or was that a rough guess. Is it bang on 1.10

mrmeindl

stuchyg wrote: »

1.40 or was that a rough guess. Is it bang on 1.10

Looking at the hydrometer now it was more like 1.37, its bang on 1.1 at the mo. I was thinking of leaving it till it's been the full 7 days. I'll check it again tomorrow to see if it's still changing.