Due to wine bills in excess of 150 quid a month, my family have recently given homebrew wine a shot. It's absolutely fantastic and nothing like the piss we used to brew when I was a kid. We're on the second batch now, which is already better than the first. When it's done I want to give some ale a shot.
Are there any magic secrets for homebrewing ale? I'll be using a kit so can someone recommend one that is quite light, not bitter; a bit like a Wells Bombardier? Ta.
>>1373 > 'll be using a kit so can someone recommend one that is quite light, not bitter; a bit like a Wells Bombardier?
Is there a homebrew shop near you? Ask them, they tend to know their stuff.
If you're using a kit, there are no real secrets apart from the usual brewing advice of "clean clean clean" and the blatantly obvious "if there's an extra hop bag, don't use it" if you prefer no bitterness. If there's no shop to ask near you, give "Muntons Midland Mild Ale" a try; it's impossible to make something offensive out of that and unless you go crazy it makes for a very nice "session ale".
>>1374 The first one was Shiraz and just keeps getting better and better in the bottles. The current batch is a Rioja. It should be done in a week but we've been taking the odd snifter and it's already very drinkable.
It's so easy nowadays. All the juice comes with the kit.
What do you think are the best home brew beers? I'm after a session beer - like that Muntons you mention - but I am wary of the chemical taste I remember from days of yore.
Has it all really got better? Also, >>1378, which kits are you using if you don't mind me asking?
>>1413 If you're specifically after the perfect session beer, I'm probably not the best person to ask. I'm the nettle brew advocate, and with the the extract kits I've done I've aimed always aimed for strongly flavoured strong-ish (5-6%) brews. The mentioned Muntons was an exception to that rule, but I liked it well enough that I've done it a few times now. It also has the added bonus of being very much in the low-end price range (~£10 + £2.50 for malt = ~0.35p/pint).
The hands-down best home brew beers I've tried so far were from Brupaks "Pride of Yorkshire" series. Careful with the hop bag that comes with them (if in doubt, leave it out), but the results were absolutely gorgeous.
There is a bewildering amount of choice out there, so as mentioned: ideally you want to find a brew shop and ask in there. I've been to three shops so far, and without exception they've been extremely friendly and helpful.
As for a "chemical" taste: stick to the recipe and don't be tempted to add bags and bags of sugar to up the alcohol content. Doing so is a pretty sure-fire way of producing something nasty with solventy overtones that take months of maturation to get rid off. With that kind of patience this can still turn out to produce exceptional brews, of course, but if you want something in the usual turn around of 1-2months… don't do it. Same goes for the kind of sugar you add: steer clear of things like muscovado, brown sugar or honey; stick to plain white sugar and spray malt.
Your brewing container is equally quite important: it needs to be alcohol proof and food safe, i.e. absolutely no milk bottles for example. Bear in mind that extract kits are almost always designed for 5 gallon batches, so your usual 10l bucket is woefully too small anyway. If you've got a few quid spare, you can get a suitable (plastic) bucket and (plastic) keg for ~£30-£40. If not, well, I use the 5l still water canisters when I make small batches of nettle brew or cider and they seem to hold up OK (obviously not for pressurizing and carbonation, just for the fermenting/maturation).
Whether it's gotten much better? No idea, but it's certainly really quite good at the moment.
Piss, as any fule kno, is sterile in the bladder but becomes less so when squirted through the bacteria-pipe that is the common old chap. If you catheterise yourself then perhaps your piss would serve. Failing that I think we should hear the thoughts of the beer lord at >>1414 on the matter.
>>1418 I personally use baby bottle steriliser, as it's pretty cheap (despite being a baby product) and every supermarket sells it. Stick in bucket, let sit for an hour (I usually leave it for a day, but that's probably just superstition), then rinse with plain cold tap water.
Remember that yeast is pretty good at out-competing everything around it anyway, so you don't have to drive yourself crazy about getting everything autoclaved or whatever. You're just trying to give the yeast enough of a head start to make sure it wins. That is not to say sanitation can be taken lightly, and it's probably best to be at least a little paranoid about it when you start, but as the saying goes: Relax, don't worry, have a home brew.
Most brewing forums recommend something called "StarSan", which is a "no rinse sanitizer", but I've never had problems with the baby bottle stuff so I never bothered trying it.
Resurrecting this thread because I'm thinking about having a go at some cider, which I did years ago and tasted like vinegary sewage. Does anyone have any tips or recommendations for kits? I prefer dry to sweet.
>>1459 Any sealed container is unsuitable for fermentation; it doesn't matter if it be steel or card board: it will explode. The only time "sealed" works is after most of the fermentation is done and you try to carbonate, at which point you want either a pressure proof container or a good estimate of how much "priming sugar" to add to not make your chosen vessel explode.
As for the general point: wrong. Lots of people ferment in glass carboys without hassle. All it takes is an airlock which lets gas escape.
>>1458 I've not used kits for cider so far. Instead, I always reverted to apple juice (of the cloudy "not-from-concentrate" kind). You won't get seriously dry cider out of those (that requires cider apples), but depending on how much sugar you add and how long you let it sit, you can get a non-sweet dry-ish brew out of it. 50-75g/sugar per 5l of juice is a decent starting point: add your chosen brewing yeast, let it ferment for ~2 weeks, then re-rack it (i.e. transfer to a different container while making sure to leave the dead yeast sediment behind), then let it sit for at least another 3 weeks. After that, it will be drinkable, though every additional week mellows and improves the flavour. It should come out quite dry.
I've currently got 4 litres of home made scrumpy that was given to me as a gift from a client. It smells lethal, I don't drink cider since I find it too acidic and gives me heartburn, so I'll be offloading it onto a cider loving friend. The blokke who made it is in his 70s and has been making his own cider since he was in his 20s, every time I go there to do jobs for him I come back with some of his lethal cider.
