Hot answers tagged kits
12
You can make beer from kits that are better than just drinkable as a newbie.
Especially, when you continue to consult websites like this and others to get research and questions answered about how to do this or do that.
For the newbie using a kit their are two areas to focus on that will give you great beer.
Sanitation. You hear it over and over because ...
11
Skip the Mr. Beer kind of kits and go to a local Home Brew Supply shop. They'll sell you a brew kit for $75-$140 depending on how nice you want it. My local place had a deal for a while where you got your first recipe either free or deeply discounted when you bought a full kit, so that was nice. The actual kit you need isn't all that important, believe it or ...
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AFAIK, there are no benefits. They're all basically the same. Brewing sugar is corn sugar and while there may be chemical differences between it and other types of sugar, the end result in your beer will be indistinguishable. Sugars like piloncillo or demarara can add a bit of flavor, but the result of adding corn, cane, beet, or brown sugar are pretty ...
10
Neither of those...
The next purchase to making better beer is a thermostat controller and a fridge. The controller you can get at your LHBS or at an online shop. Then cruise craigslist for the fridge.
You can get a fine chill in the sink with ice, like you already are doing (right!).
A secondary isn't necessary really anyway. And several people make great ...
8
There are no concerns over going to a smaller batch size. 3 gallon carboys and buckets are easily found. Check out USplastics.com they have all sorts of funky food grade buckets and things.
The other great thing about doing say 2.5 gallon batch is that you can start passing up on starters. Just pitch an entire tube of White labs and you are definitely ...
7
The shelf life of a recipe kit varies based on what type of ingredients come in the kit.
Yeast- Liquid yeast should be used within 3 months of the production date for best results but can be viable for up to 6 months but a yeast starter is recommended for yeast that old. Dry yeast can be viable for up to 1 year if stored at room temp and even longer if ...
5
Northern Brewer has 3 gallon carboys in both glass and plastic. And you can get 3 gallon kegs, as well.
If you can halve all of the ingredients in a kit, I can't think of any problems with brewing that way. My concern would be trying to split a jug of LME into halves. You'd probably need a scale to do it accurately.
4
It's not the kits that suck, it's the instructions.
Modern kits contain ingredients of MUCH higher quality than homebrewers used to have to deal with. If you buy your kit from a shop that has high turnover (morebeer and northernbrewer are pretty safe bets, I'd think) than you don't risk getting old extract.
That being said - the instructions (and advice ...
4
You can brew a great batch of beer using tips that Brewchez mentions in his response.
The only thing I'd mention about the John Bull kits, is that it's a "hopped extract", meaning the hop additions are already included in the syrup. If you try other (usually more expensive) ingredient kits, you'll generally find that you'll get unhopped extract with hops ...
4
Brew UK are pretty good and have a range of starter kits such as the St Peter's Microbrewery kit. This will get you up and running. I got the Woodforde's Wherry kit to start off with (admittedly from a local home brew shop - it was a present from my wife).
If you are going to go into bottling, I'd recommend a second fermentation bin with a tap and a little ...
4
To give more localised advice, there's a small Homebrew shop at the bottom of Widcombe Hill in Bath, if you ever happen to be in Bath (Their website is very unfinished, however). The other supplier I know of is the-home-brew-shop.co.uk, based near Farnborough, Hampshire, where I was on placement.
4
First, welcome to brewing!
I would first urge to look around in your neighborhood to see if there's a local homebrew shop. They can help you with the equipment and knowledge to get started.
But, if there isn't one around you, there are a couple of online homebrew shops that sell the equipment needed to get started. The three I've used in the past and ...
4
If you're doing 2.5 gallon boils, and then adding another 2.5 gallons of (say) 55F tap water, then you're final temperature will be around 133F - the mid point of 212 and 55. For ales, pitching temperature is recommended at 75F, so you'll need to leave the wort for a few hours to naturally cool, or submerse in an ice bath to accelerate the cooling.
If ...
3
If you want to add hop bitterness, you can get hold of some dry malt extract (DME) from your local homebrew store. Boil it up with some water, say a gallon, and add 1-2oz of your desired bittering hop and boil for 45 minutes. Add this to the fermenter along with your other pre-boiled wort and top-up water.
That will give you the extra hop bitterness you are ...
3
If the wort you use is pre boiled (which it sounds like it is), about your only option is to dry hop it. That will give you aroma and a bit of hop flavor, but won't increase the bitterness. Wait until fermentation is finished, then add about an oz. of hops to the fermenter. If you want to keep it British style, use something like Goldings. If you want to ...
3
Changing the yeast should give you a noticeable improvement as well. Try some different strains, an English strain, American Strain, maybe a Belgian strain. You might find a yeast strain that you really like. Either way it will probably be a huge improvement over the yeast that's included with your kit.
3
I've used it a couple of times. The alcohol boost is completely fermentable. Which means that it won't leave any sweetness behind. You could theoretically add several, but adding that much will create a lot of hot alcohols that will take a long time (6 months +) to mellow in the bottle.
But in a single dose it does not really change the taste of your beer.
...
3
I would say a wort chiller and and auto-siphon both seem like excellent ideas. The chiller will save you a TON of time in the process, and the auto-siphon is good for sanitization and ease of use. Auto siphons are pretty cheap too, but the chiller might cost you a fair amount. As for the carboy, I usually don't rack to secondary, I just leave it in the ...
3
No hands on experience on this kind of brew, but a few thoughts:
You have a few options, add the ginger to the boil, to the primary fermenter or to the secondary fermenter (or if you don't have/use another fermenter, to the primary after the active fermentation is done).
Each will most likely give different results, I would guess adding it to the boil may ...
2
If you don't have a local homebrew shop, then I recommend watching Groupon for a nice starter kit. They frequently feature a Midwest Supply starter kit that's quite cheap and will get you brewing.
Aside from that, I bought the cheapest kit from Northern Brewer, and it's a great kit too. Everything you need to get started - except a recipe kit. They sell ...
2
How do you feel about making the switch to all grain? If you're up for it, it's cheap and easy to convert a water cooler into mash tun. All-grain is a bit tricky at first, but once you're used to it you'll get a superior beer.
2
+1 each for the autosyphon and temperature control. Glass carboy? Guess I'd say carboy in general, without getting into the plastic v glass argument (each has its fanboys and never will the two camps agree, my small carboy is glass and my large ones are certified nalgene and polycarbonate because of weight handling issues). Something simple that I wish I had ...
2
I use 3 gallon better bottles for small batches. Available at many brew shops, including Northern Brewer.
http://www.northernbrewer.com/brewing/better-bottle-plain-3-gallon-single.html
Regarding halving recipes, you can indeed literally halve your recipe and get very similar results to the full recipe.
If you want to continue to use kits, you'll probably ...
2
In a stout that would be fine, since the roastiness of the brew will overpower any residual sweetness, and color change will not be noticable. Any caramel flavors that do come through will be a positive bonus to offset the bitterness of the kit.
There's no problem using regular table sugar with these kits, although using spraymalt/DME will enhance the ...
1
Adding flavor and aroma hops to a partial boil are a good idea to give some extra hop aroma and/or flavor that is missing in the kit - the kits provide just hop bitterness (typically 20-30 IBUs.) You can add 0.5 to 1oz of hops in the last five minutes of the boil. Find a hop variety that suits the style - Goldings/Fuggles for typical English aromas, ...
1
Dextrose is 100% fermentable, but you need to slightly increase the amount of Dextrose to get the same result as Sugar, meaning for a ferment requiring 6kg of Sugar, you would use slightly more than 6 kilos of Dextrose. I cannot say how much extra because I'm not really sure myself. However in saying that, my first ferment with Dextrose produced a much ...
1
I've upvoted a 'real' answer, but if you want to save some money on a chiller, you can make one pretty easily. You would need a propane torch and solder, but even if you have to buy those items, it's still pretty cheap. This video shows you how you can make one. It will shorten your brew day, which is something that some brewers value.
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For extract, the variables you really need control over (and thus the equipment) are
yeast growth (part one). For beers with character of your choosing, it is so much nicer if you can grow the wonderful varieties of yeast from wyeast and whitelabs and do fun things like cultivate the yeast from bottles of chimay. This is basically free. You just need a few ...
1
I know that Mr Beer kits get downplayed here. But for $25 you can get complete kits (equipment and ingredients) that will allow the beginner to see if they really want to mess with brewing. I started with one and still use the keg as a secondary at times. After I realized that bottling wasn't as big a chore as I thought, I bought a hardware kit at the local ...
1
I would recomend Brubox as a good starter kit. Its cheap and has all the equipment you need to get going with simple instructions. I wouldent recomend it for long term though, the batch size is fairly small and the price per pint works out quite a lot.
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