Brewing Muntons Summer Ale...

... Did not go according to plan!

I thought I would try a Muntons Connoisseurs Summer Ale. I've done Yorkshire Bitter and Nut Brown Ale in the range and I thought they were decent.

Bought 1kg of Pale DME. Unexpectedly it came with an 'American Ale' yeast and some hop flavouring powder. Never used a US ale in all my years of brewing.

Made it up as normal, careful to make sure the starting temp was on the lower end.

Next day I notice the tap is dripping for some reason. Bugger. Had to clean and sterilise another bucket with no tap. Transferred it over.

I then did my tried and tested procedure. 10 days to ferment then gradually reducing the temp and bottling on about day 15. This works a treat with the normal Muntons active yeast, which is a bit murky otherwise.

Went out and bought a Syphon and a new tap. Opened the bucket and my god it was the murkiest brew I've ever seen!. And I've brewed with Windsor yeast!

Transferred to my bottling bucket using the Syphon. My god syphons are a royal pain in the ***! Why in god's name would anyone use them unless in emergency situation?

Transferred it over to the other bucket after much faffing but had to leave loads behind because there was so much yeast in suspension.

Decided to try something different with bottling. I normally rinse my coopers bottles after drinking and then clean and sanitise them with VWP and rinse before bottling. Decide to just sanitise them with chemsan as the rinse does a good clean and I've heard others have done this. Situations like this you think you might as well experiment! Anyway. Doing this caused a fair bit of foaming when the beer went in the bottles, so quite big gaps at the top. Impossible to add priming sugar as caused overflow, but I've got a feeling it will carb up anyway.

All done now, but I have loads of murky beer bottled. Murky beer, or 'hazy', is my pet hate!

Will let you know what it tastes like in a few weeks time.

Quick update, in case anyone is interested in this beer kit. Despite the mishaps this has turned out to be a decent beer - very palatable. The malt flavour is solid. Not particularly hoppy, but they it does not claim to be. Does not taste like a homebrew. I'm not sure I would buy it again, but then I prefer beers that are a bit darker generally.

Not sure what the American ale yeast brought to the party in this case. I would prefer it if they used Muntons Gold yeast which gets decent results and is super flocculant and does not require cold crashing. But you don't tend to get that with the one can kits from Muntons anyway, which is a bit of a shame.

The regular Muntons yeast is reputed to be Nottingham Ale yeast. Perfectly good for most British styles. No idea what the Muntons Gold yeast is, but would not be surprised if it were the same yeast in a bigger sachet.

Why not have a look at the Muntons corporate website - there might be some clues there and it is interesting, if only to confirm that they make most of the kits, except Coopers from South Australia and the Brewferm kits from Belgium.

Hi Slid, thanks for the reply. In my experience the regular 'active' muntons yeast in one can kits seems closer something like Mangrove Jack's Empire Ale yeast - less attenuative and flocculant than Nottingham. Indeed, I made up one kit with Empire Ale yeast and it seemed similar to the results I got with the regular Muntons kit yeast provided. I know empire ale yeast is itself the same as other yeasts but repackaged. I guess the rationale for this yeast is that lots of people chuck in a load of sugar with a one can kits, so a slightly less attenuative yeast is not a bad thing

Muntons Gold, the other one, seems to behave similarly to S04 in terms of attenuation and flocculation, but when I've used S04 with kits they don't seem quite as good as when I've bought a packet of Muntons Gold. But I would have to do a side by side comparison really. On the corporate website they just mention gervin yeast (i.e. Nottingham) so maybe Muntons Gold is just Nottingham and I am fooling myself. Who knows?

I don't think Muntons make the Festival, Young's or Simply beer kits either. But they seem to make most other kits we find in the UK (including, until recently, the Wilko ones).