2 disasters and 2 great brews

[woody1959]

Youngs Harvest pils.. yuk
Lashings Ginger beer yuk

I really didn't like either of these, the youngs was just nasty.
The lashings, well I still have 17L to drink but it's not liked, it's not ginger enough because the hops drown the flavour.

Woodfordes Bure gold started that on the 9th, kegged 2 days ago had a sneaky taste already and not bad, will be great when matured.

Caxton real ale, brewed back in dec keeged earlier Jan and started drinking last week very nice brew, a little too bitter for my taste but still a good drink..

Today I just started a Woodfordes Wherry, lets see what that is like

 

[terrym]

Without wishing to dent your enthusiasm at all if you are making up your one cans as suggested then be prepared for more disappointments. The quality of beer from homebrew kits is, in my experience, very much a function of how much money you have invested in total for an individual brew, although there are exceptions to this. So if you compared beer from a cheap 1.5kg one can made up to 23 litres with mostly dextrose against one of the better premium kits you will notice the difference. One cans do, however, have their place in homebrewing providing a good basis for dry hopping, grain steeps or even a basis for a partial mash using grain.
Hope you enjoy your Wherry. That too will respond to a dry hop or a hop tea of something like EKG or Styrian Goldings, which is is keeping with the style. You can buy 50g bags of hops from Crossmyloof or other places which are ideal for trying out different hops in your beer.

 

[The Baron]

In the one can kits you generally get what you pay for unless like T says that you are using them as a base for pimping etc. Brew them short as well to magnify the malts etc in the kit. Wherry is a good 2 can kit but beware it does have a reputation of sticky at 1.020 as well documented on this forum. The problem with 1 can kits is that by the time you have spent on the extra additions to make them into a decent brew you are nearly at the cost of the premium kits unless you are using them as I said before to experiment to your own taste. Stick at it you will get there but be prepared to spend a little more to get the best beer

 

[terrym]

Wherry is a good 2 can kit but beware it does have a reputation of sticky at 1.020 as well documented on this forum.

Wherry certainly did have a reputation for sticking some time ago, as I found out when I did one with the kit yeast. However due in part to pressure from this forum Muntons increased the yeast in the kits from one miserly 6g packet (and the likely cause of the stuck brews) to 2 x 6g packets and that presumably has solved the Wherry stuck brew problem, since the yeast they supplied is fine. However I get the impression that they still only provide 6g in other kits from that range so if that is the case stuck fermentations may still be a problem for those kits.

 

[RichardM]

If you haven't already done so, throw away the instructions that came with the kit and read the proper instructions here https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/...de-to-brewing-your-own-beer-from-a-kit.57526/

 

[woody1959]

Thanks for all the comments, the Lashings ginger beer is a 2 can kit, it brewed ok, it just doesn't taste either very ginger or very beer, it's not one or the other a bit of a disappointment.

The Youngs harvest pils is a 1 can kit and won't ever be purchased again.

A note about 1 can kits, my "Go to" beer is Coopers real ale, which I brew with dextrose, 11g Lallemand Nottingham Ale yeast and bottled water either from Tesco or Co-op ( No preference just which ever shop I am near at the time), the racked into a pressure barrel, primed with golden syrup and left for 4 weeks produced a consistently great ale that can be drunk all year round because it doesn't need chilling.

The Bure Gold which I keeged a few days ago was a 2 can kit, i didn't piss about with that and used the full kit, bottled water and proimed in the keg with dextrose.. I'll let you know in about 4-6 weeks what that's like.

The Wherry I only started yesterday, didn't use the kit yeast, used 11g Lallemand Nottingham instead.

This is the first time I have used Woodfordes kits so I am not going to mess about dry hopping them until I see how they turn out, then maybe next time, well not the Bure gold that comes with 2 packs of hop pellets that you add after a few days.