Any good Christmas pudding type kits?

[Davemc]

So I decided to open a bottle today and see how it is.

The beer is carbed but not as much as I would like and tastes sweet and there is no real head to it. There is a slight hint of spice but this is masked by the sweetness and a bit of a homebrew twang but this mellows out after a few mouthfulls. I would have thought it would have fermented enough by now to carb up properly and ferment out. I have it in a room that doesn't have direct heating but is not cold. I batch primed before bottling. I did leave it quite a while before bottling so perhaps there is not as much yeast in the bottles. I am wondering if in future it would be best to add priming sugar to each bottle rather than batch priming.

I am going to leave it for Christmas but would it benefit from being put somewhere warm for a while?

 

[IainM]

So I decided to open a bottle today and see how it is.

The beer is carbed but not as much as I would like and tastes sweet and there is no real head to it. There is a slight hint of spice but this is masked by the sweetness and a bit of a homebrew twang but this mellows out after a few mouthfulls. I would have thought it would have fermented enough by now to carb up properly and ferment out. I have it in a room that doesn't have direct heating but is not cold. I batch primed before bottling. I did leave it quite a while before bottling so perhaps there is not as much yeast in the bottles. I am wondering if in future it would be best to add priming sugar to each bottle rather than batch priming.

I am going to leave it for Christmas but would it benefit from being put somewhere warm for a while?

I've had a batch take 6 weeks to prime properly after cold crashing. Warming it up would probably speed things up.

 

[Davemc]

So I have cracked open a few bottles. Moving it somewhere warm for a while worked as far as carbing it up. As you can see from the pic, plenty of carbination and it pours with a head, though this disappears prety quickly so I assume something in the Christmas pudding is affecting head retention.

It has lost most of the sweetness now and is a nice heavy beer with a hint of spice though not as fruity and spicy as I was hoping for. It's not really a session beer, a couple of pints at most for me before having something lighter. I have never tried the Winter Warmer kit as is so I cannot make a comparison.

I am not sure I would go to the trouble of adding a pudding again, I may try some of the winter ale kits available next year, although it is not a bad beer and is certainly not a disaster I am just not sure you get much of the pudding flavour.