Back to the Future

[mikecostello]

Hi all, the future is homebrew, for me anyway, so I'm going back to making my own after some 35 years or so. Was thinking about it for a while but never quite got round to it, while in The Range one day saw they had a range MYO (make your own) with the Irish Stout catching my eye, bought that and brewed up, despite what I thought was a failed brew turned out to be pretty damn good. Since then have made a Coopers Irish Stout, a cider and an old acquaintance, a Geordie Scottish Export, all have been pretty good so far, experimented a bit with the Scottish Export by using 1.5 kg of mild malt extract, got off to a slow start then burst into life and fermented furiously for about three days then stopped, I left it for another week to see what would happen but nothing, again thought this may be a failure, but no, turned out pretty good. Just wondering if anyone has had a similar experience of the furious short fermentation, was it the malt extract, yeast or just the Geordie itself? Anyhow turned out pretty good.

The experimentation continues, I recently bought from Facebook marketplace an icemaster beer machine for £50, a bargain I thought, especially when brand new and still in the box. Also bought a couple of empty 5lt mini-kegs and filled with the Scottish Export, just finished a bought IPA to test the machine so am now ready to try the export. I'm also going to modify the machine so I can use a soda stream bottle rather than the small co2 bullet things, interested and excited to see how it all turns out, I'll post an update and share my experience, hopefully of interest to others.

Cheers for now, look forward to learning more from others and sharing my brew experiences and thoughts.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Welcome to the forum,

 

[DavidDetroit]

Just wondering if anyone has had a similar experience of the furious short fermentation, was it the malt extract, yeast

I've had slow and fast. I think it more depends on the starting temperature in the fermenter and the amount of yeast. Even if a batch appears to be done after three, it can still be fermenting. It's kind of variable and so not a lot of "this is the only thing that happens." With the malt extract (DME or LME), more sugar would give the yeast more to do especially where proper amount of yeast is concerned.
For me, if the airlock starts bubbling at the right time (6-24 hours), I relax and know it will turn out well.

 

[mikecostello]

I've had slow and fast. I think it more depends on the starting temperature in the fermenter and the amount of yeast. Even if a batch appears to be done after three, it can still be fermenting. It's kind of variable and so not a lot of "this is the only thing that happens." With the malt extract (DME or LME), more sugar would give the yeast more to do especially where proper amount of yeast is concerned.
For me, if the airlock starts bubbling at the right time (6-24 hours), I relax and know it will turn out well.

Cheers for the comments.