Best Lager Kits

[MyQul]

With most kits you use tap water, when making from grain you boil or at least take things to a high temperature likely to kill any bugs. So with a kit you need alcohol fast, then that alcohol kills the bugs. Kits do vary in temperature, but this is from a Coopers kit.



So with a kit you are aiming for a light beer taste rather than a true lager. It would be nice if you could read a review and work out which kit is the best. However when you read reviews 95% of them start with "I replaced the sugar with brew enhancer/sprayed malt/honey" or some other move away from the instructions. Nothing wrong with altering the kit, but it means the report is next to useless.

I have also found temperature changes what is a good kit to a poor kit and most people who are still using kits, either enhance them or have no temperature control. Myself included. So if I look at a kit I did two years ago it was done with simple sugar, but temperature could be anywhere. And look at kits done this year, only one with simple sugar and that was not lager.

So the only reason to look at yeast in early stages is when you can't maintain the temperature required for the yeast supplied. But the yeast does change the taste, so kit manufacturers match the wort to yeast supplied. So if you can maintain 20°C go for an English kit, but if the temperature is likely to reach 25°C then go for an Australian kit where they seem to include yeasts that need a higher temperature.

I tried brewing in an old fridge/freezer without using the motor, in the main because I had bought wrong temperature controller which would control heat or cool rather than heat and cool. Once the first 10 days are over the insulated box is good, and a simple heater will maintain temperature, it is rare for the ambient to rise to a point where it gets too hot. However in those first 10 days the heat from the fermentation means the ambient needs to be below 16°C to maintain 20°C in the fermentor in the fridge compartment. Even then you need to start at no more than 18°C which is just on the limit for yeast to start. Better if ambient is less than 14°C. OK today 11th August 0:02 am outside is 12°C, but it is likely tomorrow will get hotter so you need to start brew with fridge door open and pray for first 5 days at least to be cool.

I also made a mistake measuring the fermentor temperature, I used a stick on strip, it had 16,18,20,22,24 etc marked, but it measured somewhere between fermentor temperature and ambient temperature because it was exposed to the air, when I started to use a temperature controller I found with a sensor under a sponge so insulated from air temperature and only measuring fermentor temperature the temperatures of the strip and controller did not match. The difference between to two varied first 5 days the sensor was recording up to 3°C higher than the temperature strip, but as time went on the temperatures became closer. The bigger the difference between ambient and fermentor temperature the more out the strip is, so when my strip measured 26°C likely the fermentor was really at 30°C no wonder my early brews in summer were poor.

What I did was start mid September when forecast was cold for 5 days, and last brew started end of May weather permitting. I would use two fermentors so 40 pints every 10 days and I would try to build up a stock. But last March I was ill, so the brewing stopped, as a result I ran short on stock, so bought a STC-1000 and started using the freezer to brew in. So this year is first year I have brewed in the summer.

Having a stock of beer in the shed does however have an advantage, it is all well conditioned before drinking.

My lager attempt was with Geordie kits, I did two as lager taste, one at 20°C the other with lager yeast at 12°C the latter was a total failure, it was too long in the fermentor before any alcohol was produced and it was the only one of my beers to get spoilt by wild yeast or other unwanted bugs. Unless you boil all water before using do not try to lager a kit, learn from my error. The 20°C kit was not too bad, but lager is not my thing. I used other lager kits instead of sugar in some of my brews, and they were very good, Morrisons sold off their beer kits cheap and only had lager kits left, so I bought a few at �£6.50 each which was about the same as buying dried malt.

There's a thread somewhere with much discussion on where to place the temp probe in a brew fridge.

As you say your brew in the FV was as much as 3C difference than that of ambient temp. When I use my brew bag I simply take the ambient temp but keep in mind that the temp in the FV can be 3C (or even more) higher. So I tend to try to keep my ambient temp at 18C knowing the real temp in the FV may well be in the low to mid 20C's

 

[ericmark]

There's a thread somewhere with much discussion on where to place the temp probe in a brew fridge.

As you say your brew in the FV was as much as 3C difference than that of ambient temp. When I use my brew bag I simply take the ambient temp but keep in mind that the temp in the FV can be 3C (or even more) higher. So I tend to try to keep my ambient temp at 18C knowing the real temp in the FV may well be in the low to mid 20C's

There are two reasons to measure fermentor rather than ambient in controlled compartment. The first as you say the fermentor can be 1 ~ 5°C higher than ambient on heating and with cooling this I have found is increased I have measured 15°C difference between ambient and fermentor. This can be reduced by fitting a fan in the controlled compartment and where two fermentors are put in a freezer then there is a case for monitoring ambient.

The second is run time of the heater or refrigeration unit. Two problems, one life of the relay contacts, and two the life of the refrigeration unit, the latter needs a reasonable run time, measuring air it simply does not run for long enough and the start with a standard refrigeration motor i.e. not inverter controlled, is what wears out the motor, so the sensor needs to be attached to some large mass which delays the switching of the motor, the fermentor is a large mass, so may as well use that, rather than attach the sensor to a lump of iron.

If fermentation produced the same energy from start to finish you could compensate for the difference, however that is not the case, it starts at zero and over 24 hours approximately it goes to maximum and then slowly reduces again. It is that first 24 hours which is real problem. One would need to have a seat outside the fermentor and be altering the temperature every 1/2 hour during part of the process, and to know what temperature to set you would need a thermometer in the fermentor so may as well put the sensor on the fermentor to start with. Once first 24 hours has gone and activity is dropping then easy to alter temperature once a day to compensate. But I have found near impossible to manually compensate for first 24 hours. OK yes if you pitch a very large quantity of yeast then the activity goes to maximum very quickly so you are only worried about slowly increasing temperature. However I simply sprinkle on contains of a small packet so start is slow.

I am not perfect I also made a mistake to start with, I used a demo under floor heating tile, which seemed ideal, it would take weight of fermentor and did not get too hot, and heated from the bottom. However what I had failed to realise was it had a large mass, so when switched off it continues to heat, also it was twice the wattage required so heated up too quick to get a smooth temperature. It was 18W where I only need 5W (worked out using an energy meter in heart of winter) so giving some leeway 8W was ample, I know use an 8W bulb, low mass and low heat, it is far better.

At 18°C start without cooling then nearly every time with 16°C ambient in garage where the fridge/freezer is, the brew will reach 20°C after 24 hours, with the garage over 16°C either I need to leave fridge door open, or use freezer with the STC-1000 to switch on the refrigeration as well.

In the kitchen with nothing around the fermentor then at 16 ~ 20°C in the kitchen the brew would start nicely without a problem, the energy produced at start was released into the room without a problem. It was the later stages which caused problems, I would put body warmers around the fermentor to raise it the couple of degrees required to finish off the process. The kitchen must have been the worst room, it was away from the central heating thermostat with no TRV to control temperature so it's temperature swing was large, not as bad as garage, but far worse than living room.

I did suggest I had the fermentor in dinning room, but I backed off quickly after the response. The fridge/freezer in the unheated garage was in the winter a huge step forward in the winter using just a heater, but as summer approached there was no option but to stop brewing, year one in garage loads of stock so that was OK, year two it was start using the fridge/freezers motor or run out of home brew.

 

[MidlandBrewer]

Just a top 2 from me as Ive only made a few largers and only found 2 I would really recomment (there both great though!)

1) Coopers Canadian Blonde + Coopers brew enhancer - Its impossible to get wrong an I can drink it all day long, really great brew.
2) Wilkos Cerveza as per kit instructions - I was supprisingly Impressed with this!